[Vobject] no TZ info in parsed dates?

[Jeffrey Harris]

Hi Florian,

> I'm having a similar problem to the original one (timezone is not
> parsed) with event coming from evolution reading via evolution-python
> http://www.conduit-project.org/wiki/evolution-python , namely that
> evolution does not add the VTimezone field. What do you suggest, is it
> "ok" to just add it and set it to the value of DTSTART;TZID in case
> VTIMEZONE is missing?
> 
> Just as a side note, the time zone is not ignored with evetns having  RRULE

If you need to import that sort of VEVENT, you can of course just make
the ics valid by adding a relevant VTIMEZONE, or you can take the
shortcut of registering the relevant evolution tzids (see Bill Janssen's
helpful code snippet for a guide to how you might do that,
http://skyhouseconsulting.markmail.org/message/ektmcktzgagdvb7e).

I think Outlook and Evolution are 80% of the culprits when it comes to
this particular issue (no VTIMEZONE).  It would be plausible to work
around both, for Outlook by using Bill Janssen's code, for Evolution by
just noticing TZIDs that look like /softwarestudio.org/Tzfile/.  I've
been hesitant to try this in the past, because I don't want to boil the
ocean, but I'll give it a shot.

As an aside, I'm thinking of adding a compatibility-mode flag to
vobject, which will default to on and silently tolerate invalid
iCalendar like this (if vobject can do a workaround), but when off will
fail.  I'd like to create a Google App Engine iCalendar validator, to go
along with the Java and .Net versions that are already out there.  Jon
Udell's been blogging about iCalendar compatibility and I'd like to make
it easier for applications to play nice with vobject.

Sincerely,
Jeffrey