[HN Gopher] The open calendar, task and note space is a mess
___________________________________________________________________
The open calendar, task and note space is a mess
Author : quaintdev
Score : 266 points
Date : 2021-08-30 17:37 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (stevenvanbael.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (stevenvanbael.com)
| poetaster wrote:
| Just 1 for sogo from the server side.
| frunzales wrote:
| What's the current status of the kolab.com suite? I vaguely
| remember using it in late 2000s
| Jedd wrote:
| Likewise, I expected kolab to appear in TFA's list of evaluated
| options, as I knew it has been around for a while and covered
| most (all?) of the author's requirements. IIRC it was a key
| element in Munich's initial 'let's move to GNU/Linux' project,
| so I imagined it had received a LOT of updates for those few
| years.
|
| The repo [0] looks like it's still getting lots of love. The
| commercial entity doing much of the free software development
| runs a hosted version [1], which is also encouraging.
|
| [0] https://git.kolab.org/source/kolab/
|
| [1] https://kolabnow.com/
| gego wrote:
| ...anyone still uses TheBat on Windows? I liked it a lot and it
| had notes, tasks, calendar included...
| donatj wrote:
| > Written in old PHP, according to the homepage it requires PHP
| 5.4
|
| Just because something will run on an old version of PHP doesn't
| mean it won't run on new PHP.
|
| You can write PHP that is backwards compatible but still decently
| modern sans typehints.
|
| I used Sabre for a while recently on I think PHP 7.3 and it's not
| bad.
| [deleted]
| wayoutthere wrote:
| This is a problem with all of these tasks having similar,
| overlapping use cases and similar, overlapping technology
| implementations. There are also remarkably few standards for the
| things _around_ calendars, so most clients kludge something up
| with structured data sent over e-mail. Which leads to every
| implementation having its own, non-compatible spec.
|
| Even something as simple as forwarding calendar invites can have
| dramatically different functionality between two systems. I was
| at a company that ran split-brain between Google and Lotus Notes
| and it was an absolute nightmare that effectively broke
| calendaring for 2 years because you could only forward events one
| way, and acceptances wouldn't flow back up the chain because some
| of the clients used a different mechanism for signaling
| acceptance.
|
| This has all been a problem for _decades_. The business world
| solved this by just forming a consensus on Outlook / Exchange in
| the mid-2000s; if you use any other combination you have to
| accept that there will be dropped communications with those who
| use the standard stack.
| pmlnr wrote:
| Cyrus has a built in card/caldav support.
|
| Nextcloud works just fine with davx on android and evolution on
| linux for car/cal/tasks.
|
| Radicale is fine for card/cal, but it's basic.
|
| This scene used to be a lot worse.
| jsilence wrote:
| OP might want to take a closer look at SoGo.
| Arathorn wrote:
| +1 to SoGo
| poetaster wrote:
| I've used the whole citadel stack. It's fun. And i really enjoyed
| using it in text only cli bbs mode. In the end, since it was src
| install at the time, couldnt get the others (tm) to support. So,
| we went for sogo.
| josephwegner wrote:
| I agree wholeheartedly with the author.
|
| I also find this to be true of email clients. GMail reigns
| supreme, but there is pretty much no email client out there that
| is:
|
| - A good UI/UX
|
| - Doesn't store your data in their cloud
|
| - Is cross-platform (even just iOS/OSX, but certainly not
| iOS/OSX/Windows/Android).
|
| Thunderbird is one of the only contenders here, and I find the UX
| of Thunderbird to be abysmal. I've started to kickoff a project
| to fill this space, but admittedly it's a big project and doomed
| for the shelf :/
| Closi wrote:
| Outlook is the obvious (paid) contender not mentioned.
|
| Great UI, you can connect to pretty much any email address
| (although works best with Exchange, but you don't have to host
| your mail on 365) and has native Windows, OSX, Android and iOS
| clients, all bundled in for about $6 per month. Plus if the
| company you work for has 365 you can usually use those licences
| for home too (5 device licence is standard per seat).
|
| Plus, for that $6 a month you also get Word, Excel, Powerpoint,
| OneNote and 1TB of OneDrive space. I don't want to sound like a
| Microsoft shill, but 365 is a steal considering what you get
| for the cost. But it's not free.
| pge wrote:
| I'm a big fan of outlook as well, but it should be noted that
| it doesn't have write access to google calendars which can be
| frustrating. As a mail client, it is great.
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| The experience on Linux is beyond terrible, all the MS
| webapps are hot garbage.
| pbedat wrote:
| Wait until you have to deal with the admin web apps.
|
| To enable mail forwarding to another domain I had to
| install powershell and a plugin to install a plugin to
| allow forwarding in my org.
|
| Then there are times when it says : ,,To change this
| setting please enable the legacy UI"
|
| And everything of this convoluted UX hell is documented in
| a dizzying but highly accurate documentation. I have to
| give them that!
|
| Switched to protonmail and not looking back.
| solarkraft wrote:
| Compared to the desktop version Outlook for web is pure
| heaven.
| MadcapJake wrote:
| Totally opposite for me, outlook desktop is so slow,
| regularly crashes and has horrible patchwork of UI and the
| web client has been great, super fast and feels like a
| streamlined and unified evolution. Adding ics events is
| bizarre and annoying but other than that, i'll never go
| back.
| vetinari wrote:
| > Great UI
|
| This is very subjective; I hate it ;). I consider Apple's
| Mail.app/Calendar.app/etc much better UI-wise.
|
| > Android
|
| Note that Outlook for Android (not sure about iOS version) is
| rebranded Acompli client, which sucked all your email into
| the cloud. This was instant no-go when it originally came
| out, so I ended up with Nine (https://play.google.com/store/a
| pps/details?id=com.ninefolder...), which has an additional
| advantage, that the device admin rules enforced by Exchange
| can be applied to app only, not to the entire device.
| Closi wrote:
| > This is very subjective; I hate it ;). I consider Apple's
| Mail.app/Calendar.app/etc much better UI-wise.
|
| Agree it is completely subjective - and I actually think
| that the Apple apps _look_ better and are simpler to use,
| but personally I spend a lot of time in emails and
| arranging meetings, and I can get what I need to get done
| faster in Outlook (although I have tried to get along with
| Mail /Calendar in OSX, it's just slower for me).
|
| For instance, let's say someone writes an email to me with
| 10 people on copy and says that we need to organise a
| teams/zoom call (which is a pretty common thing), the
| workflow for this in Outlook would be 5 clicks and can be
| done entirely within the application (including creating
| the Teams/Zoom call link). In Mail.app/Calendar.app it's
| way more involved and you get lots less control.
|
| But if you just want a casual email client, then Mail.app
| probably does what lots of people need it to do. So when I
| talk about good-UI for me personally, I'm not necessarily
| talking about it being beautiful, but I think Outlook is
| more functional specifically for a power-user.
| poetaster wrote:
| I'm probably mad but i like claws mail. I also use it for
| caldav meeting mails and as an rss feed reader.
| elcomet wrote:
| I think mailspring is decent (definitely not perfect but at
| least the UI is prettier than thunderbird)
|
| But it's desktop only
| ssivark wrote:
| IIUC, Mailspring (Nylas?) inserted their own cloud layer in
| between your device and a cloud email provider, to store
| email and provide "value added" features; so it's not cloud-
| free and requires trusting one more entity.
| elcomet wrote:
| I think they removed this but I'm not 100% sure
| jamesgeck0 wrote:
| The Mailspring ID was made optional at the end of March.
| You do still need it if you want to use Mailspring Pro
| features that require their server.
| louis-lau wrote:
| Nylas did, yeah. Mailspring stores all email locally.
| Recently the requirement to sign in with a mailspring ID
| was removed entirely.
| jsilence wrote:
| Interesting! Does it support CalDAV?
| jamesgeck0 wrote:
| Nope. It does have a plug-in api, though.
| guerrilla wrote:
| I don't find Thunderbird's UI too bad except the nonsensical
| search/filter dichotomy, but have you tried Evolution?
| Silhouette wrote:
| The problem with a lot of these applications today is that they
| work with the kind of information you want might want immediate
| access to from many devices. That means cloud-hosted options
| have a compelling advantage in convenience, which for many
| users will inevitably outweigh any security and privacy
| concerns.
|
| I would love for the FOSS community to come up with a simple,
| SOHO-friendly server/appliance to act as the central repository
| for information like messages and calendars and be accessible
| to all devices on the local network (or via VPN from outside).
| Then we could have some competition for favourable UIs without
| every application having to reinvent the wheel for all the back
| end protocols and formats. Sadly the experience of applications
| like Thunderbird suggests there isn't currently a critical mass
| of interest in working that way and most of the market is
| willing to tolerate the downsides of the cloud applications in
| exchange for better UIs and more convenience.
| eptcyka wrote:
| I came to the same conclusions, but I settled for Nextcloud. It
| is dogslow when ran from a nixOS VM, and I can't quite figure out
| why.
| yosito wrote:
| I'm using Nextcloud for calendar and tasks, and I keep notes in
| plain markdown files that are also synced with Nextcloud. On
| Android I use Nextcloud Notes, Nextcloud Tasks and
| https://github.com/Etar-Group/Etar-Calendar
|
| These are by far the best note and calendar apps I've used. Far
| better than Google's options. Apple's reminders are a bit better
| than Nextcloud Tasks, but the only feature I'm sorely lacking
| there is repeating tasks. Google doesn't support this either,
| which leads me to believe that it's a shortcoming of the CalDav
| spec for tasks.
| avuton wrote:
| If you're on Android, I suggest tasks.org, it supports
| repeating tasks even if the server doesn't. Of course that
| means you have to use it when completing a repeating task.
| yosito wrote:
| Thanks! This is the kind of tip I'm here for!
| blackbear_ wrote:
| Surprised nobody has mentioned this yet, but Org-mode for Emacs
| [1] is just _great_ , and fits very well to the requirements:
|
| - Source of truth: these are text files, so any of git,
| nextcloud, syncthing etc. will do.
|
| - Consistent interface: using emacs might be tough on mobile, but
| there are some pretty good web interfaces for it [2]. I
| personally use Orgzly [3] and syntching on my Android
|
| - Standard protocols: custom scripting does anything. ical is
| pretty easy to handle, not sure about webdav.
|
| - FOSS: check
|
| - Multiple calendars: yep, via Org agenda [4]
|
| - Subtask support: As deep as you can go
|
| - Custom logic: via emacs scripts (or some creativity if you're
| using other clients)
|
| - Markdown notes: yes, minimal differences between org mode and
| markdown
|
| [1] https://orgmode.org/
|
| [2] https://github.com/DanielDe/org-web
|
| [3] https://www.orgzly.com
|
| [4] https://orgmode.org/manual/Agenda-Views.html
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Yeah but then I'd have to use emacs
| roland35 wrote:
| I love org mode and use it all the time, but I still
| occasionally blow up my file with inadvertent vim commands! Yes
| I know I am a weirdo for using eVil mode :)
|
| The most common mistake I make is having caps lock on and
| hitting J a bunch which merges all the lines together.
| blackbear_ wrote:
| Yes, using evil mode in emacs puts you in the weird position
| of being scoffed at by both vim users and emacs users ;)
|
| > The most common mistake I make is having caps lock on and
| hitting J a bunch which merges all the lines together.
|
| Oh that happened to me as well one day, it was catastrophic!
| I did not realize I hit J on a folded header (which joined
| _all_ lines in that section) before saving and quitting at
| the end of the day. I only realized the mess on the next day.
|
| I wrote a blog post [1] on how I solved it, if it sounds
| interesting.
|
| [1] https://e-dorigatti.github.io/phd/2020/08/27/lost-
| notes.html
| neutronicus wrote:
| Ugh I make that mistake with code constantly
|
| I fly into a panic because "U" doesn't do anything and
| Spacemacs binds "K" to some sort of manual lookup
|
| Deeply stressful experience
| Groxx wrote:
| Last time I was looking into org-mode, I ran across an
| extremely frequent refrain of "there are no 3rd party tools for
| it, because there is no spec". And then I looked for apps
| that'd work with it anyway, and came up _shockingly_ short,
| though some of the most-trivial things generally worked.
| (orgzly is the one I ended up with. it 's pretty good,
| definitely recommended for anyone doing this)
|
| Has that improved? It seems fine if you do everything from the
| CLI (or similar), but emacs is a little difficult to use on a
| phone.
| nanna wrote:
| What sort of third party tools were you after? And when did
| you have a go?
| yewenjie wrote:
| Yes. Org mode is fantastic.
|
| However, some limitations/ drawbacks.
|
| - org-agenda is slow and completely unusable if you have
| hundreds of org files.
|
| - despite multiple half-baked efforts there is still no easy-
| to-use parser and pretty printer for the lanuguage. I'm not
| even asking for 100% of the syntax, 20% capability of t he
| built-in org-element API with good documentatiom will
| accomplish 80% of the requirements.
|
| - no easy way to integrate calendars and org-agenda with
| something like a calDav server.
| all2 wrote:
| That last point is what gets me. I very much want my org-
| agenda to be linked to the calendar app on my phone. No easy
| way to do this, so far.
| blackbear_ wrote:
| > no easy way to integrate calendars and org-agenda with
| something like a calDav server.
|
| It would be great to have something like this.
|
| I have a system which can at least handle invitations to
| events by means of a python script that convert iCal files to
| Org-style headers. It is triggered automatically via inotify
| so that every time a new iCal file appears into a specific
| folder it is appended automatically to an Org file. Now I
| simply save the .ics that comes attached to event invitation
| emails to have the time slot booked in my Org agenda
| automatically.
| solarkraft wrote:
| You can also use Org Mode files with Logseq (Roam-style
| outliner), which is the only client for it I know that doesn't
| suck for my usage.
|
| https://logseq.com/
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| Using org-mode is a complete non-starter for me because of the
| requirement to use Emacs. I'm very happy with IntelliJ and
| don't wish to rewire my muscle memory/conceptual familiarity
| from an IDE into an editor that I will detest anyway (because I
| was forced to use it to have one feature).
| lambda_dn wrote:
| Orgmode is praised, rightly, but the average user is never
| going to, or be able to use it.
| y7 wrote:
| On iOS I recently found beorg [1] for org-mode, and so far I'm
| happy with it. I've got it set up to connect through WebDAV to
| a GitFS mount on my homeserver, so that I automatically get
| versioning. I sync to the Git backend on my desktop.
|
| 1. https://beorg.app/
| hnrj95 wrote:
| seconded a million times. to me, nothing rivals org and its
| ecosystem. i'll give org-roam a shout too, if you're into this
| type of networked note-taking
| baby wrote:
| I tried so many times to get into it, but the barrier of entry
| is really high I find. Learning a number of shortcuts and
| keyboard flows just to take notes is not a very good idea IMO.
| edoceo wrote:
| I'm in a terminal all day. But I point and click for
| calendar, notes, etc. I can't remember all the syntax and
| shortcuts. But the 'Create Event's button is generally easy
| to find.
|
| I've fed these to a custom NewTab extension and that has been
| a huge win for me. I make a new tab like every five minutes
| so it's always visible.
| hkt wrote:
| I'm a little surprised nobody has mentioned Zim:
|
| https://zim-wiki.org/
|
| From their site:
|
| " Zim can be used to: Keep an archive of notes
| Keep a daily or weekly journal Take notes during meetings
| or lectures Organize task lists Draft blog
| entries and emails Do brainstorming"
|
| Zim itself is a good desktop application and Markor is a good
| mobile client for it. Sync can be done via nextcloud, dropbox
| etc. I'm not 100% on the state of the windows support, but I use
| it daily and it is great. It coexists nicely with version
| control, too.
| neilv wrote:
| If tackling those 3, please consider making it 4, by also
| tackling contacts.
| torstenvl wrote:
| I've had good success with Baikal, a sabre/dav-based project, on
| PHP 8.0. It still is only CalDAV and CardDAV though, no WebDAV
| for file/note sharing.
|
| Installation can be janky and there's no clear documentation on
| dependencies -- and it'll fail silently if you're missing any. On
| FreeBSD I install the following PHP packages and then it works
| splendidly:
|
| sudo pkg install php80 php80-dom php80-filter php80-openssl
| php80-pdo php80-pdo_sqlite php80-xml php80-xmlreader
| php80-xmlwriter
| koevet wrote:
| Been running dockerized Baikal for years on my server.
|
| This is the image I have created few years ago (likely newer
| ones exist): https://hub.docker.com/r/lucianofiandesio/baikal
| vbsteven wrote:
| I'm the author of the article, it's always fun to see your own
| articles pop up on HN unexpectedly.
|
| This post was written several months ago and in the meantime I
| have given up on trying to cobble something together using
| existing solutions because they don't provide the extensibility
| that I want.
|
| I'm building my own replacement from scratch focussing on
| tasks/projects/calendars first. The architecture is a postgres db
| exposing CRUD API endpoints and all changes are broadcasted over
| MQTT so I can easily hook into everything for automation and
| extension.
|
| I have a desktop application in JavaFX and a mobile Android app
| so I can use Kotlin as one language across all clients and
| backend. Lots of code sharing going on for things like API
| models.
| 0xCMP wrote:
| I planned to comment on the conclusion as well. I think these
| protocols often do not handle things well enough and in the end
| the apps out there do not implement them properly anyways. You
| always end up building some kind of CRUD/RPC thing that works
| via HTTP/WebSocket which is why things like Todoist and etc
| work well and are able to add the features everyone wants in
| the end.
| smartmic wrote:
| Isn't the authors conclusion about the fragmented landscape
| symptomatic for almost all FOSS solutions which try to tackle a
| specific user need? I think this is a positive development. The
| diversity and rapid development of technologies requires users to
| deal with them holistically and, in the best case, to support or
| develop a new, better solution.
| djrogers wrote:
| > requires users to deal with them holistically and, in the
| best case, to support or develop a new, better solution
|
| If you only ever want to serve the 1% that are capable of
| supporting or developing a new solution, then yes - I suppose
| this'd be a good thing. In practice though, such exclusionary
| mindsets never lead to good outcomes - software or otherwise.
| dasyatidprime wrote:
| 'support' can take the form of financial support, in which
| case anyone who would be able to pay for SaaSS subscriptions
| or proprietary software would only have to do something very
| similar here. The biggest problem there is that the social
| infrastructure and coordination points don't seem to exist,
| and that's a place where the fragmentation probably does hit
| badly, where consolidating users' needs more would let
| development be much more efficient and coordinated in such a
| way that crowd financial support would become more
| economically plausible at least. Of course, there's the free-
| rider game-theoretic issue, among other things...
|
| While there's a lot of issues between "where are are now" and
| "broadly end-user-friendly libre software support models
| being common enough to be recognizable and repeatable",
| "sure, so long as you can code" isn't meant to be the _first_
| answer. It 's just become a cultural laughing-point because a
| lot of people do ignore the issues, and "you can _choose whom
| you ask_ to handle the code" requires more work on the
| environment to be practical. IME, "exclusionary mindset"
| usually has little to do with it.
|
| The "VCs have conditioned people to never pay for software,
| so you may have to have massive scale and run on surveillance
| capitalism to survive" and "user model of technology being
| vertically integrated service by default" are of course a
| whole other environmental game which may crush attempts to
| make this work.
| cweagans wrote:
| Pretty sure the Sabre website is out of date. sabre/dav requires
| PHP 7.1+ || 8.0+ per https://packagist.org/packages/sabre/dav
| aantix wrote:
| Curious - for meeting availability.
|
| If I have a Google Business account for my company,
| jim@mycompany.com - and an external client of mine,
| tom@myclient.com, wants to see my availability, if he adds my
| external email address as an attendee, will he see my
| availability?
| kstrauser wrote:
| Citadel has been around forever, but I've only played with its
| BBS functionality. Has anyone tried it for calendaring etc.?
| trimble_tromble wrote:
| Consider EteSync as a solution. FOSS, can be self-hosted,
| available on multiple platforms, etc:
|
| https://www.etesync.com/
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I came here to recommend this. A few notes:
|
| 1. There is a CalDav/CardDav bridge which lets you use apps
| that don't implement the ETE protocol which is good because...
|
| 2. The iOS app is nigh unusable. It is painfully slow, requires
| manual syncing, and if your screen turns off in the middle of a
| sync, it may get killed by iOS forcing you to start the whole
| thing over again. Just set up the DAV bridge and use iOS's
| native DAV syncing.
| vinay427 wrote:
| Seconded. It was a bit more awkward to set up compared to
| Nextcloud or Radicale (which both support standard DAV) but the
| Etesync Android client and desktop bridge work very reliably in
| my experience, and the added bonus is end-to-end encryption. I
| now have my contacts and calendars on Etesync and haven't
| needed to touch it, easily configuring it on new client devices
| as needed.
| fuzzy2 wrote:
| Loosely related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28353718
| pimlottc wrote:
| I'm frustrated that adding and tracking public events is still so
| primitive. Why can't I just click a button and follow all the
| local events for my favorite artist/venue/team/theater/charity?
| Why do I still have to manually create events and copy and paste
| details? Why are there so few "add to calendar" and why do they
| often fail?
|
| Part of it is down to the failure of micro formats and the
| semantic web, but it would seem like with today's technology it
| wouldn't be to hard for a browser extension to recognize an event
| and automatically extract the correct details (title, place,
| date, time).
| monksy wrote:
| It sounds like you have 2 issues here: 1. You need a user based
| event recommendation service 2. You need a personalized
| calendar subscription from that service (These don't have to be
| connected services)
|
| I think a lot of this comes down to walled gardens kicking out
| formats from being developed. If we had a standard for event
| announcements, I think we would have had a chance.
| kuschku wrote:
| ical via RSS is a spec used for that, isn't it?
| peterburkimsher wrote:
| Live music is a ripe market for a new social network!
|
| There's a few music apps, but they focus only on the audio. I
| wish there were a combined app for managing everything
| together.
|
| Listening to music (Spotify, YouTube, iTunes), keeping track of
| what music I've listened to (Last.FM, iTunes play counts),
| making playlists (Spotify, YouTube, iTunes), organising
| playlists into folders (iTunes), syncing music to devices
| offline (iTunes).
|
| I hear about bands I like being on tour (Facebook, band
| websites, posters), I buy tickets (Ticketmaster, LiveNation,
| trains), go to events (iCal), take photos (iPhoto), and keep
| track of the bands I saw live (Excel).
|
| At those events, I buy physical T-shirts, hoodies, posters, and
| CDs, and get them signed by the band when possible (NFT, Wise,
| bank cards, cash). I meet other fans while waiting in the
| queue, and exchange contact details (Contacts, Facebook,
| WhatsApp, WeChat, LINE, KakaoTalk, iMessage). I then see the
| other bands that friend likes (Facebook) and check out their
| music (Spotify, YouTube, iTunes) and the cycle starts again.
|
| When I listen to a song, my mind still makes connections to the
| memories of that time I crowdsurfed while the band played it on
| Warped Tour '08 in LA during my exchange programme to
| California. Having software that could help me create the links
| to organise all those memories would be wonderful. It doesn't
| exist yet though, from what I can tell - so I hope someone will
| write it!
| zh3 wrote:
| Given the (commercially-driven) failure of the semantic web,
| I'm in favour of diversity (even if at the expense of
| convenience). Sooner or later network effects means this sort
| of service will likely still end up as a monopoly in the hands
| of some F**G organisation (probably G) but in the meantime we
| can live in hope.
| dkarl wrote:
| Our local MLS team had a feature to add the game schedule to
| your calendar. I was excited, but it turned out that for Google
| Calendar you had to grant a third party app read and write
| access to all of the data connected to your Google account,
| including your emails. Surprisingly, Google did a good job of
| explaining the possible consequences of that, including all
| your data being irretrievably deleted.
|
| So I added all the games by hand, and a few weeks later, the
| entire second half of the season was rejiggered.
| switz wrote:
| You should be able to do this with a third party service such
| as https://fixtur.es/en/team/philadelphia-union
|
| I route my remote calendars through Cloudflare workers for a
| modicum of privacy. It's as simple as running a basic open
| source relay and prepending the worker URL:
| https://github.com/Zibri/cloudflare-cors-anywhere
| marcellus23 wrote:
| > Why are there so few "add to calendar" and why do they often
| fail?
|
| In my experience (using iOS + macOS) they're pretty common and
| always work. What kinds of failures do you see?
| baby wrote:
| Same here. If you use google calendar or Apple cal it often
| works fine.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| Third party services are totally capable of this. Google
| Calendar has a "subscribe to calendar" feature that puts every
| event in somebody else's calendar into yours. I know of several
| clubs and fandoms that use this feature to track public events,
| and at least one music venue near me uses it as well.
| killerdhmo wrote:
| Agreed! and they do this for holidays, sport games, all sorts
| of stuff.
|
| Add Calendar > Browse Calendars of Interest.
|
| The gym I go to also publishes their calendar as a google
| calendar I can subscribe to. So maybe it's more of the
| adoption concern that the GP is highlighting.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| On the other hand you can click a link on a web page and have
| your calendar filled with spammy fake calendar events
| advertising who knows what.
|
| It's not a failure of the semantic web, but more a failure of
| no one creating a shared calendar like that. (And Facebook not
| giving API access to calendar events).
| armchairhacker wrote:
| Personally i have a better experience, with most places sending
| me an email that says" Do you want to add this event?" And i
| click yes and it gets added to my calendar with location or
| Zoom link, etc.
|
| I also had a shared calendar with all of the events for my lab
| synchronized.
|
| I don't think this is open calendar because it was Google, but
| it made events pretty seamless.
| switz wrote:
| I run a free hand-curated concert calendar in NYC[0] with a
| friend. It's all operated manually and we still end up with
| 15-20 great shows every night. If this were automated or
| scraped, you'd have 250 events on your calendar per day.
|
| Sure it might work if you just pick one venue, or a handful of
| artists. But it's not particularly helpful since you'll either
| be overwhelmed by spam (venue shows you're not interested in)
| or you'll inevitably be missing out on a lot of great events
| (since you're filtering on very specific parameters).
|
| On our app, you can swipe on any show to add it to your phone's
| calendar instantly. 60 seconds daily or a few minutes each week
| and you can build your own subset calendar from our already
| curated calendar. It's honestly very efficient and low-tech.
|
| I do subscribe to some remote calendars like my favorite sports
| team (NBA provides per-team calendar URLs). If you're in a
| smaller town with just a few venues, I bet you could do that
| too. For the privacy-conscious among us, you can always route
| them through Cloudflare Workers pretty easily.
|
| [0] https://tappedin.live
| pseudalopex wrote:
| The Cyrus IMAP server has CalDAV, CardDAV, and WebDAV modules.[1]
|
| [1]
| https://www.cyrusimap.org/imap/download/installation/manage-...
| chrismorgan wrote:
| And JMAP, which makes an _excellent_ foundation for client
| development, web and otherwise. Cyrus implements the
| calendaring and contacts drafts, counterparts to CalDAV and
| CardDAV. (See https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/active/#jmap for
| the active drafts. JMAP working group minutes from IETF-111
| last month say of jmap-calendars, "hopefully finalise by end of
| the year" <https://tools.ietf.org/wg/jmap/minutes>. JSCalendar,
| which it also depends on, was published last month as RFC
| 8984.)
|
| Fastmail's web app--mail, calendar, contacts and everything
| else--is built on JMAP, though it doesn't yet support offline
| synchronisation which JMAP is well designed to support.
| (Fundamentally, JMAP is an object synchronisation protocol, not
| an email protocol or anything like that.)
| bbertelsen wrote:
| In the notes field: Notable, Joplin, and recently been looking a
| lot at Dendron which has tight integration with vscode.
| Notable/Jopline are standalone apps.
|
| The promise of Geary never really materialized. I think they
| tried to get funding a while back but couldn't hit their,
| arguably lofty, goals. It's still great, but limited, software.
| d--b wrote:
| Yes well. On one hand people are angry when big tech roll out
| closed protocols. And on the other hand open standards get
| criticized for being messy...
| nixpulvis wrote:
| Add email and contacts to the list while you're at it.
| akshayB wrote:
| I worked on a project sometime ago where we needed to create a
| special event handling calendar with a Todo list for a large
| organization. It's crazy to deal with Google / Microsoft emails &
| calendars and on top of all that you need to handle iOS, Android
| devices & Outlook as well. We ran to bunch of issues with
| background sync and enormous attachments. At the end we just
| ended up using slack bot and a internal blogging tool to handle
| the whole thing. Calendar and notes are vitally important but
| with all customization / fragmented ecosystem thing become
| challenging.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| This is ridiculous. The guy just goes around bashing everything
| that's not Rust as "old". He even claims Java & C "is not very
| suitable for cross-platform world". So obviously his conclusion
| is "I'll have to write something in Rust!".
|
| Huge world of "groupware" software around. Think Zimbra. Owncloud
| is hardly the only choice here...
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| Java is literally one of the native languages of Android, and
| runs everywhere on the desktop. It's practically the definition
| of cross-platform.
| lawrenceyan wrote:
| A Google Calendar / Google Keep combo works pretty well for me.
| Cross platform compatibility is decent too.
| guerrilla wrote:
| They are looking for an open platform and are privacy
| conscious, as per the first paragraph. Anything google doesn't
| meet the basic requirements.
| ricktdotorg wrote:
| See also Standard Notes[1], pretty much a drop-in replacement for
| Apple's iOS Notes app. Decent web interface with (paid) plugins,
| great desktop and mobile apps, backend can be self-hosted as
| well. It's really good and its OSS[2].
|
| [1] https://standardnotes.com
|
| [2] https://github.com/standardnotes
| smoldesu wrote:
| Standard Notes won't be a competitor in my eyes until they add
| extentions/theming support to the free tier as well. It's an
| absurd and zero-margin holdout that makes zero sense and only
| drives me away from their service.
| djrogers wrote:
| Hate to be 'that guy', but without the ability to share and
| collaborate on notes, it's not a drop-in replacement.
| dexwiz wrote:
| Synchronizing events beetween calendar systems is hard. iCal may
| be a serialization format, but it doesn't handle things like:
| sync event from system A to system B, update in System B, how do
| we tell System A? For simple events with no attendees that is
| easy. But once you deal with recurring events, and everyone's
| varying implementations, it quickly falls apart.
|
| Internally all the major Calendar services (GCal and Outlook),
| store events differently when it comes to events with multiple
| attendees and recurring events, and it takes understanding the
| varying nuances to perform good synchronization. Even the
| difference between a timed event and an all day event will vary
| from system to system. And that barely touches the timezone
| issues that arise when scheduling.
| dboreham wrote:
| Having spend 1/2 lifetime doing this: yes++
|
| Add to all that : the calendaring hosting providers will block
| your API access to their customers so unless you have a
| business relationship with them, or the technical solution
| means that they can't block you, it's a crappy business
| proposition.
| [deleted]
| pbnjay wrote:
| I wrote a mostly-complete Go implementation of the iCal protocol
| last year. It was eye-opening but interesting.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| After writing 2 calendar programs, I came to conclusion nothing
| beats pen and paper for keeping todos and personal tasks. I
| bought a large wirebound sketchbook, and fine tip pen. Plan my
| day, then take a photo of my day's or weeks tasks. Very fast to
| do, plus all the freedom and sensory experience of drawing on
| paper. Works for me. I guess its a hybrid of manual and digital.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| To me, paper doesn't work for calendaring and to-do because it
| simply has no way to beep at you to tell you to get off your
| backside and get a piece of work done. I'm happy it works for
| others, but I simply need a digital solution for this.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > Written in old PHP and there is work underway to do a complete
| rewrite in Golang
|
| Wow [1], how cool would that be. I love that NextCloud exists and
| I plan to use it and call me biased but god I hate to be running
| some PHP. I used to maintain a vulnerability database and I don't
| think I can ever trust a PHP project again at this point. Maybe
| things have changed but you'd find it very difficult to convince
| me.
|
| 1. https://github.com/nextcloud/server/issues/16726
| ognarb wrote:
| Disclaimer: I work for Nextcloud but opinion is my own and not
| the one from my employer.
|
| There is no work underway to port Nextcloud to golang. That
| would be a bit crazy since all the plugins and apps wouldn't
| work anymore (and there are tons of them) and even just
| rewriting the core would take years.
|
| Owncloud is trying to rewrite their core since two years and it
| is still only a tech demo and many features are lost compared
| to their php based product. (They are also doing weird thing
| like taking nosql to seriously and not using at all a sql
| database just files, that probably doesn't help...)
| peterburkimsher wrote:
| I wrote my own Notes app, for much of the same reason: I want to
| control the data, and keep it local on the device (not synced to
| a cloud service).
|
| The major feature that was lacking with the built-in Notes app is
| a folder hierarchy. When I have ideas about software I want to
| code, hardware I want to build, or a shopping list, or a band I
| want to check out - I don't want these to all be stored in one
| long "Notes (723)" news feed where I'll forget it if I don't
| handle it immediately.
|
| Back in the days of the iPod (call me old), it was easy to have a
| folder hierarchy for Notes (though I admit that they weren't
| editable). There were third-party apps like Check Off that would
| sync a to-do list automatically, but only as a single file. When
| the iPhone arrived, iTunes gained the ability to sync Notes, but
| only as a flat folder structure. It's true that SQL doesn't have
| folder hierarchy so it's harder to code, but I'd rather
| categorise ideas like they come in my mind!
|
| Apple removed the feature of local Notes sync in Mac OS 10.9
| Mavericks. Calendars stuck around a little longer, but I moved to
| BusyCal when the GUI was redesigned in 10.10. Currently I'm using
| Mac OS Server 5.6 on Mac OS 10.13 to host a local calendar and
| email server.
|
| Apple removed Calendars and Contacts from Mac OS Server in Mac OS
| 10.14 Mojave. The recommended replacement is CalendarServer,
| Copyright (c) 2005-2017 with a note that says "The developers ...
| have each moved on to other projects". Apple recommended this in
| December 18, 2019 according to the "Published date".
|
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208312
|
| Apple removed syncing Apps with iTunes 12.7. The message is
| clear: Apple are not interested in letting you manage your
| digital life - you must use iCloud and store it on their own
| servers.
|
| https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/86890
|
| I miss the Digital Hub strategy where there is a Source of Truth
| that isn't owned by Apple or Google. The cloud is just someone
| else's computer, and if/when Apple/Google/Spotify/Facebook
| decided to lock me out of my account, I don't want to lose my
| photos, notes, music, contacts, bookmarks, calendars.
|
| https://xkcd.com/908/
| irl_ wrote:
| Missing from almost every calendar hosting thing I've used is the
| ability to publish free/busy information to allow others to
| schedule me into meetings without needing to be on the same
| system.
|
| I'm pretty sure vCalendar supports this, just no one has
| implemented it.
|
| If I could host a lightweight javascript app that let you browse
| the information until your client supports it properly that'd be
| cool.
| acomjean wrote:
| Lotus Notes had that. Administrative staff could look at your
| calendar and sign you up for things..
|
| Of course all Notes Mail and Calendar are just Notes
| Applications built upon its nosql database and lotus script.
| Its why they were kinda awkward. But I worked briefly at IBM
| making custom business Apps with Notes, which was a decent/
| fairly easy way of making custom applications for businesses
| last century.
| poetaster wrote:
| I use claws mail for this. I get invites from caldav and reply
| directly in my mail client. Cal views are primitive.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I think the whole area (rightly) suffers from "Bikeshed" syndrome
| - this is something everybody can have an opinion on, and 90% of
| the time their opinions are right for them. At work you know
| someone who schedules appointments with themselves just to block
| out some time, or schedules meeting with you because emails don't
| get a response and ...
|
| The solution is not more protocols, or opinionated software.
|
| The solution is that every individual should have the skills
| (software literacy) and the infrastructure (some combination of a
| diary server with an API in fifty languages) and tools (come on
| iPhone, really whatever you are doing it's a total mess)
|
| At some point with Mailbox any coder will have built an sub-AI
| agent from 200 regexes - and that's probably what will smoosh out
| across the world - oh yes I let my Virtual AI / PA handle that,
| it was coded by my brother in law and I made a few config
| changes.
| dd444fgdfg wrote:
| Author says PHP, Java and C are not suitable for the cross-
| platform world. Hmmm.
| sdze wrote:
| Horde Project?
|
| Old but gold.
|
| > https://www.horde.org
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Wow, Horde has really come a long way since I last glanced in
| its direction. Looks like the "groupware" distribution ticks
| every box from tFA except for notes being sharable over
| WebDAV...
| rcarmo wrote:
| I built two webmail solutions on Horde back in the early 2000s,
| and it was amazing at the time, but hasn't aged well. I'd
| rather use plain IMAP and Radicale...
| sdze wrote:
| New Horde is quiet nice. Even ActiveSync is well implemented
| for most clients.
| normaler wrote:
| I habe been using radikale for 3 years now. Works really well for
| calendar and contacts. Tasks is okay aswell, but I never tried it
| for notes.
| ognarb wrote:
| Disclaimer: Involved in both KDE (including kde pim and kalendar)
| and Nextcloud. See bio.
|
| * I wouldn't call Nextcloud codebase old. It's a PHP 7.3 codebase
| with sure quite a lot of legacy stuff but a lot of thing has been
| improved and refactored with the time. It's maintained, there is
| an active community and an healthy enterprise behind the project.
| IHMO this is that matters more than the programming language
| used.
|
| * SabreDAV supports WebDAV and this is that we are using at
| Nextcloud for our webdav/caldav and carddav support.
|
| * KOrganizer does run on Windows but it require to be built from
| source. I have been told that a better Windows support is being
| worked on for the entire PIM suite and I hope that at some point
| exe can be distributed. Technically there is nothing that makes
| it impossible to use on macOS, we just need more helping hands to
| help with fixing the platform specific issues. There is also a
| modern alternative to Korganizer being worked on called Kalendar.
| More on it can be learned on https://claudiocambra.com/
| (Disclaimer: I was the mentor of this GSoC project).
| skinkestek wrote:
| I think I will use this opportunity to say thank you!
|
| I've loved KDE since I was an almost broke student 17 or so
| years ago.
|
| I also use NextCloud now to sync Joplin, and I contribute to
| other projects (mostly donations, some code).
| djyaz1200 wrote:
| I'm surprised I haven't heard of a "Twilio of Calendars" that
| just makes this all dirt simple and easy to integrate into any
| 3rd party application quickly and comes with user configurable UI
| libraries for mobile and desktop etc. If this does exist please
| let me know because I've been looking and would pay for it.
| dboreham wrote:
| I own a company that did/does this. It's not attractive from a
| business perspective. Huge amount of detailed work required to
| get/keep working; hosting providers shaft you (see post above);
| nobody wants to pay because "gcal is free".
| georgeashworth wrote:
| Not affiliated, but I would check out Nylas:
| https://www.nylas.com/products/calendar-api/
| singingwolfboy wrote:
| I would strongly recommend steering clear of Nylas.
| deadbunny wrote:
| Why? Hard to take a recommendation with zero context.
| epberry wrote:
| Psssst https://calendso.com/
| louis-lau wrote:
| I'm using the built in calendar application on windows. It's
| hidden undar a hacky workaround, but it has caldav support. You
| have to add an icloud account, and then edit the server address
| in the settings afterwards.
|
| Has worked flawlessly after that, and I like the integration with
| other parts of windows.
| [deleted]
| codethief wrote:
| Can anyone here recommend a slick open-source GUI calendar app
| for Linux with support for iCal, WebCal, recurring events and
| notifications? I've been following GNOME Calendar[0] for a while
| but judging by the website it's still mostly WIP.
|
| I've been using Thunderbird's Lightning add-on for a lack of
| alternatives but it's mostly been a PITA.
|
| [0]: https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Calendar
| wastholm wrote:
| I've been using KOrganizer[1] for longer than I can remember.
| For better and/or worse, it's pretty tightly integrated with
| the Plasma desktop. For now at least, I use it with Google
| Calendar as its backend. Every once in a long while, it gives
| me some scary-sounding error message about failing to sync --
| but so far as I can tell the sync works just fine, albeit
| sometimes with a bit of lag.
|
| I recently also started using it with my work-mandated Office
| 365 calendar. According to some docs somewhere that I can't
| find right now, there were quite a few hoops to jump through to
| make that read/write so I settled for read-only.
|
| [1] https://apps.kde.org/korganizer/
| cycomanic wrote:
| Have a look at davmail. It's essentially a exchange to
| IMAP/calDAV... translator. I used it before with our work
| exchange server. It worked flawlessly (better than the imap
| support in exchange IMO)
| input_sh wrote:
| I love the one that comes with elementary OS[0]. Looking at
| those screenshots, it seems to be a fork of Gnome's calendar?
|
| I've connected it to both Google Calendar and Nextcloud's
| calendar, and it works perfectly well, provides notifications,
| recurring events, and I can quickly access today's events just
| by clicking on the clock on the bar. No complaints what so
| ever.
|
| elementary's tasks app, on the other hand, is still WIP.
|
| [0] https://github.com/elementary/calendar
| [deleted]
| martijnvds wrote:
| I recently switched to Evolution on Gnome, and put all my
| notes, tasks, calendars and address books in a "radicale"[0]
| CalDav/CardDav server.
|
| It's not 'slick' by 2021 app standards but it does what it
| needs to do pretty well. And compared to some apps, it uses
| almost no memory.
|
| On my phone, I combine it with FairEmail, DAVx5 and OpenTasks.
|
| [0] https://radicale.org/
| bestouff wrote:
| So far I've always used Evolution and I like it pretty much. It
| even connects to my team's O365 stuff.
| nicholashead wrote:
| I switched to Joplin a while back when Evernote decided to
| implode itself, and stopped iterating on their product. Now I
| send auto-donations to Joplin devs via Github Sponsorship. Love
| it. Syncs to my DropBox and I haven't had any issues.
| lancemurdock wrote:
| im so bummed on evernote. Ive used them forever. I just needed
| a note taking app in the cloud. They've evolved into a bloated
| piece of software thats like a crappy version of google docs.
| I'll checkout this Joplin app
| [deleted]
| monksy wrote:
| I've been looking for an iCal server to serve as a database for
| events. I agree with the author, this space is rather empty. Most
| of the projects out there have aged quite a bit and could use
| feature enhancements. (I.e. annoymous RSVPs, flexible
| notification perefences on a per user basis)
|
| I was looking at bedework, however it doesn't deploy very easily.
| Now I'm looking at Radicale. It does have a docker container, but
| it's not well documented.
| offmycloud wrote:
| I found the Radicale documentation [1] sufficient for setup,
| and it really hasn't needed much in the way of maintenance. I
| also enabled the awesome Git integration so that every client-
| side contact/vCard change becomes a server-side git commit to
| my contacts repo. Now my birthday greeting script can just "git
| pull" to get the latest contact data.
|
| 1. https://radicale.org/3.0.html
| rubatuga wrote:
| Radicale is pretty stable. I've submitted a patch in the past
| and they integrated it pretty quick.
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