#73: No way to specify timezone ----------------------+------------------------- Reporter: kparal | Owner: Type: defect | Status: new Priority: major | Milestone: Future Component: fedocal | Version: development Resolution: | Keywords: ----------------------+-------------------------
Comment (by kparal):
With UTC only timestamps, you can't define an event that occurs in local time. New York is UTC-4 in summer and UTC-5 in winter (or similarly, you get the idea).
I tried to create a sample recurring event in Evolution and export ics. The iCal file seems to contain hundreds of definitions of DST changes for every available year (actually, that seems pretty lame, but maybe it's really part of the standard), like this:
{{{ BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:/freeassociation.sourceforge.net/Tzfile/Europe/Prague X-LIC-LOCATION:Europe/Prague .... .... BEGIN:STANDARD TZNAME:CET DTSTART:20121028T030000 TZOFFSETFROM:+0200 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZNAME:CEST DTSTART:20130331T020000 TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0200 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZNAME:CET DTSTART:20131027T030000 TZOFFSETFROM:+0200 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 END:STANDARD .... .... END:VTIMEZONE }}}
After that the event is defined:
{{{ BEGIN:VEVENT UID:20131030T112621Z-26814-1000-1597-86@medusa DTSTAMP:20131026T102015Z DTSTART;TZID=/freeassociation.sourceforge.net/Tzfile/Europe/Prague: 20131031T160000 DTEND;TZID=/freeassociation.sourceforge.net/Tzfile/Europe/Prague: 20131031T170000 TRANSP:OPAQUE SEQUENCE:2 SUMMARY:foobar CLASS:PUBLIC RRULE:FREQ=WEEKLY;UNTIL=20131114;BYDAY=TH CREATED:20131030T112651Z LAST-MODIFIED:20131030T112651Z END:VEVENT }}}
Please notice that the event is defined in local time for Prague.
I assume that a combination of these two pieces of information ensure that a) the event is always displayed in the same time, no matter whether it's winter or summer b) if someone else with a different timezone (and different DST changes) displays this calendar, you can correctly compute the time for him and display in his local time.
Disclaimer: I don't really know anything about iCal. Just guessing.