143475 - [RFE]: Task/Event descriptions should allow HTML/rich text formatting

Status: NEW

(Calendar :: General, enhancement)

Description

[Emanuel Gull]

Right now, Event title, note and location are TEXT fields. However, I'd like
them to be HTML fields for the following reasons:

- Ability to iclude links (to the web and to other events, see also bug 137777)
- Ability to 'customize' an event - with colors, images, header size,
paragraphs, and all the other nice HTML tags. this adds a LOT of usability, and
gives the user a lot more freedom about how he wants his events to be displayed.
- We're in Mozilla, and Mozilla supports HTML -> it might not be that hard to
get it interpreted.
- Go to day view and take a look at a 7 hour event. You see a lot of space used
by it, and only a tiny little event title on top. With HTML the user might
actually use that space for information rather than waste it.
- It might be THE advantage compared to Lotus and so on - the feature that
nobody else has.

Comment 1

[Mike Potter]

I don't think there's such a thing as an HTML box in Mozilla, but I'll give you
the benefit of the doubt and just send this to nobody. I'm not going to be doing
this.

Comment 2

[Emanuel Gull]

I'll give it a try.

Comment 3

[Emanuel Gull]

Here's a short status report... I tried to program a little over the weekend,
and that's what I could do:

- I can convert a string of text to a 'tree of objects' or however you wanna
call that. I'm using the 'range' command for that:
var HTMLText=range.createContextualFragment("<br><it>Hello, World!</it></br><br>
<b>hello world!</b></br><p><h1>asfdfdas</h1></p>");

Dom Inspector shows that the HTML is parsed correctly.

- I can display HTML text inside an event box. I'm using the XUL browser object
(a read only iframe) to display html inside the box. If I construct the object,
add www.mozilla.org as src and attach it to the event box, I really get the
mozilla homepage inside the box.

-I can create an empty HTML broser (or iframe), and I have the DOM objects made
by my string, but I couldn't figure out how to transfer the DOM objects into the
browser at the right place (i.e. in browser->HTML->Body). I'm working on that
right now.
/* var eventHTMLBox=document.createElement("browser");
   eventBox.appendChild( eventHTMLBox );
   eventHTMLBox.setAttribute("src", "about:blank");
   eventHTMLBox.setAttribute("name", "SomeCalendarEvent");
   eventHTMLBox.setAttribute("flex", "1");   
*/

Finally the resolution would look like that: A preference somewhere to specify
if HTML events are allowed. If yes, there's a browser created for every event
box, and the event contents are added: first the title, then the location,
finally the description. All of them could themselves contain HTML tags.

May I assign this bug to myself? Or does anybody else want to experiment with that?

Comment 4

[ajbu]

If HTML is used, the fields should also be stored in the iCalendar as plain 
text.

The iCalendar spec (ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2445.txt) has some 
information about how to handle this, using an ALTREP parameter:

     altrepparam        = "ALTREP" "=" DQUOTE uri DQUOTE

   Description: The parameter specifies a URI that points to an
   alternate representation for a textual property value. A property
   specifying this parameter MUST also include a value that reflects the
   default representation of the text value. The individual URI
   parameter values MUST each be specified in a quoted-string.

Comment 5

[Russell Levy]

Don't know if this is still active...

the message composer and the web page composer do exactly what we want. maybe we
can reuse code from them?

--Russell

Comment 6

[Brant Gurganus]

[RFE] is deprecated in favor of severity: enhancement.  They have the same meaning.

Comment 7

[Daniel Barrett]

Please add my vote for this feature. Imagine a shared university course calendar
with all students subscribed.  Each day contains a listing of classes (e.g.,
"Math 101, 10:00 - 11:30am").  Each class is a link to the home page for the
course.  It would be a great feature for schools.

Comment 8

[Christoff_pale]

Please add my vote too. This is an extremely useful feature -- perhaps the most
important right now.

Comment 9

[Johannes Buchner]

(In reply to comment #7)
> Please add my vote for this feature. 
(In reply to comment #8)
> Please add my vote too. 
You can vote on your own by using "Vote for this bug"

(In reply to comment #7)
> Imagine a shared university course
> calendar
> with all students subscribed.  Each day contains a listing of classes (e.g.,
> "Math 101, 10:00 - 11:30am").  Each class is a link to the home page for the
> course.  It would be a great feature for schools.
This is already possible due to the URL field.

Comment 12

[M Lopez-Ibanez]

It would be nice to have an HTML editor like the one used by Thunderbird for email.
Markdown would also be a nice alternative, but perhaps too advanced.

Comment 13

[Christopher King]

I'd like to see the description field support html with a formatting tool bar of its own.  Several years ago I read the book, "Take Back Your Life!  Using Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 to get organized and stay organized" by McGhee and Wittry.  That book shows how to use event descriptions for planning and accomplishing tasks.  Because event descriptions are used extensively in that approach, formatting is used to highlight the different parts of a task.  So, there's another reason for having this feature, though probably only a small fraction of users will use such a feature.

Comment 14

[M Lopez-Ibanez]

Bug 553132 would be a subset of this.

I'd propose to rename this to:

Task/Event descriptions/text should be HTML/rich text formatting

to make it easier to find.

Comment 15

[Christopher King]

Good idea.  I had trouble finding it with the current name.  (Looks like I don't have authority to rename it myself.)

Comment 18

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

It really needs to show html formatting of descriptions at least.
As is, events from google calendars are showing the raw html that they send out, and in plain text that's not very usable :(

Comment 19

[TBirdFanLondon]

These days my calendar is full of events that happen online. Tools like MS Teams or Skype 4 business add links into the description that will open up their app and connect you to the meeting channel/room. Not being able to just click on them drives me more and more to also have the calendar (google) open in the browser where I can directly click onto links in the description of the event.
Recently Bug 1607834 was opened to ask for the same thing.

A workaround has been not to rely on the notification pop-up but to ask for notification emails. There links can be clicked on directly. However those emails are clogging up the inbox and really are a bad workaround for a much needed functionality!

Comment 20

[pgnet.dev]

The error rate for end-users incorrectly copy-n-pasting commonly long, but TXT format, vidcall links is, here, unacceptably high.

Ppl are missing meetings left & right ...

Some services pop up an error when an incorrectl/nonexistent vid-link is attempted; others, like Jitsi, will happily create a mtg room for any link your create.

In current state, it's really a non-starter for wide rollout/use.

Comment 21

[Marc Auslander]

Another need it converting an email to an event. Same story of loosing coherence and links.

Comment 22

[Dave Labrecque]

It looks like this bug thread has evolved into addressing the formatting of text in the Event Description field. At 22 years old, should I be worried that this will not be fixed any time soon? It has not worked for some time, now. Although, I don't imagine that the ostensible ability to format text in this field as it now teases has been around that long.

Is there a better bug/thread to look into? I haven't found it.