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Use America/New_York timezone in calendar.ics instead of UTC #45

@vnprc

Description

@vnprc

Summary

Update assets/calendar.ics so that event times are expressed in US Eastern Time (America/New_York) instead of UTC. Currently all events use the Z suffix (UTC), which forces calendar apps to display times in UTC. We want to preserve the same wall-clock times and let calendar apps automatically handle Daylight Savings Time.

Details

  1. Add a VTIMEZONE block to the calendar definition:

    BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
    TZID:America/New_York
    X-LIC-LOCATION:America/New_York
    BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
    TZOFFSETFROM:-0500
    TZOFFSETTO:-0400
    TZNAME:EDT
    DTSTART:19700308T020000
    RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=2SU
    END:DAYLIGHT
    BEGIN:STANDARD
    TZOFFSETFROM:-0400
    TZOFFSETTO:-0500
    TZNAME:EST
    DTSTART:19701101T020000
    RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=11;BYDAY=1SU
    END:STANDARD
    END:VTIMEZONE

    This ensures clients know the rules for Eastern Time.

  2. Update event time fields to use TZID instead of Z:

    DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:{{ event.start | date: "%Y%m%dT%H%M%S" }}
    DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:{{ event.end | date: "%Y%m%dT%H%M%S" }}

    Remove the trailing Z, and add TZID=America/New_York.

  3. Testing

    • Rebuild the site and download calendar.ics.
    • Import into Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, and Outlook.
    • Verify October events show EDT (UTC-4) and December events show EST (UTC-5) at the same local clock times.

Acceptance Criteria

  • All events display at the same local time as entered in the Jekyll front matter.
  • Calendar apps automatically handle DST shifts.
  • No UTC (Z) timestamps remain in the file.

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