2 Feature Requests

September 24, 2002 7:29 AM

Question #1: Are there any plans for a Mozilla Calendar/iCal plugin which would state the tentative dates for future swaps/meetups?

Question #2: A number of folks (myself included) occasionally visit MeFi/MeTa via PDA; for the sake of those "handheld immigrants", could a downloadable version of the Guidelines be made available for offline viewing?
posted by Smart Dalek to feature requests at 7:29 AM (6 comments total)

What's entailed in making something downloadable for PDAs?
posted by disarray at 8:08 AM on September 24, 2002

The majority of Palm/WinCE/Linux port models are able to run an ebook application which can store .txt, rtf and html files in their native format. (Rtf and html would be optimal choices over textfiles, as the two don't require any special formatting.) In addition to the guide, pages from MeFi/MeTa dealing with useful posting advice could be added as well.

The current method for wireless surfers would be to access the guidelines page itself, but one has to remember that PDAs have limited cache in contrast to a browser on a computer. With the exception of bookmarking (if available in the handheld's browser), the data would be lost once another web address was accessed.

Apart from that, the completed file could be downloaded via ftp, and installed via synchronization with a computer at home or at work (some pdas are also capable of using the wireless link to download).
Using the pda's ebook app, the guidelines could then serve as a pocket manual prior to making a post or comment.
posted by Smart Dalek at 10:50 AM on September 24, 2002

1. There are .Mac members here (myself included), so iCal sharing shouldn't be too problematic. Could also publish to a WebDAV server, but you wouldn't have that nice web interface for non-iCal users.

2. The easiest method would be to add the guidelines page as a custom channel in AvantGo.
posted by mcwetboy at 11:53 AM on September 24, 2002

what's the iCal spec look like?
posted by mathowie at 12:38 PM on September 24, 2002

Mac OS X Hints had a whole pile of information on iCal after it was released, including, I think, discussions of the format. Also see the Slashdot discussion of DIY iCal publishing.
posted by mcwetboy at 1:49 PM on September 24, 2002

iCal is derived from an IETF project; one of the original whitepapers can be found here.

Apart from Apple's own release, versions for PHP and Windows-based servers are also available.

Mozilla's plugin acts more as a client, though it can export events as .ics files.
posted by Smart Dalek at 1:56 PM on September 24, 2002