I have a digital clock set up in my task bar which, when hovered over, shows me the local time/date and US Pacific Time described as "Los Angeles". Is there any way either to edit the description (I'd like it to say "Eugene, OR") or to create a new entry in the time zones table? The time itself is fine - it's just the text I'd like to customise.

as best as I can tell you'll need to create and then compile a custom time zone for this (obviously I can be wrong and there's an easy way that I couldn't find). you'll probably want to put this in a non-standard locale so it doesn't get wiped out in an update

see the following:
http://kitenet.net/~joey/blog/entry/how ... time_zone/ - a simple how to
http://linux.die.net/man/8/zic the timezone compiler man page
ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub time zone stuff
http://www.twinsun.com/tz/tz-link.htm the timezone db for dl'ing

this is what the L.A. timezone looks like in tzdata2011g.tar.gz:

Code: Select all

# US Pacific time, represented by Los Angeles
#
# California, northern Idaho (Benewah, Bonner, Boundary, Clearwater,
# Idaho, Kootenai, Latah, Lewis, Nez Perce, and Shoshone counties,
# and the northern three-quarters of Idaho county),
# most of Nevada, most of Oregon, and Washington
#
# Rule   NAME   FROM   TO   TYPE   IN   ON   AT   SAVE   LETTER
Rule   CA   1948   only   -   Mar   14   2:00   1:00   D
Rule   CA   1949   only   -   Jan    1   2:00   0   S
Rule   CA   1950   1966   -   Apr   lastSun   2:00   1:00   D
Rule   CA   1950   1961   -   Sep   lastSun   2:00   0   S
Rule   CA   1962   1966   -   Oct   lastSun   2:00   0   S
# Zone   NAME      GMTOFF   RULES   FORMAT   [UNTIL]
Zone America/Los_Angeles -7:52:58 -   LMT   1883 Nov 18 12:07:02
         -8:00   US   P%sT   1946
         -8:00   CA   P%sT   1967
         -8:00   US   P%sT

Thanks for this reply - the links, together with actually knowing what the application I am looking for is called! - will be most helpful.