All Day Tasks vs. Mozilla Lightning

🍱 Features & apps tasks
1

Hello,

Lightning, the calender addon to Thunderbird, does not offer a way to create an “all day” tasks, and frankly, I doubt that they are willing to change that. Events can be make to last “all day”, but tasks are always shown to be due at midnight and there is no button to make them due “all day”.

None of my tasks needs to be executed at a special time. If a task was to be executed a a specific time and date, it would be an “event” or a “meeting” that needs an alarm. (At least that’s the way I see it!)

So, is there any way to tell NC to make every task last all day, once it has been synchronized into NC’s database from Lightning? Some script perhaps, that can be run periodically would be sufficient.

Thanks in advance.

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2

Technically a task that lasts all day is an event. But you already mentioned that.
Anyway in Nextcloud, the option all day only shows with me if I do set a start point.
In Lightning, when I do set a start at 0:00 time, but not set a finish date it is considered all day automatically. as All day is from 0:00 to ah… 0:00… any other start time is not in a “whole day” period.

3

I think we need to agree to the same definitions of tasks and events, in order to avoid misunderstanding:

An event/meeting is an appointment that is taking place at a certain time at a certain day. It has a duration and it involves other people, hence the term “meeting”. :wink:

An all day lasting event is something like a course of instruction, or a funfair, or a journey.

A task, on the other hand, is something that has to be done, like changing the car’s tyres, feeding the cat, or chopping wood. A task can necessitate to be done at a certain time, and it can involve other people, but usually it is something that just has to be done by oneself, and usually it does not require to be done at an exact moment in time.

An “all day” task is not a task that lasts a hole day, but a task that can be done at any time during that day, no matter if it’s done at 8am or at 5pm. When it’s done, it’s done, but it does not really last the hole day, like changing the tyres. (Of course, a task can last the hole day, if one works too slow. :wink: )

There are even tasks that are not bound to any specific day at all, tasks that can be done at any time in the future, like for example “get famous”. And, of course, there are tasks that have to be finished within a certain period of time, that do need a starting time and an ending time, and once the ending time has past, there’s no way of finishing that task any more.

That’s the way I look at it.

The problem with Lightning is, that it does not provide a way to make a task “all day”. This option is only available when creating events in Lightning. Other calender applications, including NC, do provide a button/option to make a task “all day”, and then those tasks are shown as “all day” in other calender apps as well. If I create a task the way you do it, Lightning does not show a “due” date at all. If I set an ending date without a starting date, Lightning and other calender apps list that task as due on day x at 00:00 o’clock.

And that’s quite annoying, because 1 minute after midnight that task is marked as overdue, while originally that task was meant to be done at any time that day. And that’s what I’d like to change: I do not want to see overdue tasks (eg on my Android calender), while there are still 23 hours left to execute those tasks. Since Mozilla are not really interested in solving this bug, that has been existing for several years now, I think there are two possible ways of dealing with this problem: abandon Thunderbird and Lightning completely from my desktop machine, or I can try to make NC set the “all day” option automatically on every task.

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4

As I said, do set a start time at a date on 0:00 time… do not set an end time… it will show as all day task (even in Lightning).

A check box would be nice, but also in the tasks app I can only see that check box when I do set a start.

For something to be an all day according to Lightning, it needs to start at a point it really can be “All day”. ie the start of the day at 0:00 hours.

5

I’m sorry for having to contradict, but that method does not work! If I set a starting date on 00:00 o’clock, without setting a due date and time, that task will not be displayed in any other calender app/program at the day it is supposed to be finished.

6

Weird as with me it does.

In Thunderbird/Lightning, when I set a task starting at the beginning of the day with no end date it shows as all day in Nextcloud task app too
When I set it in Nextcloud task app, sync and check in Thunderbird/Lightning it shows as whole day (even in green font color)

It also shows up on my android phone. and if I set a whole day event in the tasks app on my phone, it shows in Nextcloud and in Thunderbird/Lightning.

7

I found a work around for this problem: if you put the following lines into your Thunderbird’s userchrome.js, the Lightning will display the option “All day” when creating a task:

#event-all-day[class="event-only"] {
display: block ! important;
}

This works with newly created tasks. It still does not work when you edit a previously created task.

8

It doesn’t work for me (Thunderbird 60.4, LIghtning 6.2.4). I see the checkbox when editing new and old tasks, and I can check it, but the “all day” setting is not saved and the task still shows up with times.

9

You are right: when I found the workaround about 9 months ago, it did work with the TB version that was current at that time. But now, in TB 60, setting that option does not work any longer. :frowning:

I really would like to ask NextClould to take a closer look at this, because I don’t think this problem is bound to Thunderbird: even when I create a task for one day in Evolution and sync it back and forth, the “all day” mark is gone. So I guess it has to be lost somewhere when NextCloud comes into play, because Evolution uses its very own sync routine, completely independent from TB.

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