Calendars and Categories

Pimlical supports categories within a single calendar. However, Google and Android calendars do not support this. In some ways, Google calendars correspond to categories and are often used that way. So when you are handling an Android/Google calendar, categories are not displayed by Pimlical/Android. Categories are only displayed in the Pimlical Local Calendar (see below).

Calendars

Pimlical/Desktop typically syncs categories within its local calendar database to calendars in Google Calendars. For example, if you have a category called G_Personal in Pimlical/Desktop, that is linked to the Google calendar Personal and to the Android calendar A_Personal. The A_ prefix needs to be explicitly designated when setting a calendar as a default for creation (DefaultApptCategory). Throughout Pimlical/Android, preferences that normally apply to categories can also be used to apply to calendars by designating the calendar with its prefix.

If you only use Android calendars, you will never see categories appear in Pimlical (other than references to them in preferences).

Pimlical Local Calendar and Categories

The Pimlical Local Calendar is a calendar that Pimlical stores separately on the Android phone's SD card (or virtual SD card if there is no physical Sd card). This calendar database is identical in format to the calendar database used in Pimlical/Desktop for its cached calendar (CalendarCache.dat) and in fact the binary files can be freely copied and read/written by both platforms. Pimlical/Android supports multiple, local calendars, but only one calendar can be active and displayed at a time.

This database does support separate categories. In Pimlical/Android, if you call up an item that is stored in the PimlicalLocalCalendar, that item will display categories in the database on a line in the Edit Dialog (just above the calendar display). Click on the category button to display the category selection dialog which allows you to add or delete categories and also assign any number of category(s) to the item.

Categories are displayed in the Select Categories menu item as individual selections. That way you can set different colors and or icons for each category. There are two different color schemes supported by Pimlical - either matching how Google displays colors, or how Pimlical itself displays colors (which supports separate foreground and background colors).

The selection of categories within the local calendar also affects the currently selected filter's category selection list. Pimlical/Android in early releases does not support full edit/creation of filters (that has to be done in Pimlical/Desktop and the filter copied and imported into Pimlical/Android). What this means is that when the selection of categories is changed, that selection is stored in the currently selected filter. Switching to a different filter will change the selection of categories.

A preference controls whether you can use multiple categories or not (MultipleCategorySelection) which by default is false, meaning that only one category can be selected at a time - if you select a different category, that becomes the category the item is associated with. If this preference is set to false, then the category selection dialog features checkboxes rather than radio buttons and you can select as many categories as you like to be associated with an item. If you change this preference in Pimlical, make certain that other platforms running Pimlical that you sync with have this preference set the same way or you may lose the category designations when syncing with those platforms. Also, if you are syncing to other calendar systems, multiple categories may or may not be supported.

Adding, Renaming and Removing Categories

Categories are tracked dynamically based upon all the category names currently in use in the database. When you create a new category, the category name will persist for the current session even if unused, but if it is never assigned to an event it will not be present the next time the program is activated and the category list is displayed.

To create a category, go into menu | Categories and tap the NEW  button.

To remove a category, you have to be sure it is not in use by (a) any event or task, (b) any template, and (c) any filter. You can search all events for a particular category by just filtering the display for that category. If the 
category does not disappear in the next session, scan your Templates and Filters.

To rename a category, to into menu | Select Categories, tap on the category and then tap the RENAME button to rename it (see menu items for more information).