265516 - when refreshing a remote subscribed calendar with alerts, the calendar alerts all events from the past which where confirmed before

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Calendar :: General, defect)

Description

[Ch. Goetze]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040825 Camino/0.8.1
Build Identifier: 

I store all my calendars at my server (apache with mod_dav) via https.
My privates from my notebook (iBook, Mac OS X, iCal.app); my office from my
desktop (x86, WinXP, Thunderbird with Calendar Plugin or Sunbird (I test both!)). 

I subscribe to my private calendars from my office PC via http as read-only
calendars and I subscribe my office calendar from my private notebook via http
as read-only calendar.

In iCal I view my tasks and dates an I get the alarms once (the read-only from
my office!).
At Thunderbird with Calendar Plugin or Sunbird I get every time I reload the
calendar all alarms from the past to confirm they?

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. store a calendar with alarms at the internet (not local!)
2. subscribe to the calendar (now confirm all termins from the past)
3. refresh the calendar =>> now you need to confirm a second time
4. refresh the calendar =>> now you need to confirm...
.
.
.
Actual Results:  
I confirm to many... I need time to work q;°) ... the only way is to delete old
events at the PC which is configured to write.

Expected Results:  
I think the local saved version is not updated that I confirm the events, dates,
tasks.

Comment 1

[Michiel van Leeuwen (email: mvl+moz@)]

If the file is read-only, calendar can't save that you acknowledged. So needing
to reconfirm when going to another computer with write-access is expected.
Needing to reconfirm on reload isn't a great idea....
(although i have no idea on how to fix it)

Comment 2

[Ch. Goetze]

(In reply to comment #1)
> If the file is read-only, calendar can't save that you acknowledged. So needing
> to reconfirm when going to another computer with write-access is expected.
> Needing to reconfirm on reload isn't a great idea....
> (although i have no idea on how to fix it)

1st, the reason that this feature is needed: sometimes I'm not allowed to write a calendar, for example: 
the calendar of a business partner of me allow me to see one of his... and there I not allowed to write.
2nd, Apple iCall.app do it right? I think the do not only download the remote and overwrite the local, I 
think they made a diff (or something like this) before.
(I use with Apple iCal.app many calendars and there are many with alarms, but they are all not useable 
with the Mozilla Calendar)

Without this feature I think it is not useable for a workgroup or business partners.

Comment 3

[Michiel van Leeuwen (email: mvl+moz@)]

so the alarm data should not be saved inside the .ics file, because you can't
write to that.
Guess this depends on bug 265525 then.

Comment 4

[Ch. Goetze]

(In reply to comment #3)
> so the alarm data should not be saved inside the .ics file, because you can't
> write to that.
> Guess this depends on bug 265525 then.

Everyone is not allowed to write to all the calendars published via icalshare.com or other sites. But the 
Calendar Plugin and Sunbird also copy the downloaded calendar to local disk and there it is allowed to 
write the confirm of a event/meeting/task.
So I think iCall.app from Apple make a diff from the remote calendar with the local copy and set all 
events with an alert confirmed before they store the remote, when the event is the same as the event in 
the local copy. On this way noone need to confirm a event twice.
This I think is a "must have" feature that Calendar or Sunbird is a useable App.

Comment 5

[Matthew (lilmatt) Willis]

(In reply to comment #4)
> (In reply to comment #3)
> > so the alarm data should not be saved inside the .ics file, because you can't
> > write to that.
> > Guess this depends on bug 265525 then.
> 
> Everyone is not allowed to write to all the calendars published via
icalshare.com or other sites. But the 
> Calendar Plugin and Sunbird also copy the downloaded calendar to local disk
and there it is allowed to 
> write the confirm of a event/meeting/task.
> So I think iCall.app from Apple make a diff from the remote calendar with the
local copy and set all 
> events with an alert confirmed before they store the remote, when the event is
the same as the event in 
> the local copy. On this way noone need to confirm a event twice.
> This I think is a "must have" feature that Calendar or Sunbird is a useable App.

Reporter,

Unfortunately, not having write access to the remote .ics prevents the app on
one computer from knowing which alerts you've acknowledged on another, _even_if_
the alert was stored outside the read-only .ics somehow 

There was another bug similar to this where acknowledging alarms on remote
calendars did not write the "last ack" date/time back to the server, so even on
the same computer you would repeatedly get the same alarms every time you
reloaded the remote calendar. This has been fixed in the latest builds. Could
that bug have anything to do with what you were seeing?

Comment 6

[Brian Spolarich]

(In reply to comment #5)
 
> There was another bug similar to this where acknowledging alarms on remote
> calendars did not write the "last ack" date/time back to the server, so even on
> the same computer you would repeatedly get the same alarms every time you
> reloaded the remote calendar. This has been fixed in the latest builds. Could
> that bug have anything to do with what you were seeing?

  I'm seeing the same unexpected behaviour using the latest release of Sunbird
(0.2RC2).  

  I am subscribed by my husband's calendar which he has hosted on his .Mac
account from Sunbird on my PC running Windows XP Pro SP2.  I don't have write
access to this calendar...I'm just subscribed to it so I can easily see what's
there.

  If I reload the remote calendars, I am immediately barraged with a cascade 62
unacknowledged alarms, which take a long time to display (and seem to hang
Sunbird for some time - it refuses to repaint the window for quite a while). 
Eventually I can acknowledge them. 

  If I reload remote calendars, the .ics file gets downloaded again, the events
fire, and I have to acknowledge the alarms again.  There is some improvement
between 0.2RC1 and RC2.  It used to be the case that it would re-fire the events
every time I enabled or disabled display of the remote calendar.

  I think my expectations are reasonable -- I should be able to subscribe to a
remote calendar in read-only mode and only have to acknowledge alarms once.  Or
better yet, have an option whether I want to see alarms for that calendar or not.

  It seems like Sunbird needs to keep a separate data file locally that acts as
a cache of information remote calendars that one is not updating.  A simplistic
approach would be to just keep a list of the UIDs of events that one has
acknowledged.  A less simplistic model would be to have another .ICS format file
that contains the acknowledgements that are merged into the subscribed calendar.

Comment 7

[Matthew (lilmatt) Willis]

Reassigning all automatically assigned bugs from Mostafa to nobody@m.o

Bugspam filter: TorontoMostafaMove

Comment 8

[Damian Szczepanik]

WFM
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9a2pre) Gecko/20070106 Calendar/0.4a1

if you don't have write access you need to press dismiss every refresh/restart
if you have write access only once