[Ayatana-dev] Timezones and Locations for indicator-datetime

[Karl Lattimer <karl@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello all,

 I'm currently working on adding timezones and locations now that the
appointments and tasks are out of the way. There is an issue with how
timezones work, especially between evolution and the indicator and I
wanted to bring it up for discussion here.

Here's a use cases to demonstrate the issue;

Case: Bob creates an appointment via evolution, he creates that
appointment at home in London, the appointment is for 1 week in the
future when Bob is in New York. The appointment time is 9:00am 

Result: Bobs appointment appears at 2pm when the timezone changes due to
either user interaction or geoclue location 

Reason: Evolution doesn't (by default) display the Timezone field in the
Appointment editor. Bob didn't set the timezone for the appointment to
New York so the Timezone was London for the appointment, the local clock
changed to New York time but the appointment stayed on london time. 

 -

To solve this problem I propose that we change the default behaviour in
evolution to display the Timezone field in the appointment editor. 

Also add a helpful indication to the appointment item which is shown
when the appointment is in a different timezone. e.g. changing the
appointment time to "2:00pm BST" for items in a different timezone and,
"9:00am" for items in the local timezone. 

 --

I also want to propose a solution to the "What should happen when you
select one of the alternate timezone items in the menu.". Unresolved
item; https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TimeAndDate#Unresolved%20issues

As the user is probably expecting the timezone to change when it's
selected I propose that we use a radio button to indicate the selected
item. This is inline with the other indicators and I've written code to
do this pretty easily in the menu. 

 --

For the menu items for the locations/timezones, I suggest we always
retain the one we've changed from, at least during the current session. 

So for instance, as Bob lands in New York he has two timezones in the
menu, London and New York, which are not necessarily pre-configured to
be there. London may disappear after a reboot, but that should have been
enough of a transition period. 

 --

Something else I'm having to think about is whether or not the indicator
is the correct place to be acting on a location change as it should be
possible when the clock isn't visible in the menu from what I can
gather?

Maybe there needs to be something else to handle this particular change?
and the indicator is merely a consumer of information from that
something else.

 ---

Comments & Suggestions welcome, if you're hoping to test the
appointments indicator my branch with latest code is being pushed here; 
lp:~karl-qdh/ubuntu/natty/indicator-datetime/indicator-datetime.withappointments

unfortunately we don't have coloured icons because evolution source
colour stuff is currently broken deep inside of evolution. And there are
some other minor bugs that need squishing.

BR,
 K