Author Topic: Calendar and other family time management features - how to start ?  (Read 18164 times)

bulek

  • Administrator
  • wants to work for LinuxMCE
  • *****
  • Posts: 909
  • Living with LMCE
    • View Profile
Re: Calendar and other family time management features - how to start ?
« Reply #30 on: October 18, 2008, 02:59:01 pm »
Hi,

I guess at the moment, we're seeking for a convenient way to use funambol and access/edit that data from wrapper that will connect to LMCE...

At the start I'll try to write Perl script that will make speech announcements out of data - since we currently don't have any features on Orbiter...

Regards,

Bulek.
Thanks in advance,

regards,

Bulek.

tschak909

  • LinuxMCE God
  • ****
  • Posts: 5549
  • DOES work for LinuxMCE.
    • View Profile
Re: Calendar and other family time management features - how to start ?
« Reply #31 on: October 18, 2008, 08:30:02 pm »
dammit

*hmm*

instead of wasting time duct taping shit on, why don't you guys actually try to do it right? or is that my job too?

-Thom

bulek

  • Administrator
  • wants to work for LinuxMCE
  • *****
  • Posts: 909
  • Living with LMCE
    • View Profile
Re: Calendar and other family time management features - how to start ?
« Reply #32 on: October 19, 2008, 12:52:12 am »
dammit

*hmm*

instead of wasting time duct taping shit on, why don't you guys actually try to do it right? or is that my job too?

-Thom


I'm not sure if we're talking about same thing. I agree fully with your proposition of proper implementation of those features inside LMCE. But syncing with PDA/mobile devices is also desired - and that's what Funambol is all about. I just cannot see why we'd waste other apps that do some thing good and it would be substantial waste of time to write our own ...

Funambol takes care of syncing with virtually any PDA/Mobile/Outlook/Palm device on earth. Sorry, but I see no point of discarding it as a candidate to support better sync capability of calendar/contact data under LMCE...

We have given a lof of outsourcing functionality to other apps (Xine,Asterisk,Motion,Mythtv,VDR,UPnP...) that have own development communities and simply cause developing each feature from a scratch is impossible - you know complexity of LMCE and its features much better as me... We control/access data from those apps via wrappers. Why is this not acceptable here ?

With all respect to your work and contributions, I'm missing more positive energy on LMCE forums lately... We should all remember that this is a public forum for open discussion - at least I think so....

Regards,

Bulek.


Thanks in advance,

regards,

Bulek.

chriss

  • Veteran
  • ***
  • Posts: 140
    • View Profile
Re: Calendar and other family time management features - how to start ?
« Reply #33 on: October 19, 2008, 09:58:33 am »
Well, I think, Thom is not referring to Funambol at all when he says "wasting time". He is talking about proper implementation of the LMCE wrapper parts for some calendaring system instead. Funambol itself is no calendar system but only a sync server. As Thom pointed out before (please correct me if I'm wrong...), this includes

 * Orbiter screens
 * Calendar plugin
 * Calendar engine (this could be some sort of existing calendar server)

I think before starting to code something, we should have a short brainstorming on what we would like to achieve with the new feature, i.e. collect some use-cases. I'll start with some points, please add more or correct me

 * Storing events for every user and maybe for groups (familiy calendar, kids calendar etc.)
 * Events consisting of a title, description, time frame, location etc.
 * Event reminder pop-up screens
 * Display the user's calendar on the orbiter (different views: day, week, month)
 * Detailed view of an event => creating new events, modifying events, deleting events
 * Overlaying the user's calendar with his group calendars
 * Show a "what's next" screen with upcoming events
 * React to invitations

Any other ideas? Since this is already quite a bunch of stuff, we should take it easy and try a step-by-step approach, maybe starting with the quite simple event reminder pop-ups (which could be extended by bulek's speech announcements).

itspac

  • Veteran
  • ***
  • Posts: 136
    • View Profile
Re: Calendar and other family time management features - how to start ?
« Reply #34 on: October 19, 2008, 05:00:14 pm »
Well, I think, Thom is not referring to Funambol at all when he says "wasting time". He is talking about proper implementation of the LMCE wrapper parts for some calendaring system instead. Funambol itself is no calendar system but only a sync server. As Thom pointed out before (please correct me if I'm wrong...), this includes

 * Orbiter screens
 * Calendar plugin
 * Calendar engine (this could be some sort of existing calendar server)

I think before starting to code something, we should have a short brainstorming on what we would like to achieve with the new feature, i.e. collect some use-cases. I'll start with some points, please add more or correct me

 * Storing events for every user and maybe for groups (familiy calendar, kids calendar etc.)
 * Events consisting of a title, description, time frame, location etc.
 * Event reminder pop-up screens
 * Display the user's calendar on the orbiter (different views: day, week, month)
 * Detailed view of an event => creating new events, modifying events, deleting events
 * Overlaying the user's calendar with his group calendars
 * Show a "what's next" screen with upcoming events
 * React to invitations

Any other ideas? Since this is already quite a bunch of stuff, we should take it easy and try a step-by-step approach, maybe starting with the quite simple event reminder pop-ups (which could be extended by bulek's speech announcements).

I would like it to be like my work calendering system.

1. Each user or the administrator can set a preference of how far in advance a reminder shows before a scheduled event.
2. Todo lists show up at the first interaction of the day or if there is a wake event.
3 reminders (voice or how ever) happen in orbitors where the user is in
4 group reminders happen in all orbitors where a member of that particular reminder is at.
5 group reminders are made such that the reminder only stops showing for individuals that have closed it or "snoozed" it


I think its simple on how to overlay calendars. Make one calender  and allow users the right to make private events. so, if an event is not private everyone in the group can see it even though it may not be for them. If it is private, it blocks off time for that particular user, but does not show what the even is. I don't know if that is really as simple as it sounds, but it seems simpler than creating a calender for every member then trying to overlay events to find free time to schedule. Of course, this doesnt scale well, but how many users have a need for 20 - 50 users?

Maybe that's where you should start: defining the amount of users needed and scalability?

show upcoming events in the same fashion play lists are shown for music. Time and subject, if within 24 hours. Click on the item to get detail. Or create a button on orbiters to to bring up the calendar.

Calendar entry should be able to happen from the web interface or onscreen/ other orbitors. I dont care how its displayed, but 2 days, 1 week, 1 month works for me. should be accessible via a button on the orbitor

invitations.... wow that brings up countering on times and all that other stuff.  I'll leave that alone..

format. my thought.. stick with ical and webdav it seems simple, data looks easily extracted and can probably fitted to sync programs. Also makes your calendar available via the interface and through the internet if you have it accessible.

I dont know much about how to create the engine or plugins, so that part I wont comment on.



tschak909

  • LinuxMCE God
  • ****
  • Posts: 5549
  • DOES work for LinuxMCE.
    • View Profile
Re: Calendar and other family time management features - how to start ?
« Reply #35 on: October 19, 2008, 05:23:59 pm »
First pass, very simple...

simple calendaring for the family members inside the house.

This would be the Local_House_Calendaring_PlugIn.

The datagrids in Orbiter are currently somewhat simple, data grid cells have to be a fixed size. The exceptions are that the first row and first column can be a different size.

So maybe for this first one, we'll be able to flip between the different calendars, and only show one on screen at a given time UNTIL we can figure out how to slice up the data grid cells effectively to show what we need to show (remember, all datagrid cells need to be the same size, but we can make each cell a different color).

Let's not tackle synchronization until we have the local store working properly. The only thing we need for synchronization is the ability to send a command to dump events.

-Thom

cadman97

  • Regular Poster
  • **
  • Posts: 22
    • View Profile
Re: Calendar and other family time management features - how to start ?
« Reply #36 on: October 26, 2008, 01:11:46 am »
I agree with Thom. Start with one fuction. Calender is one that I was looking at as well. I am willing to help out as well. just need a point in where to start, since I havn't programmed since the old atari 1200xl's with basic . wow I am starting to feel old..


Mike