Forum Calendar would be cool to use

[Dark Tangent]

I noticed no one is using the forum calendar to schedule anything.

I was thinking of merging the www.defcon.org DC Groups calendar with the calendar here, and using it as a central repository for upcoming hacker related events.

Has anyone played around with the functionality? Any opinions on what would make people use the calender more?

[converge]

umm.. 'me too' post here?

I can't say for having tested its functionality in vB, but I can attest that such a thing would rock, especially after noticing a lot of folks pimping their DC Group meetings through the calendar.. I need to get our groups details in ..


As far as the actual conference is concerned.. I started up this thread (http://forum.defcon.org/showthread.php?t=7077)pimping my very basic calendar .. trying to formulate my own central base of all things DEFCON .. whether official or not. It is very low tech. .. html tables. I hoped to overlap speaker schedules and official events etc once it fills out more, but for now was trying to encourage folks to add in all the unofficial things they could think of.

Basically, the number one thing I've found so far is that very few people have settled on specific dates or times for these type of events .. still too early in the game for the non-planners.

At any rate, I am very interested in this as a general topic; and pumping out additional features if desired. I know it's already been mentioned that a PDA friendly, or even RSS version might be desired .. especially for tentative events or scheduling changes.


-- enter theCotMan --

[TheCotMan]

I noticed no one is using the forum calendar to schedule anything.

I was thinking of merging the www.defcon.org DC Groups calendar with the calendar here, and using it as a central repository for upcoming hacker related events.

Has anyone played around with the functionality? Any opinions on what would make people use the calender more?

Yep. I've played around with the calendars.

First, I tried to remove all of the religious holidays from view. However, we can add our own holidays. :-)

There are two kinds of calendars: Public and Private.
All users (except banned users) may view public calendar events

All users except banned, guests, and maybe "Lurkers" may edit their own "private" events, but I do not think private events can be viewed by other users.

Forum Leader/Organizers, Goon, Mods, Super Mods, UberGoons (goons who are mods), and admins may make, edit and delete either public or private events.

Just who can post new, edit, or delete events would need to be determined, and then enabled.

We can add more calendars than just Public and Private. However, just two calendars is difficult to manage. We may want to dump the Private calendar entirely. (In order to select an event as public/private you must first select a public/private calendar view. Having more than one calendar may be too confusing and add risk for mis-placed events.)

I suggest clobbering all private calendars, and leaving only one public calendar.

We can also enable "Moderations of events" if desired, but moderation can be a lot of work. If moderation of events on the forum calendar is desired, then we should find people who would want to do this, since it means checking on new events and then okaying them or denying them.

With the new revisions, it is possible to set an hour for an event too.

For events, vB-markup(bb) is allowed, HTML, Smilies and images are not.

Lots of decisions and options available.

[Added:]
umm.. 'me too' post here?
Hey now! ;-)

I can attest that such a thing would rock, especially after noticing a lot of folks pimping their DC Group meetings through the calendar.. I need to get our groups details in .
Yes. it would be nice to have.

As far as the actual conference is concerned.. I started up this thread (http://forum.defcon.org/showthread.php?t=7077)pimping my very basic calendar ..
This is a great idea. Very nice, and makes it easier to decide what to see when things are in contention for the same timeslot(s).

At any rate, I am very interested in this as a general topic; and pumping out additional features if desired. I know it's already been mentioned that a PDA friendly, or even RSS version might be desired .. especially for tentative events or scheduling changes.
That is somethign to consider-- Will calendar events be on the forum RSS feed? I don't know, but will check.

-- enter theCotMan --
Hah! How did you know?

[Dark Tangent]

I vote for removing private calendars and enabling moderation of entries. Black Beetle does this now for new events that people want listed on the main web site, as well as new DC Groups that want to have links.

With a bit of help, I bet we can keep the calendar in line and pretty useful for everyone.

I think the ultimate expansion would be to support iCal export / import. That way people can export the calendar to their devices, and google seems to like sucking in iCal data as well.

[noid]

Ya, ical support would rule, I could pull everything into Sunbird. I definately vote for one master calendar. List all the various conferences, hacker related dates, great moments in computer history, etc.

[TheCotMan]

A limit that I have found with the vBulletin system for scheduling when considering export to iCal comes into play with "recurring events."

Within iCal, there is capability to have a recurring event, and from what I've seen, if I am reading it properly, the ability to cancel specific instances of a recurring event, even though all other instances instances of the "recurring event" are still fine-- all of this with a single eventid, but multiple ical objects.

"Editing" of events can allow for updates to work in iCal exports, if sequence number system can be worked out. Right now it is manual, but I have some ideas on automating it.

Deletion of events is probably something we will want to restrict. If an event is cancelled, then it can be labeled as such. If an event is moved, then, the event can be edited instead.

With all of the above considered, we may consider the following for events:

Deny "delete event" to everyone except mods and admins who will probably not use it much.

Possibly enable moderation requirement for some users to allow posting of new events with moderator approval, but no access to edit events authorized for placement.

For other users (perhaps goons and leaders/organizers) opportunity to create events without moderator approval, and access to edit events they create, but NO access to delete events. (If an event is cancelled, just mark it as cancelled.)

For people who might want to create events, what kind of events would you want to post? The idea of "This Day In Hacking History" was suggested by noid, what else? Any other ideas?

(Feedback desired from registered users through to mods.)

[TheCotMan]

Anyone want to test the output of a script that converts forum events to what should be ical events as of today?

Removed. Newer flatfile posed below

If you find bugs, problems, issues, suggestions, please report them.

[Dark Tangent]

Anyone want to test the output of a script that converts forum events to what should be ical events as of today?

URL REMOVED

If you find bugs, problems, issues, suggestions, please report them.


Apple scipt I am guessing?

[TheCotMan]

Apple scipt I am guessing?

No. Though AppleScript is an OK language, its application and usefulness is limited to the whim of a company that has a history of changing their support and direction quickly. I also don't like "screenscraping" of data, since small changes to an interface can break regex patterns used to snarf data.

The unpublished script is written in PHP and runs on the server. Once the code is cleaned up, it is fully tested, and rigorously checked for cleaning of dirty data, and is seemingly bug free, I'd like to make it available for any registered user to "click" so they can download a current copy of forum events in ical format.

There is potential for making this into a general purpose plugin for these forums so others outside of defcon can use it, but I'm still working through the Proof of Concept to make sure all forum features can be mapped into ical. (This is why I am only providing flat files now, and asking for feedback and verification that it works.)

After reviewing an ical rfc, I *know* that not all ical object descriptions are possible with the present forum event data-- ical is far more advanced than the forum event system. (forumsEvents -> ical = (so far, seems good) BUT ical -> forums = (Risks and problems))

Once finished, the script should make it easy to export live copies of forum events to ical, but make import of ical object to the forum DB impossible in some cases, "at risk" for data loss in some more, and dangerous in other cases.

[Dark Tangent]

I think as long as people can export to iCal they will be happy. It will take more work to populate the calendar, but it will allow us to get it up and running sooner.

[TheCotMan]

I misunderstood portions of the ical RFC in cases of RRULE and UNTIL fields, and as a result, have yanked the previous flatfile beta releases. I've fixed these for AllDay, Daily, Weekday, and Selected weekday with intervals, but still have to fix two more monthly and two more yearly recurring events with UNTIL.

Fixing the UNTIL computation problems, and dealing with the addition of VTIMEZONE entries for recurring events that span period of DST will take a bit longer. Don't expect a new beta flatfile for about 1 or 2 weeks.

In addition to my own difficulties (above) this work seems to have exposed two bugs in Sunbird. These have been reported to the SunBird people.

Perhaps, by the time this tool is ready for release, SunBird will work flawlessly with this tool. :-D (This is assuming my tool is flawless... Hey! I can dream, right? ;-)

Features to be made available:
User selection of format to download:
1) "html" so as to be viewed on a web page, but not as a file for import.
2) "ical" format with mime type text/calendar
3) "txt" file with mime type text/plain

User will be able to choose to not include "deleted" events. (For completeness, if an event is deleted, and a new event is created to replace the old one, is see no way to "update" any previously imported event that is later deleted, unless "fake" events are generated with the same UID to replace any existing events. (This is the present "solution.")

It is a kludge, but it should work. (This is one of the reasons why we should try to avoid deleting events. We can canel, then schedule them in the past, and edit the descriptions if we want, but we don't need a ton of DELETED events for people to import and delete.

We've got a few other kludges that will work for our purpose, but will need to be revised later.

What other features would be good to include with export generation?

[TheCotMan]

What other features would be good to include with export generation?

The forum RSS feeds do not display "upcoming events."

Would a separate RSS feed for "upcoming events" be desired too? Would this be more important than access to a live ical exports of events? How many weeks (from "present" minus 24 hours) should be included in separate feed? (Consider this: During Defcon, we may have tons of events, that may take a while to load, but during the rest of the year, we may have long periods with few events.)

Would a separate calendar for *just* Defcon events be better, or would having multiple calendars be too complicated? (When I played with multiple calendars, it was a bit confusing for creating new events. Perhaps, a second calendar would be limited in some way?

Other ideas or suggestions?
Is RSVP really needed? Should I remove it?
Look through the "Categories" and see if there are any other categories that should be added.
Should the optional "URL" field be removed, and automagically replaced with a link tothe forum event, or do you prefer to have control over that field if you might need it?

Updates:
Two more bugs in sunbird were found and reported. They appear to be old bugs that were never fixed.

Integration of the present code with legal timezones is progressing nicely. You should now see another required field when creating a forum event for events with a legal country/city or country/state/city designation. They are in Alphabetical order, except the top item which maps to "America/Los_Angeles"
These timzeones deal with conversion of dates and times, paying attention to daylight saving time or other government imposed alterations to their GMT offset. (

The interface is clunky. I plan to add an integer prefix (+12 -> -12) for "Standard Time" offset from GMT, and then sort the list by this integer. This should (hopefully) make it easier to locate your legal timezone. I know it sucks that two timezones are included, but the forum timezones are not as granular as they need to be for ical support.

[astcell]

I would like to see a calendar page laid out for a CE device.

[TheCotMan]

I would like to see a calendar page laid out for a CE device.

If CE devices support import of ical, then we will have that soon enough.
If the CE device needs another format, I would need to see the RFC or whitepaper on the format for files to import.

Do you have a specific CE Device in mind?

[astcell]

Nothing in mind right now...what got my attention was the nice layout google has on a cell phone. Heck even a cellphone layout would rock!

[TheCotMan]

If the cellphone supported ical, that would be easiest. :-)

The next flatfile is available:
(url removed)
This seems to work in korganizer, and sunbird (except for a few bugs in sunbird that have been reported.)

Anyone care to test that in Apple's iCal or any other ical-compatible application?

(This latest export includes Kallahar's Defcon Robots events, Deviant Ollam.s BCCC event, and others, as well as some Defcon Group meetings.)

Please add more Defcon-related events to the forums.

[Edited: Beta6 had problems with the timezone specifications, and had to be expanded to more closely follow changes in international laws, and the US moving DST from 1st sunday in April to the 2nd sunday in March.]

[added:]
Another bug in Sunbird (really, an incomplete feature) has to do with timezone selection and relative changes to start/stop times of international events.
The DC859 event from Mar 18, 2006 starts in their timezone at 7 pm, but also starts at 4 pm pacific time.
If you are in Eastern Time (America/New_York) it should force the time to appear as 7 pm if the time is updated based on your present selected timezone, but it does not.
SunBird actually says this for timezones: "This doesn't yet do anything"

korganizer seems to do better with international meetings, but is not perfect. (An ideal solution would be to permit user selection of event start/end times to automagically get moved to the hours they would be taking place in the present timezone, with a special symbol to specify the event is taking place in another timezone, and then include a hover-over comment about the start/end times in its own timezone.)

[TheCotMan]

[link removed]

Functions have been optimized, script has been madegeneric enough to work on other similar forums if needed, and support was added for better work with PHP iCalendar.

Some testing with Apple's iCal, Mozilla's Sunbird, korganizer, and PHP iCalendar.

Support was added for multiple forum calendars, and subscription per forum calendar as well as non-display of un-moderated events.

Support for debugging messages being appended to event description has been included.

Please test the latest beta with your favorite ical-happy tool. "Deleted" events start Jan 1970, "serious bugs" get mapped to Jan 1971.

(The above is a flat-file extract, not the actual script.)

[Dark Tangent]

I tried beta 8 with Outlook and got this error:

This error can appear if you have attempted to save a recurring Lunar appointment in iCalendar format.

To avoid this error, set the appointment option to Gregorian instead of Lunar.

[TheCotMan]

I tried beta 8 with Outlook and got this error:

This error can appear if you have attempted to save a recurring Lunar appointment in iCalendar format.

To avoid this error, set the appointment option to Gregorian instead of Lunar.

Thanks. I'll have to try playing with outlook next. From what I have read, Microsoft did not implement full support of ical RFC2445 in outlook. Perhaps there are some workarounds.

The present export (beta 8) is explicitly in gregorian:
CALSCALE
:GREGORIAN

ADDED: MS Outlook issues:

From a few sources, there are claims that:
MS Outlook 2000 really sucks with ical support.
MS Outlook 2003 has some support for ical v 2.0 (rfc2445), but does not support any/many recurring events.
MS Outlook 2000, and 2003 do not support "subscription to ical calendars" (meaning, you download and import, but it is your job to manually download and import each time.)
MS Outllok 2003 has poor/no support for VTIMEZONE from rfc2445. citation (http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050504224709452) though it appears part of this problem has to do with many VTIMEZONEs use recurring events for accurate DST resolution and GMT offsets based on selected date, and workarounds are clunky at best.)
Some people have sought work-arounds.

One suggestion is to download and install an RSS feed to calendar plugin for MS Outlook. (http://www.kingtiny.net/weblog/RSStoOutlook.html) and then install an instance of php icalendar, and then have php icalendar subscribe to the real ical resource, and enable its RSS export tool, for the RSS subscription plugin for Outlook to use.

Another suggestion, is to have things like recurring events be pushed through something like a c-compiler "loop unroller" that creates an event for each recurring instace, and then have VB scripts deal with the import of each script. (Scripts mentioned here: http://www.alexking.org/blog/2005/01/30/icalendar-plugin-for-outlook/ )

Then there is this: https://sourceforge.net/projects/remotecalendars/ which claims support to help Outlook 2003 support subscription to remote ical calendars. (Though support for it may require installing other tools like PIA (Primary Interop Assemblies) http://remotecalendars.sourceforge.net/help.html#why )

Our forum export script presently has support for:
* Selecting which forum event calendar to export
* Select to only load events after "today"
* Select to not load "deleted events"
* Specify output format: text/calendar, text/plain, text/html)

If "loop unrolling" were included as an option, perhaps an "equivalent" to any recurring event could be built for MS Outlook users, but that still does not solve the problem of Outlook users being unable to subscribe to ical feeds and get event updates automagically.

Outlook requires that "METHOD, UID and DTSTAMP" are set in an event. We've had that since beta-1. (http://www.inkdroid.org/journal/2006/01/19/ical-and-outlook/)

There appears to be an Outlook to ical export tool: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=136194

Various client issues (http://www.mhsoftware.com/caldemo/manual/en/iCalExporter.htm)

[TheCotMan]

I tried beta 8 with Outlook and got this error:

This error can appear if you have attempted to save a recurring Lunar appointment in iCalendar format.

To avoid this error, set the appointment option to Gregorian instead of Lunar.

I could not reproduce that error with MS Outlook (Outlook 2002 (10.6515.6735) SP3) For MS Windows XP.

Problems were found in 3 recurring MONTHLY events due to a lack of full RFC support bu Microsoft. Events 35, 36, and 38 would not import, and event 35 became a blocking event for import of the remaining events.

ical allows for many ways to describe recurring events, so an alternative has been chosen that seems to work for me. More below.

[TheCotMan]

I tried beta 8 with Outlook and got this error:
This error can appear if you have attempted to save a recurring Lunar appointment in iCalendar format.
To avoid this error, set the appointment option to Gregorian instead of Lunar.

I couldn't reproduce your stated error, but was able to fix the error my copy of Outlook reported. (Lack of full RFC support in Outlook was the cause, but I think I have a work-around.)
Please try (URL REMOVED). (Everyone is encouraged to test this.)

What version of Outlook were you using, and for what OS? This wasn't Entourage, was it?
Does this beta import into your Outlook without errors? (There should be 44 events imported, though a majority are events in the past.)

If anyone has problems with import, please report the OS, ical product name and version (CUA), and problems encountered.

Should I enforce a subject prefix to all forum-exported events? "[DCF-event]" ? (This would make it easier for Outlook users to sort for imported events to manually purge them before manually re-importing them again.)

Outlook users should choose "File->Import/Export->iCalendar/vCalendar (.ics/.vcs)" to import Beta9. "Double-clicking" or "Open With Outlook" will only import the first event, because of a limitation in Outlook.

Outlook (with the versions I've tested so far) does not include support to "subscribe" to an ical (rfc2445) source. This means, manual synchonization is required with just a stock Outlook.

There are alternatives:
1) If the calendar is available as an RSS feed: http://www.kingtiny.net/weblog/RSStoOutlook.html
2) A plugin for Outlook 2003 for ical subscription: https://sourceforge.net/projects/remotecalendars/ (but required PIA tools: http://remotecalendars.sourceforge.net/help.html#why )
3) Manually import, and then deal with new imports manually, and possible manual purges of previously imported event data before importing again.)
4) Don't use Outlook, use something that supports subscriptions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICalendar has a list of other ical apps, and most of them will likely support subscription.

Others:
Zaurus: Opie: http://opie.handhelds.org/cgi-bin/moin.cgi
Colocation/Web-account with Apache/PHP: (PHP iCalendar) http://phpicalendar.net/ ) This works for subscriptions, and will re-export subscribed ical as RSS feeds.

Please try beta 9 with any ical capabale CUA you may want to use to track events.

Thanks!

[TheCotMan]

[URL REMOVED]

MS Outllok does n ot support "Subscription to WebCal" out of the box. If you want to Use outlook, either import manually, or try one of the above "add-ons" linked above.

I have tested this on MS Outlook (Outlook 2002 (10.6515.6735) SP3) For MS Windows XP by using the "File-> Import, iCalendar/vCalendar -> located file, and selected" (MS Outlook 2000 had limited support for ical, and I don't think that will work.)

Outlook works.

I have tested this on PHP iCalendar, by referencing the script directly, and as a flatfile on a webserver.

PHP iCalendar works.

I have tested this in Sunbird, and other than the bugs in Sunbird for certain kinds of recurring events....

Sunbird works.

I've tries this on Apple, Mac OS X, iCal.

iCal works.

Please try this latest flatfile export form the script, and give me feedback on it failure, or success, and report the OS name, version, patch revision, as well as the Application, name and version.

Next, I have been re-thinking the idea of just a single calendar, and think it would be better to have several.
One calendar of *just* Defcon Events (only Forum Leaders/Organizers, goons and mods can post)
One calendar just for DCG, Related Meeting, other conventions, and whatnot (Perhaps a new group like Leaders/Organizers, but instead POC for DCG can write here.)
One calendar for "Today In History" where we can have recurring, annual events that commemorate great moments in history. (And another group of people who can write to this with events.) (The idea of history content was noid's and is a great idea.)

What do you think? Once completed, people could choose which calendars they wish to subscribe to, and have a separate iCal for each type.

Feedback? Ideas?

[Dark Tangent]

Beta 10 loaded fine, asking me if I wanted to accept the DC-12 invitation. Cool!

[TheCotMan]

Beta 10 loaded fine, asking me if I wanted to accept the DC-12 invitation. Cool!

Excellent. Thanks for the feedback. :-)

Anyone else?

URL REMOVED

As a demonstration of being able to tell the script which calendar is desired, and for partitioning of calendars to separate subscriptions as desired, I've created a new forum calendar called "conventions (http://forum.defcon.org/calendar.php?s=&month=8&year=2006&do=&c=3)" and tried to duplicate the information from here (http://www.defcon.org/html/links/other-conventions.html) into that calendar for 2006. (Due to lack of specific dates, these were skipped: Rootfest, ToorCon 8, PhreakNIC X*, and Chaos con.*)

Having full support for 388 timezones really rocks here.

Most ical clients tend to import the start/end times relative to the local timezone of the application, so the start time is the "real time" of the event adjusted for your timezone.
Should I append a note to each long-description about the timezone for the event? Most ical clients don't make it easy to know the timezone of the event. This can be done by the export tool automagically too.

* Strikeout: Added to forum calendar.

[TheCotMan]

Aparrently, google launched Google Calendar (http://calendar.google.com/) and that claims to allow support of subscription to ical events stored on the web.
From a google account, I was able to:
(Bottom Left) [Manage Calendars]
(Right side, Tab:Calendars, bewlo "Other Calendars") [Add Calendar]
(Right Side, Select New Tab) [Public Calendar Address]
(Text field to right of "Public Calendar Address:) [http://forum.defcon.org/ical/events.ics]

It looks like they don't fully support the RFC, or I have a problem in the export, there may be other problems. After a bit of work, I was able to add the URL for "events" and see it in google calendars, but the "conventions" calendar has not fully imported. (Attempts to do so generates amusing error messages.)

Their RSS converter Events-RSS(XML) (http://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/qid6v8g3k1mnkbonfhed9e5lrtl6omdg@import.calendar.g oogle.com/public/basic) and Conventions-RSS(XML) (http://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/claqtm470dtgdsftjrrbh6usltd9617d@import.calendar.g oogle.com/public/basic)(so far) kind of sucks, as it feeds old events instead of just present and future events. (It would be nice to be able to decide.) It also does not seem to order event display based on time/date.

It is a new service from google, so perhaps things will get better. :-)

{Added:]
They may have problems with some non-US timezones for international events in the convention space.
They appear to rewrite the ORGANIZER field with a google address. *Anti-spam feature?)
They add a DURATION field (computed)