The K Desktop Environment

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5. Appointment Editor Window

The appointment editor window is a detailed interface for adding new appointments or editing existing ones. Without using this window, you are generally limited to changing only an appointment's description (and hopefully, when we have time to implement it, an appointment's time and date as well). While this is good for ``quick'' access, if you want to change more sophisticated components of an appointment such as how often it repeats, when and if an alarm should be set, what categories it belongs to, and so on, you will need this window.

The appointment editor window is made up of three tabs. The General tab has the most common items related to the appointment, including times and dates, description, privacy information, categories, etc. The Details tab has more advanced information, especially information pertaining to group scheduling. Unfortunately, we haven't finished implementing most of these features, and for that reason, the documentation will not cover the Details tab (until that part of the code is completed). The last tab is the Recurrence tab, which holds all the settings for if and how often an event should repeat over a period of time.

To save changes to your appointment, press the ``disk'' button on the toolbar (it stands for save). To cancel, either close the window, or press the ``cancel'' button on the toolbar.

5.1 General Tab

Summary

A Short description of the event or appointment.

Start and End Time

Set your appointment's starting and ending date and time here. Click on the little calendar icon next to the date to pull up an interactive date selector, or type in a date in the same format shown. For changing the time, you can type it in directly, or use the pulldown on the combobox to choose the time from a list. You can also use the up and down arrows to scroll through 15 minute increments of time.

All day event

Click this checkbox if you don't want to associate any time with the appointment at all; instead you want to make more of a ``general reminder'' that the appointment occurs on this date.

Recurring event

If you click this checkbox, the Recurrence tab will become available, and you will be able to set up how often the appointment repeats itself. By default, it isn't checked--the appointment will occur only once. See Recurrence Tab.

Reminder

Clicking this checkbox will enable a visual reminder or alarm for your appointment. Type in the number of minutes ``lead-time'' in the textbox next to it. Unfortunately, at this time, the ``WAV'' and ``PROG'' buttons, which will eventually let you play a noise or run a program when the alarm goes off, are not available.

Show Time As:

Using this combo box, you will be able to switch how your appointment's time appears to the ``outside world''--either Free or Busy. This will make more sense when the group scheduling features of KOrganizer are completed.

Description

The large text area beneath the alarm information is where you can put any details about the appointment. Cut and paste in airline flight information, details of a meeting, notes about a homework assignment, or anything else that requires more detail beyond the simple one-line summary.

Categories

This button will bring up a dialog box which will allow you to select a number of categories to place this appointment in. Eventually, you will be able to sort events by category or select to only view events in certain categories, but this isn't finished yet. For now, use categories as personal reminders and notes about what sort of appointment or event this is.

Private

If the appointment is of a private or confidential nature, you will want to click this textbox. When the group scheduling features are completed, only ``public'' events will be world-visible; private events will not show up.

5.2 Details Tab

This section still needs to be written. Volunteers?

5.3 Recurrence Tab

Appointment Time

In this area, you can edit an appointment's start and end time. Changes made in these areas will be reflected on the General tab, and vice versa. See General Tab.

Recurrence Rule

This appears to be a complex section, but it is really rather simple. Choose the repetition period by clicking the Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Yearly radio button on the left side of this area. When you choose a different period, the display to the right of the radio button will change to reflect the settings associated with that period. By default, an appointment will set itself up to repeat on a weekly basis.

For Daily, simply choose how often to repeat. By default, it is every day (1), but you can change this to every other day (2), etc.

For Weekly, change the period of weeks if you wish, and select which days of the week you want the appointment to occur on.

For Monthly, you can either have the appointment occur on the same day of the month, or in a specific week on a specific day of the month. You need to choose this. By default, it assumes you want to repeat on the same calendar day of the month (like the 15th for instance). You can also adjust the period, so you can repeat monthly, tri-monthly, bi-yearly, etc.

Yearly is similar to Monthly. You need to choose whether or not you are indicating a calendar day of the year (i.e., the 250th day of the year), or this day of the month in a particular month of the year. By default, KOrganizer assumes you mean the actual day of the year. You can adjust the period to reflect events that occur bi-annually, every four years, and so on.

Recurrence Range

By default, appoints which repeat will do so forever; there is no ``end'' to the repetition. This may or may not be desirable, so you are provided with two ways of terminating the repetition: either by giving an ending date, or by specifying a total number of recurrences. In this area, you can choose the method that is suitable for this appointment.

Exceptions

You may have a very nice recurrence rule set up, but realize that there are a few exceptions. If you set up your college class schedule for instance, you may want to make exceptions for holidays and the like. In this area, you can add, change, and delete dates from the list of exceptions (i.e. times when even if the recurrence rule matches, the event will not be scheduled). Pick a date with the date selector, and press Add to include it. For removing dates, hilight them in the box on the right side, and then click Delete.

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