On 21/01/2023 07:37, Thomas S. Dye wrote:
1) Occurrence, where the timestamp includes UTC;
2) Event relative to user, where the timestamp does not include UTC
or a time zone; and 3)
Event not relative to user, where the timestamp includes the relevant
time zone.
For a while I prefer to concentrate on future timestamps and postpone
discussion of ones in the past.
As to format for storage timestamps in Org files, particular timestamps
may have or not explicitly specified timezones, but it is unrelated to
these 3 cases. It may be convenient to keep work.org file with TIMEZONE
keyword for location of the office and do not specify it for each
timestamps, so during a trip it allows to see correct time of regular
meetings. In addition you may have personal.org file where most
timestamps assumes timezone of your current presence. In both files some
timestamps may have explicit timezone either "local follow me", UTC, or
for particular location.
From my point of view these, 3 cases might be relevant to date-time
picker UI, but not for storage format. While parsing, interpretation of
each timestamp without explicit timezone depends on preferences chosen
at higher scope.
Or, it might be a recurring virtual meeting that the boss wants to
initiate at 9:00 AM her time, regardless of the time zone she happens to
inhabit, as might happen on a business trip.
I believe that some manual action is required in this case anyway. You
almost certainly already have 9:00 AM in your agenda as a reoccurring
timestamp either with implicit or explicit timezone of usual presence.
For the period of the trip it is necessary to add series of meetings
with explicitly specified timezones (UTC or locations during the trip).
Another approach is to define ad hoc "boss" timezone and update it to
reflect all trips.
At the Org side it might be support of multiple ad hoc "timezones": a
one for you personal trips and several ones for people you frequently
communicate with. It is a nice option, but might be too complicated for
usage. It may be easier to suspend regular entry and to add custom ones
with no requirements related to the code. Anyway it assumes some
communication between participants.