Korganizer: cannot move recurring items' day, only hour.

[dotancohen]

Binary package hint: kdebase-kde4

In Kontact 1.3 on KDE 4.1 as installed by Ubuntu 8.10 alpha 3, one cannot move recurring events to a different day. When moving recurring events to a different day/time, the time changes yet the day does not.

To reproduce:
1) Create recurring event at 12:00 on Monday.
2) Drag event from 12:00 Monday to 14:00 Tuesday.

What happens:
The event moves to 14:00 Monday.

What I expected to happen:
The event would move to 14:00 Tuesday.

[Richard Birnie (rbirnie-deactivatedaccount)]

I was unable to reproduce this bug on a fully updated Intrepid alpha6 system. I followed the steps as given in the original report and was able to drag the created event around at will and have it go where I intended.

Do you still experience this bug?

What version of Kontact/KDE do you currently have? My system is showing:
sudo apt-cache policy kontact
kontact:
  Installed: 4:4.1.1a-0ubuntu3
  Candidate: 4:4.1.1a-0ubuntu3
  Version table:
 *** 4:4.1.1a-0ubuntu3 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com intrepid/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[dotancohen (dotancohen)]

I will download the alpha6 disc and test later this week.

[Harald Sitter (apachelogger)]

Richard, please mark bugs as incomplete if you request information.
Thank you :)

[dotancohen (dotancohen)]

I can confirm that this bug is still present in the Kubuntu 8.10 beta version. However, I have discovered a new detail:
The bug only occurs on events in an imported calendar (actually imported from KDE 3.x). New events created in KDE 4.x function correctly.

Steps to reproduce:
1) Import calendar from KDE 3.x that includes recurring events. Import as a new calendar (not a merge).
2) Drag a recurring event to a new time / date and select "All occurrences".
3) ????
4) Profit!

[dotancohen (dotancohen)]

Reported upstream:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=172464

[Harald Sitter (apachelogger)]

Fair enough.

[Kde-2011-08 (kde-2011-08)]

Version: (using KDE 4.1.1)
Installed from: Ubuntu Packages

In Kontact on KDE 4.1 one cannot move some recurring events to a different day. When attempting to move these recurring events to a different day/time, the time changes yet the day does not. This only affects events in a calendar that has been imported (in my case, from KDE 3). Events created on the default calendar behave fine.

Steps to reproduce:
 1) Import calendar from KDE 3.x that includes recurring events. Import as a new calendar (not a merge).
 2) Drag a recurring event to a new time / date and select "All occurrences".
 3) ????
 4) Profit!

[Kde-2011-08 (kde-2011-08)]

I can confirm that this bug still exists in Trunk. Furthermore, it now affects all repeating events, not only imported events.

[Kde-2011-08 (kde-2011-08)]

This bug is still present in Trunk, but it is less consistent.

Steps to reproduce:
1) from a blank calendar, create an event and recur it weekly.
2) With the mouse drag the event to a different time/date
3) Select "All Occurrences"

What happens: Only the hour changes, not the date.

Note that this bug is getting a bit difficult to reproduce. _Sometimes_ the move event works as expected. Try again in a few minutes and the bug returns (on the same event). So if you triage this and find that it works for you, leave the event and come back in a few minutes to retriage on the same event.

[Smartins (smartins)]

I found out that daily events can be moved fine, but weekly events have this bug. (KDE4.2)

[Kde-2011-08 (kde-2011-08)]

I can confirm that this bug is still reproducible in KDE 4.2.

I am also raising the severity to major, as this is a dataloss issue for people who coordinate meetings with KDE-PIM. It is also a moneyloss issue for those same people. It is a timeloss issue as well, as not only will the user miss his meeting, but he will prepare for and show up to a meeting that does not exist.

[Kde-2011-08 (kde-2011-08)]

I can further note that sometimes the event on the week shown and moved is changed correctly, but the following weeks are not. So when triaging, check the following weeks after each move.

[Kde-2011-08 (kde-2011-08)]

Reproducible in KDE 4.3.

[Johannes (johannes-paradise)]

kde 4.3.2 on kubuntu 9.10 karmic beta upgraded from kubuntu 9.04 jaunty

I can confirmation of same behaviour in Kontact 4.3.2. Events with recurrence set to weekly sit glued to Saturday with the occasional time and date messed up. Impossible the change to a different day without changing to another than weekly recurrence or removing the weekly recurrence first!

Workaround for now is to select a daily recurrence every 7 days to simulate a weekly recurrence. This way the event can then moved around by dragging or changed without to insist on Saturdays only or messed up time and date.

Steps to reproduce:
o create a calendar event, place wherever, all good so far
o then enter some recurrence and the event will get stuck on Saturdays no matter what

Cheers

Johannes

[Roman Zimmermann (torotil)]

I can confirm this for gentoo (amd64) with kontact 4.4.9999 (current 4.4 branch).

Bug #227977 seems to be a duplicate or another aspect of the same bug.

[Kde-2011-08 (kde-2011-08)]

*** Bug 211972 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[yehielb (yehielb)]

problem is related to all calendars.
4.4.1

[tsdh (tassilo)]

*** Bug 227977 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[tsdh (tassilo)]

Using KDE 4.4.1, I got the effects I described at bug 227977. Now with KDE 4.4.2 the effects changed a bit.

1. Create a recurring event.
2. Move the event to another day using drag&drop in the agenda and say the move is for "all occurences".
3. The event will "jump back" to the original day, but to the new time is kept.
4. Now show or edit the entry: the Date and Time fields have the new, correct values, but the agenda shows them wrong...

The I restarted korganizer to check if the agenda display would be correct then. But after that, the entry is still at the old day with the new time, and the Date and Time fields are now empty...

[Diederik (didi-debian)]

Created attachment 43333
Wrong display of event (time is off)

[Diederik (didi-debian)]

Using KDE 4.4.3 on Debian Sid/Unstable, I get similar results as comment nr 12, but not the same

1. Create a recurring event on Friday May 7 2010 from 12:00 till 14:00
2. Move the event to Wednesday May 5 2010 18:00 till 20:00 with the mouse, specifying all occurrences
3. The even will jump back to the original day, but the new time is kept
4. Show the event, the Time has the correct value, but the date is at Friday May 7 2010
5. After restarting Kontact it's the same as before restarting.

Note however that I think the display is consistently wrong:
When I moved the event I placed the top of the event block at the line where 18:00 begins, but the time it displays is 17:00.
This is also the case when creating the initial event though, visually it shows between 11:00 and 13:00, not 10:00 and 12:00
I'll add an attachment showing this

[Kde-2011-08 (kde-2011-08)]

I can confirm this issue on a brand new KDE 4.4.3 install with a clean ~/.kde in Kubuntu 10.04 on weekly-recurring events when dragging with the mouse in Week View.

"Only This Item" works as expected
"Also Future Items" moves only the hour, not the day
"All Occurrences" moves only the hour, not the day

[Andreas Mahel (andreas-mahel)]

I can confirm this issue on KDE 4.4.3 / OpenSuSE 11.2.
What I see:

- Creating an event for Tuesday 2010-05-11, recurring weekly (4 times)
- Move the event to Wednesday 2010-05-12
-> The event disappears from the current week, and the first occurrence will be next week Tuesday (2010-05-18)

It's the same behaviour both moving by mouse or changing the event's start date from the event property dialog.

My interpretation:
Weekly recurrence of an event is based on selecting the day of the week on which the event should occur.
Upon creation of the event, this information is pre-defaulted to the day of the event start date.
Changing the event start date later on only changes the time range for the whole event (like: when is the first event allowed to occur), but not the day of the week when it will occur.

I could imagine that we have similar effects on monthly or yearly recurring events, although the problem might not hit so often in those cases.
However, looking at the possible choices in those cases (like "every 11th day of the month" vs "every second Tuesday of the month"), I guess there is no easy solution to apply "event dragged by mouse" changes easily to those repetition rules.

I even would say, the behavior is consistent with the design -- albeit not very intuitive for the user.

What might help:
1. An additional choice (which should be the default IMHO) for weekly recurrence; something like "on the same day of week like the start date of the series" (sorry, I couldn't find a more catchy phrase).

2. An information to the user in cases where the recurrence rules could not be updated automatically (not that trivial to find out when this would be, probably).

[Kde-2011-08 (kde-2011-08)]

> However, looking at the possible choices in those cases (like "every
> 11th day of the month" vs "every second Tuesday of the month"), I guess
> there is no easy solution to apply "event dragged by mouse" changes
> easily to those repetition rules.

Although I agree those situations will be hard to deal with, this bug relates to a simple-to-deal with (from an interpretation of user intent perspective, not necessarily from a coding perspective) change in day and hour of a weekly-recurring event.

> I even would say, the behavior is consistent with the
> design -- albeit not very intuitive for the user.

You suspect that the software was designed to let the user drag an item to a different day, yet not change the day that the event takes place? Why don't other calendaring software operate in such an unintuitive manner? No, I suspect that this is a programming error. Even on the off-chance that this is by design, it is still a bug.

[Andreas Mahel (andreas-mahel)]

> You suspect that the software was designed to let the user drag an item to
> a different day, yet not change the day that the event takes place? Why
> don't other calendaring software operate in such an unintuitive manner?
> No, I suspect that this is a programming error. Even on the off-chance
> that this is by design, it is still a bug.

I absolutely agree with you that the application's behavior is a bug from most users' view (because obviously not consistent with what is expected).
Side note: I've experienced strange behavior concerning recurring events in other calendaring software as well ;-)

However, I can't tell if this behavior is "as designed", if it works differently than designed, or if this use case has not been designed at all, and now just happens to behave strangely.

But definitely the effect of the user's actions in this case is not what he would expect; I vote clearly for a more intuitive behavior.

[tsdh (tassilo)]

I've just checked the behavior of iCal (on MacOS X) when moving recurring events. When I move an event recurring every Tuesday to Friday, the recurrence also changes to "Weekly / on Friday", which is what I guess all user's would expect...

[Harald Sitter (apachelogger)]

Closing in favor of KDE bug report, please refer there for updates. Thanks.

[Kdenis (kdenis)]

This bug has only been reported for versions before 4.14, which have been unsupported for at least two years now. Can anyone tell if this bug still present?

If noone confirms this bug for a Framework-based version of korganizer (version 5.0 or later, as part of KDE Applications 15.08 or later), it gets closed in about three months.