[Remind-Fans] Different timezones in the same file / view?

[Dianne Skoll]

On Sun, 25 Feb 2024 13:46:54 -0500
Jag Talon via Remind-fans <remind-fans at lists.skoll.ca> wrote:

> I'll be traveling soon, and I was thinking of a scenario where I get
> to keep the reminders that I have from home (and be set at the right
> time) while also being able to set reminders relevant for my new
> location.

Remind is not spectacular at handling time zones.  All times in reminder
files are interpreted in the local time zone.  If you want to make
a non-repeating reminder in a specific time zone, you could do something
like this:

REM [tzconvert('2024-02-28 at 09:00', "Canada/Pacific")] MSG whatever

which would always be triggered at 9:00AM Pacific time on February 28,
2024, no matter what the local time on your computer is.  If you don't
mind always expressing your reminders in UTC, you can use utctolocal instead:

REM [utctolocal('2024-02-28 at 17:00')] MSG whatever

which is triggered at 5:00PM on 2024-02-28, UTC, which happens to be the
same as 9:00AM Pacific.

For repeating reminders, it's much trickier because changing time zones
can change the date.  If you are sure this won't happen, you can
express all of the times in UTC and adjust as follows:

REM Tuesday AT [14:00 + $MinsFromUTC] MSG foo

This will trigger every Tuesday at 14:00 UTC no matter what time zone your
computer is in *assuming* that $MinsFromUTC is not so high that the time
goes backwards or forwards past midnight.  Not a great solution, but it
does work for many use cases.

Regards,

Dianne.