[Evolution-hackers] importing iCalendar with VTIMEZONE definitions into Evolution

[Patrick Ohly <Patrick Ohly gmx de>]

Dear Evolution hackers,

there are various discussions in bugzilla about problems in Evolution
with timezones (#317422, #315235, #332911).

As part of #317422 chenthill has submitted a patch which fixes problems
if the calendar backend already knows the custom timezone while the GUI
doesn't. My understanding is thus that the backends are responsible for
storing these extra timezone definitions. Please correct me if I'm wrong
here.

I am the developer of the "SyncEvolution" SyncML client for Evolution
[1]. It uses the ecal API to extract and store iCalendar 2.0 items that
it gets from the SyncML library. I have not found a good method yet to
also store the VTIMEZONE definition in the backend.

What I currently do is:
     1. icomp = icalcomponent_new_from_string()
     2. event = icalcomponent_get_first_component(ICAL_VEVENT_COMPONENT)
     3. e_cal_create_object(event)

If I omit the second step, e_cal_create_object() complains with "Invalid
object", but obviously with the second step the backend only sees the
VEVENT and never gets a chance to store the VTIMEZONE definition.

The Evolution GUI also doesn't get this right: importing an iCalendar
item with timezone definition into a local calendar drops the custom
timezone definition and thus shifts the event (Evolution 2.4 - I haven't
tried 2.6 yet).

Can anybody tell me what's the right way to import iCalendar?

[1] http://sourceforge.net/projects/sync4jevolution

-- 
Bye, Patrick Ohly
--  
Patrick Ohly gmx de
patrick core de (MakeCD related mails)
http://home.pages.de/~ohly/
http://makecd.core.de/ (MakeCD home page)