Re: [FEATURE REQUEST] Timezone support in org-mode datestamps and org-agenda

[Ihor Radchenko]

Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com> writes:

>> Could you please elaborate here?
>
> I have some meetings scheduled in my org files which show up in the
> agenda.
>
> Meeting 1 is a reoccurring meeting which happens every 2 weeks. All of
> the people in that meting are in the same timezone as I'm in. When we
> transition into/out of daylight savings time, I don't want the timestamp
> to change. THe meeting will remain at 3pm.

Specifying the timezone should be good enough.
Not specifying will put you at a risk if you travel (you default OS
timezone will likely change).

> Meeting 2. This is also a reoccuring meeting. However, this meeting is
> with people from a number of idfferent time zones. When my timezone
> moves into or out of daylight savings time, I need the meeting time to
> be updated - moved forward/back 1 hour.

Again, you can just specify the right timezone and let Org translate it
to local one when calculating agenda.

> Next week, I'm travelling to a different city for work and will be in a
> different timezone. I need all my meetings to be adjusted except for
> those I've already booked that are in the timezone I willl be in while
> I'm away.

If you don't specify the timezone for both old and new meetings, there
will be no easy way to deal with this. What you may have to do is: (1)
indicate explicit timezone for the meetings in the new place (there will
probably be less of them compared to all other meetings); (2) tell Org
to use your old time zone as default - it will make the previously
scheduled meetings without timezone info use the right time zone.

> Finally, I have a few timestamps I use to track some projects and
> progress on various tasks as well as reports showing actual and
> estimated effort comparisons as well as managing billing/invoicing. The
> actual timestamp times are less important than the calculation of
> durations etc. When durations do cross daylight savings transition
> points, it is critical that additonal hours are not accidentally
> added/removed from the duration calculation. Mistakes here could result
> in me loosing revenue or over charging clients.

For the past timestamps, you can either: (1) make Org put UTC offsets
when recording clock data; (2) use the idea we discussed about multiple
default time zones where you can specify different time zones at
different periods of time (before after travel).

Does it sound good enough?

-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
Org mode contributor,
Learn more about Org mode at <https://orgmode.org/>.
Support Org development at <https://liberapay.com/org-mode>,
or support my work at <https://liberapay.com/yantar92>