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Importing the Lectionary into Evolution

by James Ogley on December 2nd, 2009

I know I’m not the only member of the clergy who uses Linux so I trust that this post may be of use to others. Also, the notes here may well apply to users of other open source calendars, I use Evolution so I know it works there. Your mileage may – or may not – vary. The lectionary that can be downloaded and imported into your calendar software is a great service but I’ve always had one problem with it which is that in Evolution, it shows the whole of every day as busy time – a little bit awkward. So I decided this year to hack the raw file before importing to make each entry an “all-day” event but with the time not showing as busy. Here are your steps to do so:

  1. Download the lectionary
    The Common Worship lectionaries can be downloaded from this site. Make sure you get the 2010 one, that’s the one that started on Sunday just past, Advent Sunday. The file type you want is Apple iCal iCal file as it’s basically the same as Evolution uses natively. This process works whether collects and post-communions are included or not so it’s up to your personal preference there.

  2. Edit the file
    Open the .ics file in your favourite text editor. If the editor can do a search and replace throughout the file, you’re going to be a lot happier – most can. My favourite is Vim so the specifics here are for that but I’ll also mention the generic principle. You need to add a line before each SUMMARY entry that reads TRANSP:TRANSPARENT – this makes the time not to be shown as busy. The line needs to end in a r character not a n – that’s a CR (Carriage Return) rather than a New Line. In Vim, that means doing this: :1,$ s/SUMMARY/TRANSP:TRANSPARENTrSUMMARY/g. Once that’s done, save the file and you’re ready to:

  3. Import the lectionary
    In Evolution, this means doing File: Import and following the instructions from there but if you’re using something else the process may be different.

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