Re: [Orgmode] iCal export - possible timezone bug

[Nick Dokos]

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.

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