3 ms·

But this is one more reason to save the timezone and stop calculating on current data? Save the time and timezone of the event in the other country, so literal

by foepys 4y ago

But this is one more reason to save the timezone and stop calculating on current data? Save the time and timezone of the event in the other country, so literally the time it starts not the calculated local time. Unless the other country decides to switch timezones, well then you are screwed.

tsimionescu 4y ago
That assumes you know what timezone the user intended. If I read somewhere that some football match in Chile is happening on November 1st at 1 o'clock, I may well put in a reminder for November 1st at 1 o'clock, without specifying a timezone or location. The calendar/reminder app would of course be unable to notify me that Chile's time for November 1st has changed, since I never told it anything about Chile.
- mason55 4y ago
  What exactly do you expect it to do? Asking the user for the location of the event for time zone purposes might be confusing but there’s no better option.
  - tsimionescu 4y ago
    The more common option is not to do that, and accept that in the rare cases of a timezone change, there's nothing you can do from software. Either way, the only completely fool-proof way to make sure you never return the wrong time is to ask not for a timezone, but for GPS coordinates, and preferably some extra cultural information - since the timezone of a particular location may change completely, and that change may only be recognized by certain entities. For example, when Russia annexed Crimeea, they could have changed the timezone (I believe they didn't, but they could have), but more nationalistic Ukrainians in Crimeea would have probably not recognized the timezone change. So, if someone had set an event for some time in the future and chose Ukraine's timezone, they may not have gotten the right reminder if the event was public (so presumably forced by Russian authorities to respect the new timezone), since you couldn't know they meant to watch something in Crimeea. To be clear, I'm arguing it's not worth trying to solve this problem in a fool-proof way in software, not that I expect software to help in situations like the above.

by foepys 4y ago

tsimionescu 4y ago

That assumes you know what timezone the user intended. If I read somewhere that some football match in Chile is happening on November 1st at 1 o'clock, I may well put in a reminder for November 1st at 1 o'clock, without specifying a timezone or location. The calendar/reminder app would of course be unable to notify me that Chile's time for November 1st has changed, since I never told it anything about Chile.

mason55 4y ago
What exactly do you expect it to do? Asking the user for the location of the event for time zone purposes might be confusing but there’s no better option.
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  The more common option is not to do that, and accept that in the rare cases of a timezone change, there's nothing you can do from software. Either way, the only completely fool-proof way to make sure you never return the wrong time is to ask not for a timezone, but for GPS coordinates, and preferably some extra cultural information - since the timezone of a particular location may change completely, and that change may only be recognized by certain entities. For example, when Russia annexed Crimeea, they could have changed the timezone (I believe they didn't, but they could have), but more nationalistic Ukrainians in Crimeea would have probably not recognized the timezone change. So, if someone had set an event for some time in the future and chose Ukraine's timezone, they may not have gotten the right reminder if the event was public (so presumably forced by Russian authorities to respect the new timezone), since you couldn't know they meant to watch something in Crimeea. To be clear, I'm arguing it's not worth trying to solve this problem in a fool-proof way in software, not that I expect software to help in situations like the above.