[Calendaring] rolf's initial experience

[Brian Leathem]

Rolf Keitel wrote:
> At my present state of limited knowledge I would
>
>     * find that using both the web-client and the lightning plug-in
>       for making calendar entries is confusing
>     * use the web-client only to manage calendars (access control etc)
>     * use Lightning or Sunbird to enter events.
>

I agree.  The UI for the web-client takes a different approach than the 
Lightning client, which can be confusing until one sorts out the 
differences.

> Here are some details, mainly for the calendar working group. My 
> apologies for being so wordy:
>
>
>       *Problems:*
>
>
>         *Web-client: *
>
>    1. free/busy list shows only full hours. Is this configurable? If I
>       schedule an event from 9:45 to 10:15, I am shown busy from 9:00
>       to 11:00. This is bad. Luckily, Lightning gives you more detail
>       when you invite to a meeting, but you have to go into zoom 200%
>       or 400% to see this.
>

Bedework is planning a major UI re-work for their 4.0 version due out 
some time next year.  I will do my part to see if the free/busy support 
can be improved.  I do not think it is a show stopper, as the lightning 
interface does a capable job.

>    1. I had problems with importing sunbird   .ics  files. Some
>       calendars imported ok, others not.
>

There are some issues with unsupported timezones when importing .ics 
files.  Please forward me your trouble file, and I'll see if I can get 
the import issues resolved.

>    1. I had an error on calendar import of a Sunbird iCAL file. This
>       gave me a full web-page of errors from tomcat, hibernate, ...
>       which would not go away. Even after killing all instances of
>       Firefox, logging into cal.triumf.ca gave me the same error-page.
>       I had to find and delete a cookie to become operational again.
>

I've had this happen to me to.  One has to "escape" the tomcat session 
to fully escape the error.  I'll file a bug report about this.

>    1. I cannot force the delete of a calendar which is not empty. I
>       had an imported calendar I wanted to get rid of. I had to delete
>       event by event until it was empty.
>

I've previously brought this to the attention of the Bedework 
developers.  They had not anticipated that someone would want to delete 
a non-empty calendar, but agreed to consider it for an upcoming release.

>    1. I am in event-view of a calendar, and select the plus on a day
>       to define a new event. Then the "add Event" form does not
>       remember where I came from, i.e. I must select the calendar
>       again. This is really annoying.
>

This would be annoying.  I'll file a bug report.

>    1. If I'm looking at the free/busy list of a different user in
>       week-view and change to month-view, it does not remember the
>       user, but displays my free/busy list.
>

Same as above.

>    1. I had a calendar, which I could delete because I was told it is
>       not empty, but I could convert it from calendar to folder and
>       back, which I'm told I can only do when it is empty. Two days
>       later I could delete the calendar?????????
>

This is odd.  We'll have to see if we can re-create this behavior, then 
file a bug-report.

>    1. Cannot export a calendar: " An exception occurred: /Define tag
>       cannot set a null value for bean with id: calendar/". Not
>       important right now, but what am I doing wrong?
>

I expect you are doping nothing wrong.  Please let me know which 
calendar is giving you this difficulty.

>
>         *Lightning:*
>
>    1. The effect of a new event on the free/busy list is hidden away
>       in the "Option/Show time as" menu and uses "free" as default. Is
>       this default configurable?
>

I believe it remembers what you last set it to.

>    1. Is there a way in Lightning to see my own free/busy list?
>

Create an event, and invite yourself.

>
>       *Things to watch for:*
>
>
>         **Web-client:**
>
>    1. In order to be able to write to a calendar from Lightning, you
>       have to give yourself access (manage calendars) with your
>       username (in addition to the owner access).
>

I do not think this is the case.  Their is a requirement to give 
yourself explicit access to a shared/group calendar so that you can 
view/edit events that you do not own, but this is not what you are 
describing.  I'll do some experimenting, to verify this.

>
>         **Lightning:**
>
>    1. If you change access privileges to a calendar with the
>       web-interface, you have to restart existing Lightning / Sunbird
>       sessions. Privileges seem to be only checked at login.
>

All you are seeing is what Lightning has cached.  For instance if you 
remove someone's access to a calendar, and make changes to that 
calendar, all that person would see is a copy of the calendar when they 
last had access to it.  Seems reasonable to me, but if we would like 
Lightning to behave differently, I can file a bug report with Mozilla, 
and see if the developers agree.

Thanks for taking the time to do this testing Rolf.  The more bugs we 
find now, the better off we will be in the long term.

Brian
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