[Dev] Re: Recurrance discussion

[Alec Flett]

I don't want to venture too far down into this discussion again, but the 
crux of the issue is that chandler is a different beast than typical 
calendar apps - events are objects in a larger system, and there are 
multiple ways of viewing those events, not just the Calendar. As 
Chandler grows and is extended by other developers, the number of views 
will only increase... the summary table and the detail view are just two 
examples of views onto items.

This means a view cannot dynamically generate these "virtual" events 
very easily (Because we don't always control the view) and even if one 
very smart view (i.e. the calendar view) could generate them, then 
handing them off to another view (i.e. the detail view) leads to more 
headaches..

We did explore the idea of these "virtual events" and even discussed 
having the repository somehow generate them magically through queries, 
but it really seemed like the problem got nastier as we delved into the 
details of it - we needed proxy events that shadowed real events, and 
all sort of other complexities.

In the end, it looks like we've decided to go with a model where we 
generate "concrete" events some time into the future (right now we're 
talking about maybe 1 year, but that is a minor detail) and letting the 
rest of chandler deal with them as if they were just normal items. This 
greatly simplifies much of the implementation, and focuses the 
"recurrence" part of the problem on only the code & UI that deals with 
recurrence, rather than burdening the whole system with some large 
abstraction that would only be helpful to calendar.

Alec

Lisa Dusseault wrote:

> I pinged a couple iCalendar implementors about how they do this today.
> - One of them stores only recurrence masters and exceptions in their 
> repository. When the client needs to display a time period, it asks 
> for a list of events in that time period, and the model logic 
> constructs objects for recurrence instances as well as for regular 
> events, and hands that list off. Changes may be made to instances or 
> non-recurring events, and the model logic handles that either way. I 
> believe this is the pure "virtual event" model that Jeffrey originally 
> proposed.
> - The other implementation *expands every recurring item into 
> instances for storage* -- expanding all instances and until 2038! 
> Apparently the world ends on 2038. On the bright side, with no 
> birthdays after 2038 we won't be getting any older.
>
> Lisa
>
> On May 9, 2005, at 12:55 PM, Jeffrey Harris wrote:
>
>> Hi Bryan,
>>
>> I'm ready to really and truly drop the idea of transient items/proxying.
>> Hooray, if only I were less stubborn, I would've given in a week ago :)
>>
>> I like the idea of periodically updating infinite occurrence items one
>> year in advance, perhaps scheduled to happen daily at midnight (for
>> those who leave their apps running 24/7). We'll also need some
>> mechanism for dealing with the user browsing their calendar ahead a
>> year, do you have an idea of where in Chandler that should be dealt 
>> with?
>>
>> As Bryan and Alec and I discussed at one point, the algorithm probably
>> shouldn't be exactly one year in advance, pathological cases like
>> biannual events with 15 month reminders need to be dealt with, a more
>> detailed description would be one year + reminder delta in advance for
>> each recurring event.
>>
>> Sincerely,
>> Jeffrey
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