man: explain why TZ=: is used

Also, reword the description a bit. "As a string" is meaningless in the context
of commandline arguments, where evyrything is a string. This is not a
strongly-typed programming language where 5 is a number but "5" is something
completely different. Here both 5 and "5" are indistinguishable. The original
text was trying to say that a location name should be given and not a number,
so say "time zone location name".

For #17177.

diff --git a/man/homectl.xml b/man/homectl.xml
index dd16e47bebf1171df4140e9a527771405a742367..732b7511ad0fb703acd9d7f4f3114ca5ccb6ab79 100644 (file)
--- a/man/homectl.xml
+++ b/man/homectl.xml
@@ -299,11 +299,13 @@
       <varlistentry>
         <term><option>--timezone=</option><replaceable>TIMEZONE</replaceable></term>
 
-        <listitem><para>Takes a timezone specification as string that sets the timezone for the specified
-        user. Expects a `tzdata` location string. When the user logs in the <varname>$TZ</varname>
-        environment variable is initialized from this setting. Example:
-        <option>--timezone=Europe/Amsterdam</option> will result in the environment variable
-        <literal>TZ=:Europe/Amsterdam</literal>.</para></listitem>
+        <listitem><para>Takes a time zone location name that sets the timezone for the specified user. When
+        the user logs in the <varname>$TZ</varname> environment variable is initialized from this
+        setting. Example: <option>--timezone=Europe/Amsterdam</option> will result in the environment
+        variable <literal>TZ=:Europe/Amsterdam</literal>. (<literal>:</literal> is used intentionally as part
+        of the timezone specification, see
+        <citerefentry><refentrytitle>tzset</refentrytitle><manvolnum>3</manvolnum></citerefentry>.)
+        </para></listitem>
       </varlistentry>
 
       <varlistentry>