RFC: addition of generic timezone support to kdelibs

[Shaheed]

Reinhold wrote:

>> There is also a mini-timezone database in kdepim/libkcal/libical/zoneinfo
>> which I have not really looked at.
>
>These are the snipplets of the VTIMEZONE objects that come with libical. If 
>(and we really need to, sooner rather than later, since that's an absolute 
>requirement to be compatible with other groupware systems) we implement 
>proper time zone support in libkcal, we need to have the iCalendar VTIMEZONE 
>object available for each time zone to copy it to the .ics files. Now the 
>problem is that this means that in libkcal we won't be able to use the 
>system-wide time zone library, but need our own timezones... (Unless the 
>KTimezone class is able to give a full representation of the timezone 
>information needed for the Calendar format, in particular, we need all 
>date/times when DST starts/ends, and the offset to UTC for DST and normal 
>time periods).

Well, if you look at ktimezones.cpp, you'll see it contains a complete lexical 
analyser for zoneinfo files at the bottom of the file. Using that, it would 
not be hard to flesh out the KTimezone class with accessors for this 
information.

If we could work out what kind of API would be useful, I'd certainly be wiling 
to give that a shot. I'd be worried about doing it without such input though.

Thanks, Shaheed