2.5.5. Editing Categories

As introduced in Section 2.2, Calendar Tool categories are used to provide additional descriptive information for scheduled items. Categories apply uniformly to all four types of item. Any category can be applied to any number of appointments, meetings, tasks, or events.

Category definitions are accessible from scheduling dialogs, notification dialogs, and item-level displays. The category menu in all such contexts appears the same, as illustrated in Figure 190.


Figure 190: Category display menu.



If the category `none' is selected, the text area above the menu is empty. If any other category is selected, the text area contains that category's name, as shown in Figure 191.


Figure 191: Category menu with non-empty category selected.



When the user selects `Edit ...' in the categories menu, the system displays the dialog of Figure 192.


Figure 192: Edit categories dialog with several user-defined categories.



This same dialog is also accessible from the `Categories' item in the `Schedule' menu.

Adding a new category was introduced in Section 2.2. The categories shown in Figures 190 through 192 reflect category additions having been made during the course of the item- scheduling operations of the preceding scenarios. When the user adds a new category, it must be different in name from any existing category. Names are compared on a character-by-character, case sensitive basis.

The user can change and delete existing categories. To change a category, the user selects its name in the `Current Categories' list and presses `Change'. For example, Figure 193 shows the user having selected the `special event' category.


Figure 193: Special event category selected for editing.



The figure illustrates that `Change' and `Delete' become enabled when the user selects a category name. When the user presses `Change', the system responds with the dialog in Figure 194.


Figure 194: Change category dialog.



The user can edit the category name to any non-empty string that is not the same as an existing category name; the color can be changed to any available in the color menu. In Figure 195, for example, the user has shortened the category name and changed the color to red.


Figure 195: Change category dialog, edited.



When the user presses `OK', the system responds with the confirmation dialog in Figure 196.


Figure 196: Category change confirmation dialog.



The confirmation indicates the total number of items that the category change will affect, that is, the number of items that are defined with this category. In computing the item count, each instance of a recurring item is counted separately. When the user presses `OK', the system proceeds to change the category in all affected items. The system also updates all active display windows in which the old category appears, replacing the old category name and/or color with the new name and/or color.

To delete an existing category, the user selects its name and presses `Delete'. In response, the system displays a dialog of the form shown in Figure 197.


Figure 197: Category delete confirmation dialog.



Here the user has chosen to delete a category that is used in 15 scheduled items. As the dialog explains, the affected items will all have their categories set to `none' if the delete is confirmed. When the user presses `OK', the system deletes the category from the defined list, removes it from all affected items, and updates all active displays. The display updates entail changing the color of all affected items to black and removing the category name wherever it appears. Blank text appears in all displays where the category name appeared prior to deletion.

Category definitions are calendar-specific. That is, each calendar has its own set of category definitions. When more than one calendar is open, the category definitions that appear in menus, displays, and dialogs are those of the current calendar. The specific contexts in which category definitions appear are the following:

  1. all four types of scheduling dialogs

  2. all four types of item-level displays

  3. the coloring in all calendar and list views

  4. meeting notification dialogs

  5. category editing dialogs
The system provides a separate category editing dialog for each calendar. Whenever the user executes the `Schedule Categories ...' command, the system (re)displays a category dialog for the current calendar. Each calendar uses a single category dialog. This means that up to N category dialogs can be displayed at any time, for N equal to the number of open calendars. When more than one calendar is open, the calendar name appears by default in the banner of each category dialog. The appearance or non- appearance of the calendar name in window banners is controled by an option setting, as described in Section 2.7.4.2.




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