[GLLUG] linux pim

[Chick Tower]

This is a pet peeve of mine, so it's not a major consideration for most 
people.  I hate it when PIMs convert the times of appointments to 
whatever time zone your PC is set up for.  For example, if you have a 
laptop, take it on a business trip to Hong Kong, and change the time to 
match local time, you're screwed on the front end or the back end.  (No 
pun intended.)  Either you calculate the time (and date!) in your home 
time zone for a meeting at 1:00 p.m. Wednesday in Hong Kong and enter 
that time for your meeting, or you don't do that and have to calculate 
the local Hong Kong time for a meeting you have scheduled for 3:30 a.m. 
  Why can't I set up a meeting for 1:00 p.m. and record it in my PIM and 
have it tell me the meeting is at 1:00 p.m. no matter where I am?  Who 
in hell calls someone in Asia and says "I want to meet with you at 2:00 
a.m. Michigan time"?  That used to drive me crazy in Outlook.  I 
discussed it with some fellow IT people at work once and they couldn't 
seem to grasp why I had a problem with this behavior, and yet it seems 
obvious to me -- why should we be doing mental gymnastics like this just 
to ensure the PC records it properly?  If a travelling executive loses 
his schedule and calls the home office to have it read to him, why in 
heck would I want to tell him "You have a meeting at 4:30 a.m. in our 
time zone, let me convert that to your local time zone.  What is your 
time zone, by the way?"  How often does someone call the secretary of a 
travelling executive and say "I need to know what your boss has 
scheduled for this very minute in Dubai."  I guess it could happen if 
they needed to set up an unscheduled conference call, but why not do the 
time conversions in your head only when they're needed and not EVERY 
SINGLE TIME?

KOrganizer bit me in the ass once for this very reason.  I scheduled a 
doctor's appointment when I was in the Central time zone and recorded 
it, but when I got to Lansing I missed the appointment because the damn 
PIM converted it to Eastern time, or one hour later.  I was livid that 
KDE programmers could be so stupid as to do this and not give me a 
choice in the matter, and livid is no exaggeration.  Orage has an option 
to record the time as a "floating" time, which is just what I want.  So, 
while my scheduling needs are modest, at best, without this floating 
time feature any PIM is utterly worthless to me.  Unless it can hook me 
up with Sofia Vergara.

I'm really not this crazy.  Apparently, this is more than just a pet 
peeve to me.

                                Chick

On 02/18/2012 07:47 AM, Patrick Goupell wrote:
> Hello All,
>
> I am a programmer / developer in northeast lower Michigan. To keep
> myself occupied I am writing a pim (personal information manager).
>
> It will be a blending of features from such programs as microsoft
> outlook, efficient pim, korganizer, kde & gnome pims and whatever else I
> can dream up.
>
> If there is that one feature that you would most like to get in a pim,
> what would it be?
>
> Feel free to sound off one any other feature(s) you think should be
> included (or excluded) from a pim.
>
> Thank you.
>
> Patrick