In Locale->Formatting, where do we get our abbreviations in Time “Long format?”
My timezone, America/Phoenix, aka. Mountain Standard Time or MST shows up as “usphx.” I would think this should be MST, not usphx. I’ve never heard of this abbreviation before. It makes little sense. I can gather that it is a shorthand rendition of US Phoenix. But in the grand scheme of UI/UX it is dramatically out of place. Especially since it is in the Locale preferences. Isn’t the point to use what is the norm in said Locale? “usphx” is definitely not a norm around here that I’m aware of. Three letter abbreviations of the name of the timezone are used here, and everywhere else in the states. This is the first time I’ve ever seen such an abbreviation.
Sounds like worth a ticket at the bugtracker.
Just opened the ticket. Aside from the rant, my question of where these abbreviations came from is on a serious note. I’d like to look into how and why it got that way.
Went to check my own locale settings after seing this. GMT seems ok in my case. But noticed that “Formatting” isnt translated “ok” in spanish, being a raw translation and not adapted for the use in the tab title 
But on the other hand if the word is used outside that tab, the translation is correct, so… humm emmm… i dunno.
These come from the ICU library, which in turn get them from CLDR data (http://cldr.unicode.org/translation/timezones). We do have some control on what is shown, so we should fix this. The problem comes and goes with ICU versions, as they change things sometimes…
And yes, it’s apparently country (2 letter) + city (3 letter), so we should be able to convert this to “America/Phoenix” in some way.
The translations usually come with a “context” and sometimes a “comment” in Pootle. This allows you to translate the same english word with different spanish words according to the context. If there is a place where this is not possible or confusing, let us know (preferably with a screenshot) and we will adjust the sourcecode to make it better.
America/Phoenix shouldn’t be in Locale display. That’s correctly part of Time->Time zone, although we use America->US->Phoenix instead of America/Phoenix. This is fine because it is logical and helps users Wade through a large number of options.
In locale formatting, it should go:
Full format: hh:mm:ss Time Zone Name
Long format: hh:mm:ss TZN
America/Phoenix would translate to Mountain Standard Time, or MST.
…Except that Arizona doesn’t observe Daylight Savings Time like most of the rest of Mountain Standard time zone here in the U.S. Or it didn’t last I knew of…
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Arizona is MST, the rest of mountain time is MDT, or Mountain Daylight Time