Forum Calendar would be cool to use

[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 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...n-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...l-and-outlook/)

There appears to be an Outlook to ical export tool: http://sourceforge.net/project/showf...roup_id=136194

Various client issues

[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" and tried to duplicate the information from here 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 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) and Conventions-RSS(XML)(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)