gnus-demon time problem

[Brad Howes <bhowes@cssun3.corp.mot.com>]

I've been unable to successfully get a handler to run at the proper time
using gnus-demon-add-handler and a string time (eg. "01:00").
Invariably, the handler runs at odd times -- seen when I put
`(message (current-time-string))' at the end of my handler.

Sniffing around, I noticed that gnus-demon-handler-state had bogus
values for the time. Further, I found that `gnus-demon-time-to-step'
would translate the given time "01:00" into the value GMT! Definitely
not what I had in mind (this on Solaris 2.4/Emacs 19.34) since I'm MST.

Anyway, I looked and looked and did not think gnus-demon-time-to-step
was doing the right thing, so here's my version that seems to work just
fine for me:

;;
;; Replacement for gnus-demon-time-to-step found in gnus-demon.el
;;
(defun gnus-demon-time-to-step (time)
  "Find out how many seconds to TIME, which is on the form \"17:43\"."
  (if (not (stringp time))
      time
    (let* ((now (current-time))
           ;; obtain NOW as discrete components -- make a vector for speed
           (nowParts (apply 'vector (decode-time now)))
           ;; obtain THEN as discrete components
           (thenParts (timezone-parse-time time))
           (thenHour (string-to-int (elt thenParts 0)))
           (thenMin (string-to-int (elt thenParts 1)))
           ;; convert time as elements into number of seconds since EPOCH.
           (then (encode-time 0
                              thenMin
                              thenHour
                              ;; If THEN is earlier than NOW, make it
                              ;; same time tomorrow. Doc for encode-time
                              ;; says that this is OK.
                              (+ (elt nowParts 3)
                                 (if (or (< thenHour (elt nowParts 2))
                                         (and (= thenHour (elt nowParts 2))
                                              (<= thenMin (elt nowParts 1))))
                                     1 0))
                              (elt nowParts 4)
                              (elt nowParts 5)
                              (elt nowParts 6)
                              (elt nowParts 7)
                              (elt nowParts 8)))
           ;; calculate number of seconds between NOW and THEN
           (diff (+ (* 65536 (- (car then) (car now)))
                    (- (cadr then) (cadr now)))))
      ;; return number of timesteps in the number of seconds
      (round (/ diff gnus-demon-timestep)))))

-- 
Brad Howes                          Motorola E-Mail ID: XBH001
EMT Development                     SMTP E-Mail: bhowes@cssun3.corp.mot.com
Motorola Corporate - MD H1780       Voice: 602 441 1522  Fax: 602 441 5455