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    • calendar suitable for UK?

    Posted by klang posts: 30

    So far so good - it installed easily and the beginners' documentation is pretty much the best I've seen for any open source project.

    But I can't figure out how to configure the calendar for a UK audience.

    08/01 means 8th Jan over here...

    And how do I convert a 'semester' into a 'term'...?

    Hope you can help - I can read the docs if I am pointed to them - thank you.

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    Posted by klang posts: 30

    Partially answering my own question:

    There is an admin option for date format on the Admin: General page at the bottom, for date formats. Apparently the programmers of the calendar have ignored it.

    The calendar appears to work by running a php script, then running the Smarty 'template engine' on top of that - for each and every page - so that the supposed speed/caching of Smarty is circumvented. The template language for the calendar is complex - not for the faint-hearted - but the solution to getting a UK format date is to find every template used by the calendar and find every place in it where it displays a date, and rewrite the code for the date format you want. After you've learnt the Smarty language of course. And avoiding date formatted text used to pull in other data. Absolutely horrible. But it does work.

    Semester appears simply to be an American term for 6 months. Having established that I can dive into the templates again and just change the term.

    I can't help feeling the calendar programming has lost its way - it would have been much better to put the programming into php, which many people know (and is clearer to read than Smarty) frown

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    Posted by George Greene posts: 257 United States

    I should first say I appreciate the work that folks who know hpow to code do on Tiki.

    I do have to agree the calendar programming lost it's way. Just as I had 1.9.xx templates and script tweaked to kinda work right, 1.10 (or 2.0) came out with a whole new way of generating the calendar and my fixes did not work anymore and none of the problems were solved.

    So, I bailed entirely and have been just tickled pink with iFraming a Google calendar into my Tiki. It adheres to the ical standard which now leaves Tiki calendar in the dust. It's free, very powerful and even ha a little code generator to make the iFrame code for you. It's hidden a little, choose settings, choose one of your calendars and them "customize" to get to the code generator) Just paste that code on a Wiki page and there you have it -(You might need a code plug in, I don't remember).

    Google Calendar also lets you subscribe to other calendars and include them in yours. Other iCal compliant calendars can subscribe to yours. I have I think 15 calendars in our system. Also you can invite up to 500 e-mail addresses to an event -and they can RSVP! And so much more I just had to bail on Tiki calendar. (You will like Tiki for all the other fine features though!)

    Take a gander -I even have two versions of essentially the same calendar on one page -one slimmed down to include only a few calendars and another with all 15 or so:

    CD3 Events Calendar

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    Posted by Darren posts: 289 United States

    The calendar is a neglected feature. Hopefully it will receive some love and care for version 3. At the very least it needs to support iCal and recurring events. The general admin page would have been my first port of call too. I can tell you that those settings do effect modules, but you're right it should probably be a site-wide setting.

    I'm no expert on the term "semester" but I believe it varies from college (university) to college but generally implies one continuous period of academic study which might typically run from the end of August to the middle of December and then again from the end of January to the middle of May, creating an entire academic year (and ignoring Winter and Summer semesters, as they are generally held over a much shorter period and allow people to make up for extra classes they need or to graduate early).

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    Posted by klang posts: 30

    @George Greene
    Thank you - yes, I agree we should be grateful for the programmers - touch of frustration from me there.
    Yes, your calendar is great, and that may be the way to go. I'd prefer not to store my events on a third party site though - not that they are sensitive, just as a matter of prinicple. I'm unlikely to update tw if the thing works ;)

    @Darren
    Thank you. I did think that 'semester' meant an academic period, but it's been implemented as '6 months from the current date', so Jan-June, Feb-July or whatever; just relabelling it 'half year' works for me.

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