Re: [Orgmode] iCal export - possible timezone bug

[Carsten Dominik]

On May 7, 2009, at 7:45 PM, Nick Dokos wrote:

> Richard Riley <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> > Carsten Dominik <address@hidden> writes:
> >
> > > > > > X-WR-TIMEZONE:Europe/Berlin
> > > > > >
> > > > > > and a quick test confirmed this. I don't have a clue if this is
> > > > > > emacs
> > > > > > side or more in org's remit, but hope this helps.
> > > > >
> > > > > The only time zone information I get from Emacs is the  
> > > > > abbreviation.
> > > > > Does anyone know how to concert this into the longer form?
> > > > >
> > > > > - Carsten
> > > >
> > > > I asked in the emacs irc and drew a blank. Possibly use what you do
> > > > unless an org-timezone string is set for now?
> > >
> > >
> > > this makes sense.
> > >
> > > For now the variable is org-ical-timezone, maybe
> > > later it will be aliased to org-timezone.
> > >
> > > Available now.
> > >
> > > - Carsten
> >
> > tested, works. As does the fix on the export. Thanks.
>
> It might be a good idea to initialize the variable from the TZ
> environment variable (if that is set). That way, one could add
>
>    export TZ
>    TZ=Europe/Amsterdam
>
> e.g., in the appropriate login shell initialization file and get the
> correct behavior with the system date as well as with org-icalendar.


OK, good idea, done.

Note however that Org does store time and date without
time zone information attached to it, so changing the TZ environment
variable will not change the display in the agenda etc.

- Carsten

> I find the timezone stuff very confusing in general, but I have the
> (perhaps incorrect) impression that people actually use the TZ env
> variable sometimes, although I guess that Linux distros in general try
> to automagically do the right thing at installation time by copying  
> the
> appropriate tzfile into /etc/localtime, so you don't have to worry  
> about
> TZ; but if you are switching between timezones or want to override the
> default, TZ does work:
>
>   export TZ=US/Eastern
>   date
>   export TZ=US/Pacific
>   date
>   export TZ=Europe/Berlin
>   date
>
> works as expected (this is on Ubuntu 8.04 - BTW, the tzfiles are in
> /usr/share/zoneinfo on this distro.)
>
> Nick