[EventCalendar] Re: Implementing a full-page "big" calendar display

[firetree_ec3 at spamex.com]

Hi Matthew,

This certainly sounds like an excellent idea. I know that Alex Tingle  
has it on his "To Do" list for future versions.

I could certainly use this in my implementation, and would  
enthusiastically support you in any way I can.

Chris

> Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 13:26:54 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Matthew Middleton <mailinglists at zzxc.net>
> Subject: [EventCalendar] Implementing a full-page "big" calendar
> 	display
> To: eventcalendar at firetree.net
> Message-ID: <368960.57236.qm at web36209.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> I need a large, full-page calendar for a site I am
> designing.  I found eventcalendar3 to be the
> best-integrated calendar plugin for Wordpress, so I
> tested adding such functionality by adding extra CSS
> and inserting event descriptions and individual links
> into the calendar table itself.
>
> So far, I have only done this to the php generated
> calendar - I have yet to do it to javascript-created
> calendars produced from the XML feed.
>
> Is such a feature being worked on, or would it benefit
> this project for me to contribute my implementation?
> I will need to change things such as the format of the
> XML feed.  Additionally, I need to keep track of post
> IDs within the PHP functions.  Before I finish my
> implementation, I would like to know if anyone else is
> working on this, or if there are any preferred
> methods/formats I should be using.  (i.e. Should I
> create an entirely new XML feed for full-page
> calendars?  What conventions should I follow?)
>
> Other things that need to be addressed for this to
> work well:
> *No functionality to sort events by start time (this
> would not be trivial to add, as the event times are
> stored in the title by "day.php" - so the internal
> functions would need to be changed).
> *Page IDs are dropped in internal functions - only the
> link to all the day's events are kept.  Each <td/> in
> the big calendar needs to contain individual links to
> each event.
> *The elements of the calendar all use hard-coded IDs,
> only allowing one calendar per page
> *Various flexibility issues with internal functions;
> internal functions need to be updated and documented
> with more comments
> *The code that appears on the event's blog entry when
> displayed on a page or in a category should be
> customizable.  Right now, it is a rather inflexible
> table on regular pages, and plain text on category
> pages.
>
> Things that would be nice to have after basic
> functionality implemented:
> *A way to create a new post that defaults to an event
> on a given day by clicking a "+" button in the big
> calendar.
> *The big calendar should be able to display "category"
> calendars.  For example, all events filed under
> "parties" or "fun" could be accessed with
> ec3_get_calendar('big','parties,fun') or
> http://blog.url/?ec3_big_calendar&category=parties,fun.
> *The sidebar widget calendar could have an option for
> choosing which categories get displayed there.
> *The above two changes would require the php and
> javascript to keep track of which categories are being
> displayed, and use it when making XML requests or
> calling internal functions.
>
>
> I don't want to do a bunch of massive changes to the
> code, only to have it obsoleted by future official
> releases.  Hence, before I start any major changes, I
> want to seek advice first.  I will submit any
> substantial contributions I make to the code back to
> the project, of course, under the GPL.
>
> So far, I have only done an initial analysis of the
> eventcalendar3 code, so I may be missing some
> necessary changes.  As I said, so far I haven't
> implemented any of the XML feed changes or javascript
> changes to allow the big calendar to download new
> events when the month changes.
>
> Also, let me know of any features you would like to
> see in a full-page calendar, so I can keep them in
> mind with my implementation.