The preferences window is used to enter initial values for Orage. You can define for example several display options, how old appointments should be archived and what is the command to be used for playing sound alarms and also you can set the local timezone for Orage.
You should always set the default timezone for Orage. It is possible to use also floating times, but then all times should be in floating form. It is a bad idea to mix floating and timezone times. Floating times tend to move to follow any timezones they see.
Orage does not delete appointments automatically, so usually your calendar file grows bigger and because of that Orage gets slower and takes up more memory from the system. Enabling automatic archiving causes old appointments to be moved from the active calendar file to passive history file after the selected time. This helps to keep the active file smaller and the application in good shape. Archiving is enabled by setting the threshold to a value greater than the default zero value. Of course, it is also possible to manually delete appointments, but that removes them permanently and you will not be able to find them later.
Note that Orage also splits recurring appointments so that if the original start date is older than threshold, that appointment is added to the archive file and the starting date in the active calendar file is updated to contain only values more recent than the threshold. This also saves time when Orage is searching recurrent events.
Here you can define which sound command Orage uses when playing sound files. Try testing some common commands like play
or aplay
from terminal to see what works on your system. You probably do not want to use full version of Totem or MPlayer since they will cause a video window also to appear and that most probably is not what you want.
Basically it is possible to do other than sound commands also since Orage really only starts this program and gives it the sound file as parameter. But this is not the intention of this feature.
Orage Preferences Window - Calender Window Tab |
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In this tab you can define visibility options for the main window of Orage.
You can hide window borders and make the calendar window smaller by unselecting this option. This frees up more space for your other applications in the workspace.
Controls day names visibility on top of the calendar window.
Select whether you want to see month and year controls in the main calendar window.
By unselecting this you can leave out the menubar in the top of the calendar window.
Controls visibility of week numbers on left of calendar.
You can hide TODO list in the main calendar by deselecting this.
You can hide EVENT list in the main calendar by setting this to zero. Non zero values means the number of days to show events for.
Show calendar window on all workspaces by selecting this.
Keep calendar window on top of all other windows.
Controls if calendar is visible in the taskbar.
Controls if calendar is visible in the pager.
Controls if calendar is visible in the systray. A small icon is presented in the systray if this is selected. It is recommended that you enable this feature. By clicking this icon, Orage is toggled visible or hidden. If you do not have Orage in the systray, you can make the main calendar window visible again by start Orage again.
It is possible to define that Orage starts in the background or as minimized. This option only affects the start of Orage.
If calendar is opened, then set selected day to today's date or last selected date.
Define how many days to show in the event list when it starts. (It is possible to change the number in the event list window.)
Set day view window first day to either the first day of week or currently selected day.
Use this timer if Orage has problems waking up properly after suspend or hibernate. For example, if the tray icon is not refreshed or alarms are not firing.
By default Orage stays open in the background when asked to close. This option changes Orage to quit and never stay in background when it is asked to close.