Dave Mason

dcm@redhat.com

Miguel de Icaza Amozurrutia

miguel@gnu.org

1998, 1999 Miguel de Icaza, Dave Mason This documentation is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA For more details see the file COPYING in the source distribution of GNOME. The following command line options are recognized by the gnomecal program. You can use these options to alter the behaviour of the program or to quickly query the program for appointments, and to do items from the command line without requiring an X display. These are useful for example to include in scripts. --events. Displays the events for the date specified (or today, if no date is specified). --from DATE. Define the beginning of the range for the event display, or the startup day on the calenday views. By default, the event will span the whole day specified in DATE. --to DATE. Define the range end for the event display. If this is not specified, it will default to the end of the day specified by the --from option. --file FILE. Set the calendar to the FILE specified on the command line. --todo. Dumps the to-do values to standard output. --userfile. Use this if you want to force the file to be loaded to be the default user's calendar (this is the default, only used to override the --file if you have some sort of macro. --geometry. Used to specity the startup geometry of the application (location and size). --view VIEWMODE. Use this to specify the startup view that should be used. VIEWMODE is one of: dayview, weekview, monthview, yearview. DATE is interpreted as being in the local time-zone, unless a specific timezone is specified. Examples of valid date specifications include: "1 month ago", "2 hours ago", "400000 seconds ago", "last year", "last Monday", "yesterday", "a fortnight ago", "3/31/92 10:00:07 PST", "January 23, 1987 10:05pm", "22:00 GMT". Currently, the GNOME calendar uses the vCal file format standard for storing and loading its appointment and todo database. This standard is widely used in various other calendar applications, so it provides a good mechanism for exchanging appointments. In the future the GNOME calendar will support the upcoming iCalendar specification as well. If you want to know more about the vCal specification, you can check the Internet Mail Consortium (http://www.imc.org) for the details. GNOME Calendar Calendar The GNOME Calendar is a simple calendar applications which can be quite useful in your daily work. The Calendar, like much of GNOME, is in its infancy and while it is a very useful application, there is some very impressive functionality still to come like network shared calendar usage, and syncing capability with Palm Pilots and other hand held PDAs. The Calendar can be launched from the Applications submenu of the Main Menu. The Calendar is broken up into four main tabs: Day, Week, Month, and Year. Each view allows you to view the respective time period but will also allow you to schedule appointments from any one of the tabs.

The GNOME Calendar

Setting Up the GNOME Calendar The GNOME Calendar can be used in the state which it is shipped but there are tools available to make sure it is setup the way you would like it to be. The first place you should go is the GNOME Calendar Preferences. You can find the Preferences dialog by selecting the Preferences menu item from the Settings menu.

The GNOME Calendar Preferences.

The Calendar Preferences dialog is broken up into three tabs, Time display, Colors, and Todo list. Time - This tab is broken up into three main sections: Time format, Weeks start on, and Day range. Time format - This allows you to choose between a 12 or 24 hour format clock. Weeks start on - This allows you to define what day your week will start on, Sunday or Monday. This will affect how the calendar is laid out in the Day and Week views. Day range - This section lets you choose what time your days will start and end. Any hours outside the range selected will be shaded on your Day view. Colors - This tab allows you to change the default colors used in the Calendar. There are seven color choices you can customize: Outline, Headings, Empty days, Appointments, Highlighted day, Day numbers, and Current day's number. Each choice has a small color selector box next to it. When you press this box you will be given a color selector dialog in which you can choose the color you want. Once you have selected a color the small sample calendar on the right side of the tab will preview your choice. Todo List - This tab allows you to define which columns will be shown in the Todo List in the Day View. You can set the Summary, Due Date, and Priority columns. Once you have made the changes to the Calendar Preferences you may press the Apply button to apply them. Using the GNOME Calendar is quite simple and most tasks can be performed from any of the major views, Day, Week, Month or Year. Probably one of the most important features to remember is that at any time you may right mouse click on a particular day and add a new appointment. There are many other features which will be described below in each of the major views. The Day tab is probably the most useful view in the GNOME Calendar as it acts just as a day timer would. On the left of the tab is the hour listing for the current day. The light grey coloring in the hour list separates the work hours from the non-work hours. If you would like to change the work hours displayed in light grey you can do so in .

The Day View

One tip for adding a new appointment in the Day View is to select a few hours in the hours list by clicking and dragging your mouse down the hours list. Once the correct range of time has been selected you may press Enter and type in the appointment. This will allow you to skip the Create New Appointment dialog. Next to the hours listing in the top right hand corner is a small full month calendar. You may change the month or year of the small month calendar by pressing the forward and backward arrows on the top. You may use the small month calendar to navigate the days as well. Double clicking on any day in the small month calendar will move the current day view to that particular day. Below the small month calendar is your Todo list. The Todo list is a simple list where you can keep all your tasks on hand. To add an item to the Todo list press the Add button. This will launch a small editing box where you can type in the item. Once you have entered an item in the Todo list you may use the Edit and Delete to manage your items. The Todo items are available no matter which days are displayed in the Day View and can only be deleted with the Delete button. The Week View shows the current week with detailed descriptions of your appointments. If you would like to add an appointment for any of the days in the week view you may right mouse click on the day and select the New appointment menu item from the pop-up menu. You may also use the week view to navigate to particular days in the Day View. Double-click on any day in the Week View and you will go to that day in the Day View.

The Week View

In the lower left corner of the Week View there is a small month calendar. You may change the month or year of the small month calendar by pressing the forward and backward arrows on the top. You may use the small month calendar to navigate the days as well. Double clicking on any day in the small month calendar will move the current week view to that particular week. The Month View shows the entire month with brief detailed descriptions of your appointments. The Month View makes use of the customized colors available in the Calendar. You may read about how to set these colors in . For any day with a brief description of an appointment you may click on the day to display a detailed description of the appointment in a pop-up window. If you would like to add an appointment to a day in the Month View you may right mouse click on any day and select the New Appointment in this day item from the pop-up menu. You may use the items in the pop-up menu to navigate in the Day, Week, and Year views by selecting either Jump to this day, Jump to this week, orJump to this Year.

The Month View

The Year View shows you the entire year with no descriptions of appointments. Like the Month View, the Year View makes use of the customized colors available in the Calendar. You may read about how to set these colors in . If you have an appointment on a day you may click on that day and a description of the appointment will be displayed in the pop-up window. If you would like to add an appointment to a day in the Year View you may right mouse click on any day and select the New Appointment in this day item from the pop-up menu. You may use the items in the pop-up menu to navigate in the Day, Week, and Month views by selecting either Jump to this day, Jump to this week, or Jump to this Month.

The Year View

There are many methods for making a new appointment in the GNOME Calendar, the easiest is by pressing the New button on the button bar. Whenever you make a new appointment you will launch the Create New Appointment dialog that allows you to set the properties of that appointment. The Create New Appointment dialog is broken into two different tabs, the General and the Recurrence tabs. General - The General tab is the area in which you specify the time of the appointment and set reminders for yourself. There are four different areas on the General tab: Summary, Time, Alarms, and Classification. Summary - The Summary box allows you to type a description of the appointment. Keep in mind that only a portion of this description will be available in the Week and Month Views. Time - The Time area allows you to set the time range for the appointment by selecting the date and hours. To the right of the start and end days there is a small selection box named Calendar. This will bring up a small Calendar when pressed. You may select the start and end date in the small calendar. To the right of the start en end hours there is a small button which will display the hours of the day when pressed. Each hour in the list will have a sub menu displaying each quarter hour so you may select them. The hours are restricted to those included in the Day Range. Alarms - The Alarms area allows you to set up an alarm to remind you of an appointment. There are four different types of alarms you may use to remind yourself of appointments: Display, Audio, Program, and Mail. The Display alarm will display a message on your screen in the time you set. The Audio alarm will play an audio file at the time you set. The Program alarm will run a program you specify at the time you set. The Mail alarm will send email to the user specified at the time you set. Recurrence - The Recurrence tab allows you to specify how often an appointment should recur, if at all. The first property you should set if you want a recurring appointment is the Recurrence rule. You may choose among None, Daily, Weekly, Monthly, and Yearly. For each selection you may adjust the recurrence properties for your selection. In the Ending date area you may set a rule which will stop the recurrence of your appointment or allow it to repeat forever. In the Exceptions area you may make exceptions to the recurring appointment by double-clicking the date and pressing the Add button.