orage version 4.7.5.
Last updated: March 2010
Copyright © 2006-2010 Juha Kautto
Table of Contents
Orage is a time-managing application of the Xfce 4 Desktop Environment . It includes a calendar window, list of events and day view. Orage has several kinds of alarms and is ical compatible so that you can transfer appointments from other calendar systems into Orage or vica versa. It also provides an easy way to archive and manage your old appointments.
Orage is started by typing orage on the command line or in the run
application window. The command line accepts some options like -v, which
tells the version and -h, which shows short usage help. You can also start
orage by clicking on the item orage in the submenu "Office" from the
desktop menu. Another handy way of starting orage is to click button 1 on
orageclock panel plugin. But usually orage is started automatically as
part of Xfce startup.
The first thing you should do is to adjust your preferences. Before adding any appointments, it is strongly recommended to set your local timezone.
When you run orage, you will first see the calendar window appearing.
The calendar window provides you a menu bar giving access to different functions. Below that is a standard calendar showing the month, the year, day names and week numbers. At the bottom there is small window showing active TODOs and EVENTs on the selected day.
The menubar contains four menus: File, Edit, View and Help.
The file menu contains four items:
- New: start an appointment window for creating a new appointment;
-
Exchange data: creates window where you can do file level operations
to
oragedata. (1) import and export appointments betweenorageand operating system files or 2) renameoragefiles or 3) add and remove foreign calendar files.); -
Close: hide the calendar window but keep
oragerunning in the background; -
Quit: end
orage;
The Edit menu gives you access to the settings window, which will be explained later.
The View menu has three choices:
- View selected date: show the event list of currently selected date;
- View selected week: show the day window starting from current day;
- Select today: set calendar's selected day to be today;
Calendar view presents you one month, which you can change by pressing the arrow beside the month name or the year number or using the mouse wheel. Days where you have appointments or where you have Ending TODO are marked as bold. One day is always selected and shown with a block. You can change the selected day by single clicking any day number. Double clicking a day number causes event list window for that day to be activated (or day list if you changed your preferences).
The bottom window lists your active TODOs. You can scroll to see them all. Red means the TODO is late (due date has passed). Blue means that the TODO is active (start time has passed, but you still have time before the due time passes). And black means a future TODO. You can edit TODOs by double clicking the row. All rows have tooltips, which show more details about the TODO.
The event list (or appointment list as it is also called) window shows all activites that you have reserved for the day (date is shown in the window heading in your locale format). On top of the window you have menu and buttons to do actions. This is your main activity window and you may want to keep it up all the day and even make it to appear on all workspaces or to be always on top of other windows.
There are ten activity buttons in the button bar from left to right:
- New: start an appointment window for creating a new appointment for this day;
- Duplicate: also start an appointment window for creating a new appointment for this day. But do not start from scratch, but copy all values from the active row in the appointment list below. Note that if you do not have any rows selected from the event list, this button does not do anything (but gives a warning);
- Delete: remove all selected appointments. There is no undo, so be carefull with this button! Before removing anything Orage asks for your verification.
- Back: show previous day;
- Today: show today;
- Forward: show next day;
- Refresh: redisplay this date;
- Find: activate the search tab;
- Close: close this window;
- Dayview: start day list window;
Each of the four tabs selects the type of appointments to show. There may also be extra selections possible depending on the tab. You can select tab by clicking it or by using the mouse wheel. Let's check each tab:
- Event: the event tab shows all EVENT type appointments happening on this day. It is possible to see more than one day in this tab by setting "Extra days to show" number to larger than 0. (You can change the default 0 in the preferences dialog.) Each number shows one more day. (It causes the Time column in the event listing to show also the date.)
- Todo: shows your active TODOs similarly than in the main calendar window. Only active ones are shown. If you want to see old TODOs, you need to find them in Search tab.
- Journal: lists your notebook entries starting from certain date. Default start date is one year back and you can not change the default setting.
- Search: enter a free text, which is searched from all the appointments. Usually the search is case independent, but for some utf8 characters Orage switches to case sensitive search method. This happens if the length of the string is different in upper case compared to lower case (for example German language double s causes this).
The list shows all appointments satisfying the conditions and tab type. Scrollbars will appear if there are more lines or longer lines than what fits into the window. You can edit any appointment by double clicking the row. Each line has three fields:
- Time: the starting and ending times of the appointment (the format varies depending on tab and appointment). All times are always shown in your local timezone. It is possible to define special whole day appointments and they have a text "All day" instead of real start and end times. Rows appear in start time order. +sign in front of the time means that the appointment started on some previous day and correspondingly +sign at the end of the time means that appointment continues and ends later than the selected day. If the Event tab shows today, there are few extra formattings used: When the event has passed, it is overstriked. Currently active events are shown with blue colour and future events are bold.
-
Flags: gives information about the appointment. If your appointment
has a category which has been associated with a clour, flags field has
that colour background. (Note that the explanations are visible as
a hint when you move your cursor into the appointment list.)
There are five flags in order:
- Alarm: what kind of action happens when alarm time passes. n means no alarm has been defined. A means that visible window is raised. S means that sound is played. (If both visual and sound alarm is defined, S is shown)
- Recurrence: how often is that appointment happening. n means no repeating so that this event only happens once. D means daily repeat, W weekly, M monthly and Y yearly.
-
Type: what kind of reservation is this. Two options:
f means free so that the action is not reserving
the time and it is possible to schedule more appointments at the
same time and respectively
B means busy, so that
nothing else can be done at this time. Note that current
version of
oragedoes not enforce these and the flag is only as a comment (in the future this may be enforced). - File: where this appointment is stored. O means it is in the standard active Orage file, A in the archive file. (The appointment is automatically unarchived if it is edited.). Archived appointments can only be found in the Search and Journal tabs. F appointment is in foreign file; in other words it is not native Orage appointment.
- Appointment type: E for EVENT, T for TODO and J for JOURNAL. This flag is usefull only in search tab since the tab name informs the type in other tabs.
- Title: the heading of the appointment. Note that the whole title is shown, so you may want to avoid using too long titles to keep the view cleaner.
The day list window shows all events that you have reserved for the next days. Default is to show 7 days, but you can change that and see up to 40 days at once. On top of the window you have menu and buttons to do actions. This is another form of your main activity window and more usefull than event list window if you want to find room for your new events or see your agenda and free time from longer perod than one day.
There are six activity buttons in the button bar from left to right:
- New: start an appointment window for creating a new appointment for this day;
- Back: start listing one day earlier;
- Today: change start day to be today;
- Forward: start listing one day later;
- Refresh: redisplay the window;
- Close: close this window;
Below the buttonbar are the two settings. You can change the start day of the day list and the number of days shown.
Biggest part of the window is the day list area. You can click the header of the day to open event list window for that day. First line contains full day events when defined. The other lines contain events that you have scheduled. Each event has tooltip which include appointment details. You can update the event by double clicking it. Events are placed on the start time row and even if the length is several hours, the event is only visible on single row. If the event is taking time (availability=Busy), there is vertical line in front of it showing its length. These lines show how full your calendar is and makes it easier to find free time quickly. If more than one event starts at the same hour, they all are added to the same row / column after each other and the reservation line is the overlap of them.
The appointment window is used to add, edit and delete appointments.
It is the most complex window in orage, but most fields still have good
default values and are not mandatory. It has button bar (All actions are
also available in menus above the buttons) and three tabs controlling
basic settings and alarms and recurrence settings.
There are 5 activity buttons in the button bar from left to right:
- Save: store the appointment to the orage system. This causes also data validity checking.
- Save and close: like Save, but also closes the window.
- Revert: undo all changes done after previous save. Note that this button is active only after data has been changed.
- Duplicate: start creating new appointment and copy all values from the current activity into it. The new appointment is not created until you press .
- Delete: remove current appointment permanently from orage system.
In this tab, you define the contents of the appointment.
- Type
Orage can handle three types of appointments:
- Event is something that happens sometimes. It has start and end time. This is the most common appointment type and you actually can handle all cases with this, since it also is the most flexible type. So if you are not sure what type to choose, Event is your best bet. Events either reserve your time (Availability=Busy) or are free which means this event does not take time from your schedule.
- Todo is some action that you need to complete. It usually has a start time and due time when it has to be finished. It has no end time, which is replaced by the due time. You can also use duration similarly than with events. Todos have no availability, but instead they have completed time. After you set the completed time, the todo is done and is removed from lists visible in main calendar and in todo appointment tab.
- Journals are just notes. They do not have end times nor availability. It is not possible to add alarm or recurrency for journals.
- Title
The title of the appointment. It appears in the event list and also in the alarm window and is listed at the header of this window. It should be a rather short summary of the appointment.
- Location (Event and Todo)
This field should describe where the event happens. It can be for example Home or Office or Paris depending on what kind of appointment you have. It is also possible to leave it empty.
orageis not using it in any special way, nor is it visible anywhere else than here. Journals do not have location.- All day event
Selecting this checkbox causes so called whole day appointment to be defined. These do not have start nor end time defined, but it is possible that the event lasts several days. Start time is assumed to be the beginning of the day at 00:00 and end date at the last day at 24:00.
- Start
Defines the start time of the appointment. First, press the date button and choose the date from the calendar. After that you set the hour and minute using either your mouse wheel or clicking the small arrows. It is also possible to type the numbers directly to the fields. Hours go from 0 to 23 (24 is not allowed value).
The last button is timezone. Default value for new appointments is your current timezone, which you have set in the preferences. It is recommended to use real timezones instead of floating. You should not mix floating with real timezones although it is possible. Floating means that time is not bound to any timezone, but varies according to current settings. Modifying either the default timezone or start timezone may cause floating values to change.
- End (Event)
Similar to Start, but defines naturally the ending time. Note that start and end timezones may be different (for example when you schedule a meeting in abroad you can set the starting time in your local timezone and the rest of the timings in the destination timezone). Event list window always shows times in your local time. Only events have end time.
- Due (Todo)
Similar to End, but defines the time where the todo should be completed. Only todos have due time.
- Duration (Event and Todo)
Often it is easier to set the appointment duration instead of ending (or due) time. You can do that by marking the first box here. It is not possible to have both end/due time and duration at the same time, so end/due time setting will be unavailable after you select duration. Maximum duration is 1000 days, which is almost three years. Note that although the minute selection jumps 5 minutes at a time, you can manually enter any number.
- Availability (Event)
What kind of reservation is this. There are two possiblities: Free means that the action is not reserving the time and it is possible to schedule more appointments at the same time and respectively Busy means that nothing else can not be done at this time. Note that current version of
oragedoes not enforce these menings and the flag is only as a comment (in the future this may be checked).- Completed (Todo)
By selecting the Done box you mark this todo as done. The completed time can then be set. Format is similar to other times (like Start). Only todos have completed time.
- Categories
Free format text, which you can use to categorize your appointment. It is also possible to create a list of categories and associate those to colours. You can then pick one of those and get your appointment to be shown with that colour in the event list window.
- Priority
Priority of the appointment.
orageis not using this, so treat it just like a comment.- Note
Free format text, where you can and should explain more the appointment. It is shown in the alarm window. Scrollbars appear when needed.
In this tab, you define the alarm for the appointment. orage supports
three kinds of alarms: window, sound and procedure, but they all happen
at the same time. It is possible to define only one alarm time for each
appointment. To cause an alarm you need to do two things: You have to
define alarm time and select alarm type. By default alarm happens 5
minutes before the appointment start time. Default alarm is Orage
window without sound.
Alarm time is set if any of the alarm timing numbers is non zero (in other words there is no special flag to set alarm; just define the time for it. This also prevents setting alarm to happen exactly at the appointment start/end time). You need explicitely select each alarm type by crossing the Use box. If you do not choose any alarm types, the alarm does not happen.
- Alarm time
Define how much earlier or later the alarm happens. If all numbers are zero, no alarm is raised for this appointment. The last field defines what these alarm offset numbers mean. You can define alarm to happen based on start or end time of the appointment and also if it happens after or before the time. Default is to alarm before the start time of the appointment. But specially for todos it is often more usefull to raise alarm before the due (=end) time.
- Persistent alarm
When
orageis not running (for example if your computer is shutdown) alarms can't happen. If you want to get reminders afteroragestarts again, you need to set the alarm as persistent. By default alarms are just lost.- Sound
Define the sound file to be played when the alarm fires. Leaving this empty disables sound alarm. Remember to define the actual play command in the preferences dialog. You should also test that your system can play the filetype you choose there. Simply start a terminal and test it using the command you specified and the sound file.
By default alarm sound is played only once, but you can make it repeated by choosing the box next line. You can also define how many time it is repeated and what is the interval. Be carefull to set the interval longer than the length of the sound since
oragedoes not wait for the previous sound to end before starting the next sound after the interval. Note that there is a silence button in visual alarms, so that you can stop the noise, but that only prevents the next play to happen, it does not interrupt