Lightning/Offline access for Google calendars

[Bob M]

I have been trying to figure out how to configure Lightning for
offline access to google calendars. I can use DAV to expose my google
calendars on Lightning, but when I go offline I cannot access the
calendar. I it only supposed to work when you're online? Am I missing
something obvious? I am unable to find any clear statements about what
Lightning is currently supposed to work, and what the plans are down
the road for this function.

I currently use GcalDaemon as a workaround to obtain offline access,
butI'm surprised that there isn't a native offline capability in
Lightning. One would think that gcaldaemon could provide it, for
example.

Thanks. On a different note, I have to say that TB 3 + Lightning +
GCalDaemon is a wonderful bit of software. Thanks so much!

[Alan Lord (News)]

Post by Bob M
I have been trying to figure out how to configure Lightning for
offline access to google calendars. I can use DAV to expose my google
calendars on Lightning, but when I go offline I cannot access the
calendar. I it only supposed to work when you're online? Am I missing
something obvious? I am unable to find any clear statements about what
Lightning is currently supposed to work, and what the plans are down
the road for this function.

This is a feature I would really like to see pushed up the tree a bit too.

The thought *is* there already however: If you notice when you look at
the properties of a calendar, there is a checkbox marked "Cache
(EXPERIMENTAL, requires restart)".

This was added around 0.8 IIRC but has never really worked and my last
test on a Shredder + 1.0pre was a failure.

Sync is an interesting problem, but I'd have thought by now with the
many off-line sync tools around that most of the questions have been
answered. (I'm thinking of Zimbra and Funambol for example).

Post by Bob M
I currently use GcalDaemon as a workaround to obtain offline access,
butI'm surprised that there isn't a native offline capability in
Lightning. One would think that gcaldaemon could provide it, for
example.

Thanks for the tip about GcalDaemon - I have not tried that before as
the project hasn't seen much activity for a good while now so I don't
think this is a viable long term solution. But I will give it a go now
you have mentioned it.

Post by Bob M
Thanks. On a different note, I have to say that TB 3 + Lightning +
GCalDaemon is a wonderful bit of software. Thanks so much!

+1 - I've been running Shredder + Lightning Nightlies for several months
now. It's a great product. Especially for Linux users whose choices are
fairly limited to mainly Evolution (bleeuurgh) or Zimbra Desktop.

Al

[Thomas Stache]

Post by Alan Lord (News)
The thought *is* there already however: If you notice when you look at
the properties of a calendar, there is a checkbox marked "Cache
(EXPERIMENTAL, requires restart)".
This was added around 0.8 IIRC but has never really worked and my last
test on a Shredder + 1.0pre was a failure.

You have to be aware that the feature works for only one calendar, as it
doesn't track the relations between appointments and their source
calendar (imagine that!).

That being said, I have my largest calendar of the bunch cached offline,
and am happy with the result!

Thomas

[Bob M]

Post by Alan Lord (News)
Thanks for the tip about GcalDaemon - I have not tried that before as
the project hasn't seen much activity for a good while now so I don't
think this is a viable long term solution. But I will give it a go now
you have mentioned it.

It's true that GCalDaemon hasn't been active in quite a while, but it
works great. It's a simple and (it seems to me) robust idea. For
those who haven't looked at it, it's a daemon that maintains a local
store of your google calendars as ics files, and then you use those
ics files as your Thunderbird calendars. I have a dozen calendars that
I can access off or online.

I always wondered why GCalDaemon wasn't just rolled into Lightning.
It's under the Apache License, maybe that's an issue.