Re: importing iCalendar with VTIMEZONE definitions into Evolution

On Thu, 2006-06-01 at 22:51 +0200, Patrick Ohly wrote:
> Dear Evolution hackers,
> 
> there are various discussions in bugzilla about problems in Evolution
> with timezones (#317422, #315235, #332911).
> 
> As part of #317422 chenthill has submitted a patch which fixes problems
> if the calendar backend already knows the custom timezone while the GUI
> doesn't. My understanding is thus that the backends are responsible for
> storing these extra timezone definitions. Please correct me if I'm wrong
> here.
Evolution picks up the standard timezone information is present in the
ical library using the tzid,
http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/libical/zoneinfo/. If the tzid is not found
in libical, it would try to pick up from the backend.
> 
> I am the developer of the "SyncEvolution" SyncML client for Evolution
> [1]. It uses the ecal API to extract and store iCalendar 2.0 items that
> it gets from the SyncML library. I have not found a good method yet to
> also store the VTIMEZONE definition in the backend.

> What I currently do is:
>      1. icomp = icalcomponent_new_from_string()
>      2. event = icalcomponent_get_first_component(ICAL_VEVENT_COMPONENT)
>      3. e_cal_create_object(event)
You can get the timezone components separately using
zone = icalcomponent_get_first_component (ICAL_VTIMEZONE_COMPONENT)
and then add it to the backend using
e_cal_add_timezone (ECal *ecal, icaltimezone *izone, GError **error).

> If I omit the second step, e_cal_create_object() complains with "Invalid
> object", but obviously with the second step the backend only sees the
> VEVENT and never gets a chance to store the VTIMEZONE definition.
> 
> The Evolution GUI also doesn't get this right: importing an iCalendar
> item with timezone definition into a local calendar drops the custom
> timezone definition and thus shifts the event (Evolution 2.4 - I haven't
> tried 2.6 yet).
This might be that the timezone is already present in libical and not
correct. Could you please verify it ?

- Chenthill