JewCal!
Way back in the Olden Days, Frank Yellin wrote an application called "Jewish Calendar" for the Mac. I loved it, and used it all the time. In fact, when I was researching a project (that never got past the dreaming stages), I found the source for it on Virtual Jerusalem. (VJ didn't use to be like it is now—it had fonts and software too.) I stashed the code away somewhere and never looked at it again.
But then Mac OS X came, and I realized that Jewish Calendar would need to make the switch, to become Carbonized. I searched online, but it was nowhere to be found. Virtual Jerusalem had purged its software archives. So I went home to our old Mac, and managed to find the source archive.
I wrote to Frank, and asked his permission to Carbonize the app. He graciously gave it to me, and I fixed up the app. I've been tweaking it ever since.
Over the years, I've gotten many feature requests. Some I've been able to do, but others are just not feasible based on the source that exists. I've always meant to do a rewrite (probably in Cocoa) but just never got around to it.
It's time.
I've emailed Frank to get the original source released under an open-source license. (He clearly gave me permission to create and distribute derivative works, but never did assign copyrights. I want to make sure this is legal.) As soon as that's cleared up, I'm planning to start a SourceForge project to hold it. I've purchased a domain, although I'm not planning on changing the program's name from "Jewish Calendar".
And now that I've made this announcement, I'm committed to modernizing Jewish Calendar. (Or at least a lifetime of harassment to get it done.)
Here are the features I want to get in:
- Resizable windows
- Custom events
- iCal integration
- Zmanim
- Hebrew version
- Tachanun-not-said marker
If you want to get a different feature in, email me or just drop a comment on here.
Comments
I came across this calendar today and it's exactly what I needed! Thank you. I noticed that it lacks Rosh Chodesh so there is no way of knowing whether it's 1 or 2 days. This might be something else you'd like to add when you're updating.
Posted by: jifnuts | April 19, 2004 5:03 PM
Uh... Wow. I thought it did. I guess not.
I'll put that on the list.
Posted by: Avi | April 19, 2004 5:06 PM
Hi Avi.
Well, it's been almost three years.
Any progress?
Which will come first:
• Avi rewrites Jewish Calendar
• Moshiach arrives?
By the way, sourceforge already has another Jewish Calendar project going, and it claims to run in OS X (though I haven't tried it yet).
http://sourceforge.net/projects/hebcal/
Posted by: Steve Klein | March 8, 2007 10:37 AM