Re: [Evolution-hackers] Appointment and Meeting Editors -- 2.0 Thoughts

[Ronald Kuetemeier <ronald kuetemeier com>]

On Fri, 2003-10-03 at 12:29, Federico Mena Quintero wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-10-02 at 10:42, Anna Marie Dirks wrote:
> 
> > So it sounds to me like what you are telling me is that if you could use
> > the "To Do" (or "Tasks") part of Evolution to help you remember and plan
> > your speaking engagements, then you would. Is that right? 
> > 
> > Besides alarms, is there anything else that the appointment editor
> > provides to you that the task editor doesn't, which you need to help you
> > plan a speaking engagement? 
> 
> I don't think we support alarms for tasks, and they would certainly be
> useful.
> 
Since it looks like I'm the only one using some more fun features of
Evolution 1.2. Here is how you get alarms for tasks in 1.2.X, doesn't
work in 1.4.X since the contacts are gone from the UI.

Set Start and Due Time, make yourself the ATTENDEE, accept the task in
the email. 
Check your tasks.ics, and it has an VAlARM in there 15 min before the
Start time. 
Ok it's kind of awkward to get the alarm in, but it works and shows the
alarm. 

The question which will come up is, do you want the alarm before due or
start time?  I took it, as getting the task alarm and better get going
to be finished in time, if you use due time you have to calculate back
when you have to start working to be done at due time and set the alarm
accordingly. Sounds like a personal pref. to me what you call start time
for a task. I don't know if there is consensus on it.
Have fun,
Ronald


> RFC 2445 says that VTODO components can have a DTSTART property, and
> either a DUE or DURATION property --- no DTEND.  The DUE or DURATION of
> course let you figure out the "end" date for the task.  Say you create a
> task to remind you to submit an abstract for a conference.  You could
> then specify:
> 
> 	SUMMARY: Write abstract for FooConference	
> 	DTSTART: <blah>  <-- date the call-for-papers was sent
> 	DUE: <blah>      <-- drop-dead date
> 
> It would be useful to set an alarm that repeats each week, starting a
> few weeks before the due date.  A three-week reminder would look like
> 
> 	BEGIN:VALARM
> 	TRIGGER;RELATED=END:-P3W
> 	REPEAT:2
> 	DURATION:P1W
> 	...
> 	END:VALARM
> 
> The "RELATED=END" is important, as it specifies that the alarm is with
> respect to the due date.
> 
> I don't think the recurrence engine handles VTODO components yet, but it
> would be simple to add.  It can already pick up the DTSTART, as VEVENT
> components also have it, but it doesn't know that there is no DTEND in
> tasks --- you need to use the DUE date, or compute it as DTSTART plus
> DURATION.
> 
> See calendar/util/cal-util.c:add_alarm_occurrences_cb().  It gets an
> occurrence's end time from cal_recur_generate_instances(), which uses
> cal_component_get_dtend() in its innards.  The latter will give you the
> actual DTEND value, or (DTSTART + DURATION) if there is no DTEND
> property.  This would work fine for tasks with DTSTART and DURATION, but
> not for those with DUE.
> 
> I guess it is just cal-recur.c that needs to be modified to use DUE
> rather than DTEND or (DTSTART + DURATION), or perhaps
> cal_component_get_dtend() could be generalized to return DUE for tasks.
> 
>   Federico
> 
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