1 Navigation Controls
2 -------------------
3
4 The "New event" link should probably not be present when only remote events
5 are being aggregated by a calendar.
6
7 Points in Time
8 --------------
9
10 Make events with identical start and end times appear in the day view,
11 potentially using the approach given below.
12
13 Events which have identical start and end times might be represented by
14 building a calendar scale that distinguishes between times acting as start
15 times and times acting as end times. (The iCalendar specification appears to
16 state that events without end dates/times are actually points in time, but
17 this potentially conflicts with the expectation that merely specifying a start
18 date or time produces an event with an undefined end point or a "common sense"
19 end point.)
20
21 Consider making dates convertible to timespans of the form (start of day,
22 start of next day).
23
24 Localised Keywords
25 ------------------
26
27 It should be possible to define events using localised equivalents of "start",
28 "end", "summary" and so on. To achieve this, the page language would be found
29 and regular expressions built to use the localised keywords, falling back on
30 the English keywords, would then search for event details.
31
32 Recurring Events
33 ----------------
34
35 Recurring event information from iCalendar sources should be considered in
36 order to avoid showing incomplete or incorrect event datetimes. Ultimately,
37 such information may need to be parsed and incorporated into the general event
38 recurrence processing.
39
40 Having events recur at certain intervals would potentially involve the
41 expansion of events to produce multiple instances within a specified period of
42 interest, and such expansion could occur after an event's details have been
43 read. Care would need to be taken in cases where no limits are placed on a
44 calendar: the expanded instances should not be allowed to recede into the past
45 and future indefinitely; where no other events exist to provide implicit
46 limits, some other default limits might be required to let the expansion
47 occur.
48
49 The description of recurring events could be based on the iCalendar
50 specification, although simpler schemes could be preferable. Recurring event
51 descriptions might start with "every" and then provide a time period ("day",
52 "week", "month", "year") for offsets from a specified date or time, perhaps
53 using qualifiers ("first", "second", "other", and so on), or instead provide a
54 more complete description using additional qualifiers that may override any
55 specified date or time for instances other than the primary occurrence. For
56 example, "every second Wednesday of every other month".
57
58 Possible grammar:
59
60 <recurrence> [ of <recurrence> ]...
61 [ from <datetime> ]
62 [ until <datetime> ]
63
64 recurrence = every [ <qualifier> ] <interval>
65 interval = second | minute | hour | day | <weekday> | week | month | year
66
67 The resolution of each successive <recurrence> must be lower than those it
68 follows. Thus, "every second day of every second week..." is valid whereas
69 "every second week of every second day..." is not.
70
71 Map Views
72 ---------
73
74 Other projections might be supported. This would be necessary for various
75 retrieved map images.
76
77 Dynamic images obtained from other sites or generated locally might provide some
78 enhancements to the map view. For example, a weather/radar image might show the
79 cloud or rain forecast either for the current situation or, if forecasts are
80 available, for the times of events shown.
81
82 Consider having day numbers down the side of a map view with highlighted days
83 indicating days having events, and with pop-up elements shown upon hovering over
84 each highlighted day.
85
86 To Do Items
87 -----------
88
89 Consider adding support for "to do" items. These might have time-related details
90 such as deadlines, but are more likely to have relationships with other items,
91 potentially forming a hierarchy of items.
92
93 Event Section Parser
94 --------------------
95
96 Events in page sections/regions could be presented using more sophisticated
97 methods and potentially be editable. To support direct editing, the parser
98 would provide a hidden form field indicating the location of the section in
99 the Wiki text, and the new event action would be enhanced to read existing
100 events from the indicated page region, populating the form fields with the
101 data found in the page.
102
103 UID Properties
104 --------------
105
106 Especially in the case of aggregation from multiple sources, the only reliable
107 way of avoiding repetition of the same events described in different places is
108 for authors to include a UID property identifying each event, using the same
109 value regardless of where the event is being published.
110
111 Formatting in iCalendar Output
112 ------------------------------
113
114 If there is a reasonably standard way of incorporating Wiki text in iCalendar
115 output alongside plain text, this would enable events aggregated from Wiki
116 sources to use Wiki text to describe things like the location and topics of an
117 event with links and other formatting that could then be reproduced in the
118 aggregating Wiki.
119
120 Remote Source Timeouts
121 ----------------------
122
123 Sometimes, network problems can cause delays in accessing remote sources. The
124 library should support either a timeout mechanism or asynchronous retrieval of
125 remote source data.
