Hi Eric,

> Guido Van Hoecke <guivho@gmail.com> writes:
>
> [...]
>
>> Hang on, I am still looking into the UTC aspect.
>>
>> Right now the offset is dependent upon the execution time rather than
>> upon the date being converted.
>
> Yes, if by execution time you mean by the time zone of the computer
> running the script.  This is definitely a problem and one which I gave
> up trying to solve.  Mind you, it did cause me no end of problems last
> year and this year again when I moved from the UK to Australia and then
> back again...

What I meant is that running the script during winter time applies the
winter time offset to all times, and running during summer time would
apply the summer time offset to all times.

As far as handling the tz difference between th file and the computer, I
suggest to use a remote shell to a computer that has the same time zone
as the file. The offsets will be different, and probably the switchover
times too. Not something to handle in an awk script, I am afraid.

> Okay.  No rush from my point of view.  I would love to see a solution to
> this problem!

The attached patch provides a solution. UTC times are corrected with the
offset appropriate to that specific time. This will work for full hour
offsets as well as offsets with any number of minutes (e.g. -0145,
+0230). Still, this conversion uses the computer's time zone...


I added some additional configuration options that allow for easy
tailoring of the script's behaviour:

    # set to 1 or 0 to yes or not output a header block with TITLE,
    # AUTHOR, EMAIL etc...
    header = 1;

    # set to 1 or 0 to yes or not output the original ical preamble as
    # comment
    preamble = 1;

    # set to 1 to output time and summary as one line starting with
    # the time (value 1) or to 0 to output the summary as first line
    # and the date and time info as a second line
    condense = 0;

    # set to 1 or 0 to yes or not output the original ical entry as a
    # comment (mostly useful for debugging purposes)
    original = 1;

    # google truncates long subjects with ... which is misleading in
    # an org file: it gives the unfortunate impression that an
    # expanded entry is still collapsed; value 1 will trim those
    # ... and value 0 doesn't touch them
    trimdots = 0;

    # change this to your name
    author = "Eric S Fraga"

    # and to your email address
    emailaddress = "e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk"


I left the default values to produce the output as you initially
intended.

I prefer to toggle preamble, condense, original and trimdots, but that
is very subjective.

With kind regards,