[rt-users] Displaying times in local user's timezone (worldwide support)?

[Thomas Sibley]

On 02/13/2013 06:42 AM, Craig Ringer wrote:
> That said, from a usability point of view, the "Options" page could
> really use a link to "About me", particularly in the "Locale" and "Mail"
> sections. The separation of display timezone and date format locale
> seems really bizarre, and is part of why I didn't find the option; if it
> were supported, surely the timezone would be set in the user editor
> accessible as admin, or in the Options section? It never occurred to me
> to look in About Me.

There are internal reasons, of course, why this isn't the case.  They
aren't good reasons though, and the timezone and language settings on a
user should be made visible from the user's preferences page (rather
than the user properties page).  The timezone property should also be
accessible to the admin user page.  File a feature request, please, to
rt-bugs at bestpractical.com or http://issues.bestpractical.com.

Regarding your concerns about RT's timezone support, they're based on
false assumptions.  RT uses the standard modern timezone specs and its
timezone support is pretty good.  Best Practical has engineers scattered
around the world, so a tool without proper timezoning is not an option.
:)  The comment you dug out of the code is related to Time::ParseDate
*itself*, and describes RT's workaround for it.  Perl has very modern
date and timezone handling via the DateTime suite, but RT predates it by
quite a few years and hasn't had the need to switch to it yet.

Thomas