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Simple Calendar Converter

D

Dinkins

Lurker
Hi guys,

What I'm after, if someone out there would be awesome enough to help, is a simple calendar converter.

It would be a widget, which would quite simply sit on my home screen, and display the normal, western day (weekday, day, month) in a block of one colour, next to the day in a custom calendar (weekday, day, month) in a second block.

The calendar I want to use has alternating months of 29 and 30 days:
JAN / Afteryule - 29 days, starting on Jan 1st.
FEB / Wintershed - 30, starting on Jan 30th
MAR / Rhedmonth - 29 - start date dependent on whether it's a leap year (this calendar sticks leap days in the final, long month).
APR / Eostremonth - 30
MAY / Mothermonth - 29
JUN / Foresummer - 30
JUL / Meadowmonth - 29
AUG / Weedmonth - 30
SEP / Harvest - 29
OCT / Sowing - 30
NOV / Store - 29
DEC / Foreyule - as many days as it takes to get up to everyone else's December 31st (usually about 41 days, I think).

I'm pretty sure there ought to be a simple logical test to determine the day of the month in this calendar from the current Gregorian date. I believe it just needs to advance one day per day, and then add an extra day to the final month in a leap year.

However, I am not even a novice when it comes to writing an app for my phone.

Does anyone think they could knock something like this up? It doesn't need to be pretty. Feel free to ask if you have any questions or need clarification of anything.

Thanks for your patience!
 
Is that called the Tolkien calendar? Just curious, why would you want this? Does it have relevance beyond fiction?
 
It's a lunisolar calendar. It reconciles the lunar month (29.5 days) with the solar year - each phase of the month will occur on the same day of each month, but the year still takes one orbit of the sun. It's more for fun than anything else; I used to be a neo-pagan!

There are a lot of similar systems out there (I don't know about Tolkien) but this one makes the most sense to me. The Gregorian is outdated and unfit for purpose, but at this stage it's so heavily built into technology and society it's here to stay. I just use this to add some variety to my day to day life.

The month names are based off the Anglo-Saxon originals, by the way. I studied Anglo-Saxon at university. They didn't stick, post-Christianisation, the way the weekday names did.
 
Wow, I feel so stupid now. That is very interesting. I said Tolkien because the Hobbits use the same month names.

This should be a trivial task, I'll give it a shot this weekend. Want to make a mockup of the design you want? Even a MS paint drawing would help.
 
I haven't read much Tolkien! I guess it's to be expected; there's a lot of that stuff in there.

I've attached a zip with a mock-up concept picture (not very sophisticated) so you can see the layout, and a spreadsheet with my very basic attempts to work out how to get the date converted. I haven't extensively tested the sheet...

I look forward to seeing what you come up with :D thanks nkarasch!
 

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Progress so far, just have to make it look nice. I kinda doubt you want the green, yellow, and red gradients like you had in your mockup. If you find a picture of a widget with a decent style or at least reasonable color scheme I'll try to copy it tomorrow, if not I'll just try to come up with something on my own. I have to go to work now :(

By the way, thanks for putting that effort into the mockup and spreadsheet, that was helpful.

z284yXN.png
 
Fantastic! I look forward to trying it out.

As for appearances... I'm not really sure. Something kind of classy/vintagey or alternatively with Anglo-saxon motifs could work.

I actually like that you have it in greyscale - it will match my homescreen, which is (currently) set up in black and white with custom old-timey icons (I can make those for myself, at least!).

10525765_10154514137205691_8620160606814155215_n.jpg
 
If you find a public domain truetype font you like Here is a good sourceand give me some colors for the regions I'll pop them in and give this to you. Also, let me know if you want spacing changed or anything like that.

I don't understand graphic design or colors at all so I cant come up with anything fancy for you sorry :(

and which device do you have?

HXJZsbC.png
 
Also, where did you come up with this calendar? Every Lunisolar calendar I've seen has had
big variations compared to our calendar. I haven't seen one whose Afteryule 1st lines up with our January 1st every time.
 
That font actually looks perfect ! Could we just go for straight up white-on-black for the two horizontal bars, and black-on-white for the centre parts?

I'm on a HTC One.

As for the calendar, I found a few variations but I came up with this one as a kind of compromise , especially as it retains the same new year etc. The other alternative would be to have 13 months, with the last one being however many days needed to last to Jan 1st. But I decided, to hell with it, I'd just have One really long month!

This is looking fab, you've done a grand job!
 
Give the attached apk a shot. I tested the sizes and stuff the best I could by using a 5x5 launcher on an emulated 5" 1080p screen (I think that is what yours is). If everything is too small or things are missing let me know.

I included an activity for configuring the colors when you click the widget. If you want to make it so that doesnt pop up on click there is a button to disable it. You will have to remove the widget from your home screen and readd though because I'm lazy and not going to put much work into this.

Let me know how it goes
 

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Hey Nkarasch! I've had the widget running on my phone for a couple of weeks now and it seems to be working perfectly. I'm very pleased with it, so thanks very much for taking some of your time to sort this out for me! It's very much appreciated :)

Have a great Autumn!
 
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