[Dev] 0.5 Proposal for Menu Cleanup

[Morgen Sagen]

On Feb 11, 2005, at 9:20 AM, Mimi Yin wrote:

> Would it be too confusing to just say Import / Export calendar events. 
> I'm
> wondering if iCalendar is confusing since it refers to both the format 
> and
> the Apple calendar? And perhaps neither is particularly well-known to
> laypeople?

We need to distinguish between import/export (which to me implies a 
one-time reading-from/writing-to a local file) and an ongoing 
subscription/publish of a remote collection of items.  Sub/pub will get 
updated each time you "Sync All".

As for format, there are actually three ways that calendar events can 
end up being formatted when shared:

    A) a monolithic .ics file (which Apple iCal understands)
    B) CalDAV's .ics-file-per-event style (not yet fully implemented in 
Chandler)
    C) Chandler's generic CloudXML format (which gets used during 
regular collection sharing)

I agree we need to keep it as simple as possible for the user, so let's 
outline the various operations that can be performed, and figure out 
the nomenclature:

    1) Export a collection of Events to a local .ics file -- one time 
operation
    2) Import Events from a local .ics file -- one time operation
    3) Publish a collection of Events to an .ics file on a WebDAV server 
-- this collection will get re-published during "Sync All", and is a 
"one way" share, "put" only
    4) Subscribe to an .ics file on a webserver -- this collection will 
get re-fetched during "Sync All", and is a "one way" share, "get" only
    5) Sharing a collection via the invitation process, which puts an 
XML-formatted collection of resources on a WebDAV server, participates 
in "Sync All", and is a "two way" share, "get" and "put"

For #1, #3, and #5, should operate on the currently selected collection 
in the sidebar.  #5 is already handled with the 'Collection -> Share' 
menu and the green arrow button.

Does everyone agree that "import" and "export" imply one-time, local 
file operations, while "publish" and "subscribe" imply ongoing 
(probably remote) operations?  Better terminology welcomed, but I hope 
that the user will be able to select any of the 1-4 operations above 
via some set of menu items.  #3 and #4 make for really cool demos, too. 
  :-)

Eventually there will be operation #6: publish my calendar to a CalDAV 
server...