Use Timezone of Photo/Entry/Location, not Computer Time?

i2diary

Hi All.

I have had a search of the forums but not yet found a similar thread. I will start with the support tag, but this may need to become a Feature Request or a bug.

I have recently started using this program and feel it is finally meets the requirements I am looking for in a travel diary app, however, there is a few small problems that are stopping me from going to the Pro version and making this my travel diary app.

Below and in the attached screenshots, I have tried to explain my issues and hoping someone can help.

In MacOS Photo App/Camera Roll
• I have phots that I took at 21:27pm on 17th Jun 2018
• The photo location and time are set to PDT (GMT-7)

In Diarum on MacOS
• Entry Date & Time Set to 17th June 2018 @ 21:00
• Location of entry set to Vancouver.

Problem/s to resolve:
• Can see photo until the 18th June 2018 (which would be correct if working in AEST/ GMT+10)
• Sunrise and Set times seem to be in wrong timezone. On this day in Vancouver:
⁃ Sunrise was 5:02
⁃ Sunset was 21:22
• Times below seem for Sunrise/set = System time (AEST/ GMT+10)

Feature Request/s
• Timezone support for entries and calendar view.
• Timezone support for Camera Roll

timo

Thanks for the write-up. Generally, Diarium does not work much with time zones, that information is not stored in the database. So when you create an entry on June 23rd at 9 PM, then this entry is always at that time, no matter where you are located / what the system time is.
And I don't know if I want to change that, for a couple of reasons. First, working with time zones makes many things more complex. I don't see what exact problem this would solve but it would make the app's logic much more complex and prone to errors. Also, the apps database would require a migration to support time zones and then the question is: what time zone to pick for existing entries?

I am aware of the sunrise/sunset problem. It's basically the sunrise/sunset of that location "translated" to the local time zone of your device. When I added the sunrise/sunset feature, the issue I was facing was to get time zone / time offset based on a location. This is not a trivial mathematical calculation based on latitude/longitude & date, but also on country borders, laws (which can change over time!) and else. I did found some database that I would have been able to use to translate coordinate to time zone, but it would have significantly increased the app size (because the time zone borders aren't just straight lines, but often follow country borders) and would have eventually become out-of-date (e.g. because changed laws or borders).
And I can't just take the devices current location / time zone because the user might pick another location located in another time zone (even if might not make sense) and then the sunrise/sunset times are wrong again.
I didn't find a good alternative solution...

I am also aware of the Camera Roll problem. To get the Camera Roll suggestions, the app sends a request to the OS requesting photos/videos in a given date/time range. Depending on the operating system, those requests are different. On Windows, they currently don't include any time/time zone information and I don't know if it's possible to add that. I will see if there's something that can be done

i2diary

timo

Thanks for your prompt and detailed response!

Totally take your point RE time zones for the calendar/entries. Too much complexity and can live without that one. Same goes for the sunrise/set... nice to have.

Good to hear your are aware of the photo problem, and lets be real, that's the one I REALLY care about as it is probably the best execution of this I have seen from the apps I looked at (despite this one issue). Thanks for looking in to it. Do I need to do anything to help? Logs, examples, anything like that?

Thanks again Timo!

i2diary

Hey Again,

Perhaps a quick fix/work around would be a preferences setting that pulls back photos from the camera for that date +/- 24 or 48 hours. That way it would cover timezone challenges (24hrs) or give people the option to add photos from adjacent days for whatever reason. In the app request to OS, can you send a range or just a static date?

Hope that makes sense.
Thanks again

timo

I had a quick look on the camera roll issue and it seems like image files don't usually have any time zone information included, so we are hitting the same problem here. We would have to guess the time zone based on location information inside the photo (which might not be available) and then we still have the location->timezone translation problem.

Yes the app could request pictures +/- 48 hours but the app wouldn't be able to filter them before showing. And always showing pictures from before/after the current date doesn't make sense...