Daylight saving - Western Australia

If BirdieSync 1.x constantly replaces your girlfriend's phone number with your mother's one, this forum is for you...
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sunspots
Posts: 19
Joined: Mon Feb 18, 2008 2:46 am

Daylight saving - Western Australia

Post by sunspots »

Hi,
Western Australia has just gone into daylight saving for the summer. The clock on my PC and my mobile are showing the correct daylight saving time, however, I received a ActiveSync error from BirdieSync that the timezones were incorrect. Even though I have selected on the PC, BirdieSync, and mobile Perth - Australia. Sync'ing has been working prior today without this issue.

I did have a look at your sticky and as such did a work around by choosing Singapore on mobile and BirdieSync. This allowed me to sync the two without error. I then re-adjusted the timezones on BirdieSync and mobile.

This is more of an informational message to you. Maybe you can update the table and post us an update for BirdieSync.

Thanks

sunspots
Posts: 19
Joined: Mon Feb 18, 2008 2:46 am

Re: Daylight saving - Western Australia

Post by sunspots »

Just updated with the latest version 1.7.0.4 and told me that the profile is 480min and the mobile is 540min. This gave me a different perspective of looking at the problem. So, I choose a profile that had 540min in BirdieSync in Thunderbird/Lightning.

This allowed the device and Thunderbird/Lightning to sync, but sync'd 20 events. No idea which events they were. I know before when I had to choose different timezones I had a recent appointment appear on the device one hour later (almost missed it, luckily I realised).

As mentioned at the start, the new version gave me a different view on the problem and solution. Which leads me to think, why not eliminate the countries in the BirdieSync profile and just have GMT, GMT+1, GMT+1.5, .... GMT+13 etc? Or add a feature to allow us to modify the profile to cater for any changes to daylight saving rules?

I prefer the second option and if it is in a file, we can post back to the community.

Regards

Birdy
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Joined: Tue Apr 18, 2006 11:43 am
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Re: Daylight saving - Western Australia

Post by Birdy »

Hello,

The problem of time zones is a complex one... First of all, BirdieSync has no control over the definition of time zones. They are defined by Microsoft on the mobile device and in Windows, and by Mozilla in Lightning/Sunbird. The definition of a time zone can change every year because of Daylight Saving Times (when you add/substract 1 hour at specific dates in the year). The problem with Windows Mobile is that they don't release patches very often to correct the time zone definitions and only for some particular countries... The time zones definition in Lightning/Sunbird is more up to date but not always. Having different time zones on the mobile device and in Lightning/Sunbird is not a good thing since it can change the displayed time of the appointments (+/- 1 hour). That's why BirdieSync check if the time zones offset are identical.

Having a time zone like GMT, GMT+1, GMT+1.5, .... GMT+13 would be a partial solution: you would have to change it manually to respect the DST change, and it will lead to problems when you enter appointments with a date past the DST change.
Birdy

sunspots
Posts: 19
Joined: Mon Feb 18, 2008 2:46 am

Re: Daylight saving - Western Australia

Post by sunspots »

Hi Birdy,
Thank you for the detailed response.

I guess in this case the Sunbird/Lightning is not up to date, as both WIndows & Windows Mobile are showing the correct time.

I agree it is not good to have different time zones and have run into that problem of changing my appointment.

Yes, agree my suggested solution is only a partial solution. I guess this is one of those nightmare areas and I know (believe) that next year we wont have daylight saving.

Regards

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