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A grumpy editor's calendar search
Your editor is, at times, a creature of habit. Many, many years ago, back
when Tcl and Tk were new and exciting, he discovered a simple calendar
called "ical" and he has been using it ever since. ical may be old and
![[ical]](/images/ns/calss/ical-sm.png)
unmaintained, but it works. It provides a basic calendar,
appointment book, and task list without taking up too much screen space or
system resources. Its interface is quick and does not require lots of
clicking and form filling. It does exactly what it needs to do.
Creatures of habit, perhaps, should not run Debian unstable on their desktops. Your editor has learned to scrutinize every dist-upgrade carefully before turning it loose, but he missed the one that deleted ical from his system. Some investigation turned up that, in fact, ical has not been part of Debian for some time; it had been removed as being obsolete, unmaintained, and superseded by better alternatives. ical was able to continue to exist for years, however, until some recent change in unstable forced its removal. After scrambling to copy his calendar file to another system, your editor decided it was time to investigate some of these newer, better alternatives. The results, it must be said, were somewhat disappointing. The new crop of desktop calendars may be impressive to look at, but few of them have achieved the straightforward ease of use and unobtrusiveness that ical had almost fifteen years ago. Fortunately, the news is not all bad. The first stop in such a search almost has to be Evolution. Ximian's high-profile groupware system is, doubtless, highly useful for busy people who must juggle meetings and share their schedules with others. One of the big advantages of working for a small operation like LWN, however, is that scheduling a meeting is a simple matter of finding a table at a local brewpub, and Evolution can't help with that. For one whose goal is a simple calendar manager, and who has no desire to switch to a new email client, Evolution brings a great deal of heavyweight baggage for little gain. The calendar interface is difficult to navigate around in; your editor never did succeed in reproducing the calendar view found on the Evolution screen shots page. Evolution 1.4 also crashed several times while being tested. Evolution may be an impressive piece of software, but it is not appropriate to consider as a replacement for ical. The word is that Evolution 2.0 will feature a much-improved calendar manager, and the underlying infrastructure will make it easier to create independent, standalone calendar applications.
The next logical place to look is KOrganizer, the KDE calendar
application. KOrganizer it must be said, is a nice calendar manager. The
There is one nice ical feature that KOrganizer lacks: the ability to add events without dealing with dialog windows. With ical, it's simply a matter of dragging an entry over the relevant time period and typing in the info. With KOrganizer (and a number of other calendar managers), you have to set the times in special dialog fields. KOrganizer 3.2 has improved things somewhat by allowing the time range to be set with the mouse, but it requires an explicit configuration option and still puts up a dialog for the event description. In the modern, graphical, direct manipulation world, the dialog window should be unnecessary if the more complex features (custom alarms, recurrence) are not being used.
Another possibility is a package called plan, which is a calendar manager
based on Motif. Plan has the basic necessary features; it can handle
A simple, but cute entry is gDeskCal. This
calendar is meant to sit on (and blend into) the desktop; it uses alpha
Your editor was also pointed at "xcal", which is available as a Debian package but which appears to lack a web page. Anybody who wonders what life was like when the Athena Widget Set was new should give xcal a try. Anybody wanting a modern calendar application should look elsewhere, however.
The final stop on this tour is GNOME-PIM.
This calendar manager, like KOrganizer, handles all of the basic tasks and
The winner is fairly clear: the only application which is competitive as an ical replacement appears to be KOrganizer. The KDE developers have done a top-quality job of creating a focused, highly-configurable calendar manager which brings in a (relative) minimum of unneeded baggage. Your editor will miss the quickness and simplicity of ical, but KOrganizer will get the job done. Let us hope, however, that the developers of graphical applications will not forget the users who are not interested in massive, do-everything applications. It should always be possible to find, say, a reasonably functional calendar without dragging in email clients, web servers, and other unrelated stuff. The old Unix guideline - a tool should do one job, and do it well - is best not forgotten. (Log in to post comments)
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 9, 2004 13:34 UTC (Tue) by jwb (subscriber, #15467) [Link] As I've recently discovered, a Linux user who wants personal management or productivity apps should just switch to Mac OS X. iCal (no relation) is a pretty nice calendar, and it can sync with my Nokia mobile phone, which can remind me of appointments while I'm away from my computers. Linux has multisync, but as far as I'm aware multisync can't synchronize calendars with a bluetooth cell phone.Probably this is not the answer LWN was looking for. Did you try the old CDE calendar? Or perhaps the XFCE Calendar could work ( as seen in http://www.xfce.org/images/screenshots/xfcalendar.png ).
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 9, 2004 14:18 UTC (Tue) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] As I've recently discovered, a Linux user who wants personal management or productivity apps should just switch to Mac OS X.This seems a bit like selling your house because you don't like the carpeting! Or perhaps the XFCE Calendar could work ( as seen in http://www.xfce.org/images/screenshots/xfcalendar.png ) Is this in the stable release yet? I'm not sure that it is..
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 12, 2004 20:10 UTC (Fri) by mceesay (guest, #2806) [Link] I'm running XFce 4.0.3.1 and that has XFCalendar. It integrates nicely into the system tray in the taskbar. It's a little lacking in features though. No alarms and no ability to schedule events for a particular time and duration for example.I would say that it would make a grumpy editor even grumpier!
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 11, 2004 5:30 UTC (Thu) by gallir (guest, #5735) [Link] As I've recently discovered, a Linux user who wants personal management or productivity apps should just switch to Mac OS X.Why? As was already told about the carpeting, but also I want to remark (again and again) that we use Linux because it's free, or perhaps because is Linux, but not because it's "Unix". If I have to migrate to something else propietary, OSX and XP fall in the same propietary category.
PDA synchronization capabilities Posted Mar 9, 2004 13:38 UTC (Tue) by denials (subscriber, #3413) [Link] A nice follow up to this article would be a description of what calendar software works best at synchronizing with various PDAs (say Palm, WinCE, and Zaurus).After my trusty old Palm Vx spontaneously reset itself a couple of months back, I'm in the market for a new PDA -- but I want one that works, and works well, in a Linux synchronization environment. Overall, Palm + Evolution 1.4 works well, although it doesn't seem to handle modifying just one out of a series of repeating meetings particularly well. (Instead of being a single meeting that repeats 100 times throughout the year, I suddenly had 100 separate meetings--so I could no longer shift the whole set, or just the instances after this particular date, or whatever). When your work consists of 8 or 9 appointments per day, syncing thousands of calendar entries over a serial cable just isn't fun. I would love to know if KOrganizer does a better job, or if there are any 'match-made-in-heaven' Linux calendars, sync software, and PDAs. So--any recommendations out there? Or any chance of a follow up article?
PDA synchronization capabilities Posted Mar 9, 2004 20:54 UTC (Tue) by irix (guest, #4556) [Link] It isn't "made in heaven" yet, but Multisync aims to be able to sync your calendar on your desktop, PDA, phone and other devices [disclaimer: I am a developer]. For example, you can sync Evolution, Palm, WinCE and (Open)Zaurus togther.
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 9, 2004 13:44 UTC (Tue) by phubert (subscriber, #2972) [Link] So, what does Novell have with GroupWise and will (or when will) they port it to Linux? GroupWise includes scheduling and "free time" search, as I recall and is integrated with the mail client.
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 9, 2004 15:04 UTC (Tue) by louie (subscriber, #3285) [Link] Evo 2.0 will integrate with groupwise. The code is in GNOME CVS but depends on an as-yet-unreleased version of the groupwise server.
XCal Posted Mar 9, 2004 13:45 UTC (Tue) by zedman (guest, #12798) [Link] XCal does a few things very well, so much so that I'm still using it in preference to many apps with a more modern interface. The winner for me is the ability to click on a date and type a one-line entry into its free-form text box, eg, "12pm Group meeting". XCal then does the rest: it correctly guesses what "12pm" means and raises an alarm at an appropriate time. The same applies (in a slightly less simple way) to regular weekly meetings.And that's about all I want in a calendar program. Is there another app that can do the above? If only I could spare the time to write a new GTK2 interface for XCal.. Ian
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 9, 2004 13:58 UTC (Tue) by MiKu (subscriber, #11415) [Link] OSDL also did a calendering usability study half a year ago, seehttp://osdl.org/projects/cmptblclndrng/results/
Text mode calendars? Posted Mar 9, 2004 14:18 UTC (Tue) by bkw1a (subscriber, #4101) [Link] What about calendar programs for "the console" (i.e., using curses, etc.)? When choosing an application, I give lots of bonus points to things that give me the option of looking at my data as text. This allows me to get to it from remote locations with nothing but an SSH client.For example, I can use both exmh and pine to read my mail. I can browse the web (or read html-formatted documents locally) with either mozilla or lynx. With a little conversion, I can view my spreadsheets with either scalc or sc. And so on... I haven't found a nice text mode calendar program, though. Currently I use the graphical "Corporate Time" program (our university has a site license for it). Ctime is able to write vCalendar files. Does anyone know of a text-based calendar program that can read this format?
Text mode calendars? Posted Mar 10, 2004 9:56 UTC (Wed) by rlb (subscriber, #9072) [Link] Hmm, well there's always M-x calendar and M-x diary in emacs.
Text mode calendars? Posted Mar 11, 2004 4:32 UTC (Thu) by zooko (subscriber, #2589) [Link] "links" is, in my experience, superior to "lynx".Also, check out the wonderful SURFRAW package. Shell Users Revolutionary Front -- Rage Against the Web! Err, this post has nothing to do with calendars, I don't think.
The answer is: KORGANIZER Posted Mar 18, 2004 14:14 UTC (Thu) by morhippo (subscriber, #334) [Link] Just install konsolekalendar and you can update and view your calendar intext mode, if you log in remotely. # konsolekalendar --help Verwendung: konsolekalendar [Optionen] Eine Kommandozeilenschnittstelle für KDE-Kalender Einfache Optionen: --help Optionen von "Hilfe zu" anzeigen --help-all Alle Optionen anzeigen --author Autoren-Information anzeigen -v, --version Versionsinformation anzeigen --license Lizenz-Info anzeigen -- Ende der Optionen Optionen: --help gibt diese Hilfe aus und beendet sich dann --verbose gibt hilfreiche Laufzeit-Meldungen aus --dry-run Nur ausgeben, was getan worden wäre, nicht wirklich ausführen --file <calendar-file> Geben Sie an, welchen Kalender Sie benutzen wollen. Verfügbare Betriebsmodi: --view Kalenderereignisse im angegebenen Exportformat ausgeben --add Ereignis zum Kalender hinzufügen --change Kalenderereignis ändern --delete Kalenderereignis löschen --create Neue Kalenderdatei anlegen, wenn sie noch nicht existiert --import <import-file> diesen kalender in den Hauptkalender importieren Modifikatoren für Betriebsmodi: --next View next activity in calendar --all Alle Kalendereinträge anzeigen --uid <uid> eindeutiger Bezeichner für das Ereignis --show-next <show-next> From this day show next # days activities --date <start-date> Von diesem Tag an [JJJJ-MM-TT] --time <start-time> Von dieser Zeit an [HH:MM:SS] --end-date <end-date> bis zum Tag [JJJJ-MM-TT] --end-time <end-time> bis zu dieser Zeit [HH:MM:SS] --epoch-start <epoch-time> von dieser Zeit an [Sekunden seit der "Epoche"(1.1.1970, 0:00 Uhr)] --epoch-end <epoch-time> bis zu dieser Zeit [Sekunden seit der "Epoche"(1.1.1970, 0:00:00 Uhr)] --summary <summary> Zusammenfassung zum Ereignis hinzufügen (bei den Hinzufügen/Ändern Modi) --description <description> Beschreibung zum Ereignis hinzufügen (bei den Hinzufügen/Ändern Modi) Exportoptionen: --export-type <export-type> Dateityp für Export (Standard: Text) --export-file <export-file> Datei für den Export (Standard: Standardausgabe) --export-list gibt die Liste der Export-Dateitypen aus und beendet sich dann Beispiele: konsolekalendar --view konsolekalendar --add --date 2003-06-04 --time 10:00 --end-time 12:00 \ --summary "Doctor Visit" --description "Get My Head Examined" konsolekalendar --delete --uid KOrganizer-1740380426.803
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 9, 2004 14:31 UTC (Tue) by nstraz (subscriber, #1592) [Link] I haven't used a calendar program much since I stopped using my Palm. Back then I started using jpilot. It's not great, but it's worth a look. It is mostly meant for syncing up with a Palm device.
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 9, 2004 16:02 UTC (Tue) by utidjian (subscriber, #444) [Link] Actually... jpilot is what I was going to recommend also. I think it IS great. You don't need a palm device in order to use it or for it to be useful. It has a very clean and simple interface. It is not tied to Gnome or KDE. It also runs on a Mac (via fink). It has been a "standard" part of my desktop installs for about 4 years now.http://www.jpilot.org/ -DU-...etc...
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 10, 2004 8:52 UTC (Wed) by vmole (subscriber, #111) [Link] I, too, was going to suggest jpilot. But I went and looked, and it doesn'treally have the "type the new item directly into the schedule" feature that our illustrious editor's previous choice had. It does, at least, have the "dialog" as part of the main window, rather than bring up a new box.
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 9, 2004 14:59 UTC (Tue) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] 'dist-upgrade' shouldn't be used by people running Debian unstable, you should be using just 'upgrade'. 'dist-upgrade' is for upgrading between versions of debian (2.2 -> 3.0), but unstable doesn't have versions.Anyway, our editor should be using emacs, 'M-x calender' 'M-x diary' etc. :)
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 9, 2004 21:37 UTC (Tue) by socket (subscriber, #43) [Link] So I don't post comments that much anymore, but this needs to be responded to: the parent post is simply wrong. There are many cases where you need to use 'apt-get dist-upgrade' instead of just 'apt-get upgrade'. The difference between the two isn't only relevant in a major version upgrade, especially if you're running unstable which has a lot of packages changing all the time. Here's the difference, as described in the apt-get manual page:upgrade: upgrade is used to install the newest versions of all packages currently installed on the system from the sources enumerated in /etc/apt/sources.list. Packages currently installed with new versions available are retrieved and upgraded; under no circumstances are currently installed packages removed, or packages not already installed retrieved and installed. New versions of currently installed packages that cannot be upgraded without changing the install status of another package will be left at their current version. An update must be performed first so that apt-get knows that new versions of packages are available. dist-upgrade: dist-upgrade, in addition to performing the function of upgrade, also intelligently handles changing dependencies with new versions of packages; apt-get has a "smart" conflict resolution system, and it will attempt to upgrade the most important packages at the expense of less important ones if necessary. The /etc/apt/sources.list file contains a list of locations from which to retrieve desired package files. In short, it's sometimes important to do a dist-upgrade on debian testing or unstable, otherwise packages won't install because they depend on something which conflict with something you've got installed. A dist-upgrade will remove a package if doing so resolves a conflict and allows a new package to be installed. In fact, dist-upgrade is always supposed to keep your system consistent, even if the packages themselves are otherwise broken. That said, I can't say I have a whole lot of respect for Debian after the whole All Documentation Must Be Free Including RFCs fiasco. Free documentation is apparently more important than open standards, I suppose. Whatever.
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 9, 2004 23:09 UTC (Tue) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] > the parent post is simply wrongNope. 'dist-upgrade' is better than 'upgrade' for complex upgrades because it attempts to be "smart" and it is more aggressive - though this means it should be monitored. Our editor used 'dist-upgrade' for a routine upgrade, and he didn't monitor it, and he got stung. I commented that he should have been using 'upgrade'. I'm right. I also gave a one line description of the difference between 'dist-upgrade' and 'upgrade'. If your post is just a very long-winded claim that my one line does not constitute complete documentation, you'll get no further argument from me.
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 10, 2004 6:22 UTC (Wed) by rise (subscriber, #5045) [Link] Your original comment looks to me to be either highly misleading to users unfamiliar with apt or outright wrong. Both the Debian FAQ and the APT HOWTO recommend dist-upgrade in places specifically because of its ability to handle dependencies correctly. The author's direct mistake was simply that he missed noticing a removal and that's logically independent of your claim about dist-upgrade's suitability. I can see how you might jump to the conclusion that dist-upgrade is for version upgrades only from the more extensive documentation that accompanies doing something that complex with it, but a closer reading might be order. The "very long-winded" potshot you took seems a little over the line as well. The user who responded to you quotes the canonical descriptions of the functions and then explains why dist-upgrade is sometimes unnecessary. He tried to justify his position and provide evidence to let others decide for themselves while you've wallowed in proof by assertion. Could you please offer even one shred of evidence instead of the straw-man argument about "complete documentation" and your naked statement that you're right? Recklessly directing Debian users to avoid using the tool that properly supervised does the best job of keeping a system up to date and consistent is a disservice to the community.
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 10, 2004 8:42 UTC (Wed) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] Our editor lost ical when he used 'dist-upgrade' for an unmonitored routine upgrade. Routine upgrades should not delete your favourite applications. He should have used 'upgrade' for such an upgrade.That is why I'm right. There is one detail that is up for debate though, and that's my claim that 'dist-upgrade' is for version upgrades. 'dist-upgrade' is for unusual circumstances. Version upgrades are the best example I know of, and are the only example I have encountered in the last 3 years. If you'd like to list all the possible circumstances where 'dist-upgrade' can be useful, I probably won't dispute you (although apt-get is not the topic of this forum). (small thing: both tools "handle dependencies correctly". If one doesn't: please file a bug report.)
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 10, 2004 13:37 UTC (Wed) by socket (subscriber, #43) [Link] We're talking about slightly different senses of the word 'upgrade', I think.When I was running Debian testing, I'd use 'apt-get upgrade' most of the time, until I had a situation where nothing more would get installed despite new packages being available unless I used 'apt-get dist-upgrade'. On one occasion, I think python had to be ripped out and replaced with python#.# packages and a whole raft of other packages depended on the old python instead of python#.#. Lots of things needed to be deleted, and many of the same had no newer version to provide a smooth transition to python#.#. The new python packages conflicted with the old ones. Thus, a normal 'upgrade' would say, "Ah. I'll spare your system -- better to upgrade nothing than to remove anything." Perhaps a wise choice, for many. This makes sense for people running the stable branch of debian. But if you're running testing or unstable, things are going to change a lot, and users want to continue to get new packages, they will have to accept some amount of bridge-burning in the form of removing old packages responsible for a conflict. The newer packages of Python conflicted with the existing one specifically to encourage users to move with the times. I think there was also some confusion in what I meant by 'handling dependencies correctly' -- in one sense, it just makes sure that Depends: requirements are satisfied, no other conditions necessary. In another sense, (the one I meant,) it means that Depends: requirements are satisfied, and that you don't get into a state where you can no longer upgrade your system to newly available packages on account of the importance of keeping old ones around. For developers, the latter is a pretty important dependency. I'd be surprised if I ever made it more than a week with Debian Testing without the normal 'apt-get upgrade' process simply refusing to install new packages. I'd also argue that 'dist-upgrade' is for both unusual circumstances, and running a suitably modern system. We're both right, I think. You're right, for people running Stable. But the issue of which sense of the word 'upgrade' we mean is really at the core of this. I'd argue that most people consider a system upgrade (in the generic, non-debian sense) to be something that modernizes the system. A user running testing or unstable and only using 'apt-get upgrade' will eventually be making no changes to their system at all, and that doesn't constitute much of an upgrade.
apt-get dist-upgrade can seriously damage your health Posted Mar 10, 2004 14:58 UTC (Wed) by robster (subscriber, #4849) [Link] Of course APT will kindly tell you what it is holding back because of conflicts/new packages required when doing a plain upgrade. Often the best approach is to do an upgrade and then manually go through the kept back packages and install them, allowing you to get any new packages that are needed to upgrade existing ones and maybe prevent yourself from removing packages you do want.This is one example of why apt-get dist-upgrade is dangerous, and is in fact not recommended for distribution migrations anymore except for advanced users . (Please see the woody release notes for more details on this). Cheers, Rob
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 11, 2004 1:11 UTC (Thu) by lacostej (subscriber, #2760) [Link] A usefull use of dist-upgrade is when you modify your package selection.E.g. I have two machines, one desktop and a laptop that I keep in sync. apt-get upgrade every now and then When about to apply changes onto laptop. dpkg --get-selections > /home/dpkg-get-selections-master.txt on the mirror (laptop) apt-get update apt-get upgrade doesn't work in that case, based on my experience. A problem of apt-get dist-upgrade is that it also pulls the "Suggested" packages. Some pointers:
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 18, 2004 4:16 UTC (Thu) by sholden (guest, #7881) [Link] If you has said "'dist-upgrade' shouldn't be used for an unmonitored routine upgrade" then, yes, you may have been right. But you didn't, you said:"'dist-upgrade' shouldn't be used by people running Debian unstable" Which is completely false. If dist-upgrade is not used by people running unstable they will reach a point at which their system does not upgrade when they tell it to. "'dist-upgrade' should be used with care when 'upgrade' doesn't perform as expected" sounds reasonable. But again, that isn't what you said. You gave no qualifier and simply stated dist-upgrade should not be used by unstable users.
right or wrong Posted Mar 11, 2004 16:17 UTC (Thu) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] >> the parent post is simply wrong>Nope. >I commented that he should have been using 'upgrade'. I'm right. But that was a minor part of the subject post. The thrust of it was, >'dist-upgrade' shouldn't be used by people running Debian Do you stand by that? As a general rule, and not limited to our editor's recent sorrow, should dist-upgrade not be used by people running Debian unstable? Is it for upgrading between versions? I'm not attacking; I really want to know.
right or wrong Posted Mar 11, 2004 17:06 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] dist-upgrade will do you no harm (AFAIK) *if* you monitor it each time you use it. If you don't monitor it, you may end up having to write an insightful article about alternative software packages.If you use 'upgrade', you won't have to write the article. If 'upgrade' is not going to upgrade a certain pacakge, it will tell you. You can then 'apt-get install' that package if you want to, and you'll be told that to install package "x", package "y" has to be removed - or whatever the problem is. Back in my day (all of 3 years ago), when upgrading from a stable version to another stable version, or for upgrading from stable -> testing, it was recommended that you use 'dist-upgrade'. robster above says that 'dist-upgrade' is not even recommended for this anymore. (the release notes for Woody-3.0 still recommend 'dist-upgrade' for version upgrades. Maybe robster is talking about the release notes for the upcoming 3.1?) The main thrust of my post was meant to be my advice to Our Editor. I'm glad no one disputed that he should be using Emacs - that is a little harder to prove ;-)
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 14, 2004 13:16 UTC (Sun) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link] Please reread the article: Our editor wrote that he "learned to scrutinize every dist-upgrade carefully before turning it loose, but he missed the one that deleted ical from his system".Anyhow, if that means good articles like the current one, I won't feel too sorry for him. :-) :-) Joachim
5 days later... Posted Mar 14, 2004 18:36 UTC (Sun) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] Our editor learned to be careful while using a hammer to kill a fly. I pointed out that there is a fly swatter within arms reach :-)
Mozilla project's Calendar Posted Mar 9, 2004 15:00 UTC (Tue) by jvotaw (subscriber, #3678) [Link] For what it's worth, the Mozilla folks have a Calendar tool out, too. I'm not sure if it has all the bells and whistles you need, but it interoperates with Apple's iCal, allows sharing of calendars across a network (or the Internet), and can send you reminders of deadlines. So far my experiences with it have been good.Mozilla's mail and calendar packages are, together, getting almost good enough that you can replace Outlook with them in a corporate, Windows environment, in my opinion. (Yes, I'd rather go to Linux, but that's harder to sell.) -Joel
Mozilla project's Calendar Posted Mar 9, 2004 16:31 UTC (Tue) by bkoz (subscriber, #4027) [Link] I agree. Recently I was dragged kicking and screaming into the present (future?) by my parents use of OS X's calendar. Mozilla was the only thing that seemed to interoperate with this on linux, but I admit only to a non-exhaustive search. I was surprised to not see mozilla's offering reviewed.(Same with sylpheed for the email client write-up, BTW.)
Mozilla project's Calendar Posted Mar 12, 2004 8:11 UTC (Fri) by sideshow (guest, #2791) [Link] Another vote for Mozilla Calendar here. I kind of wish the old Calendar app from Netscape 4.x worked (is now CorporateTime and commercial). There's a nice doc on how to make a "poor man's calendar server" with the Mozilla calendar which is pretty cool. Looking at the roadmap, I'm pretty excited about where this project is heading.
ICAL - why not cotinue to use it? Posted Mar 9, 2004 15:08 UTC (Tue) by subhasroy (guest, #325) [Link] If ICal does the job best, then why not continue to use it? It is simple to build an Ical package for your favourite distro. Just to run KOrganizer, I'd not want to run the whole KDE infrstructure, if I am not using KDE desktop.I personally continue to use Ical on my IceWm desktop.
ICAL - why not cotinue to use it? Posted Mar 9, 2004 15:26 UTC (Tue) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] Just to run KOrganizer, I'd not want to run the whole KDE infrstructure, if I am not using KDE desktop.No need to run all of KDE just to run korganizer. It runs in any environment.
ICAL - why not cotinue to use it? Posted Mar 10, 2004 14:51 UTC (Wed) by subhasroy (guest, #325) [Link] But it will load all KDE and Qt libraries which are pretty huge I think.I already run other Tcl/Tk apps all the time and so tcl/tk libs won't cost extra for me.
ICAL - why not cotinue to use it? Posted Mar 9, 2004 15:36 UTC (Tue) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] I actually grabbed the source and tried to build it. Got through the first four or five roadblocks before deciding that, sometimes, you have to take the hint and move on to something that's actually maintained.
ICAL - why not cotinue to use it? Posted Mar 9, 2004 18:20 UTC (Tue) by clint (subscriber, #7076) [Link] The latest package in Debian was 2.2-9, but you can get an earlier incarnation at http://archive.debian.org/dists/slink/main/binary-i386/misc/ical_2.2-2.deb .There's always a possibility of reviving it.
ICAL - why not cotinue to use it? Posted Mar 22, 2004 18:11 UTC (Mon) by bayard (guest, #20385) [Link] I have gone almost exactly the same route as the Editor, and I haveconsidered (even tried, probably, I don't remember now) to use it as unpackaged from /usr/local. The trouble is it is a Tk app, and Tk keeps changing at a scary pace (ask the Debian Tk maintainer), so at some point it is almost guaranteed to break with the current Tk and require one that is no longer in Debian, if it has not happened already. In fact the reason why apt decided to remove it was probably it needed to get rid of the underlying Tk.
Backends Posted Mar 9, 2004 16:47 UTC (Tue) by gdt (subscriber, #6284) [Link] Your review could have also looked at what backends the calendaring clients use. In the past, a lot of mail clients all used differing on-disk formats and it was a nightmare. Now almost all mail clients support IMAP. The ical (no relation, see IETF) protocol and file format, used by iCal (no relation, see MacOS X) and others is the IMAP of calendaring. More support for it would be nice, especially as this would allow importing of corporate calendars (and TV schedules) and booking of meetings.
Backends Posted Mar 23, 2004 21:45 UTC (Tue) by rickmoen (subscriber, #6943) [Link] gdt wrote: The ical (no relation, see IETF) protocol and file format, used by iCal (no relation, see MacOS X) and others is the IMAP of calendaring. Amen to that, sir. This is why my own comprehensive survey of scheduling software options on Linux starts with a discussion of the IETF standards (iCAL file format, iTIP event-access, iMIP transport, and CAP/BEEP network access), proceeds to a detailed examination of server-end implementations, and only then details client-end software options. One serious impediment I encountered was, in a sense, Jon's old friend, the now-unmaintained "ical" tk/tcl program by Sanjay Ghemawat: Its name confuses people, because of high similarity to that of IETF's iCAL (RFC2445) data-storage format (aka ".ics") for scheduling data. Ghemawat's old "ical" program does not store its data in iCAL format; the two worlds of data are just about completely incompatible. (There was a half-hearted effort at a conversion script, but it worked only in one direction and was seriously buggy.) In any event, the future of serious efforts in this field, especially on Linux and especially in open-source coding, lies in the IETF protocol and file-format suite. Effort in that area has been impeded by (1) lack of awareness of the problem, (2) confusion about what "iCAL" does and does not mean, and (3) a shortage of reference implementations for the server end. Server end:
Someone else in this discussion was asking rhetorically whether Chandler will ever matter: Chandler plus the planned matching server-end piece will, if finished in some reasonable time-span, matter a great deal. One piece that's given me trouble, but that I expect to fix soon, is bidirectional conversion between PalmOS Datebook and iCAL (".ics") format. The latter, just to make sure the point sinks in, is the crucial lingua franca for scheduling data. On the server end, absent a real solution, I can make do with half-measures like PHPiCalendar (an excellent Web-based viewer for multiple .ics files, with no free/busy negotiation, notification or agenting abilities, etc.), and I can edit iCAL data in Mozilla Calendar or any of several other Linux/X11 apps, but if the events don't end up in my PalmPilot, they're pretty useless to me. Based on Jon's report, KOrganizer w/jPilot might finally bridge that gap for me.
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 9, 2004 18:42 UTC (Tue) by clugstj (subscriber, #4020) [Link] I really like the "grumpy editor" series. Keep up the good work!
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 12, 2004 10:39 UTC (Fri) by Baylink (subscriber, #755) [Link] Indeed; editory is what makes a publication interesting, useful, and worth continuing to payfor: keep havin' them opinions, Jon. It really is all about you. :-)
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 12, 2004 20:16 UTC (Fri) by mceesay (guest, #2806) [Link] Agreed, it's good stuff.
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 9, 2004 19:14 UTC (Tue) by bhepple (guest, #2581) [Link] Another vote for continuing for ical - in my case, running on gentoo, there is a package available so all I do for installation is "emerge ical" and off I go.Perhaps that's also a vote for gentoo over debian :-)
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 9, 2004 19:56 UTC (Tue) by xanni (subscriber, #361) [Link] I also run Debian unstable and have been using ical for years. Due to the remarkable lack of import support for the ical file format, I can't easily migrate to other calendar software. Now that it is no longer provided as part of Debian, I just downloaded the latest RPM and converted it to a .deb using alien.
Console reminder Posted Mar 9, 2004 20:00 UTC (Tue) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link] I have used a program called remind for years. I use it in the console mode only, I have tried the tk front end out of curiousity but don't remember much about it.Try this URL: http://www.roaringpenguin.com/products/remind/ I have no idea how it compares to iCal or Xcal. It does everything I want ... periodic reminders, one shot. I run it out of crontab once a day, on every login, it has never failed me. Simple text file for reminders. Handles the Hebrew calendar too.
Remind: Kitchen-sink for hard-core Unixers... Posted Mar 11, 2004 6:17 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] :-)I'm the author of Remind. I started it back in 1990 when I didn't want to work on my Master's thesis. Remind is *not* for everyone. If you're expecting a pretty clicky GUI, forget it. (Well, not quite; there is a Tcl/Tk GUI front-end which is quite nice and usable.) If you like to edit text-based configurations and sit back smugly in the knowledge that Remind's calendar language can express "Meeting every second Thursday of the month except if there's a full moon, in which case move it to the first Friday of the month", or "Payroll on last working day of the month", then Remind is for you. :-) Remind can even calculate "blue moons" -- that's the second full moon in a month. Here's a brief taste: ================================================= MSG Next blue moon is [trigger(blue)] The next blue moon is July 31, 2004. http://www.roaringpenguin.com/products/remind/
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 10, 2004 1:07 UTC (Wed) by pointwood (subscriber, #2814) [Link] Good overview - thx!
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 10, 2004 5:24 UTC (Wed) by krash (subscriber, #2689) [Link] Well my favorite seems to have been overlooked. I use J-Pilot. It provides all of the features you mention and then some. It has a simple to use interface. Most if not all entry is done in a single screen. Yes it is intended also as an interface to a PDA device but the PDA is not a requirement for using all of the other features. Give it a look at www.jpilot.org.kr
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 10, 2004 5:54 UTC (Wed) by jhenry (subscriber, #991) [Link] Another missing option seems to be XNotesPlus.I believe the author is a former LWN editor/contributor, so I'm really suprised this package didn't get mentioned. I downloaded this just the other day, but I haven't had time to try it out yet. I'm interested in it's Palm sync capabilties.
XNotesPlus is non-free Posted Mar 10, 2004 6:56 UTC (Wed) by ber (subscriber, #2142) [Link] XNotesPlus is proprietary software.I expect LWN to only consider Free Software for such a task.
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 10, 2004 7:08 UTC (Wed) by utidjian (subscriber, #444) [Link] XNotesPlus is not "free". It is shareware. Yes, the source is available... but it doesn't build on my system (something about pspell). J-pilot does. It also has a horrendously ugly interface (from the screenshots). I suppose the interface is adjustable but it is hard to tell when it won't build. Seems that supported binaries (US$10) are available up to Red Hat 7.3. RH7.3 is no longer supported by Red Hat. In other words... XNotesPlus seems to be an even more deadend proposition than ical. ical, BTW, still builds and installs correctly on my system (Fedora Core 1).-DU-...etc...
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 10, 2004 7:42 UTC (Wed) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861) [Link] I, too, miss ical quite a bit. I moved to Evo, mainly in anticipation of our corporate email infrastructure moving from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2003, so I could use Connector for shared calendaring. Hopefully that transition will happen sometime this year... I also, I have to admit, found ical a little buggy: it would sometimes crash on me (although I must say Evo also sometimes has problems: Evo itself hasn't crashed on me but the notifier applet does crap out, then I don't get any popup reminders). ical also had some annoying GUI misfeatures, and most egregiously its storage format was non-standard and not portable.However, I share the grumpy editor's disappointment at the crop of calendars out there. I suppose it's like file chooser dialogs: to someone who hasn't tried to write one the interface doesn't seem like it should be that difficult. The things I miss about ical are the simple things. By far the most critical is being able to see my schedule from another system: I log in remotely from home every morning and I just want to know what time I have to be at work--I can't do that without starting Evo with remote display, which seems pretty ridiculous in itself--and I can't even start Evo from home unless I remember to shut it down before I leave work the night before, or else kill it from home in the morning. This issue may be alleviated when the Exchange shared calendaring is deployed since I could start a native Evo from home and visit my shared calendar on the Exchange server. In any event, the ability to get a quick text summary of your daily schedule via a command-line operation is critical IMO. I also greatly miss the configurability of the popup reminders: Evo's popups are not very configurable. They're also, annoyingly, a minute off: if a reminder pops up at 2:55 and I click the 5 minute snooze, I don't get the next reminder until 3:01. Instead of a "snooze" feature, which requires me to click the snooze button quickly or else adjust the snooze time, ical just had a "recurring reminder" feature which reminded me every N minutes: this is _MUCH_ more practical in real life.
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 10, 2004 12:37 UTC (Wed) by boerner (subscriber, #4247) [Link] I don't have any suggestions to offer for a calendaring application, but I wanted to throw my two cents in about the grumpy editor series. I enjoy them completely and would love to see more. I would even pay more than my current subscription for such content.
bigger problems Posted Mar 11, 2004 6:13 UTC (Thu) by zooko (subscriber, #2589) [Link] bigger problem #1: good working software goes unmaintained, while flashy but awkward alternatives abound.bigger problem #2: Debian removes the good, working, unmaintained software. bigger problem #3: Debian removing software forces corbet to stop using it. Of these three, the third one -- Debian removing software forces corbet to stop using it, should be most easily fixable!
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 11, 2004 9:34 UTC (Thu) by pimlott (guest, #1535) [Link] If Jonathan keeps up these reviews, we just might see more clean graphical interfaces that focus on basic usability and functionality for real users, rather than whiz-bang features, interface guidelines, and other false gods of "modern" GUI design. It's sad that there doesn't seem to be a by-and-for hackers desktop these days.
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 11, 2004 9:53 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] > It's sad that there doesn't seem to be> a by-and-for hackers desktop these days. There is. It's called bash and it comes in two competing flavours: Bash+Vim and Bash+Emacs. (really.) If you're actually looking for a desktop for "power users", then yeh, there's none that I know of. (a scriptable, keynavigatable desktop would be very nice.)
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 11, 2004 10:30 UTC (Thu) by pimlott (guest, #1535) [Link] It's sad that there doesn't seem to be a by-and-for hackers desktop these days. *cough*zsh*cough* 'Scuse me. There's a lot missing in those "desktops" that even most hackers can't get along without. You really need a graphical web browser that understands the many languages and protocols used today. There doesn't exist one without a clunky, inflexible UI. I also need a PDF reader, a movie player, and (occasionally) an AIM client--which actually pretty much rounds out the graphical programs I use, but that doesn't mean I might not use others if they didn't suck so much. I think the command line crowd has to broaden its perspective a bit.
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 12, 2004 4:03 UTC (Fri) by amdias (guest, #6441) [Link] "There's a lot missing in those "desktops" that even most hackers can't get along without." Sure, I aggree with you: I also couldn't live without a graphical desktop... but I also would like to have "a scriptable, keynavigatable desktop". My best approach, these days, is fluxbox.
"Power user's" desktop, scriptable and hotkeyable Posted Mar 12, 2004 4:40 UTC (Fri) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link] > (a scriptable, keynavigatable desktop would be very nice.)Well, within certain limits, most notably the system resources required, KDE does have that ability, given its DCOP scriptability, and configurable hotkeys. There are individual apps that don't lend themselves to keyboarding so well, including much of kicker and applets available for it, but since kicker like much of KDE is quite configurable, those can be kept to a minium if desired. As well, a power user should know how to "power use" a mouse as well as a keyboard, IMO, and then choose the best tool for the job and based on personal preferences, which is more or less the definition of a "power user" in the first place, isn't it? Of course, even KDE, when run on a desktop built on a dual Opteron 242 w/ a gig of memory, can be fast. =:^) I'm currently about 2/3 done with the research I need to do to start the switch from Mandrake to Gentoo (due to Mandrake's lack of current KDE on the AMD64 platform.. even in cooker.. still stuck with 3.1.4 when 3.2.1 was just released!), which should improve performance even MORE. =:^) =:^) =:^) I hope to kick off the actual install in the next couple of days, after finishing the research, and deciding whether it's more efficient to go stage-3+binary install now and recompile everything later when I figure out the options I want, or figure them out now and set it up to do it right, from a stage-1 install. Duncan
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 12, 2004 6:25 UTC (Fri) by daenzer (subscriber, #7050) [Link] > The calendar interface is difficult to navigate around in; your editor> never did succeed in reproducing the calendar view found on the Evolution > screen shots page. As many others, myself included, you probably ran into Evolution Bug #44539.
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 18, 2004 0:39 UTC (Thu) by cuboci (subscriber, #9641) [Link] You know you could've just put this into your /etc/apt/preferences and ical would never have been removed:Package: ical On the other hand a bunch of software would never have been upgraded because of ical still being there ;-)
Mozilla Firefix w/ Calendar-Extension Posted Mar 18, 2004 3:13 UTC (Thu) by Octavian (subscriber, #7462) [Link] The author forgot to mention an alternative I use for some time now:mozilla Firefox with the calendar extension: -> http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar Use it!
Don't forget Chandler Posted Mar 18, 2004 9:20 UTC (Thu) by sphealey (guest, #1028) [Link] Don't forget that Chandler is grinding along slowly somewhere "out there":http://www.osafoundation.orgA long way from being usable, but also fairly well funded. And perhaps even organized? sPh
Don't forget Chandler Posted Mar 18, 2004 12:16 UTC (Thu) by davidl (guest, #12156) [Link] I'm just wondering what the point of Chandler is these days.
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 18, 2004 14:03 UTC (Thu) by dfsmith (guest, #20302) [Link] I love my ical.It emails my appointments (and phone #s) to my mobile phone---waking me up early in the morning if it has to. It maintains my .plan file for finger and when I login to a shell. It maintains a two-week calendar web page for my secretary. When I used a Palm Pilot, it sync'd with that quite happily. When I need to do end of year reports, it'll dump out all the text very readily. But it also keeps birthdays and non-business stuff in a different file, so that I can keep work and "pleasure" separate yet still on the same calendar. It has a simple file format so that I can still grep if I need to find the name of that guy I spoke with in 1997 around April; begins with a B, has an r in it somewhere too. It's fairly easy to modify the TCL; just in case.
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Mar 18, 2004 14:33 UTC (Thu) by cowabunga (guest, #20303) [Link] Hi, I 'm glad to see you like Korganizer.I'm using Korganizer with a Sony Clie that runs Agendus. No problems so far, does it very well. Only the first step was difficult: getting Kpilot to sync with Sony ...
ical ported to Fedora Core 1. Posted Mar 22, 2004 9:34 UTC (Mon) by lm (guest, #6402) [Link] Jon sent me mail about http://www.annexia.org/freeware/ical/ and I used thatas a base to port ical to Fedora Core 1. My changes are at http://www.bitmover.com/ical.patch.fedora1 and I mailed I'll go figure out what needs to be done to get this included in Fedora.
A grumpy editor's calendar search Posted Apr 9, 2004 8:48 UTC (Fri) by MarkSwanson (guest, #9328) [Link] ScheduleWorld works great on Linux (the ScheduleWorld services network runs onLinux, and the client was primarily developed under Linux). The ScheduleWorld client and server are free to use. It's based entirely on open standards, interoperates with Exchange/Outlook, and recently started to provide schedules for weather and tv-listings. It also has a timesheet scheduling feature that is geared to help all you Linux folks working on "the next big thing" keep track of your time so you can get back some of your investment in the form of R&D tax credits. It's written in Java, so works great on Linux, Windows, OS/X, and Solaris. http://www.ScheduleWorld.com/ Cheers.
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