What comes in, what goes out

Zenith Calendar has no list of connections. Nothing reaches your calendar except through an almanac — a named, coloured layer of commitments, like one calendar, where a commitment is one thing you have to do. Each almanac keeps its own connection, on its own page, behind two doors: "what comes in" and "what goes out".

#One wire, or none

An almanac is fed by one place at most. "Nothing" is an ordinary and complete answer. Most people's almanacs read from nowhere and are filled by hand.

That is the whole model. If you want to know where something comes from, open the almanac and look at its first door.

#Finding the two doors

1. Open the binder — the place where every almanac lives. Hold the "almanacs" book button in the bottom-right corner of the sky (the whole calendar screen), or tap "manage ▸" at the end of the almanac chips. The ▸ is a small right-pointing triangle.
2. Tap an almanac's row once to choose it, and again to open its page.
3. The doors "what comes in" and "what goes out" are on that page. The An almanac's page page describes the rest of it.

#"what comes in"

Before you open it, the door tells you its answer: "what feeds it, and what kind of thing that is", or "nothing feeds it — it is filled by hand".

Behind it is a sheet headed "what feeds “‹name›”", with a reminder that nothing here is permanent. You can change or unplug it whenever you like. It offers four kinds:

#Once something feeds it

The sheet then shows:

• A letter for the service: "G", "O", "E", "D" or "Z".
• A direction mark: ↓, a down arrow, means it only reads. ↕, an up-and-down arrow, means both ways. ↕· — the same with a dot — means both ways, carrying Zenith's own detail.
• What kind of thing the source is.
• How it is doing: "live · last heard ‹how long ago›", paused, read-only, gone from the phone, or not being downloaded by its own account. That last one offers "open sync settings". The app does not change a phone-wide setting for you.

#The switches behind that door

• "listening" — "talking to its source", or paused.
• "my edits go to ‹source› too" — "adding, editing and deleting here changes it there". Off, "anything you change stays in zenith". A source that will not accept changes says so in a sentence instead of offering this switch.
• "carry zenith's detail" — offered only while your edits go out. On, your other Zenith devices read an entry back whole. Anyone else sees the kind, repeat rule, colour and mark as a little extra text on a normal calendar entry. Off, you get "plain entries; they arrive elsewhere without their almanac or kind".
• "⊘ unplug it" — ⊘ is a crossed circle. The almanac keeps everything it has. Anything Zenith already wrote into somebody's real calendar stays where it is.
• "⇄ carry it between my own devices instead" — ⇄ is a two-way arrow. It moves the wire rather than pulling it out.

#"what goes out"

This door answers in one line before you open it: "your edits go back, carrying zenith's own detail", "your edits go back, plainly", or "your edits stay in zenith".

Behind it, the sheet "what goes out of “‹name›”" holds the same two switches, with their reasons spelled out. With nothing plugged in, it offers no switch, because there would be nothing for one to do. It says "plug something in under “what comes in” first." A read-only source ends the sheet there.

Your changes on this sheet are held as a draft. Tap "keep" to save them. "leave it", or the back gesture, throws them away.

#The two overrides

Two switches act on every almanac at once. They live in the binder's panel behind the gear ⚙, under "everything that reaches outside", and also in quick settings, which opens when you tap the gear ⚙.

• "nothing is coming in" stops Zenith watching every source for changes. That is all it does. It does not hold your edits back.
• "nothing leaves this phone" holds every write back. Zenith writes nothing to any source, and what it already wrote out stays where it is.

Neither one changes any almanac's own setting. So when you lift either, every almanac goes back to exactly how it was. Lifting "nothing leaves this phone" sends out what was held back and carries your Drive copies up.

While an override is on, the switch it governs does not pretend to be live. It tells you which override is in the way and where to lift it.

#One commitment can disagree with its almanac

A single commitment can go its own way. On a commitment's page, its "EXPAND" sheet offers:

• "⇤ this one stays in zenith"
• "⇥ this one goes out"
• "⇄ goes out · as its almanac says"

The arrows point into and out of a bar. Three more rows let one commitment go plain or carry Zenith's detail. Each row appears only where it could mean something. See A commitment's page.

#Locked almanacs

On a locked almanac, both doors are shut. They say "it is locked — unlock it first". See The lock.

#See also.

What an almanac is · The binder · Connected accounts & Drive sync · Privacy, permissions & what leaves the phone