Integration with Evolution Calendar lost?

[igorsantos07]

It seems there was some sort of integration between the Evolution Calendars and the Calendar applet in the panel on GNOME 2, but that's not present on MATE anymore. Is there any reason for this to be gone, or is it just waiting an update on implementation?

Nowadays this is quite a basic feature - look at our online calendars on the phone - and it's yet another reason why MATE is falling behind other DMs :/

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[lukefromdc]

I'll have to install Evolution to experiment with this, and that will have to be done somewhere I have enough bandwidth to fetch the packages. This would be quite spectacular in the theme I use that looks like the early gnome-shell theme in panel menus and the calendar

[igorsantos07]

Glad to know I'm not crazy when requesting a 201X feature on our desktop :)

[lukefromdc]

Problem for me in playing with this is I can't pull Evolution at home due to
bandwidth and have no template for how the integration worked as I've never
used it. Just to test the old setup I will have to start up an old live DVD from
6 years ago on a system that can boot it.

On 9/17/2016 at 1:51 PM, "Igor Santos" notifications@github.com wrote:

Glad to know I'm not crazy when requesting a 201X feature on our
desktop :)

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[lukefromdc]

OK, I just found the Evolution packages in Debian are only about 10MB
although they expand on about 70 on installation, have them on their way
but I am getting behind and it will be a while before I can find anything on
this I suspect.

On 9/17/2016 at 1:51 PM, "Igor Santos" notifications@github.com wrote:

Glad to know I'm not crazy when requesting a 201X feature on our
desktop :)

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[flexiondotorg]

The evolution code was removed from MATE sometime ago, it is in the GitHub history. It was removed because the Calendar integration used widgets provided by evolution, so evolution components were a build dependency.

I do agree that the re-instating the evolution-data-server integration would be great, but this time use native GTK widgets.

[lukefromdc]

That's probably beyond my current ability to write code, though I will take a look at
the original code for this. Were there any Evolution changes to remove integration
with GNOME 2 after GNOME 3 came out that would affect this as well?

The GTK 3 transition obviously also affect this, as right now native GTK widgets would
have to be written for both GTK versions. Whoever wrote the code would then have to
have test systems for both and be able to easily switch between them. As for me, I have
always done everything on bare metal.

Parts of evolution were always a dependency of GNOME 2. There are a lot of other
desktops (mostly the lighter ones) that also don't have any kind of calendar integration,
in the case of MATE it does constitute a removed feature.

On 9/17/2016 at 3:22 PM, "Martin Wimpress" notifications@github.com wrote:

The evolution code was removed from MATE sometime ago, it is in
the GitHub history. It was removed because the Calendar
integration used widgets provided by evolution, so evolution
components were a build dependency.

I do agree that the re-instating the evolution-data-server
integration would be great, but this time use native GTK widgets.

You are receiving this because you commented.
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
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[lukefromdc]

I just found I cannot configure Evolution calendar without connecting it to an email
account. I don't have any email accounts that allow access other than by web
browser as Hushmail does not monetize with ads and does not include that on
free accounts. If I enter a random email address I can get past that screen but the
next screen asks for email server information I do not have, thus I cannot interact
further with it it seems.

Also, I was unable to find any references to Evolution in the Github history for
mate-panel/applets/clock.

On 9/17/2016 at 3:22 PM, "Martin Wimpress" notifications@github.com wrote:

The evolution code was removed from MATE sometime ago, it is in
the GitHub history. It was removed because the Calendar
integration used widgets provided by evolution, so evolution
components were a build dependency.

I do agree that the re-instating the evolution-data-server
integration would be great, but this time use native GTK widgets.

You are receiving this because you commented.
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
#480 (comment)
247800080

[mcphail]

I've been experimenting with Ubuntu Mate, and this issue might be a blocker for me. Having a functional calendar/event/task widget makes my working life easier.

If this cannot be fixed in the short term, can I request that the current implementation is altered so the dates are not clickable and cannot be highlighted? At present, the widget gives the impression that something can be done by clicking on dates. I spent ages looking for configuration to get my online calendars working with this. If the dates weren't clickable, I would have known it would not work.

Interestingly, the Ubuntu Unity and Solus Budgie calendar widgets betray the same behaviour: the dates can be clicked but nothing can be achieved by this. Both of these widgets spring to life when the full evolution package is installed. Unfortunately, evolution-data-server on its own does not seem to be enough. Thus, if there is a solution for the Mate widget, it may benefit other desktops too.

[N0rbert]

I have this issue with Ubuntu MATE 16.04. But I remember that I got it working in old Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (with MATE 1.8 from PPA) with indicator-datetime-gtk2.
I do not know how to get event list in modern MATE. Please implement this functionality.

As temporary solution one can use calendar-indicator. It works in Unity and MATE.

[lukefromdc]

I'm not sure how Evolution worked, but I do know that using a calandar linked to a Google server risks exposing your personal schedule to potential 3ed party access. At the very least a search warrant would gain access, as could a data breach at Google.

[igorsantos07]

It's awful to see such an awesome desktop interface like Mate to be left lacking behind other ones in terms of user features. Nowadays any phone has integrated information about calendars, Windows does that as well, and as quoted in other comments, other DEs also do. However, because of a "dependency issue" such important feature got removed and seems to be very hard to come back.

Seriously, as pointed out by @mcphail, why do we have a calendar with clickable dates if we can't really interact with it? That's simply a plain substitute for my paper calendar. Calendar apps nowadays come integrated with our agenda, why can't Mate do that as well?

So sad 😞

[lukefromdc]

This is the commit that removed Evolution integration, unfortunately it is combined with the commit to move the clock applet to gsettings. It cannot be cleanly reverted

commit cf41dc3
Author: Stefano Karapetsas stefano@karapetsas.com
Date: Thu Oct 11 00:04:50 2012 +0200

migrate clock applet to gsettings
remove evolution code

[lukefromdc]

I tried to manually revert the above commit, but there are several points where the calendar/Evolution code used the old mateconf system, I do not know how to port that over to gsettings. Apparently evolution was tossed when the clock was converted over. Not sure how many distros were building with it, as the use of the
#ifdef HAVE_LIBECAL
selector means it could be built with or without evolution calendar support.