Problems with timezones

From what i have managed to find:

1. In iCal - events can have their own timezones (even - different Timezones for
start and end times).
2. Timezones are described in the iCal file itself.

We do not support events that have start/end in different timezones.
We do not support events having different timezones.
We can't do timezone parsing at the moment.
We can't do timezone export at the moment.

IMHO - it is a gap in ST timezone support and not a cosmetical bug.

Additional bug ignas pointed out on IRC.

Expansion of recurrent events does not account for DST changes.

Steps to reproduce:

Set TZ to Vilnius/Europe.
Add an event on 2005-09-01 spaning 14:00-15:00
Set it to recur every day, forever.
Go to 2005-11-01 daily view

Result:
The start and ent times of the event are shifted to 13:00-14:00..

Expected:
The event stays on 14:00-15:00

A fresh look at the issue:

1. Log in as manager
2. Create an event at 15:00
3. Click Open in iCal, save the .ics file to disk
4. Look inside

The DTSTART property of that event is 15:00 UTC+00:00, while I expected to see
15:00 UTC+03:00 (my local timezone).

However this is to be expected, since I forgot to go to the preferences page and
tell SchoolTool what my local timezone is. SchoolTool assumes UTC by default.

This is a usability issue.

(The issue Ignas discovered is a different one and should get its own entry in
the tracker.)

Interesting.

1. Set my timezone to Europe/Vilnius (+03:00 while in daylight savings)
2. Create an event at 15:00
3. Look at the .ics file from Schooltool -- it shows DTSTART at 12:00 UTC which
is correct
4. Open the .ics in Mozilla Calendar

Mozilla Calendar shows the event at 16:00, which is not correct. Bug in Mozilla
Calendar?

I do not have access to Apple's iCal.

Fun fun!

Evolution shows the event at 14:00! Bug in Evolution?

Yep, Evolution thinks that Europe/Vilnius is +02:00 all year round.

Mozilla Calendar, BTW, is even more stupid than you could possibly imagine.
When you export that event (which stated as 12:00 UTC == 15:00 EEST, and which
Mozilla Calendar presented as 16:00 local), then Moz Calendar happily writes a
.ics file inside which that event is described as starting on 09:00 UTC!!!

Yuck.

I've got a suggestion. We might "go with the flow" and just export
timezone-naïve ics files in the timezone of the user preferences. Wrong, but
perhaps much less confusing.

Hi,
sorry I haven't been able to check back lately
since I installed the version 1.2.3, it seems to have solved the problem when
the accounts are set (through the web) to use UTC and in MozCalendar to use the
European time (GMT+1 for Paris)
All seems to stay in order and work fine ...

when I export an event via iCal the event is 2 hours earlier (looks like UTC) than the event in schooltool.

I'd suggest not using iCal export and timezones at the same time, ever. Or at least for a long while. We are not storing timezones with events at the moment (misfeature 1), we have no way to export timezoned events (misfeature 2) and until those get solved, or worked around in some clever way - it just won't work correctly.

How does one not use timezones? Just leave everything UTC? Does that help?