weather not shown in world-clock-applet when computer timezone differs from home location timezone

[Dieter Moerschel]

Binary package hint: gnome-panel

Bug Description: When one manually configures tzdata to a different timezone value than one the current home is set to, the wheather and temperature preview will fail to be shown in the taskbar towards the left of the date.

Bug Reproduction:
0. Make sure that you have the clock applet running and that a home location is configured and set. Furthermore have the clock show the weather and temperature in the taskbar to the left of the date.
1. compare with BeforePic, see the sunny weather? ^_^ :)
2. open a terminal and do "sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata"
3. set the timezone to a different one than the one your home location is set to.
4. restart the X Session
5. after log-in compare with the 'After' pic. Notice the missing weather?
6. repeat step 2 and 3 in order to restore your original timezone
7. be amazed that the weather miraculously reappears :D (maybe another restart required, but with me it pops up instantly)

What happened:
Although the world clock applet is configured correctly and I did not interact with the world-clock applet, it will fail to display the weather in the taskbar when tzdata is altered.

What should have happened:
The Clock-Applet should habe just continued to show the current weather of my set home location.

Why this is Bad: For people who typically set their computers timezone to the local time of their current location this is no problem. For people though who for various reasons set their tzdata to other values this leads to the clock to fail to display the weather in the taskbar (UTC for example as it is the global standard time, and especially useful for people corresponding with many different timezones)

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Wed May 21 02:14:10 2008
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: gnome-panel 1:2.22.1.3-0ubuntu1
PackageArchitecture: amd64
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=en_DK.UTF-8
SourcePackage: gnome-panel
Uname: Linux 2.6.24-17-generic x86_64

[Tristan Schmelcher (tschmelcher)]

Confirmed. I live in Seattle and had my computer's timezone set to America/Vancouver, but the gnome clock applet uses America/Los Angeles for the timezone of the Seattle location, so they didn't match and it never showed the weather in the system tray. Only once I changed the timezones to match did the weather show up properly. (Note that the pull-down window with the calendar and world map _does_ show the weather regardless, it just doesn't show up in the system tray.)

Perhaps the author did this deliberately so that only the user's home location's weather would show up in the system tray (i.e., instead of the weather for each location)? I think the right solution though is to have a check box for each location that says "show the weather for this location in the system tray". Or instead just always show the weather for the first location in the list.

I have attached a screenshot showing the two places where the timezone must match.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

thank you for your bug report, the clock only display the weather for the current location, if you have no location configure there matching the system one there is no weather displayed which is expected, do you think that the clock applet should automatically override your configuration when you use tzdata?

[Tristan Schmelcher (tschmelcher)]

The main problem is that the user can end up with no weather showing in the system tray, but with no indication of why. I was saying above that you should be able to set a location to be your home location without having to change your computer's timezone to match. (i.e., don't make it depend on tzdata at all.)

Alternatively, an even simpler change would be to take the "Set" button that appears in the pull-down menu (the one that sets that to be your home location and changes the timezone) and put it in Preferences -> Locations too, together with the Home icon. That way it becomes much clearer why there's no weather in the system tray. (I've attached a mock-up of this.) Deeta and others in a similar situation could still use the stand-alone Weather Report applet, which doesn't require your timezone to match.

The tooltip for the "Set" button should also be changed to "Set this as my home location". Currently it is "Set as current timezone for this computer", which is missing part of the picture.

[Dieter Moerschel (dmoer)]

The problem is two-fold:

1.
The clock-applet will try to force the system timezone to the timezone of the location you are trying to set as home.
(This is really awkward for international minded people who have long since abandoned local time in favor of world time)

2.
the clock-applet does not accept direct timezones settings in tzdata (the Etc/ range)

No. 2 foils a possible workaround:
I tried to edit my home locations timezone to 'Etc/UTC' so that it matches my system timezone and will thus resume displaying my local weather in the taskbar. Unfortunately the clock applet seems to be ignorant of the presence of direct (non-geographical) timezone input and will not set the locations timezone to 'Etc/UTC'

@Sebastien: Yes, I think the clock applet should be able to function fully without it trying to force a change in my system time. An elegant solution would if every defined location's weather could be optionally set to be displayed in the taskbar. This way the inability of the clock to acknowledge the 'Etc' set of tzdata would not inhibit users from seeing their local weather :D

[Dieter Moerschel (dmoer)]

I just found a dirty workaround for those people who want to set UTC as their locations timezone.
If you edit your locations timezone to 'Africa/Abidjan' then you will in effect have UTC as you local timezone. (Abidjan's timezone is +0 and it does not use Daylight saving time which in effect means that it is in sync with universal time)
Drawbacks could be:
1. unknown consequences as the system now thinks you live in Africa
2. Timezone is named GMT instead of UTC (but this purely aesthetic as in 1972 GMT was replaced by UTC even if the historical names were kept in some places)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

could somebody describe how to trigger the bug on a stock installation? do you have any location set as the current one when you have no weather information? that doesn't seem to be a bug, the clock applet is supposed to be displaying the weather for your current location, if you want random weathers you can use the weather applet rather

[Dieter Moerschel (dmoer)]

Sebastien, the steps I included in the bug description should be sufficient to reproduce the bug on a stock install.
The question of course is whether we both see this feature as a bug. It seems the clock-applet's taskbar weather display does not tolerate if the computer's tzdata differs from the home location's timezone that has been set. You mentioned above that this was 'expected behavior' so it might be just a strong divergence in 'expected functionality'. (and thus perhaps you would not even view it as a bug :) / but I do ^-^)

Anyways I just rewrote the steps to reproduce the phenomenon. I hope it is better now :)
(here two pics, one with the missing weather)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

let's try to be clear there:
- gnome-panel display the weather for the current location, that's how it's designed
- you go on a command line and set a timezone which is not configured as a location in GNOME
- the effect is that the applet get no current location set since none of those configured matches the system timezone now

what would you expect then? gnome-panel to automatically add a new location when you set a system timezone? what city should it use for the weather then?

note that the weather is not for a timezone but for a location, so there is no way to display the weather for the system timezone which has been selected when reconfiguring tzdata, the user has to pick the city somewhere

[Dieter Moerschel (dmoer)]

Ahh It gets clearer now. I thought the world-clock uses the location where I pressed 'set' as home. Thence my incredulity about the clock changing how it works despite me not fiddling with its preferences.

I assumed the clock should keep the last 'set' location regardless of the system timezone.

I still think this is an issue though as it is not good that the world-clock tries to 'guess' ones location depending on the timezone that the computer is set to.

What is required then is a way to change the home-location in the applet without the applet trying to change my system time.

For example no matter where I travel I 'always' keep my timezone at 'UTC' this way there is no confusion with log-files and timezone transitions. Right now as the clock is programmed this scenario would not work as the applet would on me arriving at new locations (and pressing set) try to change my time zones back and forth and otherwise deny setting a new location if I do not grant authorization to do so.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

the set button is the way to define the system timezone, modern desktop users don't want to reconfigure tzdata on the command line

the clock applet doesn't try to guess a location, there is none configured by default and you have to add one and use the set button to change this one

what you want is to have the weather for a random location and not the system one, there is a weather applet you can use for that, closing this bug that's not a gnome-panel bug, you don't have to set any location there or enable the weather if you don't like it, you can simply use a weather applet

[Dieter Moerschel (dmoer)]

@Invalid: Oh :-/ yeah I mean I already found a workaround. (the Africa thing) Just had hope that this might be enter the queue as low priority or at least wishlist.

@users not wanting to use the command line: I agree, but exactly the missing features in the world applet drove me to use the command line ;-) before that I did not even know that tzdata existed ;-)

Anyways I guess the whole thing could have been mitigated if the world-clock applet supported the Etc/... part of tzdata. (as then none of the problems would have arisen) But this is a story for another bug/wishlist :D I think I saw a similar one on launchpad where I can chime in :D

Thanks for your time!

[Tristan Schmelcher (tschmelcher)]

Note to posterity:

I still feel that this is a bug, so I have filed it with GNOME at http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=537912.