Bug #8000: Misleading times in meeting reminder

Bug #8000

Misleading times in meeting reminder

Added by sajolida 2014-10-05 02:34:35 . Updated 2014-10-15 16:24:02 .

Status:

Resolved

Priority:

Normal

Assignee:

Category:

Infrastructure

Target version:

Start date:

2014-10-05

Due date:

% Done:

Feature Branch:

Type of work:

Code

Blueprint:

Starter:

Affected tool:

Deliverable for:

Description

Currently our meeting reminder outputs approximate timezone for Central Europe, and approximate time for UTC:

“9pm CET or CEST (7pm or 8pm UTC)”

It would be useful to make it able to calculate real time is useful timezones like UTC, based on our reference time (9pm Central Europe).

This output is generate by a Ruby Liquid template: http://liquidmarkup.org/.

We need to write some Ruby and Liquid code that does:

- Find out whether the reference time will be CET or CEST
- Convert this reference time to UTC and possibly other useful timezones

I’ll put the two pieces of code as attachment.

Files

meeting-code.txt (2383 B)	sajolida, 2014-10-13 11:22:23
meeting-template.txt (1174 B)	sajolida, 2014-10-13 11:22:38

Subtasks

History

#1 Updated by Anonymous 2014-10-10 04:00:14

I think the reference time should be UTC and not CET in any case.

Then, i don’t see why we would only announce CET/CEST. Maybe we can announce 2 or 3 other timezones too, so people from the US might consider attending for example?

Next suggestion: add a location reference to the timezones, so people can easily find theirs, that is what a lot of datepickers do, too.

Or, if all this seems complicated, why not just use UTC instead of mentioning 3 different “approximate” times. And link to a map with UTC offsets.

Now concerning Europe it is already hard enough:

In the template, check the date, and between 1:00 UTC on the last Sunday of March and 1:00 on the last Sunday of October (I am sure there is a shortcut for this in Ruby, there is even a shortcut for that in PHP…)
* add 1hr to get WEST (Western European Summer Time - applies to Great Britain, Ireland, Portugal - reference London time)
* add 2hrs to get CEST (Central European Summer Time - applies to all European Union Member States - reference Paris, Berlin)
* add 3hrs to get EEST (Eastern European Summer Time - applies to most Eastern European States - reference Athens, Helsinki, Bucarest)
* Iceland uses UTC - reference Reykjavik

Else
* CET (UTC+1) (Central European Time)
* WET (UTC) is standard in Great Britain, Ireland, Portugal
* EET (UTC+2) (Eastern European Summer Time - applies to most Eastern European States)
* Iceland uses UTC

Liquid looks pretty much like every other templating language, i don’t think that the problem is a technical one.

#2 Updated by sajolida 2014-10-11 02:14:12

Starter set to Yes

> I think the reference time should be UTC and not CET in any case.

The problem with having a reference time in UTC is that the time of the
meeting will change in most timezones between winter and summer. We
would have a meeting on 8pm in winter and 9pm in summer for those living
in Central Europe. I’d rather avoid this if the idea it to avoid
confusing around the meeting time.

And I think that is why we chose Central Europe as a reference time. For
the time being, it’s the timezone used by most of us.

> Then, i don’t see why we would only announce CET/CEST. Maybe we can announce 2 or 3 other timezones too, so people from the US might consider attending for example?

I’m ok with that too. But which ones then? Central Time, Pacific Time,
Eastern Time, and Western European Time? Any other?

> Next suggestion: add a location reference to the timezones, so people can easily find theirs, that is what a lot of datepickers do, too.

Good idea.

Ok, so for the time being I replaced all the time and the timezone
indications by this:

9pm in Paris
8pm in London
3pm in New-York
12am in San Francisco

All those places hopefully implement similar daylight saving times.

> Or, if all this seems complicated, why not just use UTC instead of mentioning 3 different “approximate” times. And link to a map with UTC offsets.
>
> Now concerning Europe it is already hard enough:
>
> In the template, check the date, and between 1:00 UTC on the last Sunday of March and 1:00 on the last Sunday of October (I am sure there is a shortcut for this in Ruby, there is even a shortcut for that in PHP…)
> * add 1hr to get WEST (Western European Summer Time - applies to Great Britain, Ireland, Portugal - reference London time)
> * add 2hrs to get CEST (Central European Summer Time - applies to all European Union Member States - reference Paris, Berlin)
> * add 3hrs to get EEST (Eastern European Summer Time - applies to most Eastern European States - reference Athens, Helsinki, Bucarest)
> * Iceland uses UTC - reference Reykjavik
>
> Else
> * CET (UTC+1) (Central European Time)
> * WET (UTC) is standard in Great Britain, Ireland, Portugal
> * EET (UTC+2) (Eastern European Summer Time - applies to most Eastern European States)
> * Iceland uses UTC

Any Ruby coder around?

Let’s call this an easy task then:

Have some code that converts our reference time (9pm in Paris) to UTC
depending on the date of the meeting and back to several other timezones
and locations.