1731783 - Calendar Printout List View date range lost in TB 91.1

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Calendar :: Printing, defect)

Description

[Harvey]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:92.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/92.0

Steps to reproduce:

Choose a Calendar View - Pick Menu File -> Print -> Layout 'List'

Actual results:

You can only pick a monthly Range for the printout. Three months back or 12 months forward. How to print a range not shown in the dropdown menu?

Expected results:

In former versions of TB we had a Date picker to freely pick a range of calendar events between a start and end date - which perfectly makes sense.
Why has this been removed? Or is it just a glitch!

Comment 1

[Geoff Lankow (:darktrojan)]

I tried to use a date picker there, it would've made life a lot easier, but it was impossible at the time. The date pickers we have available are a lot more complicated than they appear. I suppose we could implement a bespoke one for this situation, but that's a lot of work for a very uncommon usage.

Out of interest, what date range are you trying to print?

Comment 2

[Harvey]

Forgive Me, but this is not an 'uncommon situation'. Even the monthly list is limited to a range of 15 months. It is not possible to print lists for months that are not in this range. For example try to print a list for a month lying 4 months ago...
But - this is only half the truth. If someone tries to print a 'Todo' List, he surely does not want to print the whole month. Our case needs a printout for just one day, usually the actual or the following day. This is handed out those that have no access to our calendar (for good ;))
Once again - this was implemented in the versions before 98 and is lost now.

Comment 4

[Anje]

I also reported this so I created a duplicate -
In Calendar
File > Print
Select eg: Events
Choose Date Range
FROM / TO - does not offer a mini calendar to select date
Offers a restricted drop down with earliest date June 2021 and last date August 2022

I wanted to print off events prior to that date - impossible.
I wanted to print off using a date reference that commenced with the start of a specific year eg: 1st Jan 2021 - impossible.

I wanted to print off specific selected events in that time frame- impossible - a separate bug 1732734 which I've listed as it may be related in context.

I wanted to print out a list of all events that were birthdays starting with January 2021 to Dec 2021
I selected all those events in the Calendar
After clicking on Print only one event was displayed and it was displayed twice because the calendar shows two occurances because it is mentioned in two calendars. A bit weird - so possibly yet another bug. It works ok providing you remember to choose only that calendar and hide all others first.

I could not use the date range, it was useless. I could not choose what I wanted to print as it is not in list.
Even if a month year is in the list, I cannot select the day.
I did not want ALL events to be printed between date range even if it is just one month.
I do not want to print one event at a time - Sorry just realised I do not have that choice either. I would need to delete all other unwanted events or convert them into Tasks, so I could temporarilly stop them in a month print out. It just gets worse. That is not an ideal workaround.

Comment 5

[Anje]

Out of interest, what date range are you trying to print?
examples:
A particular day of choice in any month or year. So range is one day.
any twelve month period of complete months eg: 1st jan - 31st dec
Any year period starting on any day such as financial year eg: 5th April - 4th April
Any selected event no date range.

Comment 6

[Harvey]

We need mostly
'A particular day of choice in any month or year.'
But all other options may occur as well. Why can't there be simply just a date picker for 'start date' and 'end date' so anyone could define its own range? To me this seems to be the easiest way to satisfy all needs.

'Any selected event no date range' can be handled already by simply just defining several calendars, i.e. birthdays.

Comment 7

[Anje]

'Any selected event no date range' can be handled already by simply just defining several calendars, i.e. birthdays.

But that is assuming someone has a calendar perhaps called birthdays which only contains birthdays.
I do not - All events and Tasks are only in one calendar - the Home default thunderbird calendar, so if I want to select birthdays in a year, currently it selects every event in the entire date range.
There is nothing correct in any form at the moment unless you want to print everything within a date range which in itself is extremely restrictive.
The current Printing of events or anything in the Calendar is virtually non existant.
Currently, it only prints everything within a very poor date range, it does not print anything you select regardless of date range.
Printing in the calendar should not be dependent upon a date range, if selected events are only required to be printed - hence having no date range needs to be an option.
It's not just a poor date picker problem, it's the inability to print selected events as well.

Comment 8

[Harvey]

@Anje: I understand what you are describing, but this is different from what I reported. My Report is about a feature that has been in previous versions of TB and is lost with the last big update, for what ever cause.
Yours is more like a feature request, because you want something that has not been in TB before.
That said it seems better to me that you open a feature request on your own. If this gets too complicated to realize the probability of getting anything at all might tend to 0...

From the database programmers view I would say that it is easier to define a SELECT statement for a date range than what you want to achieve. The only way to tell what entries have to be selected and printed is either to let them be selected by the user (which might be very cumbersome for a longer time period) or to select by keywords from the calendar entries name or even details. I don't know if those fields are even indexed but the date surely is...

Comment 9

[Anje]

I'm asking for the old calendar date selector so that it is possible to select any date including a single day. I was under the impression you were asking for this.

Previously you could select an event and print it, now you cannot, so this is not new, but it is new in the updated version. See Bug 1732734

Comment 10

[Jim]

I have been using the calendar to keep a schedule of a dance/fitness studio for our different tenants. With different calendars for each tenant, I print a monthly calendar for my use showing all the bookings and one for each tenant showing only their own bookings along with their invoices. I would select the first and last day of the month, and only those events would show on the calendar.

Now, when I select 'October 2021', the events from September 26-30 and November 1-6 also show up on the October calendar. It is now less clear how many days the monthly rental is, as the calendar includes dates from the previous and following month. I can eliminate this unwanted information in the pdf file, but it would be best to have the old date selector method return. I realize some people would want the additional information from the previous and following month on the calendar, and they could still get this information by selecting the appropriate dates.

I do really like the Thunderbird email and calendar program, and appreciate the time and effort that is put into the improvements.

Comment 11

[Harvey]

I'm asking for the old calendar date selector so that it is possible to select any date including a single day. I was under the impression you were asking for this.

Yes I was asking for this. (In reply to Anje from comment #9)

Previously you could select an event and print it, now you cannot, so this is not new, but it is new in the updated version. See Bug 1732734

Now I get it ;) But I still feel this is different from what I reported. Let's see what happens, though :)

Comment 13

[Geoff Lankow (:darktrojan)]

Attachment: Bug 1731783 - Let the user pick any day or month when printing the calendar. r=mkmelin

For the list printout, I've dragged in a XUL minimonth to use as a date picker since the HTML date picker doesn't work here. Not very happy about using XUL here, but I'm not willing to convert it to HTML just for this (and take the risk of uplifting the change to 91).

For the month printout, I've changed the predefined list of months into month selector and a year selector.

Comment 14

[Geoff Lankow (:darktrojan)]

Attachment: Bug 1731783 - Convert minimonth header oncommand attributes to event listeners. r=mkmelin

For some reason these event handlers don't work as attributes in the printing form, but they do work when added with addEventListener.

Depends on D129736

Comment 15

[Gary Mayfield]

I have not updated to TB 91 yet and won't for a while but I agree with those who are advocating for a simple date picker range like we have in TB 78.

Comment 16

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/82f8b9807b08
Let the user pick any day or month when printing the calendar. r=mkmelin
https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/22c213e8033f
Convert minimonth header oncommand attributes to event listeners. r=mkmelin

Comment 18

[Geoff Lankow (:darktrojan)]

Comment on attachment 9248131 [details]
Bug 1731783 - Let the user pick any day or month when printing the calendar. r=mkmelin

[Approval Request Comment]
Regression caused by (bug #): bug 1713045
User impact if declined: user can't choose exactly what dates they want to print the calendar for
Testing completed (on c-c, etc.): in 95
Risk to taking this patch (and alternatives if risky): low

Both patches required.

Comment 19

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Comment on attachment 9248131 [details]
Bug 1731783 - Let the user pick any day or month when printing the calendar. r=mkmelin

[Triage Comment]
Approved for ers91

Comment 20

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Comment on attachment 9248132 [details]
Bug 1731783 - Convert minimonth header oncommand attributes to event listeners. r=mkmelin

[Triage Comment]
Approved for ers91

Comment 21

[Rob Lemley [:rjl]]

Thunderbird 91.3.2:
https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/comm-esr91/rev/5e08b5c48abb
https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/comm-esr91/rev/ba3b554fffc6

Comment 22

[WaltS48 [:walts48]]

Not a calendar printer myself, but I can select a Date range in List View when printing in my testing of the 91.3.2 release candidate on Windows 10.

Comment 23

[Anje]

Confirm - I updated to 91.3.2 on Windows 10
Using 'List' view.
I can choose a from and to with identical dates and print one day.
I can choose two various dates from earlier than the other and it shows in preview all events etc.

Many thanks for fixing this functionality.

Comment 24

[Harvey]

Confirmed: 91.3.2 on Linux works as expected. Great Job, many thanks from me as well!

Comment 25

[Jim]

The new date selector works for 'lists', but if you select 'monthly grid' it reverts to selection by month. It seems you can choose any month you would like, unlike the previous version where you can only go back 3 months and forward 12 months.

However, printing any selected month also prints the last few days of the previous month and the first few days of the following month if they are in the same week as the selected month. For some people (such as myself, see comment from 10/24/21) it is preferably to only print the events/tasks from a single month.

Can the date selector be extended to work with the 'monthly grid' as well, so only the specific dates are shown on the grid?

Comment 26

[Gary Mayfield]

One thing I noticed that is an issue for me is repeating tasks. I have a task that repeats daily. I selected to print all tasks and pushed the date to 12/31/2024. The repeating task showed up for every day during that time period. I can understand that someone might want this to happen however in this case for me it would be good to have the option of showing a repeating task only for the first due date.

Great job! Thanks to all who worked on this fix. Other than the one suggestion above, it works well for me on 91.3.2 on Windows 10.

Comment 27

[Gary Mayfield]

One other minor problem. I did Ctl-P from the task list. Selected List (default), unchecked Events and left all 3 task check boxes checked. Selected today as the from and to dates. Selected "Save to PDF" in destination and left all other options at the default. The preview shows the correct tasks. Clicking on "Save" does nothing. I also have Bullzip installed with a Bullzip PDF printer defined. Selecting that printer and "Save" still does nothing. I was able to save to PDF by using the Print using system dialog option. I also tried selecting events only and got same results.