International preferences -- how to adjust daylight saving time there?

Thanks much for the reply, BDAqua. I tried your suggestion and it did not help the problem with DST. Maybe the settings are in another plist file, but I can't fish around through all of them without cause. Anyone even had a similar experience? Thanks...

Michael,

Yes, EDT stands for Eastern Daylight Time. It's not clear to me whether the International preferences have reflected the switch correctly or at all in the past. I believe I've only just begun using apps that look to the International settings. The point is that I don't know how the switch has been handled there previously -- I just know it's incorrect now.

Output from plutil command:

<key>com.apple.TimeZonePref.Last SelectedCity</key>
<array>
<string>38.916656</string>
<string>-77.000000</string>
<string>6</string>
<string>US/Eastern</string>
<string>US</string>
<string>Washington, D.C.</string>
<string>U.S.A.</string>
<string>Washington, D.C.</string>
<string>U.S.A.</string>
</array>

Output from zdump command:

/etc/localtime Sun Mar 9 06:59:59 2008 UTC = Sun Mar 9 01:59:59 2008 EST isdst=0
/etc/localtime Sun Mar 9 07:00:00 2008 UTC = Sun Mar 9 03:00:00 2008 EDT isdst=1
/etc/localtime Sun Nov 2 05:59:59 2008 UTC = Sun Nov 2 01:59:59 2008 EDT isdst=1
/etc/localtime Sun Nov 2 06:00:00 2008 UTC = Sun Nov 2 01:00:00 2008 EST isdst=0

The "nearest city" is Washington, DC. According to Wikipedia, the lat/*** is 38°53′42.4″N 77°02′12.0″W. I tried different cities within the same time zone, and that didn't seem to make any difference.

BTW, I did not know those commands before -- are they BSD utilities, or are they specific to the Mac OS? In particular, plutil looks like a powerful tool for dumping out the preference settings in human-readable format. Thanks for that!

Yes, DC is in the preference pane. The other locations you mention are also listed, plus several others, mostly outside the U.S.

/etc/localtime looks like this:

lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 30 Aug 10 21:44 /etc/localtime -> /usr/share/zoneinfo/US/Eastern

So that symlink seems to be pointing to the right timezone file.

Thanks for the extra info on plutil and zdump. I have a lot of experience with various Linux distros and several UNIX variants, but have not had much exposure to BSD. I guess that's a testament to OSX -- not much reason to look under the hood most of the time. But, I still have an xterm open at all times -- old habits die hard...

Well, I made a new account, and the timezone is listed there as EST instead of EDT. So, it's the same as the regular account. Do you think this is the kind of question that one of the Genius Bar staff at the local Apple Store might answer? I don't want to go to the trouble of making an appointment and then wasting our collective time. Thanks...

Michael Conniff wrote:

In your first post you said

Every application that looks to the International settings for time info is one hour ahead of the correct time (e.g., Entourage calendar).

Can you clarify what you mean here? The "International" preference pane only affects the Date and Time format not its value.

Many scheduled events that I've imported into Entourage from an external ics subscription (a sports schedule created by someone else) are one hour later than they are supposed to be. But not all. That would make me think that the calendar's creator did something wrong. However, events that I've personally created in iCal and imported into Entourage are always shifted one hour later than originally specified. Events that I create in Entourage are all ok.

From what I could gather on web searches, Entourage somehow looks to the International settings in order to determine local time, and the time zone is listed as EST in Int'l preferences (though according to another poster, it will always say EST in the Eastern time zone). Anyway, if the information from those web searches is correct, then it might make sense that schedules coming from outside Entourage could be in error for this reason. The events created within Entourage would never need to be adjusted for local time because the Entourage user specifies the correct local time of the events in Entourage. Maybe I was misinformed about the relationship between Entourage and the Int'l settings, though if it's an Entourage bug, I'm pretty sure I would have found some reference to that during my initial web searches.

Fyi, the "regular" Date & Time preferences specify that the time and date be set automatically from Apple's time server

Note that all Network Time Servers give out the time in UTC (same as GMT). So any time server will do, and won't affect the time you see displayed.

Yes, I understand that. My point is that I'm not manually adjusting the time.

and applications that use the time info from there are fine.

What exactly are these applications? As I said, the "Date & Time" preference pane is the one that affects the value.

Not sure how to answer this now (if there's no relationship between Entourage and the Int'l settings, then that previous statement of mine made no sense).

What does the command line date give you? From the information in your previous posts I would expect that, at least, to say "EDT". If that is wrong, something very low level is adrift!

The date command gives the correct time.

Thanks for bearing with me on this. Initially, I thought this was a bug in Entourage, but info on some websites convinced me it had to do with OS X settings. Now, I'm not so sure. Lots of signs are pointing to Entourage as the culprit.

neuroanatomist wrote:
Voozy, when you state "timezone is listed there as EST instead of EDT" are you referring to the oval 'symbol' in System Preferences > International > Formats when you click on Customize in the Times section and look in the Time Elements area? That will always be EST if you have a city in the Eastern time zone selected, regardless of whether or not daylight savings time is in effect. As Michael points out, the International settings only affect the +display format+ of the time, not the actual value. The EST shown in the International settings there does change with time zone (e.g. it will show PST if the city is set to San Francisco, or GMT+3:00 if you're set to Kenya), but it is merely a placeholder so you can drag the position around when you set the top pop-up menu to . This becomes obvious when you notice that none of the other values are matched to the correct time, i.e. the Customize area does not show the correct hour, minute, or second, regardless of the actual time of day or whether or not daylight savings time is in effect.

Right, I noticed that none of the other values were correct, but I think I got all excited when I saw that the time zone said EST instead of EDT and discounted the idea that it was just a placeholder. Classic case of putting on the blinders! If I'd encountered this problem outside of Daylight Saving Time, I wouldn't have fallen for this "trap." I guess it boils down to a lack of familiarity with this particular interface.

So, I suspect we need to look elsewhere for your problem - the apps that are incorrectly reporting the time are not doing so based on the International settings.

As Michael requested, can you list the apps (in addition to Entourage) where this occurs? Also, what is the version number of Entourage you are using (Entourage menu > About Entourage).

I think it's just Entourage now. Version is 11.4.0 (080122), installed as part of Office 2004.

For Entourage, you should also check in Entourage menu > Preferences > General Preferences > Calendar and confirm that the default time zone for new events is set to the correct time zone.

Yes, that setting is correct. Unfortunately, I can't find much in the way of other Entourage settings that might fix this problem, if it is in fact due to Entourage. I'm beginning to get a bit frustrated here. Personal experience tells me that this should be a simple fix!

Hope this helps...

It helps, thanks. Any feedback that doesn't sound like, "Forget it, kid!" is helpful.

neuroanatomist wrote:
Ok, that version of Entourage should be cognizant of proper DST behavior (not the case for pre-11.3.3 versions of Office 2004).

One clarifying question on semantics - in your first post you state, +"Every application that looks to the International settings for time info is one hour ahead of the correct time (e.g., Entourage calendar)."+ Can you clarify what you mean by 'ahead'? (Some say, "Move it ahead an hour," and mean make it an hour later, i.e. add +1 to the time, others interpret as 'move it up' as in closer, an hour earlier.) So, if you have an event for which the correct time should be 3:00 PM EDT, what time actually shows up in Entourage?

The 3:00 PM event, if imported from iCal, shows up as 4:00 PM. BTW, the event's time does not specify EDT/EST.

Michael, to see what voozy is referring to, look here, then here.

One more question, voozy - how are you transferring the iCal events to Entourage?

I export an iCal calendar to an ics file on my desktop, and then import that file into Entourage. As far as I can tell, Entourage will not directly import calendars from iCal. Hmmm, maybe something is happening during this process that messes up the timezone setting...

(Still adding questions as they occur to me) - In iCal > Preferences > Advanced tab, is the box for "Turn on time zone support" checked?

No, it's not. Should it be? When I check that box, the correct time zone (US/Eastern) appears in the upper-right corner of the main calendar window anyhow.

Thanks for the effort!