[Remind-Fans] Re: Sunrise, Sunset (Swiftly Flow the Days) ...

[David Rogers]

Mike Harris wrote:

>(5/2/05 9:03 AM) David F. Skoll <dfs at roaringpenguin.com> wrote:
>
>> I'm not sure how Mac OS X handles it, but Linux and most UNIXes keep
>> system time in UTC and their C libraries do on-the-fly conversions,
>> taking into account DST.
>
>Well, 'date' yields 'Mon May  2 21:44:09 CDT 2005' -- but the more
>simplistic version of the code yielded the very same problem of it
>being an hour ahead.  I imagine it may be something individual to my
>system.  Are there any other Mac OS X users on this list experiencing
>the same problem?
>
>Perhaps I can attack this from a different angle.  The sole inaccuracy
>is the hour's difference.  Can I manually subtract one hour from the
>result, code I could later eliminate when we go back on 'normal' time?

I ran into this problem on OS X, and copied the following (with my own
modifications) to the beginning of my .reminders file, from one of the
example files that comes with Remind. The "-420" value in the first line
is what you would change to suit your own distance from UTC. -420 seems
to work for me on the Canadian west coast. I hope I've used the example
correctly, and I hope it works!



#__________________________

SET TimeZone -420

    # Use --8 rather than --7 because we want the last day BEFORE
    # the time switch occurs.
    REM Sun 1 May --8 SATISFY 1
    SET BegDst TRIGDATE()

    REM Sun 1 Nov --8 SATISFY 1
    SET EndDst TRIGDATE()

    SET $CalcUTC 0

    # Check out the following IF statement and figure out why it works!
    IF EndDst < BegDst
        # Daylight Savings Time
        SET $MinsFromUTC TimeZone+60
    ELSE
        # Standard Time
        SET $MinsFromUTC TimeZone
    ENDIF
#__________________________