Calendars Created with Evolution are Read-Only

[mpwoodward]

I've been working with the Thunderbird Lightning add-on until recently, but now that I'm trying Evolution all my calendars are read-only. I understand that I won't necessarily be able to edit existing calendars because of the one publisher/many subscribers model, but even when I create a calendar from Evolution it comes up as read-only.

Has anyone had luck getting Amahi calendars working with Evolution?

[cpg]

My wife does that (and i subscribe to them). Occasionally (rarely), they become read only. Not sure if it's because some stray keystroke or stray mouse click.

Right-clicking on it, then making it not be read-only does it.

HTH

[mpwoodward]

Thanks, but I don't see anything related to read-only when I right-click in Evolution, so I'm not sure how to even control that or how I'd inadvertently make even new ones read-only.

Thunderbird and Lightning work fine so I'll just use that combination instead, but the behavior with Evolution is a bit strange.

[cpg]

I think that thunderbird creates them in some way that it's read-only for others.

When I try to edit thunderbird-created calendars from another client, I see them in read only. Maybe there is some client ID or something, as a crude control system in WEBDAV?

I have not tried the other way around or to dig deeper on this.

[mpwoodward]

Yep, I understand that I wouldn't be able to edit calendars created in Thunderbird from Evolution, but even creating a calendar in Evolution itself is read only. So are you saying that perhaps Thunderbird is somehow having a global effect on all the calendars? Interesting thought--I'll look into that. Thanks.

[sourinux]

I have the same problem (Evolution/Ubuntu 9.10). I first tried to create a calendar directly in Evolution, following the instructions on http://wiki.amahi.org/index.php/Calendars.
Evolution asks you for the type of calendar you want to create. It offers 2 choices for remote calendars: 'Caldav' or 'On the web' (+ 'Google calendar', but we don't want to put our data in the wild, do we ?).
Choosing Caldav won't work: Evolution can't reach any Caldav server, of course, because the HDA doesn't offer one
Choosing 'On the web' looks like the good way. You give the calendar a name and you put, as URL, http://calendar/<CalendarName>[.ics]. Evolution will change your http:// prefix into a webcal:// prefix, meaning what it means. Don't worry. Evolution asks you for a user name, but you don't need to put one. I tried with and without user name, it didn't change anything. And now what: you click OK. And it looks like Evolution created the calendar on the server for you. In fact, it didn't. Try adding an event: it will shout at you saying the calendar is "read-only". What a shame !
After some look-around, I started to understand:
- Webcal (Web calendar) is not a standard protocol (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webcal). It's just a way to say you want to work with a distant iCal file (.ics), probably on a webdav server (but who knows ?).
- Evolution seems unable to publish using the Webcal pseudo-protocol. It can only read from a distant server. That's why you get this "Read-only calendar" error. See e.g. http://www.mail-archive.com/evolution-l ... 04362.html
- The only standard for read/write distant calendaring is CALDAV, but it's not built into our HDA. So bad !

If you want to publish to your HDA, it's still possible within Evolution using another feature: go to Edit>Preferences>Calendar&Tasks>Calendar_Publishing. There you can publish on a webdav server, and choose how often the calendar should be written (not a lot of options here !). But it's one way too: it's not a synchronisation feature, just a publishing one.

So for now, I can't say my HDA gave me what I expected in calendaring experience. It would be very nice to have a real CALDAV server... Unfortunately, I'm not the guy to code it

[cpg]

in apple's ical we also have to give a username sometimes. anything works as long as it is not empty.

also, have you looked at the log files in /var/hda/calendar/logs/* ?

i believe we have a world-class calendar (apache!), it just may be configured sub-optimally.

[sourinux]

At the moment I register a new calendar in Evolution, the error log on /var/hda/calendar/logs says:

[Tue Feb 09 07:59:10 2010] [error] [client 192.168.1.105] File does not exist: /var/hda/calendar/html/test.ics

Which would confirm that Evolution doesn't even try to create the calendar but just to access it (read-only).

But given that Webcal isn't a well-defined standard, can you blame Evolution for not implementing it as may iCal on Mac OS X ?

[cpg]

I did a quick test with Evolution with the tips you mention and was able to publish a calendar to my Amahi HDA.

The help documentation does explain it, though it's a less than straightforward method.

You have to have a calendar, then go to Edit -> Preferences -> Calendar and Tasks -> Calendar Publishing tab

In Locations, you click on Add, and a "New Location" comes up.

Then you Select the calendar under the Calendar tab. After that you can enter the settings:

Code: Select all

Server: calendar File: WhateverYouLike.ics

you can leave the port/username/password blank.

EvolutionCalendars.png (83.15 KiB) Viewed 7935 times

you can then select Actions -> Publish Calendar Information ... to sync on demand.

now, this deserves a wiki guide ... anyone?

[sourinux]

Added a link from the wiki to your post. Not as good as a full guide, but better than nothing