GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 793915
Option to convert UTC time to local time in Reply credits
Last modified: 2018-03-12 13:25:33 UTC
According to the discussion in this bug report https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=779804 I would like to propose an implementation of an additional option in Evolution that would enable a user to pick the timezone of the Date/time field in Reply credits (header). 2 options are sufficient: original timezone from the Date field of the original mail (to which the user is replying) OR local timezone of the user. The option is mean to correct the behavior of mails that come from Outlook (2010, 2013 whichever version), because Outlook converts all Date/times to UTC timezone, thus when replying to a mail that came from Outlook, the Date/time is in UTC timezone. This way it would enable us to override this and set the timezone to the one of the user doing the reply. In the above bug, after analysis, we have confirmed that this is not an issue of exchange or any other particular server, but a problem of Outlook client not sending the date/time in correct timezone in the original mail. Thank you very much.
Note that sometimes, UTC *is* the correct timezone of the sender.
Yes, indeed that is true, but in that case it would produce the same result in both options, which is OK I think.
Created attachment 369178 [details] [review] evo patch for evolution; I cannot commit this for 3.28, because it adds new translatable strings, thus this is only for 3.30. The default is to convert UTC Date values into local time zone in the reply credits. The value can be changed with: $ gsettings set org.gnome.evolution.mail \ composer-reply-credits-utc-to-localtime false
This is indeed great news - thank you very much!!! I will really look forward to this release. Will there also be a GUI option somewhere within Evolution settings in application itself?
Please can we make that default off? With sane mail systems that have nothing to do with Outlook or Exchange, citing the sender's Date: header with its original time zone is the correct thing to do. We don't want to suddenly start messing with the citations by default for people who *are* actually sending in the +0000 time zone.
In fact if it's designed to cope specifically with Outlook, is there something else we can check for? I don't think there's an X-Mailer: header but is there something else we could use? Then we could stop messing with anything that *doesn't* come from the offending versions of Outlook, perhaps? Also... while we're fixing problems in incoming messages, should we also spell-check them and silently fix up the sender's spelling when we are citing their message?
I absolutely agree that the option should be turned off by default and that Evolution should by default handle the reply credits in the same way it does now. If someone needs to override the Outlook timezones, then he/she can easily find the option in the preferences.
Created attachment 369320 [details] [review] evo patch ][ for evolution; Okay, I changed the default. There will be no GUI option for it. It's too specific to Outlook (I do not know why I didn't set the default to 'false' from the beginning), thus it's only with gsettings or dconf-editor or such. Not that easy to find, but you are the only one requesting it as of now, and you already know about it. With respect of spell-checking: no, definitely not. Either you quote what had be written or you write new text. You cannot change the history. Not talking that the typos usually offer multiple choices. You can always issue spellcheck in the composer and fix also the quoted parts. In any case, please do not change subject of this bug report, it makes things very confusing and hard to follow.
I wasn't serious about the spell-checking; it was designed to show what I think of this feature :) Everything you said there applies fairly well to the subject of re-writing the sender's Date: header too. Thanks for setting the default to 'off'. I wasn't following along *so* carefully in the other bug; have we really exhausted all possibilities for EWS managing to somehow work out what the sender's timezone really was? If we're going to attempt to reconstitute the Date: header properly, it *would* have been much nicer to do it when receiving the mail from EWS in the first place, of course.
(In reply to David Woodhouse from comment #9) > I wasn't serious about the spell-checking; it was designed to show what I > think of this feature :) Oh, I see, my humour-detection-sense is pretty low today. > Everything you said there applies fairly well to the subject of re-writing > the sender's Date: header too. Yes, and no. By changing the timezone you do not change the time when it had been sent, you change the actual value being shown in the credits only. When you convert it to your timezone, then it'll be the correct time. You cannot expect this from spell-checking :) > Thanks for setting the default to 'off'. Sure, you are welcome. As I said, I do not know why I made it 'on' by default, maybe because I thought there's no significant number of users using UTC zone. > I wasn't following along *so* carefully in the other bug... I am not aware of any other option. It doesn't mean there is none, it means only that I'm not aware of it. I do not want to "poison" this bug with related, but elsewhere discussed functionality, thus in case you'll find something I missed, please update the other bug report instead. Thanks.
OK I'm perfectly fine with that - will switch it via dconf-editor, no issue at all. Regarding David's comment about other options from EWS (just a short summary): I've not managed find *any* reference to the sender's timezone in the mail sent from Outlook, neither in the data received by EWS connector - all usable dates are converted to UTC as they come out from Outlook - Exchange has no role in this.
Created commit ae559e669c in evo master (3.29.1+)