288686 - Synchronize categories among remote calendars [extension fodder]

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Calendar :: General, enhancement)

Description

[James William Cook, Jr.]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1) Opera 7.54  [en]
Build Identifier: Sunbird 0.2 rv1.8a5 20050203 (two different work stations tested)

If I enter Tools>Options and choose to add a category (say, "Rebuild"), that new 
category will appear in my Sunbird for my use, it will appear at the category 
for any event which I create using my Sunbird.  However, the new category will 
NOT be available for any other user on the network.  They will be able to see 
that the Event in question is marked as Rebuild in the category list, but they 
will not able to create a new event using this category.  Further, if they were 
to change the category they would not be able to revert to Rebuild (as Rebuild 
will not appear in their category drop-down list).

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. In Sunbird, go to Tools>Options... and select General on the left.
2. Add a category intended for use on a Remote Calendar (network calendar)
3. Create an event using that category
4. Go to another machine (or sign on as a different user on the same machine)
5. Run Sunbird and find the event in question; note the category is the newly 
created one
6. Attempt to create a new event as this other user and you will find the new 
category is not an option

Actual Results:  
Newly created categories are not published into the remote calendar but remain 
the property of the local user, even though an event employing that newly 
created category will display properly for all users on the network.

Expected Results:  
Newly created categories should be published to the remote calendar so as to 
become available for all authorized network users who have access to that remote 
calendar.

I am continuing to work with this product and am happy to assist in testing 
where such a thing is possible.

Comment 1

[Simon Paquet [:sipaq]]

dmose, I would consider this a bug. Do you agree or is use-case not defined in
the CALDAV standard.

Comment 2

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

The build in question doesn't actually support CalDAV, so I think this probably
not the right component.  Reassigning...

Comment 3

[Matthew (lilmatt) Willis]

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

Bugspam filter: TorontoMostafaMove

Comment 4

[Damian Szczepanik]

(In reply to comment #2)
> The build in question doesn't actually support CalDAV, so I think this probably
> not the right component.  Reassigning...

dmose, how about current version?

Comment 5

[Bruno Browning]

It seems to me that what reporter is expecting here is that a newly-encountered Category should be automatically added to the category list stored in the local profile. That's certainly not part of CalDAV (nor RFC 2445) and strikes me as likely to become problematic as iIip becomes more common: I certainly don't want it to be the case that receiving an invite from a German friend adds 'Wichtig' (or even 'Bier') to my category list, for example. At most Sb/Ltn should notice the new category and offer the user the choice of adding it to the local profile.

Synchronizing categories between Sb/Ltn installations strikes me as analogous to synchronizing bookmarks between Ff installations. As such, I think this is less a bug than an opportunity for someone to write a nifty extension.

Comment 6

[cmtalbert]

I agree with Bruno.  I think this use case is rather unique to this user's installation.  I think that in the general case, people would expect and want their categories to remain local to their calendar.  If someone would like to write an extension to allow categories to be synchronized among installations of Lightning/Sunbird, I think that would be great.

Leaving unconfirmed (we only confirm things we intend to fix in the current product), but we will accept an extension for a category synchronizer. I'll change the summary to reflect this.

Comment 7

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen][☁️📆]]

I think category synchronization is something that should be done with the weave extension, so this is a dependant bug on the non-existing bug to implement weave for calendar.

iirc, we have been marking extension fodder as WONTFIX. No hard feelings, I do see the use case here, but I think its something that should be taken care of in an extension.