chuma.org

Since the demise of Toad Hollow Software‘s yearly Holidays packages, there seems to be no easy way to get the year’s holiday events into your Newton.

Well, with about 100 lines of Perl and some NTK clicking, I’ve created some packages which should add the important dates for 2007 to your Newton running OS 2.0 or 2.1.

These files are created from the Apple iCal holiday calendars, so if you don’t like the dates, blame them. I won’t mix and match events from multiple calendars, sorry.

These packages are distributed with no warranty whatsoever. I claim no copyright on the iCal data itself.

Do you find this useful?

B1B

See “Usage” below for instructions.

• Australian 2007 dates
• Canadian 2007 dates
• German 2007 dates
• New Zealand 2007 dates
• Spain 2007 dates
• United Kingdom 2007 dates

• United States 2007 dates

• Christian 2007 dates

• Jewish 2007 dates – Generated from data at hebcal.com. If you appreciate this, let them know.
• Islamic 2007 dates – Apple hasn’t updated this source file yet – anyone got another source?

Other files available on request. Leave a comment below with a link to the file you’d like converted. It doesn’t even have to be from Apple – any iCal / vCalendar compliant file will do.

B2B

Download the file of dates you want to add. Install it onto your Newton using whatever method you normally use. Once installed you’ll be asked to confirm that you’re going to add the events. Tap “Yes” and they’ll be added, and you’ll see a confirmation dialog when it’s done.

The package will be installed into the Extensions folder of Extras automatically. If you tap on it you’ll see an info message on when the package was generated, a link back to this site, and also the tag associated with the package’s events. If you search Dates for events containing the tag, you can quickly see what’s been added and selectively remove events if you like.

If you delete the package, you’ll be asked if you want to remove the events. You can tap “No” and the events will stay, and you’ll free up some storage space. Or tap “Yes” and they’ll be removed, and then the package will be removed.

B3B

1. Where’s Easter?

   Apple puts Easter it into the Christian Holidays file. Even though Easter Monday is a statutory holiday in the US, UK, and Canada, it isn’t in any of those countries’ holiday files. Blame Apple.

2. How did you do this?

   iCal files are read by a Perl script leveraging the iCal::Parser module. The script generates NewtonScript source for a simple auto-part (extension) which is then compiled into a package by hand using NTK.

3. File X doesn’t have event Y in it! Please add it!

   The data comes straight from Apple – I do no modifications the data other than translating it into a Newton-friendly format. If you think the Canadian file should have Hallowe’en, Mother’s Day, and St. Patrick’s Day in it, go bug Apple.

B4B

1. If you delete one of the events manually, and then try to delete all events when you delete the package, you’ll probably get a system error. You can still search Dates for the meetings to delete them. Tap the package in Extras to see what its tag to search for is.
2. Installing more than one file will probably give you duplicate events. Well, the same thing would happen if you subscribed to more than one iCal file. For example installing both US and Canadian package will give you “Christmas Day (Canadian)” and “Christmas (US)” on December 25th.

B5B

• First version (2006-01-03) – initial build, US/Canada only.
• Second version (2006-01-03) – if holiday has a description, put the description in the event’s notes and the first 30 characters in the event title. Added confirmation dialog when adding/removing events.
• Third version (2006-01-04) – added UK, Christian, and Jewish dates files.
• Fourth version (2006-01-04) – changed Event tag from (iCal) to file-specific tags. If you tap on the package you’ll see a window which includes what the tag is. Added confirmation message when import is complete too. Also updated the package version info to 4. Added Australia and New Zealand too.