FossifyOrg
Implementation of CATEGORIES property to organize and color events
Checklist
- [x] I made sure that there are no existing issues - open or closed - to which I could contribute my information.
- [x] I made sure that there are no existing discussions - open or closed - to which I could contribute my information.
- [x] I have read the FAQs inside the app (Menu -> About -> FAQs) and my problem isn't listed.
- [x] I have taken the time to fill in all the required details. I understand that the request will be dismissed otherwise.
- [x] This issue contains only one feature request.
- [x] I have read and understood the contribution guidelines.
Feature description
The event type currently only allows for one type per synched calendar. This makes managing calendars that already include categories for different events quite difficult. It would be great to have the possibility to create categories so that imported events containing information for the CATEGORIES property show up in the corresponding category and colour. Also the other way around the app should be able to store the category of an event in a way that it transfers to other apps that use the CATEGORIES property.
Why do you want this feature?
When synching calendars between android and windows there is a problem with proper organization of event types. All the android calendar apps I have tried use the COLOR (or some other, customized) property to set the color for an event, while Thunderbird, the pretty much only reasonable option for CalDAV on windows, uses the CATEGORIES property. I am not a developer by any means and have already been told by @naveensingh that there is no standardized way in android to do this, so I don't fully understand how much of a pain in the ass this would be to implement. Still I believe that it could be worth it, considering that offering the possibility to read and write categories for events in fossify calendar would give the app a unique and useful feature for organization of events as well as synchronisation with other clients, that no other android calendar app seems to offer at the moment.
Additional information
No response
This would be a wonderful feature. So many apps and providers are inconsistent on how to color-code events. Offering icalendar/CalDAV compliant per-event COLOR and CATEGORY fields would really help.
Here is a link to rfc7986 where both categories and colors were added to iCalendar.
Thunderbird in Linux works similarly to the Windows version. Colors show up in Fossify Calendar only when the .ICS file is imported. When instead it is set up as a CalDAV source using ICSv5, the whole calendar shows up as one single color. It also occupies one single tab. The workaround of importing the file still leaves all event types the same color, unless event types get colors adjusted manually. Overall better than any alternatives I saw, but still too much manual labor required. If the info is already in the file, use it.
When a CalDAV calendar is put on the device using DAVx5, it maps the categories to an extended property. Apparently the AOSP activesync exchange provider does the same thing for handling Outlook categories.
An implementation using this would be extremely helpful
As a user, as much as I think coloring based on categories would be a nice feature, I believe the priority would be showing the CATEGORIES field's values at least. Sometimes important contextual information can get hidden otherwise if the software creating the event does not include other user-readable category information in DESCRIPTION or SUMMARY.
As an example (using Fossify Calendar + ICSX5/DAVX5), Moodle's exported calendar writes the class room's name to the CATEGORIES field. In consequence, Moodle's assignment events lack proper context when viewed in Fossify Calendar, as it doesn't populate this information in other fields.
Here is an example of the above (event, description and categories translated to english):
BEGIN:VCALENDAR
METHOD:PUBLISH
PRODID:-//Moodle Pty Ltd//NONSGML Moodle Version XXXXXXXXXX//EN
VERSION:2.0
BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:[email protected]
SUMMARY:Module 1 deadline. Practical Assignment 1.
DESCRIPTION:Practical Assignment 1\n
CLASS:PUBLIC
LAST-MODIFIED:20251002T150336Z
DTSTAMP:20251008T134712Z
DTSTART:20251009T215900Z
DTEND:20251009T215900Z
CATEGORIES:OPERATING SYSTEMS (2526)-496_11_23_2526
END:VEVENT
...
END:VCALENDAR
Hi There
i would love to see this features aswell.
As something similar already exists on 'local saved' calenders, it meigth not be that hard to port it to davx5 "categories" property?
If someone could point me to re right directen (related files) i can try my best to help.
