299370 - Reload remote calendars at startup *before* generating alarm

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Calendar :: Sunbird Only, defect)

Description

[Michael Cadwallader]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8a5) Gecko/20050203 Mozilla Sunbird/0.2

I have two remote calendars that I reload via FTP
(ftp://name:password@server/file.ics). I have Sunbird configured to reload
remote calendars at startup and publish all changes to the remote files. The
problem is that Sunbird issues alarms at startup for events that I have already
acknowledged from another location. For example, I have a meeting at work that
happened at 1 yesterday afternoon. The alarm for the meeting showed up at 12:45
and I acknowledged it. Then, when I got home and fired up Sunbird an alarm
immediately appeared for the meeting.

I assume this is because Sunbird is generating alarms at startup from the local
file that was stored during the last session rather than reloading the remote
file before generating alarms. (I suppose it is also possible that the remote
file is not being updated when I acknowledge an alarm, but a reload at work
later in the day did not produce an unexpected alarm, so I don't believe this is
the case.)


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Create a remote calendar with and alarmed devent and subscribe to it from two
different machines.
2. Shut down Sunbird on machine one. 
3. Acknowledge the alarm on machine two.
4. Start Sunbird on machine one.

Actual Results:  
You see the alarm on machine one, even though the remote file should already
indicate that it has been acknowledged. 

Expected Results:  
Recognize the input from machine two when Sunbird is started on machine one. 

I originally posted this question on the Calendar forum. Rod Whiteley had this
to say about it:

In general when you subscribe to a remote calendar, Sunbird does not know
whether you want your own alarms raised on the events in it, or whether you want
to respect alarm acknowledgements stored in the file. As you point out, the
present behaviour is a curious mixture of the two. Normally when someone else
has acknowledged an alarm, then you do not want that acknowledgement to apply to
you. But when that someone else is you on another computer, then perhaps you do
want the acknowledgement to apply.

It's the kind of thing that CalDAV might address, but I don't know enough about
it to tell you whether it does.

Comment 1

[Joey Minta]

Newer versions of Sunbird always reload the file before firing alarms.  (They don't even have the data for offline use at all, so they don't have a choice.)

Marking WFM.