Reflections on iCal: categories and calendars

I am, of course, an interested party on this topic, but I left PalmOne
almost a year ago and am speaking now primarily as a user. Hope this
doesn't sound like an ad.

On Nov 23, 2004, at 18:39, mcthe-mind.com wrote:

> Until Apple fixes this, i'd be keen to hear of any workarounds.
> Likewise, i'd be keen to know if others are having a similar problem?

My completely biased opinion* is that you should at least give Palm
Desktop a try and see if its more robust feature set and high-fidelity
handheld syncing works better for you overall. I use iCal for some
things, including shared calendars, but I use Palm Desktop for the data
on my handheld.

iCal does a few things Palm Desktop doesn't, like shared calendars, but
Palm Desktop does a number of things iCal doesn't, like linking address
cards with appointments and notes related to a contact. And Palm
Desktop does a better overall job of syncing the data with the handheld
because that was our primary goal: to make it a good match for the
handheld's data.

If you do give Palm Desktop a try, be sure to get the latest version,
available from:

        <http://palmone.com/us/support/macintosh/mac_desktop.html>

*I am a software engineer and I was primarily responsible for the
development of Palm Desktop for five years.

--
Chris Page - Software Wrangler - Dylan Pundit

  The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree,
  is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals.
  We cause accidents. -- Nathaniel Borenstein

There is a way to specify the calendar the Palm events should go to. After selecting your Device in ISync by clicking on it in the gray bar you'll find a Pop down menu "Put events created on Palm into ..."

Andreas

I do have one thing I liked about Palm that I can't do with either iCal
or Addressbook: I can't open up other people's address books and
calendars like I could with the Palm desktop. Sometimes I'd sneak a
peek at my wife's Palm calendar to make sure that I wasn't planning
something that would conflict with her schedule. Now that we both use
iCal, I have to publish our calendars on the Internet somewhere in
order to do this. Plus, there is no way for me to look up a phone
number my wife might have, but I don't with Addressbook.

It would be nice if there was some sort of local sharing available.

--
David Weintraub

On Nov 28, 2004, at 06:03, Dr. Andreas wrote:

> There is a way to specify the calendar the Palm events should go to.
> After selecting your Device in ISync by clicking on it in the gray bar
> you'll find a Pop down menu "Put events created on Palm into ..."

Although, as far as I am aware that only lets you direct *all* items
created on the handheld into a *single* calendar. Last time I looked
into it, it didn't support filing calendar items with different
categories into different iCal calendars.

--
Chris Page - Software Wrangler - Dylan Pundit

At 6:39 PM -0800 23/11/04, mcthe-mind.com wrote:
>Until Apple fixes this, i'd be keen to hear of any workarounds.
>Likewise, i'd be keen to know if others are having a similar problem?

At 6:03 AM -0800 28/11/04, Chris Page wrote:
>My completely biased opinion* is that you should at least give Palm
>Desktop a try and see if its more robust feature set and
>high-fidelity handheld syncing works better for you overall. I use
>iCal for some things, including shared calendars, but I use Palm
>Desktop for the data on my handheld.

I feel the original poster's pain and I also agree with Chris - for
most things Palm Desktop is still a long way ahead of iCal, even if
Chris did leave PalmOne almost a year ago :)

I'm in a situation where the usage of some of the scientific
instruments I'm responsible for is managed through shared calendars
in iCal. When I'm making appointments I need to see those bookings to
know when I'm available. It would be great if I could move all my
calendering into iCal but I'm not quite ready to live with the all
limitations so I'm still using Palm Desktop as well. This is not long
term solution because it is real pain and leads to lots of mistakes
to have my calender information in more than one place.

What I have been doing is exporting my Palm Desktop calender and
importing it into iCal on a regular basis. In effect my Palm calender
becomes another read-only "shared" calendar in iCal. That way I can
at least see most of my appointments in one application (although
when I'm mobile and using my Palm that doesn't work).

I suspect this process could be streamlined by some apple scripting
but I've not had time (or ability) to delve into that yet. I know
Chris added a lot of AppleScript support to Palm Desktop and I've
seen other scripts that import events into iCal so maybe it could
made to work. Something that went both ways would be even better (but
I've not yet worked out a simple way of getting appointments out of
iCal and back into Palm Desktop).

I really hope there is a new, vastly improved, iCal in Tiger... (and
that Apple would give some serious thought to better support for the
Palm OS handheld data).

Regards,

Adrian Smith
Centenary Institute
Sydney, Australia

"What I have been doing is exporting my Palm Desktop calender and importing it into iCal on a regular basis. In effect my Palm calender becomes another read-only "shared" calendar in iCal."

Unfortunately there's a long-standing BUG in iCal when importing vCal files. Some events get shifted one or two days in the future during the import process. The vCal files show the correct dates when examined in a text editor, but the events appear on later dates.

The easiest work-around is not to use iCal until they fix the problem.
I'm all for supporting Apple, but not at the cost of a key function!
If you can't integrate the various categories of your life - To Dos
included - in your calendar, what's the point?

Ever hopeful,
rm

Hi,

I have exactly the same problem as described but between ical and my Sony-Ericsson P900.

I haven't found a work around. Except not synching very often and using an outliner called projekt to keep my planning in, and so keeping the list of todos to the bare minimum. The problem also happens with classified calendars too.

=djg

On Dec 8, 2004, at 9:39 AM, Dave Garbutt wrote:

> I have exactly the same problem as described but between ical and my
> Sony-Ericsson P900.

My system for the P900 isn't exactly a workaround -- I still lose
categories -- but it works for me.

I have about 8 calendars on my iCal, only two of which I sync to the
P900. However, there's also a P900 calendar which is NOT synced -- but
all incoming P900 events (i.e., created there) are stored in it. So in
my iCal, I have a color-coding that tells me which events need to be
categorized. On my P900, where categories are lost, I see everything
and can usually figure out from context which calendar it came from.

Best,
Jeff

Don't want to rain on you, but the problem doesn't come from iCal. It comes from Palm.

There is no calendar client on the palm that has this concept of multiple calendars. Sure you can specify a category for a particular event on your Palm, but all your Palm events still show in ONE calendar. How should iCal determine which event goes where when syncing?

The ideal answer would be a Palm calendar app that supports multiple calendars, not a lesser iCal with one calendar and multiple categories.

iCal deals much better with Calendar invitations (received via email) than Palm ever will.

I love my Treo, but I have to admit its calendar application is not up to par.

When I publish a calendar from ical (2.0.3) from my mac (OSX 10.4.5) for others in the company to reference, I lose all my colour coding. They render all in blue on their macs.

Any ideas?

Steve Bratt

On Mar 15, 2006, at 22:47 PM, Steve Bratt wrote:

> When I publish a calendar from ical (2.0.3) from my mac (OSX
> 10.4.5) for others in the company to reference, I lose all my
> colour coding. They render all in blue on their macs.

Do you mean the color you set for the published calendar (the whole
calendar) isn't seen by subscribers? As far as I am aware, the colors
of all calendars are controlled by each user. When you subscribe to a
calendar you can assign it any color you prefer. I suppose it would
make sense for it to default to the color the publisher assigned--I
assume you're complaining that it doesn't do this--but subscribers
can choose a color that makes sense to them and doesn't conflict with
colors they may already be using, so you wouldn't be able to force
your color upon subscribers, anyway.

--
Chris Page - Computer Professional

  The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree,
  is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals.
  We cause accidents. -- Nathaniel Borenstein

On 3/16/06, Steve Bratt <stevemcs-creative.co.uk> wrote:
> When I publish a calendar from ical (2.0.3) from my mac (OSX 10.4.5) for
> others in the company to reference, I lose all my colour coding. They render
> all in blue on their macs.

I'm not 100% sure about this functionality but I think that when you
publish your calendar iCal treats it as one calendar and therefore
everything gets one colour on the end user's machine. If you want them
to come through as different colours perhaps you could publish the
colour-differentiated calendars individually and then when your
coworkers subscribed to them they should come in with different
colours.

(Sorry, I haven't had a chance to test this, it's a brainstorm
response. So, I'm not sure this is possible, but logically it should
work that way if it's possible).

Good luck !

Cordially,

Christopher Appell
European Market
FreeRecruiting.com
JobMart.com

Thanks for the feedback on this - yes, I need other users to see the same colours as I give the different events, so they can arrange in the same order as I see them - we use ical as a production system in the office.

cheers,

Steve.

At first I did publish each project as a different calendar so the colours remained, but I had to publish it everytime there was a change, and the end user had to subscribe every time (a time consuming business!!)

By having just one calendar containing different colour events they only need to subscribe once, and then changes are refreshed every 15 mins, which is great.

Cheers

Steve