Event times do not honor timezone offset when subscribed in iCal

[jlg]

Running Plans 8.2.1, I have a calendar with a timezone offset of -6. I
create an event at 6:30 AM on a given day. When I subscribe to the
calendar using iCal, the event shows up at 6:30 AM GMT instead of
GMT-6. This causes all events on the calendar to be 6 hours off when
viewed in iCal.

Is there a way to fix this?

[jlg]

Well, the easiest way to fix it was to set the calendar to auto-update
on a daily basis. Apparently, if the calendar is stored on MobileMe
instead of the local computer, the manual update doesn't work. So,
it's an iCal bug instead of a Plans bug.

Now, to figure out how to make Plans automatically account for DST...

[jlg]

Here's how to sort of fix the DST issue, at least in iCal exports.

Edit plans_lib.pl, find the event2ical subroutine, and make the first
part of it look like this:

sub event2ical() {
my ($event_ref) = @_;
my %event = %{$event_ref};
my $results;

my $start_timestamp = $event{start} - $calendars{$event{cal_ids}[0]}
{gmtime_diff}*3600;
my $end_timestamp = $event{end} - $calendars{$event{cal_ids}[0]}
{gmtime_diff}*3600;

my @timestamp_array = localtime($event{start});
my $ndst = $timestamp_array[8];
my $dst_start_timestamp = $event{start} - ( $ndst * 3600 );
my $dst_end_timestamp = $event{end} - ( $ndst * 3600 );

my $cal_title = $calendars{$event{cal_ids}[0]}{title}; # need to
add titles for all other cal_ids

my $dtstart_string = "";
my $dtend_string = "";

my $rightnow_date = &outlook_date_time($rightnow) . 'Z';

if ($event{all_day_event} eq "1") {
$dtstart_string = ";VALUE=DATE:".&outlook_date($event{start});
$dtend_string = ";VALUE=DATE:".&outlook_date($event{end}+86400);
} else {
# $dtstart_string = ":".&outlook_date_time($event{start}) . 'Z';
# $dtend_string = ":".&outlook_date_time($event{end}) . 'Z';
$dtstart_string = ":".&outlook_date_time($dst_start_timestamp) .
'Z';
$dtend_string = ":".&outlook_date_time($dst_end_timestamp) . 'Z';
}

[jlg]

This fix assumes that you set the timezone offset for your calendars
to the correct non-DST offset, and that your calendars use your
server's local timezone.

As the script generates iCal events, it checks to see if the beginning
of the event falls within DST; if so, it subtracts an additional hour
from the start and end times. Events that fall on the DST changeovers
might not translate correctly, but in general it should work.