Rainlendar Lite

Rainlendar Lite is a lightweight, small, customizable desktop calendar, a lite version of the Rainlendar Pro application that includes less features, but still usable and distributed for free on the GNU/Linux, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows operating system.

Features at a glance

Rainlendar is a feature rich calendar desktop application that is easy-to-use and doesn't take much space on your desktop. It is possible to use Rainlendar with other calendar applications too, as it is an Unicode application and supports localizations.

The application supports different events types with different appearances, Windows transparency, includes a todo-list, displays an alarm when an event is due, synchronizes events between several clients, display Outlook's appointments, and displays the current date in the tray icon.

Rainlendar Pro vs Rainlendar Lite

For your convenience, Rainlendar is distributed in two editions, a Pro version that adds comes with advanced features, such as support for Google Tasks and Google Calendar, support for network shared calendars, Toodledo support, support for Remember the Milk, support for exporting calendars to the CSV format, as well as support for importing calendars from CalDAV, CSV and iCal files, and the Lite version reviewed on this page, which includes a standard amount of features that are useful to any Linux user.

Supported OSes, availability and hardware platforms

Rainlendar is a multi-platform application that will run perfectly on all GNU/Linux distributions, as it’s distributed as pre-built binaries for both 32-bit and 64-bit instruction set architectures. The software is officially supported on any Debian/Ubuntu-based distribution of Linux through native installers in the DEB file format.

In addition, the program has been successfully tested with the Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows operating systems, for which it provides native installers, which can be downloaded for free from Softoware via the dedicated Windows and Mac sections.

What is new in this release:

• Relative snooze values did not work in the alarm.
• The startup executable path is not changed unless the file doesn't exist anymore.
• Boolean variables for windows are shown in the context menu.
• Improvements for high DPI screens.
• Calendars are reloaded on if modified when the options are applied
• The task position is storead as meta tag for Toodledo
• Calendar selection is cleared for read only evemts and tasks
• Removed dependency to libpng12

What is new in version 2.12.2 Build 138 / 2.14 Build 149 Beta:

• Fixed offset problems with context menu and generic list item.
• Custom categories did not work when the Shadow4 was in large mode.
• Events with active alarms remain in the event list.
• Alarm can be dismissed from the event list.
• Added option to show Rainlendar in the Windows taskbar
• Google Calendar supports now custom audio files
• Added snooze menu and large versions for Savannah and Chromophore

What is new in version 2.12.2 Build 138 / 2.14 Build 148 Beta:

• Updated build-in languages
• The editor shows the time zone if the event uses different than the calendar.
• Outlook calendar preserves the custom MAPI library path when settings are changed.
• Event and todo editor shows indetermine checkbox for "private" if the calendar doesn't define the value.

What is new in version 2.12.2 Build 138 / 2.13 Build 145 Beta:

• Added advanced option to prevent the alarm from showing if there is a fullscreen window in front.
• The text edit controls were not hidden with the window.
• Double click on the empty text in event list opens now the editor.
• Rightmost column in the schedule was cut by the scrollbar.
• Math parsing failed on some locales when using '.' as the decimal separator.
• Event duration affects the priority of the appearance. I.e shorter events are drawn on top of longer ones.
• Completed date was not saved to non-recurring tasks.
• Manager did not show monthly recurring events correctly in current and upcoming views.
• Moving read-only events or tasks in the manager are copied instead.
• Vertical schedule calendar showed the events in incorrect locations.

What is new in version 2.12.2 Build 138 / 2.13 Build 142 Beta:

• Fixed memory corruption issue with libical usage.
• UTC time in the event was incorrectly converted twice to the local time when editing an existing event.
• Network Shared Calendar supports now compressed data from the server.
• Unicode characters were not written correctly to the Outlook appointment body text.
• Added print menu item to the event and task editors.
• QuickAdd parses location after '@' until the next whitespace.
• On higher than HDTV resolution the large version of the calendar can be selected on the first startup.
• Added a workaround for the birthday calendar recurrence problem on Yosemite.
• When creating a Google Calendar event without alarms the default reminders are not added to it automatically anymore.
• The quote characters are not escaped anymore in the iCalendar output to be more compatible with RFC2445.
• Added selections to the manager's edit menu including "Select duplicates" which selects all but one items with same summary text.
• Window positions are saved per screen resolution by default. This can be changed from the advanced setting.
• Full alarm window does not play sound anymore when a single event is dismissed or snoozed

What is new in version 2.13 Build 141 Beta:

• Added support for CalDAV calendars which do not provide a list of calendars.
• Timezones with negative offset were set incorrectly for Google Calendar.
• Recurring events with exception instances were not read properly from CalDAV server.
• Local time zones were not always found when reading the events even if it was assigned to the calendar from Rainlendar.
• Deleting an instance in Google Calendar did not get updated to Rainlendar if the offline copy was enabled.
• Weekly recurring events on a calendar which defined a time zone were sometimes set on an incorrect day.
• Added option to save the event/task to file right from the editor.
• Polling events from Google calendar caused error 400.
• The Google Calendar events are now requested as gzip compressed to reduce the amount of transferred data.
• Opening the event editor after 23:30 moved the start and end time to the next day.
• Schedule views always show the first line of text even if it doesn't fully fit in the available area.
• Removed the old GooglePlugin since Google dropped the support for the old API.
• Some CalDAV servers returned also the folder when polling for changes which caused "404 not found" error.
• Updated openssl, libcurl and wxwidgets libraries.
• Added alternative authentication method to Google if the build-in browser does not work.
• Events in offline copy were not read correctly if it contained exceptions.
• Added --nolog command line argument to disable logging
• The description text always uses the local codepage when written to Outlook.

What is new in version 2.12.1 Build 137:

• The last character was trimmed in some texts in local ics files breaking the text encoding.
• Linux version crashed on Google's authentication.
• The time zone for Google events was not adjusted correctly.
• The events were marked as past a day early if multiday event grouping was set to none.
• Disabled autocompleting combobox for the categories in Linux since the control doesn't support setting the selection.
• Manager shows the number of items currently visible/selected in the list.
• Added possibility to limit the downloaded events by time in the Google calendar version 3

What is new in version 2.12 Build 136:

• "No sound" option was reset to default alarm after refresh.
• The end/due time was always read from the start time field.
• Added possibility to define if the CalDAV server supports events, tasks or both.
• Reading dates from RTM did not do timezone conversion correctly.
• When smartly hidden the today window gets hidden if it doesn't show tasks and only the event list is empty.
• The offline copy was not read immediately after startup.
• Color mapping in Google Calendar did not work correctly when offline copy was enabled.
• Reordering Google subtasks did not work.
• Resetting the dismiss time for tasks was not actually removing the information from the ics file.
• When multiple alarms are triggered at the same time the executable for each of them gets ran.

What is new in version 2.12 Build 135 Beta:

• The status and priority filters in the manager did not work in other languages.
• The time is now written to the template too (but only if it is changed before the template is saved).
• The drawing order of the skin items can be defined with "zorder".
• The opacity of the background in Shadow4 can be changed from the settings.
• It's possible to disable the alarm sound for a individual event.
• The calendar can be defined with the quickadd by enclosing the name in '[' and ']': e.g. "Summary [Calendar]"
• Added skin info caching for r2skin files which makes the options dialog open faster.
• The today window is activated by default if the skin is selected in the simple mode.
• The font face for the windows can be overridden in Options->Advanced->Font face
• Fixes to the CalDAV support to make it compatible with Synology server.
• Moving tasks as the first item in Google Tasks did not work.

What is new in version 2.12 Build 134 Beta:

• Added support for the element for the
• Generic list's "multiline"-attribute was not accessible from lua script.
• The manager and calendar showed incorrect end date to for tasks which did not define the time component.
• Values for the variables were not parsed correctly on locales which used ',' instead '.' as decimal separator.
• Improved the wrapping in the message box.
• Google calendar (v3) can now read more than 2500 events from the server.
• Added next and previous buttons to the Shadow4's Grid Calendar.
• RegisterMenuItems() lua method can be used to add new items to Rainlendar's menu.
• Alarm should not constantly pop in front of other windows anymore if it is not set as topmost.
• Google calendar (v3) accesses the calendars by their id instead the name.
• It's now possible to expand and collapse the subtasks in the todo list.
• Refresh is done automatically after successful skin/addon installation.

What is new in version 2.11 Beta Build 133:

• Google calendar's color mapping showed the categories always in English
• The manager shows and filters the snooze and dismiss times for the alarms.
• The alarm snooze/dismiss time can be reset by clicking the alarm icon in the manager.
• Google calendars with '#' in the url were not read correctly from the server.
• Logging unicode characters sometimes caused a failure.
• Changed the CalDAV to send proper etag to the server when editing the events.
• Changing task status to in progress from the dialog did not work.
• The task completed time can be reset by clicking the status icon in the manager.
• Dragging items in schedule view set incorrect time if the area height was set to non-even number.
• Tasks without status property but with completed date are shown as complete status.
• The upcoming, cancelled and completed tasks are hidden by default in the today window.
• The time for the tasks is now optional.

What is new in version 2.11 Beta Build 131:

• Added "Event min height" setting for the day and weekviews.
• Chromophore skin has a large calendar window.
• Added colorless and dark versions for the Chromophore skin.
• The message store setting in the new calendar wizard did not get set properly.
• The times were saved incorrectly if the local time was set to British time zone.
• the "uppercase" attribute for the font can convert the text now also to lowercase or capitalize it.
• Lua scripts can be put to the Scripts folder under the config folder too.
• Skin addons can be applied to different skin version (although this might break the skin).
• The time item which shows only the week number is mapped to the first day of the week so that it is the same number as in the calendar.
• The z-position can be set separately for each window in the skin.
• Added advanced option to bring all windows on top when any of them is clicked.
• The hidden Google calendars are also hidden in Rainlendar.
• Tasks were shown on two days in the calendar window.
• The tray icon can now show also the week number (See "Number in tray" advanced setting). Note that this only works if the tray icon image has enough frames.

What is new in version 2.11 Beta Build 130:

• Toodledo plugin crashed when polling with offline file enabled.
• The manager can show and search the description field now too.
• All windows can be moved at once by holding shift key down.
• Portable installation uses custom password encoding by default.
• Read-only events and tasks can be now opened to the editor but the changes cannot be saved.
• Added confirmation if all skin windows are activated at once.
• Moved the Google Tasks to a separate plugin.
• Reading long descriptions from Outlook failed.
• Right alt+a selected the text in the description field.
• The expired Toodledo authentication token was not updated if the folder was defined in for the calendar.
• Manager allowed to delete items from read-only calendars.

What is new in version 2.11 Beta Build 129:

• Fixed a crash bug if another instance of Rainlendar was started.
• "Number of past days the list shows" was not working.
• Reversing the sorting from the event list's context menu could not be done.
• The font effects did not work for custom categories.
• The tool buttons in the manager adjust to the text width.
• It was not possible to remove calendar selection on Mac if "Allow multiple calendars" was enabled.
• Exporting the events in the manager only worked if the list had selection. Now all events are exported if there is no selection.
• The autocompletion works again in the category combobox.
• The traytip does not gain focus anymore when it is shown.
• Double click on the week or day view always created an all day event.
• The reminders were not read correctly from iCloud with CalDAV.
• The status image was not shown in the tray icon on Windows and Mac.
• Executing lua from command line failed on Linux and Mac.
• Creating a exception to a event in week view by dragging deleted the original event from Google calendar.
• Writing events with no duration to iCloud failed.
• Completing an alarm for non-recurring task in the alarm window did not dismiss it.
• Removed hard dependency to the gnome-keyring library on Linux.
• Backup opened incorrect file dialog in Linux.
• The value for "Poll for changes"-setting in Toodledo was not read correctly.

What is new in version 2.11 Beta Build 128:

• If the event was set not to be all day with a template the start and end times were not set correctly.
• Fixed a possible crash bug in Outlook plugin.
• The change for "Show tray status icons" setting did not apply.
• CalDAV calendars showed connection error even though the real error was been related to authentication.
• Creating new events to CalDAV calendar on Mac was not possible.
• Manager dialog showed priority icon for tasks which didn't define any priority.
• Changing the sorting in the manager added the new positions to selection moving them.

What is new in version 2.11 Beta Build 127:

• Shortcut keys in the message dialog buttons didn't work.
• The manager sometimes crashed when viewing tasks that were in in progress state.
• Filtering in manager's search worked only for the summary field instead all fields.
• Adding new subtasks to Google calendar was not working.
• It's possible to define every second saturday of the month as the weekend day.
• The sorting of the event list can be reversed.
• All text can be selected in the description editor with ctrl+a.
• The digiclock in Shadow4 can have a title text.
• Added screenshots to the help.

What is new in version 2.11 Beta Build 126:

• Added sort button to the new manager dialog.
• If reading the event data from the CalDAV server fails Rainlendar tries to do it with a different method.
• Ctrl+Enter accepts and closes the event and task editors.
• All day events were not shown correctly if they were set on the day when DST changed.
• New operating system specific tray icons. The icon can be changed from the skin's settings.
• The recurrency status for tasks and events can be shown in the tooltip.
• Added context menu to the manager's event list.
• New categories for the skins: Pets, Car, Theatre and Music

What is new in version 2.10 Beta Build 125:

• The images in the about dialog didn't work if the program path contained foreign characters.
• Improved the error handling in the Toodledo plugin.
• Added manager list icons for task status and priority.
• It's possible to use special filters (e.g. "category:important") in the manager's search field.
• Clicking the category, status or priority in the manager will automatically set the filter for it.
• Delete key in the manager deleted the selected events also when the focus was not in the list.
• The tooltip in the manager showed content from the incorrect row.
• Improved the performance when there are a lot of events visible in the calendar.
• Manager didn't check the end date for the recurring events and tasks.
• The application was not closed down properly on Mac.
• Size of the new calendar wizard depends on the font size.
• Setting recurring task completed did not always set the alarm and completed date correctly.
• Improved the CalDAV support. It should now work with Yahoo!, iCloud and Baikal.

What is new in version 2.10 Beta Build 124:

• New completely rewritten manager dialog.
• Fonts in skins didn't work on Windows.
• The skin comment can contain newlines ("n")
• Added the name of the translator to the about dialog.
• The submenus can be again wrapped inside a table for Rainlendar_ShowMenu() so that their position can be defined.
• Fixed division by zero error if the all day event area height was set to 0.
• Removed hard dependency to the appindicator library on Linux.
• Re-enabled the description field for Remember the Milk tasks.

What is new in version 2.10 Beta Build 123:

• Dragging items in the schedule caused a crash.
• Changed the password encoding to use the operating system services.
• The MAPI connection to Outlook is closed when the calendar is disabled.
• Added optional app indicator icon for Linux.
• Rainlendar_ShowMenu() required that submenu was wrapped inside a table.
• The week for the past dates was calculated from the start of the week insted from the end of it.
• Some menu items were twice in the task editor.
• The calendar must be selected in the new calendar wizard before proceeding.
• Deleting a single instance from a recurring event caused duplicate exception days to be created into Google calendar.

Requirements:

• Ubuntu 12.04 or newer (equivalent Linux distributions should work too). 32bit or 64bit operating system
• 20 MB of available hard disk space
• 512 MB of RAM or higher recommended
• Window manager capable of showing transparent windows