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Qalendar

Revision as of 15:33, 20 April 2014

Introduction

Qalendar is an effort to recreate (closed source) stock Calendar for Maemo platform, as Open Software. The main goal of the project is to include all features of native Calendar without it's bugs, at the same time having the ability to extend functionality, when desired and appropriate.

Qalendar is currently in beta stage, so it may not be ready for end-users. However, brave souls (power-users, testers, developers) are encouraged to test it and participate in the development, by either submitting patches, or pointing out bugs/proposed features on the talk thread.

Differences between Qalendar and Calendar

The list could be more complete, but hopefully the most important points are present.

(+) denotes an added feature or a positive change. (=) means a different approach or a change that is more likely to be considered for worse. (-) marks a missing feature or some kind of problem.

General

• (+) Automatic cleanups of events and tasks can be configured separately.
• (+) Events can be set with one-minute precision (instead of 5 minutes).
• (+) Various dialogs use more screen space to avoid scrolling as much as possible.
• (+) More default alarm tones to choose from.
• (+) Invisible calendars in the calendar picker are grouped together and dimmed.
• (=) Tasks and notes are on par with month, week and agenda in the menu. They can be saved as the active view on exit and restored after reopening.
• (=) When opening a window to show an event or a task as requested by the reminder dialog, the underlying views are not adjusted to the date of the requested event/task.
• (-) No preview for alarm tones.

Month

• (+) Swipe left/right to move between years.
• (=) Clicking on a day from another month shows events for that day (instead of changing to that month).
• (=) There is no animation, which makes navigating with touch gestures and arrow keys much faster.

Week

• (+) Scrolling seems smoother.
• (+) The small colored rectangles which indicate that not all items are in the view do not have dedicated bars on edges of the scrolling area, thus they take only as much space as is really needed.
• (+) Click on the hours bar to scroll between all-day section and current time.
• (+) If an alarm is present for an event, the icon is displayed no matter how little space is available. There are also a few other small differences in how contents of a block are laid out.
• (=) Blocks are wide enough to completely fill a column horizontally. This gives more space for block contents, but makes it impossible to create a new event by a precise click between two events.
• (=) All-day events are always at the top of the scroll area. This sometimes might be less convenient, but is more predictable and readable.
• (=) One block is displayed for each task (instead of one block per day). This is only good if the number of tasks is not too large, because otherwise a lot of scrolling is required to reach the lower parts.

Agenda

• (+) Scrolling seems smoother.
• (+) Label for the current day is highlighted with a different color.

Agenda/Day

• (+) Tweaked contents of event icons to be more clear (e.g. 23:00-... instead of 23:59, to indicate that the event does not end on this day)
• (+) There is an additional button, it allows to create a task for the day in focus.

Tasks

• (+) Separate window to display all details (like with events).
• (+) Possibility to enter additional long description.
• (+) Number of tasks (overdue, incomplete, completed) displayed in window title.
• (+) Alternative layout to provide more space for summary and show calendar color.
• (+) Overdue tasks use a color from theme (instead of hardcoded red).
• (+) Option to hide completed tasks.
• (+) Option to delete completed tasks.

Tasks/Events

• (+) Cloning.
• (+) Clickable email addresses, phone numbers and web links.

Notes

• (+) Alternative layout to provide more space for summary, show calendar color and full modification stamp.
• (+) The editor can display significantly more text.
• (+) Number of notes displayed in window title.
• (=) Modification stamp is not displayed in the editor (the new list layout provides that info).

Date picker

• (+) Day numbers are supported by weekday names.
• (=) The default date for a date picker shown after selecting Jump to is the date of the parent view instead of the current date.
• (-) Details (day name, week number) are blinking when touching other columns, which technically is not completely wrong, but does not make a good impression.

Replacing the default calendar

Consequences

• About 35 MB of memory will be consumed instead of 25 MB due to the weight of Qt libraries (measured on a CSSU/Thumb system). The difference will be mitigated if other Qt applications are running.

How to replace

1. As root, change the Exec line in the file called /usr/share/dbus-1/services/com.nokia.calendar.service so that it looks like this:

   Exec=/usr/bin/qalendar --background

2. Kill the default calendar, in case it is still running in the background, with the following command:

   killall Calendar

How to revert

1. Change the mentioned line in /usr/share/dbus-1/services/com.nokia.calendar.service back to:

   Exec=/usr/bin/Calendar

2. Kill Qalendar:

   killall qalendar