Re: [Evolution] Webcal and TimeZones

[JP Rosevear <jpr novell com>]

On Tue, 2004-12-21 at 18:54 -0500, Ted Anderson wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-12-21 at 10:18 -0800, Lonnie Borntreger wrote:
> > Using Evolution 2.0.3
> >
> > I'm in the "America/Los_Angeles" time zone.  When I subscribe to a
> > webcal that is set as showing times in "US/Eastern", no time shift
> > occurs.  It shows in my calendar with the little icon that indicates a
> > difference in timezone from the default, but the time shown for the
> > event still shows the "US/Eastern" time.  Shouldn't this be shifted
> > according to my time zone?
> >
> > In case I'm mumbling too much and not being clear, for example..... an
> > event in a webcal starts at 1PM Eastern, and it shows in my
> > "America/Los_Angeles" calendar as starting at 1PM, instead of 10AM.
>
> What program is generating the webcal? I've noticed in the past that
> other non-windows software tends to use TZID's such as those you typed,
> while Evolution's TZID looks like this:
>
> TZID=/softwarestudio.org/Olson_20011030_5/Europe/Madrid
>
> I've mentioned the problem before on this list and was told that it's
> the other software's fault for not having
> the /softwarestudio.org/Olson_20011030_5/ before the country/city.
> Regardless of who's wrong and who's right, I've found that I always have
> to add the extra info to make Evo be able to correctly use outside
> calendars and delete the info to have outside programs (phpical, for
> example) use Evo's data.

The problem is not that string, the problem is that the calendars tend
not to include the relevant VTIMEZONE data in the VCALENDAR.  You'll
note that other programs, like Outlook even, when sending ITIP data,
include the timezone. I think that section 4.2.19 or RFC 2445 is pretty
clear:

'An individual "VTIMEZONE" calendar component MUST be specified for each
unique "TZID" parameter value specified in the iCalendar object.'

Apple's ical and others seem to assume the Olsen timezone naming
scheming while not actually providing the data.  

That said however, people just want it to work, so we should do a better
job of "guessing" the zone, 

-JP
-- 
JP Rosevear <jpr novell com>
Novell, Inc.