#26 Calendar View overlaps

[Anonymous]

In the calendar view, you can put into multiple events
with overlapping times. Now this isn't a bad thing, but
the output displayed doesn't look very good. For
example, if you set up a task to be done at 8:00, and
another at 8:30, chances are, the second task will be
displayed over the first one, so you can't read much of
what the first one says.

Furthermore, if you write a long description, it can appear
that the task is to take like 10 hours, instead of just half
an hour, because the entire description is displayed. This
could be fixed by not displaying the description. When
you click the "Summary"/Title of an event (in the time
line), it asks you to reschedule the event, but instead
you should display all of the revevant information there,
as is done when you click on the "summary" on the
sidebar list of "Proposed Meetings".

Back to the first problem though. You can avoid the
overlapping problems by using spike notation. Basically,
you would want to do somethin like this:
1) Create an array of zeroes from 0-287, since there are
288 5 minute intervals in a day.
2) Next, every time an event is added to your day, assign
it a unique ID number, and fill up the spaces in the array
with that number. For example, if you have a meeting
from noon till one, lets first assign that meeting the
number "1". Now assuming you call the array 'time', you
would go and set time[143]=1; time[144]=1; time[145]
=1, ... etc.
3) Every time you add a new event, check to see if the
array already has an event there, if so, inform the user,
and have them select a new time, or you could set up
multiple time arrays, and display the overlapping events in
collumns.

I hope you implement these fixes. I'm sorry I can't be of
more help and actually give you a patch, but I don't
actually use your software. I have been thinking about
creating some of my own time management software, and
so have been looking around at what others have done.

-scott piper
spiper@utulsa.edu (email me if you have questions about
what I meant)