391126 - Suggestion: Allow timezone overrides for unknown timezones in remote calendars

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Calendar :: Internal Components, enhancement)

Description

[Ed]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070725 Firefox/2.0.0.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.4pre) Gecko/20070614 Sunbird/0.5

Note:  This bug may be a dup of part of bug 314339.  I looked that one through, and it wasn't completely clear to me if the issues there would cover what's here.  Even if the list of supported timezones is expanded, there's always the case that someone might point an ics file at Sunbird that contains an unknown (unsupported) timezone.

I was attempting to add a Yahoo! sports schedule calendar to Sunbird.  When I finished the remote calendar definition, an error popped up.  I downloaded a copy of the ics, trimmed it down to the test case below, loaded it up via a file:// reference, and the issue is (not surprisingly) the timezone value:

DTSTART;TZID=US/Pacific:20071007T100000
DTEND;TZID=US/Pacific:20071007T130000

If I alter those to ones I know that Sunbird supports:

DTSTART;TZID=/mozilla.org/20070129_1/America/Los_Angeles:20071007T100000
DTEND;TZID=/mozilla.org/20070129_1/America/Los_Angeles:20071007T130000

The load works just fine.  The problem is that I'd like to use one of these remote calendars as-is, and since it's coming across with a timezone that Sunbird doesn't like, I can't use the calendar unless I save a local copy and edit it (in which case I don't receive calendar updates since I'm using a local copy).

What would be nice is if the calendar setup definitions allowed me to select a timezone to use for the remote calendar file if Sunbird doesn't recognize the timezone provided in the remote calendar.  Even better would be catch for the error condition that would prompt the user for the override value (e.g., "Sorry, but the calendar file you've requested refers to the timezone US/Pacific, which I don't know how to manage.  Please pick the timezone you'd like to use instead from this selection list").

Here's the error:

An error has occurred
There has been an error reading data for calendar: giants.
Error number: INVALID_TIMEZONE
Description: [Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x804a0001 [calIIcalComponent.startTime]"  nsresult: "0x804a0001 (<unknown>)"  location: "JS frame :: file:///C:/Program%20Files/Mozilla%20Sunbird/js/calItemBase.js :: anonymous :: line 526"  data: no]

Here's the edited .ics I used to dig into the issue:

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
METHOD:PUBLISH
X-WR-CALNAME:New York Giants Calendar (NFL)
PRODID:-//sports.yahoo.com//New York Giants Calendar (NFL)//EN
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=US/Pacific:20071007T100000
DTEND;TZID=US/Pacific:20071007T130000
SUMMARY:New York at New York
UID:New York Giants Calendar (NFL)[e-mail]
SEQUENCE:0
COMMENT:Copyright 2006 (c) Yahoo!, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
DESCRIPTION:TV: CBS
DURATION:PT3H0M
DTSTAMP:20070806T123234
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Bas van den Bosch]

The latest nightlies have support for foreign timezones, could you retest and see if it works now?

Comment 2

[studfunk]

Just to confirm, as of the 2008-02-17 nightly, this problem still exists.

Comment 3

[Martin Schröder [:mschroeder]]

The iCalendar file from comment#0 is invalid because it misses the VTIMEZONE definition for "US/Pacific". If the VTIMEZONE component exists it should be possible to load the iCalendar file with Lightning and Sunbird 0.8. -> Nominating for resolving as INVALID

Comment 4

[Bas van den Bosch]

@martin: The bug title is to allow setting choosing/setting existing timezones for unknown/undefined timezones, allowing invalid ics. I think this bug is valid, if we can catch and process these invalid ics-files there'll be less errors.

Comment 5

[Martin Schröder [:mschroeder]]

(In reply to comment #4)
> @martin: The bug title is to allow setting choosing/setting existing timezones
> for unknown/undefined timezones, allowing invalid ics. I think this bug is
> valid, if we can catch and process these invalid ics-files there'll be less
> errors.

@Bas: Please file a clean RFE. The intention I read from comment#0 was a bit different, especially because it was filed before we could handle non-native timezones. I always like ideas to improve loading and parsing invalid iCalendar files with easily visible problems that allow error correction.

Comment 6

[Ed]

Arguably, at some level, the entry was about using a Yahoo! ics file in Sunbird.  With:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.13pre) Gecko/20080331 Sunbird/0.8

The calendar loads without throwing any errors - so that's good.  The only problem I see is that the events are three hours off.  My timezone is set for America/New_York, and this calendar is in US/Pacific.  I'm guessing that comment #3 from Martin is exactly the issue at this point.

If a means to handle the timezone better necessitates a separate bug / RFE, I'm happy to submit it.  I'm also happy to go whine at Yahoo! about their invalid format.  What would you all prefer?

Comment 7

[Stefan Sitter [:ssitter]]

(In reply to comment #6)
See Bug 419007 for the observed issue with shifted times.

Comment 8

[Martin Schröder [:mschroeder]]

Marking INVALID per comment #3 and comment #6.