GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 247908
TZID makes Evo incompatible with other ICS programs
Last modified: 2008-08-07 14:14:41 UTC
This is a wish to somehow make Evo able to work with other ICS-enabled systems that apparently haven't yet agreed on a standard for the TZID field. Iv'e been told by Evo developers that the standard TZID field is supposed to look something like this: TZID=/softwarestudio.org/Olson_20011030_5/Europe/Madrid. However, in iCal .ics files the same appointment would have the following: TZID=Europe/Madrid. From the experimenting I've done with iCal (online use only as I don't have a Mac), iCal cannot use Evolution .ics files unless the /softwarestudio.org/Olson_20011030_5/ is removed from each calendar entry, and Evolution cannot use iCal .ics files unless that information is added in. Furthermore, Outlook uses a completely different set of TZID's that look more like: TZID="Paris, Brussels, Copenhagen, Madrid" which must be manually changed to the Evolution format before Outlook .ics files can be successfully imported. In this final case, the .ics file when viewed inline in an email will actually show the correct details, but upon importing into the calendar the appointment cannot be seen unless Evo's .ics file is manually edited to correct the timezone. All this being said, my wish is for Evo to somehow compensate for this incompatibility. In the case of Mac-generated .ics files, the solution seems to be for Evo to add the /softwarestudio.org/Olson_20011030_5/ as required or to stop using that format altogether. For Windows .ics files it would be more complicated because the TZID's are not similar enough for automatic conversion. Perhaps a timezone choice in the inline view before hitting update?
This is probably related to http://bugzilla.ximian.com/show_bug.cgi?id=25757 (commas in Outlook TZIDs). The fix from there may be missing some code path that gets used when importing.
Just in case this ever gets looked at again, my main concern was not the Outlook incompatibility, which I've come to expect, but the difference between Evo and iCal. It's fairly easy to add or remove the /softwarestudio.org/Olson_20011030_5/ in gedit as required, but it would be nice if Evo were directly compatible without manually editing the ICS file.
FWIW its iCal thats actually broken. They don't include timezone information in there files (which they should) and they use non-unique timezone identifiers. Evolution does both. Nothing in the iCalendar spec includes any information about "default" zones like Europe/Madrid, iCal just arbitrarily uses the Olsen time zone names, however there are various versions of the Olsen info as countries change the info so this is not enough to identify the zone.
I believe newer versions of iCal actually export the VTIMEZONE information. Can anyone confirm this?
adding interop keyword
can anyone please test this with a current verison of evolution and update this bug? thanks in advance.
Evolution 2.6.3 does not produce any VTIMEZONE entries which causes Mozilla Calendar to choke. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356987#c2
Evolution 2.8.0 also does not produce VTIMEZONE entries.
perhaps related to bug 353439. reopening.
*** Bug 353439 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
this isn't an enhancement, but a serious bug to me.
This has been fixed in evolution. We now export the timezone data while saving calendar to disk as .ics or while publishing the calendar on to a webserver. http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/evolution?view=revision&revision=33230 http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/evolution?view=revision&revision=33231