Is iCal so bad at displaying calendars correctly?

[gusanitoverde]

I have a heavy problem with iCal

I am very much geared into organization through a Calendar. And I have used calendar applications including "Entourage" and Palm desktop for Mac, but the best so far has been Palm Desktop Calendar for windows. I will focus my reference in iCal, since I need it's features of web publishing and printing (besides that I am still proud of being a Mac user):

When I moved to Mac I tried using iCal to synchronize my calendar, but the problem is that when you have an extensive list of appointments in one day is almost impossible to display them in a month calendar view. The squares are too small and the font is too big in iCal. Imagine if I have the need to publish this calendar, how do I get all my appointments to show up?

Another issue: Printing

In Windows Palm Desktop Calendar Application, if you print the month Calendar View, and the Palm Desktop will print all of your appointments, and if the appointments don’t fit in the page for any reason, it will print you an “addendum” which will contain the excess appointments that did not showed up in the first page.

I printed a similar calendar in iCal and no addendum will show up, and even the full name of the appointments that “fit” in the squares will not show up. How do I get around this? What I am doing wrong?


Thanks so much!!!

By the way, I use a Palm to keep my calendar (just in case the info is reelevant)

 

[mkrishnan]

I just wanted to chime in, that I've found overlapping appointments in week view somewhat difficult in iCal too... Especially also, if you want to create a new meeting, with an overlapping start time, you can't do it immediately, because there's no place to click on the calendar to grab that time. So you have to put it at another time and then change the times.

But I don't have any answers! Sorry.

 

[varmit]

I would have to say iCal, or any calendar program is setup to show more detail or extensive lists of appointments in day and weekly views. Monthly constrains the amount of space the program has, and printing is usally done to try and fit it all onto one paper. That is why when we print out calendar stuff from Outlook, we do weekly so that everything shows up. I'm sure you are wondering what calendars look like published online, here is one for a teacher I worked with over a year ago. http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/p/1/p16/calendar.htm Picture attached of montly view. Notice the big plus signs. When you click on a day, it give a full listing and really, for people that want to look at your calendar, they will be more than happy with what they see. This is his appointments one month from today. http://ical.mac.com/WebObjects/iCal.woa/wa/default?u=kylepeck&n=Work.ics&d=16&v=2&m=2&y=2005

If you were to publish your calendar, it would come out looking very nice.

 

[gusanitoverde]

I Did not know that!!!

I would have to say iCal, or any calendar program is setup to show more detail or extensive lists of appointments in day and weekly views. Monthly constrains the amount of space the program has, and printing is usally done to try and fit it all onto one paper. That is why when we print out calendar stuff from Outlook, we do weekly so that everything shows up. I'm sure you are wondering what calendars look like published online, here is one for a teacher I worked with over a year ago. http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/p/1/p16/calendar.htm Picture attached of montly view. Notice the big plus signs. When you click on a day, it give a full listing and really, for people that want to look at your calendar, they will be more than happy with what they see. This is his appointments one month from today. http://ical.mac.com/WebObjects/iCal.woa/wa/default?u=kylepeck&n=Work.ics&d=16&v=2&m=2&y=2005

If you were to publish your calendar, it would come out looking very nice.

Thank you so much!!!

Now this picture is of iCal... great!

Now the printing issue... Any ideas?

 

[mad jew]

The squares are too small and the font is too big in iCal. Imagine if I have the need to publish this calendar, how do I get all my appointments to show up?

Just out of interest, what size screen are you using?

 

[varmit]

Thank you so much!!!

Now this picture is of iCal... great!

Now the printing issue... Any ideas?

I'm not sure how iCal prints by a guess would be to print the weekly view, but of the whole month. That is the only way any program will be able to fit all your info in the boxes. That is how we do it with Outlook here at work since the boxes are too small when doing a month view printout.

 

[mkrishnan]

I hadn't really tried printing an iCal calendar, so I played around with it a little out of curiousity. Wow, printing in iCal is astonishingly weak, compared to Outlook. I don't use it, but..... In Outlook, printing is insanely complicated to get right, but once you do it, you can do all kinds of neat things that are oriented towards the kind of people who print out their calendars. Well, that I'm guessing are oriented towards them. Once upon a time I briefly printed out weekly Outlook calendars that were custom-fit to my paper planner, but that was a while ago, and the last time I printed Outlook calendars, it was cuz I was always out of the office, and I taped them over my monitor so people who didn't understand how to view a calendar over the Exchange server could see where I was.

Here is one possibility -- check out this program:

http://www.pocketmac.net/products/pmicalprinter/

It isn't free ($10), and I'm not really sure it does what you want, but give the trial a trial.

Hmmm, and what's this, totally OT...when I click the smilies in Mac FF now, they show up at the cursor. When did that change? That's been an annoyance for a long time!