119 lines
6.7 KiB
Markdown
119 lines
6.7 KiB
Markdown
# Sunbird: My favourite calendar program
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I've been using Mozilla products as my calendar system for many years, but sadly
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their flagship calendar product, Sunbird, was discontinued in 2010.
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Sunbird was and is a really nice calendar solution because it has the following
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combination of features:
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- It's local-first (no network required).
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- It supports the iCalendar format and CalDAV protocol for syncing with other calendar systems.
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- It has a very nice user interface (what you'd expect from a large company like Mozilla).
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- It supports mouse-driven drag-and-drop for moving events around.
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- It has barely any dependencies, so it can be easily installed on a wide variety of platforms.
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- It uses very little resources, given that it was designed to run on the average computer of 2004-2010.
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- It's open source, so it can theoretically be updated and ported to other platforms.
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- It runs on Linux, and doesn't require any web accounts (e.g. Outlook, Google Calendar, etc.).
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# History
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[October 1998: Sunbird begins life as 'Zulu'](https://web.archive.org/web/19991011010018/http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/)
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- With the stated aim of supporting iCalendar (still one of its huge advantages).
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- "Zulu is the next-generation calendar client currently under development for Netscape Communicator."
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[December 2001: 'Zulu' is renamed 'Mozilla Calendar'](https://web.archive.org/web/20011211125739/http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/)
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According to the webpage from the time, it still was not a 'released' product, and needed to be compiled by users.
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Stated aims at this point:
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- "The Mozilla Calendar project is meant to create an open source, standards based calendar solution."
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- "Presently the code only runs under Linux, with plans in the works to quickly convert the code to run under Windows and Mac. "
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At this point, the project states that the code for Mozilla Calendar was
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donated from *OEone Corporation*. Whether this group were also involved with
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'Zulu' is unclear. Perhaps they were. Based on [a pixelated screenshot](https://web.archive.org/web/20011211125739/http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/screenshot.html) of the
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calendar from the time, it looks like at that stage it ran as a server with a
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web interface, accessible via Firefox, or perhaps the entire calendar ran as a
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Firefox extension.
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[August 2002: 'Mozilla Calendar' adds Windows and Mac support](https://web.archive.org/web/20020802223115/http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/)
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At this point, the calendar is definitely a standalone application, and has a similar appearance to the final Sunbird product release.
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[February 2003: Calendar 'Skins' become available](https://web.archive.org/web/20030201103420/http://projectit.com/skypilot/)
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[April 2004: 'Mozilla Calendar' is renamed 'Sunbird'](https://web.archive.org/web/20040404190553/http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird.html)
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"The Sunbird Project is a redesign of the Mozilla Calendar component. Our goal
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is to produce a cross platform standalone calendar application based on
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Mozilla's XUL user interface language. At the moment the "Sunbird" name is a
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project name. It is not official and may change in the future."
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"Our intended user is someone who uses Mozilla Firefox (or another browser) as
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his browser, Mozilla Thunderbird (or another mail client) as his mail client
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and wants a calendar application based on Mozilla."
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"In addition, by focusing solely on standalone calendar, we believe we can make
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some dents in the overall footprint and performance of the calendar application
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by removing components and chrome we don't need."
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"At the moment Sunbird is in an experimental stage. Although it is quite
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stable, we recommend it for testing purposes only."
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Later:
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"In addition, by focusing solely on standalone calendar, we believe we can make
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some dents in the overall footprint and performance of the calendar application
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by removing components and chrome we don't need."
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[A 2004 Review of Sunbird](https://web.archive.org/web/20041101091034/http://osdir.com/Article1558.phtml)
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[April 2006: First mention of 'Lightning'](https://web.archive.org/web/20060427181604/http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/lightning/index.html)
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What would eventually come to replace Sunbird was a spinoff project called
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'Lightning', which essentially took Sunbird and made it into a Thunderbird
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extension. The first mention I could find of it was in April 2006, when
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it started to appear below the Sunbird project on the Mozilla website.
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[2007: Lightning starts to be prioritised](https://web.archive.org/web/20070528183038/http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird/index.html)
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In a bold move, Mozilla start to position Lightning above Sunbird on their
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official website. Though both projects are still in development under
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the umbrella 'Mozilla Calendar' project.
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[April 2010: Mozilla announce Sunbird's 'last version'](https://web.archive.org/web/20100404032000/http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/)
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"This is the last public Sunbird release by the Calendar Project.
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We recommend upgrading to Thunderbird 3 and Lightning 1.0 beta1."
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To me this is highly contentious reasoning, given that Sunbird and Thunderbird
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are very different products. To someone who already has a favourite email
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client, they now have to choose between their email client and their calendar
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client: stay with Sunbird-style workflow and adopt Thunderbird, or stay with
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their email client and lose their Sunbird-style workflow by looking for a
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different calendar solution.
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[January 2014: Mozilla remove all mention of Sunbird from their website](https://web.archive.org/web/20140104071728/http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/projects/calendar/)
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Lightning is now the only calendar product mentioned on the Mozilla website,
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which integrates with Thunderbird.
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# Quality
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Sunbird's excellence is a result of the 15 years or more during which it was
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actively developed by whole teams of programmers and designers. This abundance
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of resources is not typical of open source projects, and it shows in the
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quality of the product, which is still one of the best desktop calendars for
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Linux today.
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# Installation
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I've put together a `install.sh` script which can be used to install Sunbird on
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a Linux system. It pulls the last stable version of Sunbird from the Mozilla
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archives, checks a SHA256 hash to verify the integrity of the download, and
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then extracts the files, installs the application, icons and desktop entry.
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Library requirements: gtk2
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