[Design] [Cosmo][Desktop] Month View Update

[Greg Noel]

On Oct 19, 2007, at 3:11 PM, Jeffrey Harris wrote:

> So, I think the things we should limit are multi-day all-day  
> events, not 1-day all-day events.  Does that seem more reasonable?   
> How many multi-day events do you have at a time?

Hmmm...  Yes, there are fewer multi-day events, but every once in a  
while they bunch up.  My worst case was in August, when we were  
moving to a new house.  It involved coordinating multiple contractors  
to do the renovations, so I had some overlapping events for the tile  
guy, the painter, the carpet guy, the fence guy, a shelf guy  
installing a custom bookcase, a fireplace guy to put in a new hearth  
and mantle, and a door guy to move a door to a better spot.  On top  
of that, both my wife and I had to go in for unexpected surgeries  
(both multi-day stays that overlapped), so we were unable to do a lot  
of the packing and whatnot, so the family pitched in to help, but  
they had various vacations and other commitments, each of which had  
to be worked around.  The worst case was one day that had four multi- 
day events spanned through it: a generic "moving" event, a "Polly in  
hospital" event, the tile guy's first day (so someone had to be there  
to let him in), and an event for our niece's family on holiday in  
Cabo (so they couldn't let him in).

On top of that are all the one-day events from suppliers who refuse  
to give you anything closer than a four hour window when they _might_  
deign to show up.  I used one-day events for those because they  
effectively tied me to one house or the other during the transition.

As the month wore on, events had their dates adjusted: the painter  
asked if he could work on weekends so he could fill in with a day job  
that turned up; my wife came through the surgery so successfully that  
they sent her home two days early; and so on.  At the same time,  
other events were added: we had to call a plumber and an electrician  
on the old house to clear up some problems.  And all-day events  
sometimes got an actual time promise and turned into timed events,  
enabling me to squeeze in other activities.

Yes, exceptional circumstances, but iCal came through it well, and  
kept everything displayed.

Oh, and going through that month did give me a very firm idea about  
how the spanned events should be ordered to minimize vertical space  
(i.e., give the maximum number of events in a day).  Unfortunately,  
iCal doesn't use it, so there were a number of days that had gaps.   
If you want me to write that up somewhere, I can do that.

> Odd.  My version of iCal strictly limits the number of all-day events
> displayed to 2 in month-view.  What version of iCal are you using?

It claims that it's 2.0.5 (1069).

Hope this helps,
-- Greg Noel, retired UNIX guru