better timezone handling.

[LearnedVector]

Time zone fails at odd locations like california, los angelos, etc.

[jrwarwick]

I may have had a similar experience to you, @LearnedVector , not totally clear on the details of your scenario. Here is an excerpt from my mark1's log for a scenario that I was surprised resulted in failure:

04:49:41.722 - mycroft.client.speech.main:handle_utterance:62 - INFO - Utterance: [u'what time is it in brisbane australia']
~~~~US", "session": "3c60b647-f8a0-43bf-9730-e66d5cbc33b2", "utterances": ["what time is it in brisbane australia"]}, "context": {"client_name": "mycroft_listener", "ident": "1522903779.012003830050"}}
04:49:41.746 - SKILLS - DEBUG - {"type": "skill.converse.request", "data": {"lang": "en-US", "skill_id": 1017122086, "utterances": ["what time is it in brisbane australia"]}, "context": null}
04:49:41.758 - SKILLS - DEBUG - {"type": "skill.converse.response", "data": {"skill_id": 1017122086, "result": false}, "context": null}
04:49:41.739 - requests.packages.urllib3.connectionpool - DEBUG - Starting new HTTPS connection (1): api.mycroft.ai
04:49:41.887 - mycroft.skills.intent_service:send_metrics:244 - DEBUG - Sending metric if opt_in is enabled
04:49:41.892 - requests.packages.urllib3.connectionpool - DEBUG - Starting new HTTPS connection (1): api.mycroft.ai
~~~~GQuery": "what", "utterance": "what time is it in brisbane australia", "BABHBCCAIGTime": "time"}, "context": {"client_name": "mycroft_listener", "ident": "1522903779.012003830050", "target": null}}
04:49:41.918 - SKILLS - DEBUG - {"type": "mycroft.skill.handler.start", "data": {"name": "TimeSkill.handle_query_time"}, "context": null}
04:49:41.926 - requests.packages.urllib3.connectionpool - DEBUG - Starting new HTTPS connection (1): api.mycroft.ai
~~~~{"expect_response": false, "utterance": "I could not find the time zone for brisbane australia"}, "context": {"client_name": "mycroft_listener", "ident": "1522903779.012003830050", "target": null}}
04:49:41.969 - SKILLS - DEBUG - {"type": "mycroft.skill.handler.complete", "data": {"name": "TimeSkill.handle_query_time"}, "context": null}

[jrwarwick]

I just noticed something: if I say "paris france", or "brisbane australia", as a human I think I'm being more specific and helpful, but that fails. Instead, if I say just "paris" or just "brisbane", I get a correct answer. So it seems the skill is not "broken" per se. Instead, I think we should say that it only accepts a city name alone for location, and that this is too limited.

I think the solution here is to have a little more sophistication in the processing of the "location" Context item. Moreover, there are definitely duplicate city names around the world, even in the same country. I can see how this will take a little bit of clever programming to really do correctly (and more location "knowledge" for Mycroft), but I think for an initial improvement, just doing some string slicing and checking to see if any "extra" words match a parent country would greatly improve the user experience. At least for the usual nominal Timezone representative cities. As it stands, it gives a user the impression that Mycroft is broken.

Clear overlap with #17 ; I think it could be sort of merged with the "city, country" look-up list.

[jrwarwick]

I am considering posting a bounty on bountysource for this issue, but the acceptable solution would need to cover #17 as well as this issue. In the spirit of consistency, I propose the following "User Story" for this particular issue:

User story
As a Mycroft User, I want to be able to ask Mycroft for the time in an arbitrary city anywhere on the planet, and to be able to specify the particular city with a "containing" superior region name. This Skill would then have greater usability and value for me, as someone who works across multiple time zones.
Example queries:

• "what time is it in Paris, France?" (City, Country)
• "what time is it in Los Angeles, California" (City, State/Province)
• "what is the current time in County Cork, Ireland?" (County, Country)
• "what is the time in Colorado?" (State [if that name appears in the list of states in the same country as currently location])
• "what is the time in Colorado, U.S.A.?" (State, Country)
• "what is the time in Colorado, Paraná, Brazil?" (City, State, Country)

[penrods]

Changes just made to this skill means it support the following:

• what time is it in Paris (Common city, no country given)
• what is the current time in Ireland (no county or city)

This only partially addresses the issue, but I think it covers many of the cases. We need a bigger solution for general geo-spatial encoding/processing. But I think those should be done in the framework, not just this skill.