Great link!
https://spin.atomicobject.com/2016/07/06/time-zones-offsets/
"Given a
local time and an offset, you can know UTC time, but you do
not know which time zone you’re in (because multiple timezones
have the same offset)."
So, given
a time zone you can know the offset (Google it, for example)..
Then,
given the time zone and the local time, you can know UTC.
If
orgmode gets the UTC there is not ambiguity.
But, that
would mean that the offset related to the different time zones
must be downloaded and updated from some site.
As you
said before, that offset can change. For example, peninsular
Spain has the same time as Berlin, but as this doesn't make
much sense, it could change, so updates would be necessary.
I have been thinking about how I would use this feature. So use
cases appeared, which arose some doubts about how to use this
feature, and an opinion for the Poll surged:
If I wanted to assist to a "Mastering Emacs book club" meeting in
America/Vancouver, while living in Spain: Doubt: Should I use
local time of America/Vancouver to schedule the meeting?. Like:
[2024-02-04 12:00 @America/Vancouver] (I don't like space before
the @, for the Poll).
1. Doubt: I suppose my agenda timestamp would be: [2024-02-04 do.
21:00]. (Spain local time). Correct?
2. If I went on vacation to Brasília, my agenda timestamp should
change to: [2024-02-04 do. 17:00]. (Brasília local time).
Doubt: How must the local time zone be updated to get that
timestamp changed?
3. Back to Spain, I see that, for political reasons, Vancouver's
winter time-zone changed from UTC-8 to UTC-9.
Doubt: How would my tz database be updated?
Doubt: After updating the tz database, my agenda timestamp
would change automatically to [2024-02-04 do. 22:00]. Correct?
4. For the Poll: What would be the expected behavior if we used
the UTC offset? [2024-02-04 12:00 @-08,America/Vancouver]
- We should know beforehand the DST of Vancouver, or there
would be warnings. It seems more difficult for the user: maybe the
"-08," should be optional?
- Case 3: After updating the tz database we would get warnings
too. To correct those warnings, should the UTC offset be changed
manually in the timestamp?. If there were 35 meetings in Vancouver
throughout the year, to change all the UTC offsets could be non
trivial for a normal user: UTC of the summer and winter would
differ.
[2024-09-04 12:00 @-07,America/Vancouver] should be changed
to [2024-09-04 12:00 @-08,America/Vancouver]
[2024-02-04 12:00 @-08,America/Vancouver] should be changed
to [2024-02-04 12:00 @-09,America/Vancouver]