[Opensim-users] OpenSimulator now correctly sets the Daylight Savings flag for the viewer based on the Pacific Timezone

[Justin Clark-Casey]

Hello.  As previously discussed on this list [1], in the Second Life system the server does not send a timezone to the 
viewer - instead many viewers just display US Pacific Time (with the exception of some viewers that display UTC instead).

However, viewers that display Pacific Time still need to receive a flag from the server on login that signals whether 
daylight savings time is in operation.  If the flag is received, I believe the viewer displays PDT (Pacific Daylight 
Time) instead of PST (Pacific Standard Time).

Up until commit cccef2e5, OpenSimulator has set this flag depending on whether daylight savings is in operation for 
whichever timezone the login server is in.  This meant that many timezones set the flag wrongly, either for a short 
period (in the case of European timezones) or for half the year (in the case of countries that don't operate daylight 
savings).

 From commit cccef2e5, by default OpenSimulator looks up the Pacific timezone and sets the flag accordingly to match the 
viewer's expectation.

If you would like to keep the old behaviour where server timezone determines the DST flag, please override the DSTZone 
setting in the [LoginService] section of Standalone.ini/Robust.ini/Robust.HG.ini with the setting "local".

I believe this is a minor thing but I imagine it can be misleading to see the viewer display PST when Pacific Daylight 
Time is in effect.

None of this effects viewers that just display UTC or allow the user to set a timezone.

Many thanks to Olivier Van Helden and Gudule Lapointe for doing the research on this, submitting the original patch and 
working through a number of revisions.

[1] http://lists.berlios.de/pipermail/opensim-users/2012-April/010154.html

-- 
Justin Clark-Casey (justincc)
http://justincc.org/blog
http://twitter.com/justincc