GSoC idea: Country holiday service for calendar and calendar improvements

[Mark]

Hi,

Disclaimer: This is just an idea. I don't have plans to make this and i
sadly lack the time to even implement it. However, someone might be
interested to mentor this and someone else might be interested to do this
as a GSoC project. Provided that something alike isn't already existing. I
didn't do a lot of searching prior of making this mail.

= Current issue =
The current digital clock has a calendar, but the default events are really
pointless for non usa people. I see the events and i certainly don't live
in the usa. So, the data in there has to be a little more focused on where
the user lives. For example having the Dutch holidays in it for the Dutch
users. German for... you get the idea.

= Issues =
I'm not a KDE n00b and i have no clue where the current calender events are
pulled from or where i can even change them, add them or delete them. It's
not visible at all. I would have expected korganizer but to my surprise
that is empty. So where is is pulling the events from?

= Calendar improvements =
* Make it transparent where the events are pulled from
* Make it user changeable (integrate with korganizer?)

= The holidays themselves =
I just did a google search on "worldwide holidays" and "worldwide holidays
api" (since we would probably like to use something that's already there.
That turned out:
http://www.earthcalendar.net/index.php
http://superuser.com/questions/162284/free-world-holidays-data
http://www.timeanddate.com/services/api/holiday-api.html

One API but it's not free to use. So that leads me to think (more searching
is needed though) that there isn't a free service for providing the
holidays. For now i assume such a thing isn't there in a free manner thus
it has to be made.

= make it yourself: holidays.kde.org =
No, that domain doesn't work (yet) ;)
Since there is no free holiday API, but all the data is freely available on
the internet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_holidays_by_country why
not make a holiday system where users can contribute the holidays. So i for
example can add all the dutch holidays, someone can review and check that i
didn't fill in bogus data and done. Dutch holidays are in the system. This
system then needs an API (REST perhaps?) where you can request all holidays
by (or a mixture of) year/country/month/day something like that. Make the
web API publicly and freely available for anyone to use.

= Integrate holidays.kde.org with organizer or akonadi (or nepomuk?.. i
lost it) =
Lets for the moment make the assumption that this data is PIM data thus
akonadi is the one where this should be stored. Organizer should interface
with akonadi. I could be mixing up the akonadi and nepomuk names now. If
so, please do correct me. Either way, the API of holidays.kde.org should be
used to fetch and store the users country holidays in his local PIM
database which should show up in KOrganizer (as a seperate calendar) and
that should show up in the digital clock calendar. That seems logical to me.

So that's my idea. I could certainly do the web part (easily!) and i could
make the integration in korganizer and akonadi though i would need help in
that last area. I would like some more feedback on this to improve the idea
where needed. Once you guys like the idea i will put it in the GSoC idea
page. I can't mentor this but if someone is willing to mentor this and
someone else is going to implement this then i certainly want to provide
help where needed.

ps. korganizer looks hopelessly outdated. Perhaps that could be another
GSoC, overhaul korganizer in QML or something ^_-

Kind regards,
Mark
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