[TYPO3-core] RFC: Bug #1697: Datetime input fields and timezone shift bug

[Steffen Kamper]

...snip...
> Forcing UTC will break current installations. As TYPO3 isn't clever enough 
> right now, we must assume that 99% of installation have data in the only 
> one TZ, which is the server's TZ.
>

yes, this is an important note.
What's about changing this in general by one version (maybe 4.3) and an 
install tool routine (database) to recalculate all timezone fields in DB 
with server's TZ ?
Should be announced also for all upgraders.

> What we must do is to allow the TZ to be configurable just like charsets. 
> For new installations this should be UTC, but an empty value will default 
> to the server's TZ (as defined by the OS).
>
>> Also remember that there is a Conf-Var, that was never used: 
>> $TYPO3_CONF_VARS['SYS']['serverTimeZone']
>
> Ah, this is excatly what I mean!
>
>> This is a possibility to read the server TZ.
>>
>> Next step ist the display - there are several possibilities:
>> - show datetime in servers TZ
>> - show datetime in users TZ
>> - show datetime in entered TZ
>>
>> first is simple, second could be done by JS, third is not possible, 
>> because this information is never stored.
>
> I think the third one is not important. For the BE options 1 and two could 
> be configured via user TS. For the FE any plugin may decide what is 
> appropriate. Maybe we can provide an API for typical use cases.
>

this was result of the discussion in skype with mario / jeff and bernhard a 
time ago, where we thought about giving the BEuser a TZ-field.
but it could be complicate if the user change TZ while a trip.

>> Maybe it could help, if Servers TZ is displayed anywhere, so anyone knows 
>> which timezone is displayed (maybe a switch to users TZ?)
>
> Either that, or as already suggested by me, display both UTC and local 
> time. If there are place restrictions we could use the title attribute to 
> display the "other" time. By another TS confivuration we could set which 
> one is the preferred one.
>

+1 anyway to display it.

vg  Steffen