Basics | Plugins | Howtos | Applications

The cal plugin

The calendar module is implemented by the lino_xl.lib.cal and lino_xl.lib.calview plugins. This document is about general calendar functionality. Automatic calendar entries are handled in a separate article.

Lino isn’t very much used as a real-life calendar application because –you’ll have guessed why– there are powerful competing products on the market. We are looking for users who nevertheless want to give it a serious try!

Calendar entries

calendar entry

A lapse of time to be visualized in a calendar view.

A calendar entry is stored in the database as an instance of the Event database model.

A calendar entry usually has a given type.

It can have a list of guests or participants (more precisely presences).

Lifecycle of a calendar entry

Every calendar entry has a given state, which can change according to rules defined by the application.

Common calendar entry states are “suggested”, “took place”, “cancelled”, …

Calendar entry types

The list of calendar entry types is configurable via Configure ‣ Calendar ‣ Calendar entry types.

Often used calendar entry types are appointment, informal meeting, public event, holiday.

The type of a calendar entry can be used to change behaviour and rules.

Calendars

Calendar entries can be grouped into “calendars”.

Conflicting calendar entries

When two calendar entries conflict with each other, Lino shows this as a data problem message.

Click on the Check data button to run this test explicitly. Otherwise it is run periodically, e.g. every evening, depending on how your Lino site is configured.

Transparent calendar entries

transparent calendar entry

A calendar entry that does never conflict with other entries.

For example the entry type “Internal” is marked “transparent”.

The guests of a calendar entry

A calendar entry can have a list of guests. A guest is when a given person is expected to attend or has been present at a given calendar entry. Depending on the context the guests of a calendar entry may be labelled “guests”, “participants”, “presences”, …

Every participant of a calendar entry can have a “role”. For example in a class meeting you might want to differentiate between the teacher and the pupils.

Remote calendars

A remote calendar is a set of calendar entries stored on another server. Lino periodically synchronized the local data from the remote server, and local modifications will be sent back to the remote calendar.

The feature is not currently being used anywhere.

Rooms

A room is location where appointments can happen. For a given room you can see the calendar entries that happened (or will happen) there. A room has a multilingual name that can be used in printable documents.

Applications might change the term “Room” into something else if the application is not interested in physical rooms. For example Lino Presto calls them “Team”.

Subscriptions

A subscription is when a site user is interested in a given calendar.

Tasks

A task is when a user plans to do something (and optionally wants to get reminded about it).

Glossary

calendar view

A specialized data window that is optimized for showing calendar entries and in monthly, weekly or daily display mode.

calendar entry state

The workflow state of a calendar entry.

See Lifecycle of a calendar entry below.

calendar entry type

The type of a calendar entry.

See Calendar entry types.

appointment

A calendar entry for which other people (external partners or colleagues) are involved and should be informed about schedule changes.

French: Rendez-vous, German: Termin.

Appointments are defined by assigning them a calendar entry type that has the EventType.is_appointment field checked.

all-day

An all-day calendar entry is one that has no starting and ending time.

same-day

A same-day calendar entry is one that ends on the same date as it starts. The ending date field is empty. If a somae-day calendar entry has its ending time before the starting time, the ending date is understood as the day after the starting date.

presence

The fact that a given person is an expected participant to a given calendar entry.

task

Something a user plans to do.

daily planner

A table showing a calendar overview for a given day. Both the rows and the columns can be configured per application or locally per site.

See DailySlave.

My calendar entries

A table showing today’s and all future appointments of the user who requests it. It starts today and is sorted ascending.