sync Service to delete marked events

[dschuermann]

Use Account on all Android's and create a service to delete the marked events

[Gitoffthelawn]

What do you mean by this?

Is this related to SufficientlySecure/calendar-import-export#46 ?

[dschuermann]

yup, I hadn't time to answer, but wanted to make a TODO for me to work on this.
Should be easy to create a sync service that really deletes the entries that have been marked for deletion by the calendar apps

[Gitoffthelawn]

Wow! That would be FANTASTIC!

I'm without a working calendar app right now (using good ol' pen and paper) due to this issue.

I forgot how much I like pen and paper, but at the same time miss the convenience of the digital tools.

Just so I can plan, and _not_ to apply any pressure, do you have a rough guesstimate on when you might finish this? I know, nothing like being asked when you will finish, before you even start! :-)

Without this type of tool, I don't understand how everyone is using offline calendars. I guess they never perform backup / restore operations and never look at the actual data that is stored.

[dschuermann]

Can't really give an estimate, maybe I find some time for it today.

I have to confess that I also forgot about the issue that entries are only marked for deletion and not actually deleted. But this is indeed a very important issue that must be fixed.

[Gitoffthelawn]

Sounds great!

I'll tell you my understanding of the issue, which may or may not be accurate. ;-)

Calendar apps delete events in offline calendars by flagging them for deletion. Some calendar apps, like aCalendar/aCalendar+ also remove the UUID.

The idea, apparently, is that Google Calendar Sync is supposed to eventually delete the events. For devices without Google Calendar Sync, of course, this can never happen. But even for devices with Google Calendar Sync, I have yet to see this ever happen.

Also, interestingly, there is another related issue: being able to delete/edit individual events in a series (for offline calendars). Some apps can do this, some cannot. But all apps can do this for synced calendars, so it has something to do with the difference between synced and local calendars.

Curiously, the app "Today Calendar" displays a toast, for all calendars, when the user wants to delete an individual event in a repeated series. "Wait for events to sync to delete only this event (5 mins).". However, even after syncing (for devices that have Google Calendar Sync), it remains impossible for individual events in a series (for local calendars) to ever be deleted by that app.