yCal Concepts

Storage

yCal uses standard calendars for all its storage needs. This makes it easy to access all your data from any other app that knows how to deal with standard calendars — there is no proprietary database or data store.

As a consequence, yCal specific concepts such as markers are stored as normal events (which yCal will interpret accordingly, while other calendar apps will show them as standard events with a "yCal:" prefix in their title). However, it makes great sense to separate these types of yCal specific events from normal events; so yCal asks you to specify a separate calendar for storing this kind of data.

In fact, there may be up to three calendars that you should configure to make full use of yCal's features: one calendar for storing marker information, one calendar for storing holiday information (because yCal semantically distinguishes holidays from normal events), and a calendar for storing birthday information. The latter may not be necessary if you activated the OS X built-in birthday calendar.

When you edit a calendar (by Alt-double-clicking or choosing Edit... from the context menu on the calendar entry in the left pane), you'll see a configuration option "Interpret entries in this calendar as:". Here you can tell yCal to use the calendar for storing marker information, holiday information, or birthday information.

Note that other events in the calendar will not show up anymore if you choose the calendar to serve as marker, holiday, or birthday storage! So it's typically a wise idea to create new calendars solely dedicated to serve as marker, holiday, or birthday storage. Local calendars (stored on your local machine) can be added from within yCal (e.g., by clicking New Calendar... from the File menu), however, to add or manipulate online calendars hosted on remote servers, please use Apple's iCal or Calendar app instead (read here on why you can't do this from within yCal).