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Final-Project Report Calendar Tool Shengqun Sun Computer

1. Was the result correct yes no Was it easy to use yes no Comments if any no 7 View Full Event List Was the result correct yes no Was it easy to use yes no Comments if any no 8 Schedule Meeting For A Group Was the result correct yes no Was it easy to use yes no Comments if any no Part B 1 Were the instructions easy to follow and the system easy to use 2 Did you ever lost or confused about what was happening 3 How was your feeling of displaying calendaring information on web browser Please give your comments on the whole system and report any errors you have encountered 47 The whole system Sample Questionaire Part A 1 View Previous Month Calendar Was the result correct Was it easy to use Comments 2 View Next Month Calendar Was the result correct Was it easy to use Comments 3 View Today s Event s Was the result correct Was it easy to use Comments 4 Add New Event Was the result correct Was it easy to use Comments too much information need to enter if any no 5 Edit An Event Was the result correct Was it easy to use Comments 6 Delete An Event Was the result correct Was it easy to use 48 yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes if any no if any no
2. Component Property Name Element Name CATEGORIES Categories CLASS Class DESCRIPTION Description LOCATION Location SUMMARY Summary SEQUENCE Sequence DTSTAMP Dtstamp DTSTART Dtstart DTEND Dtend TRANSP Transp UID Uid VALARM Valarm TRIGGER Trigger VEVENT Vevent Table 2 3 4 Mapping iCalendar Component Properties to XML 3 The Standard iCalendar XML Documentation A well formed and standard iCalendar XML document is shown below to help people understand iCalendar XML quickly The first line is XML declaration the next line describes the root element of the document which is telling us this XML document is a calendar file The following lines describe some child elements of the root calendar and finally the last line defines the end of the root element lt xml versione 1 0 encodinge UTF 8 gt lt iCalendar gt vcalendar method PUBLISH version 2 0 prodid Shengqun SUN Calendar vevent lt uid gt csxss003 425 811 lt uid gt lt dts tamp 20031 dts tart gt 20031 1009T233000Z lt d 120T1330002 lt d CS tamp CS tart lt dtend gt 20031 lt summary gt Cal 1122T1830002c dtend endar Tool lt summary gt lt location gt Level Ten Lab lt location gt lt categories gt lt item gt Education lt item gt lt categories gt lt vevent gt lt vcalend
3. 2 Outlook Calendar in Window Environment 1 2 1 Ximian Evolution Calendar in Linux System Ximian Evolution Calendar is a calendar and scheduling application used in Linux Environment all calendar information is stored in a calendar ics with iCalendar format Ximian Evolution Calendar offers user four different views of calendar which are day working week week and month respectively Moreover User can select an arbitrary range of days that user wishes to view in the calendar The range of days can exceed a month Ximian Evolution Calendar also can add new appointments that must have a starting and ending date but user can choose whether to give it starting time and ending time or to mark it as an all day event An all day event will be displayed in grey area on the top before time 00 00 and under the current date rather than inside it so appointments can overlap and fit inside each other For example a conference might be an all day event including some timed meeting and the meetings would be timed appointments Of course appointments with specific starting time and ending time can also overlap They will be displayed as multiple columns in the day view of the calendar What s more Ximian Evolution Calendar supports the use of time zones If user wants to schedule a meeting it is necessary to set time zone User can also configure time zone information specific to the Start and End time in each appointment For example I live in
4. O n or even much bigger In sum the scheduling function is an efficient algorithm for large size of the problem but it may not be the best choice for small size of problem in some cases 3 7 User Interface Design The term user interface refers to the methods and devices that are used to accommodate interaction between machines and the human beings who use them There are two fundamental tasks communicating information from machine to the user and communicating information from the user to machine 14 Graphic User interface design is a very important job for widely acceptable software software with well designed interface will make it easier and more interesting to use for people The user interface is also quite important and cannot be ignored in this project Let us consider what will happen if the users interface design is ignored here Firstly the required information and required results should be displayed following the prompt a user may not recognise which part of the information is wanted and which part of the information is system command Secondly part of the information will be rolled up when the amount of information needed to be displayed is overloaded which always leads a user to make mistakes 21 A web based interface design is a common and effective method so I was going to display the user required information on a web browser such as full event list user manual scheduling results For an insta
5. Final Project Report Calendar Tool Shengqun Sun Computer Science 2002 2003 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is their own and the appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others understand that failure to attribute material which is obtained from another source may be considered as plagiarism Signature of student Summary Before 1980s the personal computers are not usually used by people People have to record information about events on paper or remember them in mind and if they want to schedule a meeting they have to compare the timetables of attendees or even have to make a phone call to all attendees to check suitable meeting time So that wastes not only labor power and also material resources The efficiency of working was decreasing a lot Advancement in computer engineering and information technology has reached a state in the past decade that leads to the widespread ownership of personal computers worldwide with an ever increasing population of internet users carrying out numerous types of transactions online Thus some calendar tools produced are used to help people ensure that information can be quickly and reliably stored and organized What s more people can exchange calendaring and scheduling information in an easy and automated manner It is the objective of this project to developing an all in one software that is able to store information ab
6. vCalendar is the older version of the format and is currently supported by many products especially use by some mobile phones and other mobile devices iCalendar is a newer and more robust version of vCalendar that is capable of transferring more information There are also numerous other applications which can handle the iCalendar format e g Evolution or Outlook iCalendar files typically contain a line VERSION 2 0 to distinguish them from the vCalendar format which uses VERSION 1 0 In addition there is a more obvious instance that shows the difference between iCalendar and vCalendar The time transparency property is identified by name TRANSP in the iCalendar file with type of string But the time transparency property is identified by name TRANSP in the iCalendar file with type of integer The values of transparency property are specified in table below for both iCalendar and vCalendar Transparency property Value in iCalendar Value in vCalendar Transparent TRANSP TRANSPARENT TRANSP 0 Non tansparent TRANSP OPAQUE TRANSP 1 2 3 The XML File Format 2 3 1 XML Definition Extensible Markup Language XML is a simple very flexible text format It was designed to meet the challenges of large scale electronic publishing originally XML is also playing an increasingly important role in the exchange of a wide variety of data on the web and between the different systems and becoming more and more p
7. I think the backend program works fine and is tested 49 Appendix C Source Code XML lex 961 FILE outfile To s CREATEDTIME s DATETIMESTART s DATETIMEEND s TRANS s SEQ s CLASS s SUM s LOC s CAT s DES s USERID s ALARMSTART s ACTION 7070 lt vevent gt fprintf outfile BEGIN VEVENT n lt vevent gt fprintf outfile END VEVENT n lt valarm gt fprintf outfile BEGIN VALARM n lt valarm gt fprintf outfile END VALARM n lt vcalendar gt fprintf outfile END VCALENDAR n lt dtstamp gt BEGIN CREATEDTIME lt CREATEDTIME gt lt fprintf outfile DTSTAMP s n yytext lt dtstamp gt BEGIN INITIAL lt dtstart gt BEGIN DATETIMESTART lt DATETIMESTART gt A lt fprintf outfile DTSTART s n yytext lt dtstart gt BEGIN NITIAL lt dtend gt BEGIN DATETIMEEND lt DATETIMEEND gt A lt fprintf outfile DTEND s n yytext lt dtend gt BEGIN INITIAL 50 lt transp gt lt TRANS gt A lt transp gt lt sequence gt lt SEQ gt M lt lt sequence gt lt class gt lt CLASS gt M lt lt class gt lt summary gt lt SUM gt N lt lt summary gt lt location gt lt LOC gt N lt lt location gt lt item gt lt CAT gt M lt lt item gt lt description gt
8. element of the vector will be lost automatically Otherwise all elements with a higher index have to been moved up one place then decrease the size of the vector by 1 7 Whenever users delete an event the vector needs to be resized in order to improve the efficiency and the correctness of other methods For instance the resize vector will reduce the number of iterations basically in the viewFullEventList and viewDayEvent methods Source codes are available in Appendix C 4 2 5 See the User Manual The user manual which is essential part for a software product is a guide and shows the people what and how the system does step by step People can read through the user manual in order to grasp how to work with the system quickly A user manual file named user_manual htm1 is containing the instruction which tell the user how to use the current system When the user chooses to view the user manual the several system commands will be executed automatically to do the following tow jobs One is that the system will copy the user manual htm1 file to tmp directory and then open a web browser to display the information in that file Moreover there is a list on the top of the displayed web page the users can click the topic to reach the expected information directly 26 4 3 Calendar File Handling In this project the program support import of either iCalendar file or Xml file and has the ability to export cale
9. lt description gt 6pm at bar of Maxi lt description gt lt valarm gt lt trigger gt 16 04 2003T18 09 57 lt trigger gt lt action gt DISPLA Y lt action gt lt valarm gt lt vevent gt lt vevent gt lt uid gt csxss003 425 811 lt uid gt lt dtstamp gt 20 04 2003T 14 33 52 lt dtstamp gt lt dtstart gt 02 05 2003T15 00 00 lt dtstart gt lt dtend gt 02 05 2003T16 00 00 lt dtend gt lt transp gt OPAQUE lt transp gt lt sequence gt 3 lt sequence gt lt class gt Private lt class gt lt summary gt interview lt summary gt lt location gt computer science department lt location gt lt categories gt lt item gt personal lt item gt lt categories gt lt description gt see Dr Simon lt description gt 54 lt valarm gt trigger 20 04 2003T14 35 42 trigger action DISPLA Y action lt valarm gt lt vevent gt lt vevent gt lt uid gt csxss003 425 811 lt uid gt lt dtstamp gt 27 04 2003T20 50 56 lt dtstamp gt lt dtstart gt 05 05 2003T10 00 00 lt dtstart gt lt dtend gt 06 05 2003T17 00 00 lt dtend gt lt transp gt OPAQUE lt transp gt lt sequence gt 3 lt sequence gt lt class gt Private lt class gt lt summary gt Finish so31 coursework lt summary gt lt location gt Long room lt location gt lt categories gt lt item gt Education lt item gt lt categories gt lt valarm gt lt trigger gt 05 05 2003T08 00 00 lt trigger gt lt action gt DISPLAY lt action gt lt descript
10. 2003 me KO 1172 ee talus Fa 2 12 ee ee See ao Ta Background Reading Design Calendar Tool Programming Calendar to do the required task s Testing as the Calendar is programmed Modify the finished program and test again Final write up Chapter 2 Background Research 2 1 The Standard iCalendar File Format Most calendaring and scheduling applications such as Personal Information Manager or Group Scheduling Product store their information in iCalendar format because iCalendar format is more common and popular and is also suitable as an interchange data stream format between applications or systems Currently there is no particular method which must be used to transport this kind of data format however the file system may be used for exchange purpose More important is that iCalendar is a transport and platform independent format for exchanging calendaring and scheduling personal data 2 1 1 iCalendar Object and vEvent Entity An iCalendar is a data stream consisting of one or more iCalendar objects Each individual iCalendar object can be identified and well formatted within the data stream The iCalendar object seems like a container used to store calendaring and scheduling entities An event is a calendaring and scheduling entity that represents an amount o
11. UK but want to have a telephone meeting with my parents in China the time difference is 7 hours In order to avoid the potential confusion the time zone must be set for this appointment In Addition user can use the Free Busy view to check whether people are available in advance The organizer can arrange a meeting by finding a common free time slot for all attendees The main window of Ximian Evolution Calendar is shown in figure 1 2 1 below to give reader some ideas what the user interfaces look like EDIZON RININ Ka pa yes di jan H m ce Avan ig Tui a a ai an le El a E Fel Jean bel Gee mn E Figure 1 2 1 Main Window of Ximian Evolution Calendar 1 2 2 MSN Calendar in Window System MSN Calendar can be found when MSN Explorer is started which is used in the Windows environment Functionalities of MSN Calendar are similar with Ximian Evolution Calendar In addition the MSN calendar can cooperate with MicroSoft outlook For example the MSN calendar can import appointments tasks and notes up to 2000 entries from Microsoft outlook Calendar The interface of MSN calendar is also different with Ximian Evolution Calendar and the main window of MSN Calendar is showed in figure 1 2 2 below 4 Previous Month April 2003 text Morth gt DP rds repoictmece Wg syretrocise Printable Page Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday 1 2 3 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
12. as a string starting with the character P There are some examples below to make this clear P3W means a period of three weeks PT45M means a period of 45 minutes and P1Y9M15DT10H30M10S is a general case which means a period of 1 year 9 months 15 days 10 hours 30 minutes and 10 seconds 3 Classification Classification is an iCalendar property defining the access classification for the iCalendar entity which is identified in the iCalendar file by the property name CLASS The type of values of classification for iCalendar is strings There are three property values for classification which are public private and confidential The default value for classification is public the values are written in an iCalendar file as CLASS PUBLIC 4 Categories Categories is a property defining the categories for the iCalendar entity which is identified in the iCalendar file by the property name CATEGORIES The type of values of categories for iCalendar is string More than one category may be allowed for a vEvent entity separated by the Semi Colon character For example CATEGORIES BUSINESS EDUCATION 5 Sequence Sequence is a property defining the number of revisions that had been made to an iCalendar entity which will be identified by the name SEQUENCE When an iCalendar entity is created and its sequence is set to zero this sequence will be incremented each time if the iCalendar entity is modifi
13. everybody know the time of a meeting the organiser is required to broadcast e mail with an iCalendar or Xml attachment to all the attendees Each receives the e mail drops the iCalendar or Xml attachment onto their particular scheduling application then their calendars will be updated automatically Unfortunately if all the time was filtered out due to busy status after organiser completed the scheduling job scheduling a meeting is unsuccessful the meeting has to be delayed 12 Chapter 3 Analysis and Design 3 1 Possible solution One possible solution to the problem could be as the one described below The program first reads an iCalendar or XML file and transfers its data into the system Then users could view and manage the data in the system for example adding editing deleting or scheduling data Finally the program should be able to export data in the system to an iCalendar or XML file replacing the original file 3 2 System Requirments Before starting the actual design of the program the targeted platform and required software packages should be considered first In this project the program will be coded using c language so Redhat Linux operating system is chosen as the targeted one Moreover web based interface could be used to display the calendar information therefore software package like Mozilla web browser must be required and properly installed in the operating system In the process of developing the
14. iCalendar format file can be converted from original xml format file without loss of any calendaring information For example if an xml format file called calendar xml is supplied to the program the program will generate the calendar xml ics automatically and then import the data from the calendar xml ics file So the program will succeed in handling the xml format file 3 6 Analysis Scheduling Problem Scheduling a meeting for a group of people is an important functionality and feature in a calendaring and scheduling application My calendar program cannot connect to an exchange server so the calendar program will need to get all scheduling files in order to start a new scheduling job One thing that needs to be considered is that all received scheduling files should be accepted by the calendar program in either iCalendar file format or xml file format because the people an organiser wants to invite may use a variety of scheduling applications or different operating systems What s more people may only want to work from 9am to 5pm in a working day and do not want to work at the weekend so the system should supply some options to the user who can choose to schedule a meeting for the working time or for 24 hours of the day The scheduling function will reduce the amount of work improve the efficiency of work save the user time Assumption can be made here that an event must at least last thirty minutes so there should be 48 thirty m
15. icalendar gt In addition XML elements have relationships All elements are related as parents and children 3114 3 Attributes Attributes in XML provide additional information about the element which is not a part of the data What s more all attribute values should always be enclosed in either single or double quotes Double quotes are the most common but sometimes single quotes must be used if the attribute value itself contains quotes such as lt game name arm core another age gt 2 2 3 4 Standard XML Documentation for Representing iCalendar xCal 1 Mapping calendar properties to XML The standard features of the XML syntax can be applied to represent the component iCalendar semantics For example iCalendar data type can be specified using the XML notation declaration The element type attributes in an iCalendar XML are used to represent many of the calendar properties that provide a global attribute capability in an iCalendar obfect In the example belovv it is easy to see that the method version and prodid in XML representation become attributes of the iCalendar or the vcalendar elements 2 Mapping component properties to XML Component properties defined in the standard iCalendar format are represented in the XML 10 representation as element types The table 2 3 4 below specifies the element types in XML corresponding to each component properties in iCalendar
16. in XML 2 3 4 Standard XML Documentation For Representing iCalendar 2 4 Scheduling Problem Chapter 3 Analysis and Design 3 1 Possible Solution iii 10 10 12 13 3 2 3 3 3 3 1 Disadvantages of Similar Calendar Systems 3 3 2 C C and Java 3 3 3 Class Analysis and Diagram 3 4 3 5 3 6 3 7 Chapter 4 4 1 4 2 4 2 1 View Previous And Next Month 4 2 2 View Full Event List or Today s Event s 42 3 Add A New Event nennen 4 2 4 Edit and Delete An Event 90U0 0yXUg9 4 2 5 See the User manual 005 uo 7oOoOCHh HU g07xxXxxo Calendar File Handling 07790 U ku eee 4 3 1 Check VVhether File Exists 4 3 4 3 2 Import An Existing File 4 4 Scheduling Implementation 0006009 8 uk 4 5 Interface Implementation 9 4 6 Other Techniques Used 060600 U7 7 ko 4 6 1 Ostringstream Class 0606060 8 KF K 4 6 2 Get System Time Chapter 5 5 1 5 2 5 3 5 4 5 5 5 6 56 1 Getting Started rann System Requirements 09 U 9hu yu Analyses and Design Diagram XU Analyse the iCalendar Data Structure XML Lexical Analysis 0 U y VU X Analysis Scheduling Problem 9 X User Interface Design wenn nn nn nn nn nn nnn Implement
17. lt DES gt M lt lt description gt lt uid gt lt USERID gt M lt lt uid gt lt trigger gt lt ALARMSTART gt M lt lt trigger gt BEGIN TRANS fprintf outfile TRANSP s n yytext BEGIN INITIAL BEGIN SEO fprintf outfile SEQUENCE s n yytext BEGIN INITIAL BEGIN CLASS fprintf outfile CLASS s n yytext BEGIN INITIAL BEGIN SUM fprintf outfile SUMMARY s n yytext BEGIN INITIAL BEGIN LOC fprintf outfile LOCATION s n yytext BEGIN INITIAL BEGIN CAT fprintf outfile CATEGORIES s n yytext BEGIN INITIAL BEGIN DES fprintf outfile DESCRIPTION s n yytext BEGIN INITIAL BEGIN USERID fprintf outfile UID s n yytext BEGIN INITIAL BEGIN ALARMSTART fprintf outfile TRIGGER s n yytext BEGIN INITIAL 51 lt action gt lt ACTION gt M lt lt action gt n P BEGIN ACTION fprintf outfile ACTION s n yytext BEGIN INITIAL ignore the n 52 Appendix D Sample Output Files Sample iCalendar File BEGIN VCALENDAR CALSCALE GREGORIAN PRODID Shengqun Sun Calendar EN VERSION 2 0 BEGIN VEVENT UID csxss003 425 811 DTSTAMP 20 04 2003T 13 29 38 DTSTART 14 04 2003T00 00 00 DTEND 15 04 2003T00 00 00 TRANSP OPAQUE SEQUENCE 4 CLASS Private SUMMARY Sheng s Birthday LOCATION Maxi s CATEGORIES Pe
18. the value of the entry in the display array will be changed to Free if the value of corresponding entry in the status array is still 0 So the organiser can arrange a meeting at the time with a value Free otherwise they can try to schedule a meeting with other specified time Displaying the scheduling result will depend on the organiser s choice if the organiser chooses to schedule only for working time part of the scheduling result between 9am and 5pm will be displayed If the organiser chooses to schedule for all of the time the 24 hours full scheduling result will be displayed 4 5 Interface Implementation A user can view all events and scheduling results on the Mozilla web browser Like calendar ics and calendar xml the program will also create an html file named calendar html in a shard folder to store details of all events Each time when the user chooses to view all events the system will run Mozilla automatically and all events information will be displayed and well formatted on it After each scheduling job is completed the scheduling result also would be formatted and saved in schedule html and the system will run Mozilla to open that schedule html automatically In addition the scheduling result will be displayed in different colour in the web browser to reduce user s effort 4 6 Other Techniques Used 4 6 1 Ostringstream Class There is a method toStringin Time Date and DateTime classes respective
19. to the iCalendar file Firstly the string BEGIN VCALENDAR will be written as the first line in an iCalendar file Secondly the information about each event will be written back to an iCalendar file beginning with string BEGIN VEVENT and terminating with the string END VEVENT If the information about summary description category and location for an event was not input by user the corresponding field of the event would be empty and not be written in the iCalendar file Finally when all data is written back to the iCalendar file completely the string END VCALENDAR will be written as last line to close the iCalendar object and the file exporting is finished Altogether the iCalendar date 19 structure has been constructed completely So the program can always import a right iCalendar file and export calendar data to an iCalendar file with correct data structure 12 3 5 XML Lexical Analysis Calendar information will also be saved in an xml format file The program should have the ability to read data from an xml format file because the organiser may receive xml format calendar files from attendees rather than iCalendar format files when he she is going to schedule a meeting The program will convert an xml format file into an iCalendar format file using a lexical analyser first and then by reading data from that generated iCalendar format file when the user supplies an xml format file to the program The generated
20. will be enhanced 6 5 Searching Function In the current system there are only two options which can be chosen by users to view either today s event list or full event list However the user may expect to view the events according to the category the summary or the date The system could be expanded to supply the search function which would 40 allow the user to view the exact event s what they are looking for by entering a few words into associated search field For example if a user enters Education into the category search field all events within Education category will be displayed on the screen One advantage of this search function is that users can narrow the results returned from the current system and find the result in a faster way with the minimum effort 6 6 iCalendar Limitation The system currently only supports the single iCalendar object in a single data stream However the iCalendar format should have the capability for including multiple individual iCalendar objects in a single data stream according to the iCalendar specification The system may be possible to be further developed to allow any number of iCalendar objects to be written into the iCalendar file Each individual iCalendar object is specified by vcalendar element type in the file with XML format and is specified by the strings BEGIN VCALENDAR and END VCALENDAR in the file with iCalendar format The developed system will work as th
21. 0 11 int tm_year year int tm_wday weekday 0 6 Sunday as 0 int tm_yday yearday 0 365 int tm_isdst Nonzero if daylight saving time is in effect Getting the current system time is achieved and each arributes in the struct tm can be called and used directly 17 30 Chapter 5 Evaluation 5 1 Introduction In order to effectively evaluate the solution produced by this project it is necessary to examine it in terms of how well it have fulfilled the initial objectives and how well these objectives fulfil the problem needs depending on users feedback 5 2 Fulfilment of Initial Objectives The project can be seen have successfully delivered all initial objectives in the project life cycle The system successfully implements the aim of viewing and managing people s appointments The objectives of this project were also extended because scheduling a meeting successfully delivered its target of calculating the most convenient result to the organiser with the minimum of effort 5 3 Advantages of Final Product by Comparing With Other Products I have mentioned similar software products such as Ximian Evolution Calendar MSN Calendar in earlier chapter Both of them can store and exchange calendaring and scheduling information through using the file with iCalendar format rather than XML format By comparing the current system with them the current system can not only deal with the iCalendar form
22. 0 35 11 0 11 30 12 0 12 30 13 0 13 30 14 0 1452 15 0 15 50 18 0 16 50 un lon Tue 120412005 14 4 2003 15042003 Free Pree Free Free Free Free Free Free Free Free Free Free Free Free Free Free Free SESISESESSISESIT i Figure 5 5 2 Seheduling Result for VVorking Time 4 EEEEETEEEEEEPEEPEEERPIEEEEEETEEEEEEEEIETEEEEEISE 0 Figure 5 5 3 Scheduling Result for 24 Hours 35 Frea Free Free EEEE 5 6 User Instruction 5 6 1 Getting Started 1 On Linux systems copy files from CD to your own directory and compile the main program called Interface cc using Makefile with the command make Interface and an executable program Interface will be generated and then type command Interface to start calendar 2 Current month s calendar and calendar system menu are displayed like shown below You can view current month s calendaring information or enter a choice to start calendar activities May 2003 Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat 12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Calendar System 1 0 Menu List a View Previous Month Calendar b View Next Month Calendar c View Today s Event s d Add New Event e Edit An Event f Delete An Event g View Full Event List s Schedule Meeting For A Group h Help User Manual q Quit Enter your Choice 36 5 6 2 Previous or Next Month s Calendar To
23. 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 2003 Year View March May s M T w T F s s M T w T F s 2 24 25 26 27 28 1 27 28 29 30 1 2 3 2 3 4 5 0 4 5 6 0 9 10 9 10 12 13 14 15 u 12 13 14 15 16 17 16 17 t 19 20 21 2 18 19 20 2 2 23 24 4 26 2 2 30 3 20 a 1 5 Figure 1 2 2 Main Window of MSN Calendar 1 3 Minimum Requirement 1 Some fundamental functions must be included in the Calendar tool such as adding a nevv event deleting an event viewing event s scheduling a meeting 2 The Calendar can import files with one or more different standard calendar data formats such as iCalendar XML 3 Understand how the Calendar tool could schedule a group of files and try to build it into Calendar Possible enhancement Understanding the limitations of the Calendar Tool and how they can be improved 1 4 Deliverables 1 Mid Project Report 2 Final Calendar Tool Product 3 Final Project Report 1 5 Objectives 1 Fundamental functions of Calendar Tool should be sufficient for the tool to be used 2 The calendar tool should also have ability to schedule a meeting with another who is using the similar kind of calendar tools 3 The Calendar Tool should work efficiently and reliably and be easy to use 4 Finally the calendar tool must be evaluated to understand its existing limitations 1 6 Project Schedule The table below briefly shows how the time was spent Month Dec 2002 Jan 2003 Feb 2003 Mar 2003 Apr
24. TIMESTAMP dd mm yyyyThh mm ss So the DateTime Class make the users control the date and time much more easily and conveniently and clarify the program code The following figure 3 3 3 shows the relationship among these three classes 15 day integer month integer Year integer Datel Date d integer m integer y integer Date str string setDate void tm getCurrentD ate struct showDate void dateValid d integer m integer y integer boolean dateDiff Date amp Date integer incADay void 5 Dam decADayl void sameds const Date 8i const boolean DateTime DateTime d Date t Time DateTime dateString string timeString string getDate const Date getTime const Time hours integer setDate d Date void minutes integer setTimelt Time void seconds integer setDateTime d Date t Time void advanceli int void TimeQ toString const string Time hr integer min integer sec integer sameds const DateTime amp const boolean Time str string operator const DateTime amp DateTime setTime void tm getCurrentTime struct advanceli integer void toString const string toStringli unsigned integer string inSeconds const integer isMorning const boolean eanierThan const Time amp const boolean sameAslconst Times const boolean operator const Time amp Times Figure 3 3 3 Date T
25. add a new event into their calendar the program will ask users to input text from the keyboard and input values will be assigned to the corresponding part of an event and push the new event to the end of the vector In the addEvent method the default duration of an event was half an hour if the user did not input a start time and end time of a new event then the start time of the event would be set to the current system time and the end time of the event would be 30 minutes later Another point I noticed was that the user may input several words sentences and even more than one paragraph for a description and the summary fields of event but cin can only read the input string without white space between it so I was going to use get method or get line method to deal with description and summary input Get method and get line method both take three arguments the last argument is the terminating character Get method and getline method will stop reading input when a terminating character is read A terminating character has the default value of n therefore both get method and getline method store input until the users press carriage return But the get method does not extract the delimiter from the input stream when it stops On the contrast get line method can work without this problem Thus I decided to use get line method in my addEvent method 6 Unfortunately I met another problem when I had finished the addEvent meth
26. ameters also can be deduced from the current system time toNext method in the program was used to change values of current system time to values associated with next month display method with values modified by toNext method will show next month s calendar information to the user Implementation of toNext method is similar with the implementation of toP revious method 24 4 2 2 View Full Event List or Today s Event s When the program is executed all events are saved in a vector and users can make a choice to view the full event list The size of the vector determines the number of events stored in a user s calendar so we use a for loop to output details of all events on screen with indices If users choose to view their today s event s the start time of each event must be compared with the date for today in the for loop if the start time of an event is equal to today s date then the details of the event will be printed on screen Otherwise all the other days events will be ignored The purpose is that users are reminded what they should do today according to the event list that is received 4 2 3 Add A New Event Events are personal items that only users are required to attend Creating an event in your calendar reminds you to plan around that time Examples of events include a visit with a doctor picking up a child from school or a due date on a project Each time when the users choose to
27. ar gt lt iCalendar gt 11 4 Multiple iCalendar Objects The iCalendar format has the capability for including multiple individual iCalendar objects in a single data stream The XML representation also supports this Each Individual iCalendar object is identified by vcalendar element type so more than one vcalendar element types are allowed within the single iCalendar element type 18 For example lt iCalendar gt lt vcalendar version 1 0 gt Here is the first iCalendar object lt vcalendar gt lt vcalendar version 1 0 gt Here is the the second iCalendar object lt vcalendar gt lt iCalendar gt Altogether XML is more flexible and widely used Using the XML data format will increase the compatibility of my Calendar Tool with other similar kinds of applications 2 4 Scheduling Problem In order to schedule an appointment for a group of people organisers need to know the free busy information of each person If the calendar system cannot connect to an exchange server at that moment organisers will have to ask for schedule files from each attendee then the scheduling application reads the information of all the received scheduling files and starts scheduling a common free time slot for all attendees will be found after checking the busy time of each attendee will be filtered out during the checking So it is sure that the determined time is suitable to everybody In order to let
28. at but also handle the XML iCalendar documentation xCal by converting the XML format to the standard iCalendar format In 31 addition the XML is gaining widespread attention as a web friendly syntax for representing and exchanging documents and data on the Internet Therefore one advantage is that the XML file generated by the system can be exchanged between incompatible systems and accepted by many more applications 5 4 User Feedback Final testing with users to determine the usability of the system shows that although the initial objectives of the project have been successfully met there is still room for improvement in the system People with little Knowledge of Computing The user pointed out the difficulties involved in adding a new event into the calendar as there are too many information required to enter using keyboard by user In addition they mentioned the data had to been typed in the correct format otherwise the system will quit suddenly For example when the user input unmatched formatted information for EVENT START TIME the system will quit All of these are limiting the efficiency of the calendar tool currently The project had aimed to make this operation as simple as possible so as to make the system usable by people with little knowledge of computing This again indicated a possible future modification whereby the adding event function could provide a friendly graphic user interface GUI instead of the current t
29. ation Experience Introduction 007 nennen Fundamental Functions Implementation Evaluation Introduction 07 nenn Fulfilment of Initial Objectives Advantages of Final Product by Comparing with Other Products User Feedback 00 K Testing 06065 rennen User Instruction 0707 ann V 5 6 2 Previous or next Month s Calendar 5 6 3 Viewing Events 5 6 4 Creating Deleting or Editing an Event 5 6 5 Scheduling a Meeting 5 6 6 Getting help and See User Manual Chapter 6 Further Development 6 1 Introduction 6 2 Graphic User Interface 6 3 Multi user Management 6 4 ToDo Type of Calendaring and Scheduling Entities 6 5 Search Function 6 6 iCalendar limitation 6 7 Summary Bibliography Appendix A Project Reflection Appendix B Questionnaire Appendix C Source Code Appendix D Sample Output Files Chapter 1 Introduction 1 1 Purpose This project is concerned with building and programming a Calendar Tool so that users can view and manage their appointments quickly reliably and electronically This program can exchange important data about events so that people can schedule meetings with anyone who is using a similar kind of program 1 2 Similar Software Product Here I introduce two similar software products so that the reader can further understand the problem of this project 1 Ximian Evolution Calendar in Linux Environment
30. cation of what possible development of the system may achieve 6 2 Graphic User Interface The text based user interface is bit confuse sometimes for example when the users added new event and scheduled a meeting they had to follow the system output and type information through keyboard one by one without jumping This would allow the implementation of flexible graphic user interface which allows the user to choose the function by clicking mouse on that function button and type the information into text boxes optionally Thus the confusion currently involved should be eliminated For example if the users chose wanted to add a new event they were at least needed to type text into the summary box rather than fill all fields of the event then saved that event The data of all other fields would be passed by the default values 39 Therefore the graphic user interface makes the users lives easier The percentage of making mistakes will be decreased dynamically What s more the colour pictures audio and animation can be added into the user interface that makes the software more attractive 6 3 Multi user Management At the moment the current system only supports the single user All calendaring information would be written into a file with default file name in default directory Assume the current system was used by two users they would be confused by another s calendar data Therefore the system could be expanded to support two o
31. ckly and effectively I would offer the following suggestions to any students undertaking such a project in the future 1 Device a flexible plan and Keep to your planned schedule as much as possible It will give you the opportunity to deal with problems when problems arise Do not leave anything to the last minute 2 Always keep a good record of the progress you make during the development For example record of what methodology you used what problems met and how the problems were solved All of these are invaluable for writing the final project report 3 Comparing the different methods before implementing carefully and try your best to avoid significant modification of the program If do so the time can be saved and the correctness of whole system can be improved 45 Appendix B Questionnaire This questionnaire help me evaluate the software calendar tool I have developed for my project I would so appreciate it if you would take 15 minutes to use the calendar tool to view and manage your personal information and give me some your own feelings and opinions on its functions and usability If you are a student of school of computing you can access the system with permission which is stored in the folder called project at my home directory My username is csxss Just type Interface to run the program and try each function on the system menu and recode any behaviour that you think is good bad or unusual then fill the q
32. d output all calendar data to calendar html firstly then run web browser to open calendar html so long as the user chose view full events list option The second approach is the best way which solves the problem completely How the events information displayed on web browser is shown below in figure 5 5 1 33 A a Red Hal Network a Support gi Shop g Product G Training Eveni Time Stari Transparency Sequence Class Summary Location Calegorles Alarm Time Event Time Start Transparency Sequence Class Summary Location Categories Alarm Time C206 0008T 15 00 00 05 05 2002T10 00 00 Time End GFAGUE 2 public ngj Fe here 2504 19 56 53 Time End OPAQUE Private tyre he FE Test 3 Scheduling Function Scheduling Function was tested fully and the scheduling results were correct displayed on web browser for any number of the scheduling files The following two figures show the scheduling results which calculated from scheduling the single scheduling file icalendar ics for the week starting from 13 04 2003 to 19 04 2003 There was only one event that took place this week on 14 04 2003 and this event also was an all day event The scheduling results were calculated correctly and displayed on web browser as expected See appendix D 34 DSO 20057 17 00 00 Figure 5 5 1 Displaying the Event Information on VVeb 0 10 0 1
33. dTime DateTime name string alarm_uid string description string action string duration string repeat integer AlarmComponent Figure 3 3 4 Calendar Components Diagrams Calendar class is a very important class shown in figure 3 3 5 most of operations will be directly used by the interface of the main program The table 3 3 5 below shows what the operations do in Calendar class selectMday integer selectWday integer selectMon integer selectYear integer eventList vector EventComj Calendar Emi getCurrentDate struct getFirstWday integer integer integer numberOfDays integer integer integer toStringfunsigned integer const string toPrevious void toNext void display integer integer integer integer void addAlarmn EventComponent amp void deleteEvent void editEvent void viewDayEyent void outvCalEventCom EventComponent ofstream void outvCalAlarmCom AlarmComponent ofstream void outwHimlCom EventComponent ofstream void outwHimlAlamCom AlammComponert ofstream void out mlEventCom EventComponent ofstrearn void outkmlAlarmCom AlarmComponent ofstream void inVcalFile char void viewFullEventList void void Figure 3 3 5 Calendar Class Diagram 17 getCurrentDate Get the current system time getFirstWday Return the date of the first day in a speci
34. e standard iCalendar specification and improve the inter operation with other calendar applications 6 7 Summary The preceding sections have recommended and discussed various ways in the project may be developed in the future Most of new features would be developed in near future There are of course several other paths which the project could follow and there is huge scope for the future development 41 Bibliography 10 11 12 13 David Hunter Kurt Cagle Chris Dix amp Roger Kovack Beginning XML Edition Wrox Press Ltd pp891 900 16 Dec 2002 http www w3schools com xml default asp 20 Dec 2002 http training gbdirect co uk courses xml xml technical and commercial overview seminar html 20 Dec 2002 http omar opi arizona edw cgi bin WebObjects UAMasterCalendar 20 Dec 2002 http www expertsexchange com Programming Programming Languages Cplusplus Q 2041 9485 html 21 February 2003 Bruce Eckel 1995 Thinking in c Prentice Hall pp212 13 Feb 2003 Rick Mercer 1999 Computing Fundamentals with c 2 Edition Lynx Communication Group pp371 24 February 2003 Bruce Eckel 1995 Thinking in c Prentice Hall pp221 08 Mar 2003 http ietf org rfc rfc2445 txt 15 March 2002 http www imc org pdi vcal 10 txt 16 March 2002 http swordfish rdfweb org calendar links 16 March 2002 http www softwarestudio org libical 18 Dec 2002 http www cs col
35. ed 6 Summary Summary is a property defining a short summary or subject of the iCalendar entity which is identified by the nnme SUMMARY in the iCalendar file For example SUMMARY Shengqun Sun s report 7 Time Transparency Time Transparency is a property defining whether the event is transparent to free busy time searches which is identified by name TRANSP in the iCalendar file If the value of this property is TRANSPARENT then specified time of this event is treated as free otherwise busy For example TRANSP TRANSPARENT 8 Unique Identifier Unique identifier is identified by name UID which defines a globally unique identifier associated with the iCalendar entity Unique Identifier is an important property for group calendaring and scheduling applications to match calendar entities with later modification or deletion requests It is optional to include this property to the implementation of iCalendar but if a Calendaring application supports this property in iCalendar entities it may be improving their interoperability with other group calendaring and scheduling applications 10 2 2 Differences between iCalendar and vCalendar Both iCalendar and vCalendar are standard formats for storing calendar and todo data and under the control of the Internet Mail Consortium and specified in RFC 2445 In addition iCalendar also is the base of the group scheduling standard iTIP in RFC 2446 and its implementation iMIP in RFC 2447
36. ext based interface in order to reduce the user s effort People with Computer skills It was noted by test subjects that viewing previous and next month s calendar functions are quite convenient to use but the method to view any month calendar has not been built in the system currently However some other calendar products support this operation So the calendar system can be developed by providing go to any month calendar method in order to supply user more choice Therefore people can view any month calendar directly by giving a month and a year values The users also points out the difficulties involved in scheduling a meeting function as user has to type all attendees calendar files into system that wastes user s time and reduces the correctness of the system A possible future modification of scheduling a meeting function is to only require user to input the name of a folder which store all attendees calendar files and then all of free busy information of calendar files in that folder will be read into the system automatically 32 5 5 Testing Testing is an efficient way to detect the bugs existing in the program Each class was tested fully when completed further testing was done when the final program was finished The following show the tested results what bugs had been detected and how to fix these bugs for some functions Test 1 Make a Choice form System Menu When the final program was just completed the use
37. f specific time on a calendar it may be an activity such as attend an interview from 3 PM to 4 PM at University of Oxford next Monday In an iCalendar format file the string BEGIN VCALENDAR must appear as the first line at the start of data stream indicating that an iCalendar object is starting When the delimiter string END VCALENDAR appears the iCalendar object terminates All data between BEGIN VCALENDAR and END ICALENDAR belong to entities of iCalendar vEvent Entity is identified within an iCalendar object by the delimiter string BEGIN VEVENT A vEvent entity is terminated by the appearance of the End vEvent Delimiter string END VEVENT 9 2 1 2 Syntax For Encoding the iCalendar 1 Date and Time The values of date and time for iCalendar are represented as a string in format of lt year gt lt month gt lt day gt T lt hour gt lt minute gt lt second gt For example 3pm on March 15 2003 would be written as 20030315T150000 We use Universal Coordinated Time UTC rather than local time that aims to avoid time zone ambiguities so the above example in UTC based time would be written as 20030315T150000Z Created Date Time is identified in the iCalendar file by name DTSTAMP Start Date Time is identified in the iCalendar file by name DTSART End Date Time is identified in the iCalendar file by name DTEND 2 Time Duration Duration of time given by the user is represented
38. fic week numberOfDay Count the number of days in a specific month toString Convert an integer to a string toPrevious Return the previous month parameters toNext Return the next month parameters display Display the calendar on screen displayCurrent Display the current month calendar on screen addEvent Add a new event addAlarm Add an alarm for a event deleteEvent Delete an existing event editEvent Edit an existing event sortEvent Sort the events according to the start time of each event viewDayEvent Display the event s started today viewFullEventList Display all events in the calendar outvCalAlarmCom Ouput the alarm part to an iCalendar file outvXmlAlarmCom Output the alarm part to a XML file outvHtmlAlarmCom Output the alarm part to a Html file outvCalEventCom Output event information to an iCalendar file outvXmlEventCom Output event information to a XML file outHtmlCom Ouput event information to a HTML file Table 3 3 5 Meaning of Each Operation in Calendar Class Interface is an interface program it only contains a list of public operations that can be implemented by either other classes or by itself and has no attributes What s more Interface provides a way to access the elements of each class which lead all classes to work as a whole system Table 3 3 6 will show what the operations do in interface program outvCalHeader Output the header of iCa
39. file will be displayed and the program exits 4 3 1 Check Whether a File Exists I had even compared three different methods to check if a file exists These methods are shown in table 4 3 1 below lt 1 gt ifstream FileObject file name if FileObject fail file does not exist lt 2 gt bool FileExistViaAccess const char FileName return access FileName 0 0 lt 3 gt bool fileExist const char fileName struct stat my_stat return stat filename amp my_stat 0 Table 4 3 1 Methods for File Existing 27 Method lt 1 gt would only work if the file was in the same directory as the program but the file would be stored in different directory as the program in the real case Method lt 2 gt tries to access the given file in order to determine whether a file exists or not so this method is not efficient Method lt 3 gt is using stat to determine if a file exists and also the method lt 3 gt using stat can be passed a path as an argument So method lt 3 gt is more practical and the most portable to make that determination Method lt 3 gt can be a success to determine if a file exists but it is also important to know if the file is a directory or a file because a file cannot be created if its name is the same as a directory in the same directory Therefore I use the isDirectory method to cooperate with method 3 in the program 5 4 3 2 Import An Exis
40. ginal plan was flexible enough to accommodate theses changes so I had caught up during the holiday What s more some unforeseen technical problems were encountered during the implementation of the project Therefore it is important to devise a project plan that is both well and flexible At the early state the system had ability to import iCalendar file successfully I considered what methodology I could use to handle XML file At the beginning I used an inefficient method to extract information form XML file Later I learned lexical analyser from the module Compiler Design By comparing lexical analyser with the method which was already used I found lexical analyser was the most powerful so I decided to use flex to deal with input a stream of XML characters output a stream of iCalendar characters instead It took me long time to change code from one methodology to another I recorded the advantages and disadvantages of the methods which I used and also record the differences between the methods if a problem could be solved by many methods All records reminded me what I had experienced which was invaluable when I wrote my final project report Therefore recording the progress of the development is a good habit Given the opportunity to conduct a similar project again I would hope to use the experience I have gained to help me to avoid any repetition of these problems and preserve the good habit to solve some 44 problem qui
41. h year month day week day was defined to do this job In order to display the current month s calendar the current system date and time is caught and passed to the display method each time In the display method in order to display the date in the correct format like the format in figure 4 1 thus we use week day of today and the number of days in the current month to calculate the week day of 1 of current month for example the 1 day of April in 2003 is Tuesday so number 1 is located at the Tuesday column and other numbers follow So the program will always show the user the correct well formatted calendar information unless the system time is incorrect 11 April 2003 Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Figure 4 1 An Example Of Calendar Layout A user can make a choice to view a previous month s calendar so the toPrevious method vvas used to change the values of the current time received from the system and then passed the modified values to the display method such that the previous month s calendar will be displayed In the toPrevious method if the value of the current month is 1 then the value of the last month must be 12 and the value of the year will be decreased 1 If value of current month is between 2 and 12 then value of last month is value of current month minus 1 and value of year does not change Values of the other two par
42. if any no if any no no no no no Comments if any no 7 View Full Event List Was the result correct yes ii no VVas it easy to use yes 2 no Comments if any no 8 Schedule Meeting For A Group Was the result correct yes E no Was it easy to use yes i no Comments if any no Part B 1 Were the instructions easy to follow and the system easy to use Yes generally 2 Did you ever lost or confused about what was happening Yes When adding an event 3 How was your feeling of displaying calendaring information on web browser Displaying information via the browser is a good idea on the grounds that the information is nice formatted and is more attractive than pure text based 4 Please give your comments on the whole system and report any errors you have encountered When enter description if I press enter before type any information it quits input description mode automatically The whole system Major functions are working correctly program efficiency is generally fine However the text based user interface is bit confuse sometimes For example when adding an event there s a default value pre set for user who did not input anything for the EVENT START DATE but there s no such hints displayed Generally
43. ime and DateTime Class Diagram In Figure 3 3 4 There is a class named CalendarComponent which is a superclass storing the similarities for its subclasses The EventComponent class inherits from the CalendarComponent class and all protected attributes and public operations in the CalendarComponent class can be used directly in the EventCompoent class EventComponent class may have its own additional attributes and operations For instance the transparency attribute of an event only belongs to EventComponent class not to all other subclasses Each event is an EventComponent object In addition the User may add an alarm for an event there is an attribute in EventComponent class with type of AlarmComponent So AlarmComponent class is defined here as part of EventComponent class 16 dateTime DateTime 7 getDateTime const DateTime acta i ra setDateTime D ateTime void dateTimeStamp DateTime dateTimeStart DateTime dateTimeEnd DateTime summary string description string se quence integer description string classification string AlarmClock categories string AlarmClock CalendarComponent AlarmClock D ateTim e8 A getAlarmDateTime const DateTime setAlarm DateTime 8 void EventCom ponent included in alarmTime DateTime name string alarmPart AlarmComponent AlarmComponent location string timeTransparency string alarmCreate
44. inutes in a day So I decide to declare one 48 7 array of integer type which is used to store the free and busy time for a week for a group of people All entries of this array could be initialised with value 0s When an attendee is busy at a time on a day value in the entry associated with that date time will be changed to 1 The program did not finish until all of events had been scheduled The time complexity of this schedule algorithm can be considered as following 20 The best case There are n events in total from attendees scheduling files each event lasts just 30 minutes The scheduling function needs several comparisons for each number of n and needs n assignments totally which are changing the values of related entries to 1 The comparisons are varying depending on different cases Therefore the scheduling function can be completed in linear time The time complexity of the scheduling function is O n The worse case There are n events in total from attendees scheduling files and all of events will last for 7 days which the users specified The scheduling function also needs several comparisons and 7 48 336 assignments for each number of n Therefore the scheduling algorithm needs at least 336n times to complete If the size of the problem n is much and much greater than 336 the time complexity is still O n if the size of the problem is much less than 336 the time complexity of the scheduling function may be O n
45. ion gt so3 1 lt description gt lt valarm gt lt vevent gt lt vcalendar gt lt iCalendar gt 35
46. lendar file outXmlHeader Output the header of XML file outHtmlHeader Output the header of HTML file fileExist Return true if a file exist isDirectory Return true if given name is a directory checking Check the import file is in iCalendar format or XML format checkingS Check the schedule files is in iCalendar or XML format schedule Schedule a meeting for a group of prople getWday Return the first week day of given date Table 3 3 6 Meaning of Each Operation in Interface program 18 Attributes and operations for each class have been introduced in the figures above a class diagram in figure 3 3 6 shows relationships between these classes and how they work together Class Diaqram CalendarCornponent IN AlarmComponent EventComponent AlarmcClock Figure 3 3 6 Class Diagram 3 4 Analyse the iCalendar Data Structure In a iCalendar file the string BEGIN VCALENDAR appears as the first line and the string END ICALENDAR appears as the last line all data between these two lines will be extracted and stored in a vector when the program is run The number of entities in a file determines the size of the vector If there are three event entities in file when data was read in by the program the size of the vector would be three Each time a user adds a new event the size of the vector will increase by 1 When a user closes the current program all data will be written back
47. ly which is used to convert the Time Date or DateTime object to a string through using ostringstream 29 class The ostringstream class provides a buffered stream and returns a string containing the information that is extracted from stream by using st r method 15 Note that ends must be added at the end of stream instead of endl because ends inserts the null character WO in the ostringstream and endl adds a new line at the end of stream and flushes the stream In addition remembering to include a new library lt sstream gt to instead that outdated and deprecated header lt strstream gt and use ost ringstream rather than ostrstream to avoid warning message Altogether ost ringstream is really easy to use any types can be passed into it so long as a stream handler exists for it 16 4 6 2 Get System Time The current time needs be retrieved from system and passed to a date or time object In order to get current system time a timer with type of time_t is declared which can get current calendar time in seconds by passing a NULL to time funtion and then apply localtime function to convert the timer from type time_t to struct tm that holds the current date and time in usable form The struct tm has structure shown as below struct tm int tm_sec second 0 59 int tm min minute 0 59 int tm hour hour 0 23 int tm_mday day 1 31 int tm_mon month
48. m gt first flex checks the line and the start condition is activated using BEGIN CAT action then extract data between lt item gt and lt item gt into a buffer and then write the date in the buffer to a iCalendar file as CATEGORIES Education finally flex clean the buffer by using BEGIN INITIAL action and continue to deal with the next line until reaching the last line Lexical analyser file named xml lex can be found in appendix C 28 4 4 Scheduling Implementation The schedule method is divided into two parts one is scheduling attendees calendar files and another is displaying the scheduling result with the expected format Firstly I will introduce how to schedule a group of calendar files Assume every event will last at least 30 minutes I declared two 48 7 arrays where 48 represents the fact that there are 48 half hours in a day and 7 represents the fact that there are 7 days a week One array called status only store the digit 0 or 1 another array called display stores the Free or Busy values The meeting organiser will be asked to give a date in order that the program works out result for the week including the given date The value of each entry in the display array is Busy and in the status array is 0 originally During scheduling if any attendee is busy at a time of that week the value of the corresponding time entry in the status array will be changed to 1 until the schedule is finished And then
49. nce when a user is choose to view details of events scheduling results or the user manual the system will start up a web browser automatically with the user expectative information Of course the large amount of information displayed is not a problem any more the reason is the users have been used to using a scroll bar to view the information on a web browser 22 Chapter 4 Implementation Experience 4 1 Introduction Some functions had been built and worked correctly in the final completed product Once the program is run the current month s calendar will be displayed on screen and the user can choose the jobs to do from the system main menu These jobs are listed below View Previous Month Calendar View Next Month Calendar View Today s Event s View Full Event List Add New Event Edit Event Delete an Existing Event Schedule Meeting For a Group Oo OWN A Wn BPW t View the User Manual Later sections of this chapter will tell readers how these functions were implemented and what problems had been met during coding the function and what methodologies had been used to solve the problems 23 4 2 Fundamental Functions Implementation 4 2 1 View Previous and Next Month Calendar Each time the program is started the current month s calendar will be displayed on the screen and the user will know the current date and time at once The display method with four parameters which are mont
50. ndaring information into files in both formats All calendaring information will be output to an iCalendar file named calendar ics and an xml file named calendar xml when the program is closed each time As a well formatted iCalendar file string BEGIN VCALENDAR must be written into the calendar ics file as the first line then write calendaring information back to the file each event entity is also beginning with line BEGIN VEVENT and closing with line END VEVENT Finally the line END VCALENDAR must be written to close the calendar ics file In addition there are no white spaces at the start of each line in the calendar ics file As a well formatted Xml file every element in the file must have a closing tag and the white spaces are used to represent the relationships between elements Sample output files are available in Appendix D iCalendar data structure has been mentioned in section 2 1 and section 3 2 Xml syntax and data structure has been mentioned in section 2 2 So this section will focus on how the program will check whether files exist and how the program imports a file if it exists In this project a command line argument is used to allow the user to supply a file name to program If the user did not supply a file the program would import calendar ics by default otherwise the program would import the file supplied What s more the file supplied must exist or the warning message Unable to open the
51. nge any field of the event The option j will bring you back to main menu Edit List a Change Event Start Time b Change Event End Time c Change Free or Busy Time d Change Classification e Change Summary 37 f Change Location g Change Categories h Change Description i Change Alarm j Finish Enter your Choice 5 6 5 Scheduling a Meeting 1 To schedule a meeting by choosing the option s from the calendar system main menu 2 A sub menu is shown you can choose the option a in sub menu to scheduling a meeting at working time or the option b to schedule a meeting for 24 hours 3 Enter a date number of files and names of files to start then schedule job 5 6 6 Getting Help and See User Manual 1 To get help by choosing the option h from the calendar system main menu 2 A web page will be displayed to show the user instruction 3 Follow the links at the top of the web page to reach the expectative information directly 5 6 7 Quit 1 To leave the system by choosing the option q from the calendar system main menu 38 Chapter 6 Further Development 6 1 Introduction The scale of the project may be further developed Some ideas for improving the system overall usability and usefulness were uncovered due to the time available for the delivery of the solution The ideas which could not be developed because of time restrictions are outlined below and serve as an indi
52. od the program can be compiled but the program did not return an input prompt and it did not allow the user to input text anywhere Eventually I discovered every getline method function did not work 25 correctly after a cin The reason is cin has a similar problem with get method it has a default terminating character n and can not extract n from the input stream so I used a piece of code getline cin consume to consume n of cin before using getline method In the result the addEvent method worked properly 4 2 4 Edit and Delete An Event Users can edit an existing event when the information of an event has been changed When users select edit event all events will be listed with an index and the users are required to enter the index number they want to edit After the index number was input details of the required event and a sub menu would be displayed on the screen at the same time users can make the choice to edit any field of the information of the event and then write back the vector Thus editing an event is completed In addition if an event was past or cancelled users can delete it from their calendars When users select delete event users also need to enter an index number they want to delete If the index number equals to the size of vector that means the user expects to delete the last event in the vector so we can simply resize the vector by reducing the size of the vector by 1 the last
53. opular now XML was designed to describe data and to focus on what data is Tags are not predefined in XML so we must define our own tags and our own document structure 1 What s more XML uses either a Document Type Definition DTD or an XML Schema to describe the data and XML with a DTD or XML Schema is designed to be self descriptive 2 2 3 2 Advantages of XML Format In the real world many computer systems and databases contain data in incompatible formats Fortunately data can be exchanged between incompatible systems through using XML Converting the data to XML can reduce the complexity of problem and the data in XML also can be read by many different types of applications So my Calendar Tool should have the ability to output personal information to a file with the standard XML and also can convert the XML format to a standard iCalendar format 2 2 3 3 Syntax in XML 1 Declarations The first line in any XML file is XML declaration which defines the XML version and the character encoding method currently used in an XML document For example the line lt xml version 1 0 encoding iso 8859 1 gt means the document conforms to the 1 0 specification of XML and uses the ISO 8859 1 Latin 1 West European character set 2 Elements All XML elements must have a closing tag it is illegal to omit the closing tag What s more XML tags are case sensitive the tag lt iCalendar gt is different from the tag lt
54. ostate edu cs154 PerfComp 05 Apr 2003 42 14 http www dfg cit cornell edu cfg design bkg html 06 Apr 2003 15 Bruce Eckel 1995 Thinking in c Prentice Hall p227 08 Feb 2003 16 http gethelp devx com techtips epp pro 10min 2001 aprt 10min0401 2 asp 08 Apr 2003 17 http dotnet di unipi it Content sscli docs doxygen pal structtm html 06 Apr 2003 18 http www ietf org internet drafts draft ietf calsch many xcal 02 txt 16 Apr 2003 43 Appendix A Project Reflection Overall I think that the goal of the project was achieved successfully The original objectives were met and exceeded However there are some aspects of the project which could have been better I did further research than what I had mentioned in mid project report I only talk about what XML format looks like and how XML describe the data in my mid project report After researching on relevant documents I found there is a standard XML is applied to represent iCalendar Through reading the specification of iCalendar I understood how an iCalendar object is defined and can be identified and parsed within a data stream and what the data format looks line in an iCalendar file Therefore research can determine the correctness and quality of the project A good research will direct you to the way of success In fact I did not do as much work at the first semester as I expected which lead to some changes in the schedule Fortunately the ori
55. out events and handle information in many data formats Program can exchange important data about events so that users can schedule meetings with anyone else who has a same date format aware program Acknowledgements I would like to offer my sincere thanks to my supervisor Dr Nick Efford for his guidance throughout the planning and execution stages of this project whose constant advice and helpfulness are invaluable to my project and also thank my assessor Natasha Shakhlevich for her advice on writing up the report The successful implementation of Calendar Tool program would not have been possible if without their patience and continual support I also would like to thank many friends who have annoyed greatly with testing of my system Finally I would like to thank my family for their continuous support love and enthusiasm which has always accompanied me particularly in the difficult times ii Contents Chapter 1 Introduction 1 1 Purpose 1 2 Similar Software Products 1 2 1 Ximian Evolution Calendar in Linux System 1 2 2 MSN Calendar in Window System 1 3 Minimum Requirement 1 4 Deliverables 1 5 Objectives 1 6 Project Schedule Chapter 2 Background Research 2 1 The Standard iCalendar File Format 2 1 1 iCalendar Object and vEvent Entity 2 1 2 Syntax for Encoding the iCalendar 2 2 Differences between iCalendar and vCalendar 2 3 The XML File Format 2 3 1 XML Definition 2 3 2 Advantages of XML 2 3 3 Syntax
56. program more software packages may be required such as Flex 13 3 3 Analyses and Design Diagram 3 3 1 Disadvantages of Similar Calendar Systems Ximian Evolution Calendar and Microsoft Outlook are well designed and used in different system environments They have a common disadvantage which is not supporting the import or export of an XML format file Data in different systems and databases may be in an incompatible format which leads the problem to become more complex or even can not be solved at all when the systems try to handle data in different format Therefore Data incompatibility and problem complexity can be reduced if the system has the ability to write data to a XML file and convert XML to iCalendar 3 3 2 C C and Java C is an object oriented language and a direct descendant of language C that retains almost all features of C as a subset C also provides stronger type checking and supports a wider range of programming styles than C without losing the efficiency Java is also an object oriented language one important advantage of Java is its portability A Java program is compiled into byte code rather than a native machine code byte code can be interpreted by a Java Virtual Machine If there is a Virtual Machine designed for specific computer architecture the computer could execute the Java program of byte code directly without compiling the program again But this feature also causes one of Java s biggest disad
57. r more than two users Each time a user log on the system the identification number associated with that user will be passed to the system and then the system will load all calendar data of that user from the calendar file This would allow the implementation of an access control interface which allows registered users to log on the system by input user id and password and unregistered users to create their own new account Thus the confusion currently involved should be eliminated Unfortunately there was limited time left before the final project deadline and there was doubt as to whether the access control interface could be implemented in time Hope it can be completed in the near future 6 4 ToDo Type of Calendaring and Scheduling Entities In the current system only event entities are included in the iCalendar object In other words the current system only allows adding event information into the calendar system In fact the iCalendar can be used for exchanging information not only about event but also todo types of calendaring and scheduling entities A todo is a calendaring and scheduling entity that represents an action item or assignment For example it may be an item of work assigned to an individual such as John to buy some gifts for the party tonight This would require the system to be further developed and allow users to add edit and delete todo information Obviously the usability and the compatibility of the system
58. r only was allowed to make a choice by inputting a lowercase letter from the menu therefore when the user input a capital letter or any other invalid string the system would do nothing which caused the confusion There were 4 menus in total in the program all of them had this bug mention above Therefore the program was modified which treated both lowercase and capital letter as valid input When the user input an invalid string the system will output error message and ask the user to input choice again The confusion involved earlier was solved and the system will not abort any more Test 2 View Full Events Information on Web Browser There was a problem that had been encountered during testing the View Full Events function The events that the user just added could not be displayed on the web browser The reason was that the program would only write the calendaring information back to the iCalendar XML and HTML file when the user chose to quit the system When the user was going to view the full events list the web browser would open the old HTML file without including the new added data So the information displayed on web browser was incorrect One approach to view correct information was that the user could simply restart the program and chose view the full event list option again the information would be displayed as expected but this approach is meaningless and can not be accepted Another approach was to modify the program which woul
59. ram interrelate with each other and also aids the task of programming the code more efficiently The diagrams for each class and the relationships between classes are shown below to give the reader an idea of the program s overall structure I have decomposed the system into 5 main classes and one interface main program They are specified in table 3 3 3 Time Handle the time Date Handle the date Datetime Handle the date and time together CalendarComponent Define the calendar components e g event todo AlarmComponent Define the alarm part for each calendar component Calendar Define some fundamental methods for the calendar system Interface Main program user can run complied program to start to use Table 3 3 3 Functions of Classes and Main Interface As can be seen in table 3 3 3 there are three classes used to handle date and time which are named Time Date and DateTime Class Time is to represent the time of day and class Date is to represent the date In the calendar system whenever an event is added or modified the time and date will be recorded and saved to a file as a single stream Date will always be written together with time as a property rather than be written separately in different lines as two properties Therefore the class DateTime is used to put the time and the date together as a single object For example the created time of an event written in a iCalendar file is
60. rsonal DESCRIPTION 6pm at bar of Maxi BEGIN VALARM TRIGGER 16 04 2003T18 09 57 ACTION DISPLAY END VALARM END VEVENT BEGIN VEVENT UID csxss003 425 811 DTSTAMP 20 04 2003T14 33 52 DTSTART 02 05 2003T15 00 00 DTEND 02 05 2003T 16 00 00 TRANSP OPAQUE SEQUENCE 3 CLASS Private SUMMARY interview LOCATION computer science department CATEGORIES personal DESCRIPTION see Dr Simon BEGIN VALARM TRIGGER 20 04 2003T 14 35 42 ACTION DISPLAY END VALARM END VEVENT BEGIN VEVENT UID csxss003 425 811 DTSTAMP 27 04 2003T20 50 56 DTSTART 05 05 2003T 10 00 00 53 DTEND 06 05 2003T 17 00 00 TRANSP OPAQUE SEQUENCE 3 CLASS Private SUMMARY Finish so31 coursework LOCATION Long room CATEGORIES Education BEGIN VALARM TRIGGER 05 05 2003T08 00 00 ACTION DISPLAY DESCRIPTION so31 END VALARM END VEVENT END VCALENDAR Sample XML File lt xml version 1 0 encoding iso 8859 1 gt lt iCalendar gt lt vcalendar version 2 0 prodid Shengqun Sun Calendar gt lt vevent gt lt uid gt csxss003 425 811 lt uid gt lt dtstamp gt 20 04 2003T13 29 38 lt dtstamp gt lt dtstart gt 14 04 2003T00 00 00 lt dtstart gt lt dtend gt 15 04 2003T00 00 00 lt dtend gt lt transp gt OPAQUE lt transp gt lt sequence gt 4 lt sequence gt lt class gt Private lt class gt lt summary gt Sheng s Birthday lt summary gt lt location gt Maxi s lt location gt lt categories gt lt item gt Personal lt item gt lt categories gt
61. ting File iCalendar file has a fixed format the first several characters of each line will determine what information is followed For instance CLASS public represents a public event so when the program reads the line CLASS public classification of the corresponding event would be set the value as public Most lines in the iCalendar file can be handled in similar way When the program reads END VEVENT it would push the event to the vector and start to read the next event finally all events would be imported successfully Xml file also has a fixed format but each element in the file has a closed tag So the above method will only work for the iCalendar file Therefore I decided to use flex to extract the information between tags and then written them to a new file with iCalendar format and then apply the above method to read the calendaring information from that new iCalendar file into the program Flex has the ability to activate rules conditionally any rule whose pattern is prefixed with lt cond gt will be active only when analyser is in start condition cond These start conditions need to be declared in the definition section using s in the flex file Each start condition cond is activated using BEGIN cond action and this condition applies until next BEING action is executed Here is an example that will give a reader some ideas about how flex works When flex is dealing with the line lt item gt Education lt ite
62. uestions in part A When you have finished experiencing with all the functionality on the system menu please fill the questions in part B Note You should specify a date to a scheduling function which is at least the start date of an event in calendar file or the scheduling result returned is meaningless You can schedule file called calendar ics and specify date 14 04 2003 Of Course you can add some your own events and pass a meaningful date to it Please e mail me the completed questionnaire to me at csxss comp leeds ac uk In order to meet deadline of the project I will need your responses by 23 April Part A 1 View Previous Month Calendar Was the result correct yes no Was it easy to use yes no Comments if any no 2 View Next Month Calendar Was the result correct yes no Was it easy to use yes no Comments if any no 3 View Today s Event s 46 Was the result correct yes no Was it easy to use yes no Comments if any no 4 Add New Event Was the result correct yes no Was it easy to use yes no Comments too much information need to enter if any no 5 Edit An Event Was the result correct yes no Was it easy to use yes no Comments if any no 6 Delete An Event
63. vantages An intermediate path needed first is that Java binary code has to be translated into the equivalent microprocessor instructions by the Java Virtual Machine but native machine code is a set of instructions that can be accepted directly Obviously the binary code translation takes more time on translation so the performance of Java binary code is slower than that of compiled C machine code In addition integer value or floating point value computation in C is also several times faster than Java What s more C handles file I O much more efficiently than Java does In summary Java performs many times slower than C especially in I O operations The performance difference between Java and C cannot be ignored for my project One reason is that when my program runs each time the data in the calendar file will be read in and additional information also will be written back to the calendar file when the user creates something new or modifies something Another reason is that there will be a lot of calculations and comparisons in my program Input file and output file operation is significant in my program So in order to save user s time I decide to choose the C rather than Java for my program 1 14 3 3 3 Class Analysis and Diagram As C is an object oriented language it was also necessary to draw up a class diagram in order to aid the design process A class diagram illustrates how the different classes within a prog
64. view previous or next month s calendar by choosing option a or b from the calendar system main menu then previous or next month s calendar will be shown You can apply the option repeated to view any either future month or past month s calendar you want 5 6 3 Viewing Events 1 To view today s event by choosing the option c from the calendar system main menu some of events that starts today will be displayed 2 To view full event list by choosing the option g form the calendar system main menu all of events will be displayed with an index You can know how many events in total in your calendar program 5 6 4 Creating Deleting or Editing an Event 1 To create a new event by choosing the option d from the calendar system main menu 2 Fill in the Summary field and enter any other relevant information 3 If you would like to add a reminder for this event give an answer yes to the question Do you want to add a reminder for this event and enter relevant reminder information 4 To delete an event by choosing the option f from the calendar system menu All of events are displayed with an index and then you can enter an index number to delete it 5 To edit an event by choosing the option e from the calendar system menu All of events are displayed with an index and then you can enter an index number to edit it At the time you can see an edit list sub menu as shown below and choose the option to cha

Final-Project Report Calendar Tool Shengqun Sun Computer

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