Because I couldn't find a large enough calendar in the shops I created one myself in PhotoShop/Gimp and had it printed out by a print shop. Although the design fitted my needs, it was a lot of hassle to draw all the dates and occasions in by hand. Being a developer I decided it made sense to write some code to do the drawing for me, thus the PrintableCalendarGenerator was born.

Currently the generator consists of a rather specific index file (as in, access from your web-server) that generates all of the months on the calendar from 09/2012 to 08/2013, decorated with information from all the XML files found in the 'decorations' folder. These decorations colour the backgrounds of days that are (school) holidays and write the holiday 'title' at the bottom of the day(s). For birthdays, the name of the person is written at the top of the day.

Obviously, due to the specific implementation of the generator (and lack of proper documentation) it is currently not at a broadly-usable stage. As I continue to use the generator more, it will become more and more generically-implemented. It is my intention to be able to offer the functionality of the generator to others, as people seem to like my big-ass-calendar in it's printed out form.

There are 4 different types of holidays that each have a different decoration on the calendar. There can also be custom decorations with a icon of their own for things such as daylight-savings, garbage day, etc.

There a 3 different shades of gray, one for weekends, one for national holidays and one for school holidays.

• National holidays (including Religious Holidays) have their name written in black and have the day's background coloured gray to mark it as a day off.

Examples of National holidays are

• Queen's Day
• New Year's Eve
• Christmas
• Easter
• Pentecost

• Secular holidays have their name written in black but do not change the day's background color as we do not get a day off.

Examples of Secular holidays are

• Valentine's Day
• Labour Day, Worker's Day or May Day
• Mother's Day
• Father's Day
• Halloween

• School holidays Have their name written in gray (or black with a white border for longer periods) and have the day coloured gray to mark it as a day off for the children.

The holiday name is written in regular fashion, only stretched to the full length of the holiday. If a holiday spans several weeks it is only written once, in the first full week.

• Personal Observance (Birthdays) have the Persons name written in black with a crown over it.

• Unofficial holidays (Unofficial observances/Commemorative Days) are not yet supported

Examples of Unofficial observances are

• Towel Day
• International Talk Like a Pirate Day

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