[Remind-Fans] timezone handling

[Justin Alcorn]

On Mon, Mar 6, 2023 at 4:49 PM Tim Chase <remind at tim.thechases.com> wrote:

> The main difference seems to be that it outsources worring about
> DST from the application layer or reminder-file layer to the OS
> layer.  So if you change OS settings for your timezone and locality,
> you don't have to update anything in your reminder file(s).  Or,
> if laws change when DST occurs and your OS updates to the new laws,
> you don't need to do anything to your reminder file(s).
>
>
>
>
> This conversation actually created an idea in my mind.

My kids aren't Linux users (disappointed!), but I've had a whole reminders
setup for all of them that emails their reminders every day.  It's why I
wrote ical2rem.pl years ago, so I could take their Google Calendars and
email them an agenda each day.

Well, the kids have grown up and moved away.  I've set up $Latitude,
$Longitude and $Location so that their daily reminders tell them sunrise
and sunset, etc....but then one of my boys moved to the Central Timezone,
and I just realized I'm sending him the wrong times because my computer
lives in ET.  And I was sending the sunrise and sunset times for everyone
for Cleveland Heights.  When 2 of them live in Northern Michigan, and one
in Boston.

I see that "Remind doesn't have any support for timezones" so...my solution
was to put a location file for each user as an INCLUDE, as so:

SET $Latitude "xx.xxxxxx"
SET $Longitude "-xx.xxxxxx"
SET $Location "Minneapolis"
#TZ America/Chicago

Then my script that sends the reminders does (among other things):

 timezone=$(cat $d/location | grep TZ | sed -e 's/.*#TZ \(.*\)/\1/g')

cat $ft | TZ=$timezone perl ~/git/ical2rem/ical2rem.pl --label "Online
Calendar" --heading "PRIORITY 9999" --lead-time $t > $d/ical2rem
TZ=$timezone /usr/bin/remind -q -iplain=1 $d/reminders

($ft is the contents of downloaded google calendars.  $d is the directory
with the person's reminders files)

There's a lot more, but that's how I solved the "Users in timezones other
than my OS timezone" problem.
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