TimeZone as IANA timezone or UTC+/-

[martinheidegger]

Subtask for #6

The current timezone specification uses IANA timezones like Asia/Tokyo. Those timezones are imho. good to read for people. But they also contain the hidden issue that they are subject to change. I.e. the japanese government code get the crazy idea to change their timezone. (this happens on 1/2 countries during one year (average)). It might be more intelligent to change it to UTC+09:00 or so to make it clear. This however brings on the problematic that the UTC timezones disregard Summer/Wintertime so the user will need to think in which timezone she is at the time of the event.

So I think we have 3 options:

1. Stay strict as it is now and require the IANA code
2. Make IANA optional and just take it from the lat/lng. Add information in the admin interface that it will use this lat/lng!
3. Change to UTC+/- codes which brings in Summer/Wintertime chaos.

I choose 1) because it seems best to me but am open for counter-arguments.

[fforres]

IANA works well, imo. :)
We could add a search/validation to prevent user errors, but adding the whole UTC/GMT/ETC seems too much chaos.

Although, considering the workshops are specific to a location/timezone, putting just a local time should work, for the purposes of the "event description"

[martinheidegger]

After further reflection: I think it would be best if the timeZone's would be removed from the events.json entirely. The lat/lng location should provide sufficient information on the applicable timezone of the event. By adding the information to an event I am sure that it would just annoy people and it actually is duplicate information.

So, Instead of the current solution I would welcome PR that:

• removes the timeZone from the wizard and event specification
• automatically evaluates and adds the timeZone to the output of list

[dinodsaurus]

Should we use this https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/timezone/intro , or is there a better solution on doing this ?

[martinheidegger]

We are using tz-lookup for looking up the timezones here. It should be faster and less dependent than google.

[RichardLitt]

Would moment naturally fix this? Aren't there libraries which have solved this problem?

[martinheidegger]

I did Investigate quite a few options before using tz-lookup which is fast and light.

[RichardLitt]

Ok. I think your comment on removing timezones makes sense. Let's just do that.