Re: Outlook / Timezones

Hi Negar


On Wed, 5 Nov 2003, Negar Razbani-Tehrani wrote:

>
>
> I use an outlook calendar at work,so I've been saving events from it in
> iCalendar
> format, then using your ical2rdf.pl script I've converted them into rdf.
> Comparing these rdf files with your sample test files available on:
>
> http://www.w3.org/2002/12/cal/test
>
> it seems that I'm missing the tzid tag in dtstart & dtends. I guess I'm
> getting a simple string representing local time. Also outlock doesn't
> export the VTIMEZONE block that you get from Apple iCal. Neither does it
> give the calendar's scale.

hm, this is an issue - Apple ical did not do that either until recently,
but iCalendar (RFC 2445) files are not usually valid unless they contain
a timezone block, so it looks like Outlook is at fault here.

One thing you could do is try and export your data as UTC (append a 'Z'
onto the datetime and convert to UTC), which would also be correct:

http://esw.w3.org/topic/RdfCalendarDocumentation,

[[
17 http://www.w3.org/2002/12/cal/ical#dateTime

[...]

Summary: you must either have Z for UTC time or a reference to a
timezone identifer and a Vtimezone object defined *in the same file*,
unless you are referring to a floating time (i.e. the same time in
different timeszones). Timezone offset is not acceptable.
]]

- but that might be less than helpful, depending on where you are.

>
> I wanted to know if anyone has done any experiments with outlook or not
> (besides Tim B.Lee's lookout.py script)? Is there a way to get it to
> export the timezone data correctly?

I'm sorry, I don't know about this.

>
> If I wanted to write a script to add the timezone related data into the
> rdf files (after the fact), what should I use as a valid format? Can the
> test data *.rdf files be used as a model? Where can I get the offsets
> from?

The /test files should all be correct to use as examples. There is also
a complete (I think) list of timezones by place in

http://www.w3.org/2002/12/cal/tzd/

- you can just add the bit between
  <Vtimezone rdf:about='#tz'>
   ...
  </Vtimezone>

Note that the timezone id is a string, e.g

<tzid>/softwarestudio.org/Olson_20011030_5/America/Los_Angeles</tzid>

I'm fairly sure this would be better as a resource, but I ca't find any
discussion there, so best to follow the testcase format and use a
string.

>
> And also is the icalendar task force still working on timezone and
> discussing its related issues? I have been reading sporadic emails from
> the archive list about it here & there, but could anyone summarize the
> final decisions made so far w.r.t timezone data? examles would be helpful
> too.

I don't think we are doing any more work at the moment except on
documentation.

Our last position was this:

- http://rdfig.xmlhack.com/2003/05/14/2003-05-14.html#1052921345.552964
InterpretationProperties, esp as applied to timezones

PROPOSED: that we note the issue but keep the status quo.

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-calendar/2003Sep/0002.html

http://rdfig.xmlhack.com/2003/09/10/2003-09-10.html#1063209175.159585

[[
libby: see action
libby: and last meeting's discussion
libby: RESOLVED:To note the issue with InterpretationProperties as
discussed last time, but to keep the status quo
libby: ACTION libbt email www-rdf-calendar about this decision
]]


>
> The wiki site, the archive list and the w3c RDFCalendar web site have
> loads of useful data but sometimes finding what you're looking for can
> be tedious.

I agree, and we are currently looking at ways to impove the
documentation. Any suggestions appreciated.

Hope that helps,

Libby

Received on Wednesday, 5 November 2003 06:41:04 UTC