[Kolab-devel] KEP 2: Modification of datetime type, introduction of 'tz' sub-tag

[Jeroen van Meeuwen (Kolab Systems)]

On Wednesday, November 17, 2010 11:57:27 am Georg C. F. Greve wrote:
> On Wednesday 17 November 2010 12.33:58 Jeroen van Meeuwen (Kolab Systems)
> wrote:
> > - Does the nesting make the new version of the format incompatible with
> > older  clients?
> 
> Provided the clients are Kolab compliant, i.e. preserve unknown tags, and
> use proper XML parsing, it should not be.
> 
> > - Is there a specific reason the <tz /> element is nested in the
> > <start-date  /> element? Do we expect to see end-dates specified for a
> > different timezone?
> 
> Most clients allow to choose the time zone for each of the time fields that
> is entered. So not being able to model that in storage would impose much
> larger changes upon clients in their user interaction, or an implicit
> decision which explicit user input to discard, whereas a nested value will
> avoid placing that burden on the client implementor or user.
> 
> At the same time, there is no additional cost to doing this nested, and it
> makes sure that we can cover future use cases that we may not be aware of
> right now without having to modify the format for them.
> 

As long as we know and are able to verify this is factually correct, we're in 
good shape (e.g. create the necessary test cases for this).

Thought about it a little more, and it's actually very nice to be able to 
finally do the timezone shifting plane trips in one agenda ;-)

I would depart somewhere UTC+2, and arrive somewhere UTC-2 after a 4 hour 
flight -you know how these airlines express everything in local time...

Upcomint appointments on the other end of the trip can then be set to the 
target timezone immediately as well, without regard to any timezone shifting, 
and the history is preserved accurately.

Kind regards,

Jeroen van Meeuwen

-- 
Senior Engineer, Kolab Systems AG

e: vanmeeuwen at kolabsys.com
t: +316 42 801 403
w: http://www.kolabsys.com

pgp: 9342 BF08
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