BVI Holidays

A BVI public holiday calendar is available for reference in iCal from this web site via the URL “https://bleistein.net/private/Etc/BVI%20Holidays.ics”. Simply start the iCal application, enter Calendar->Subscribe from the main menu and paste this URL into the text box or simply click on this link.

Note: This calendar covers public holidays for the year 2011 to 2023, future years will be added when the information gets available from the BVI government.

The official source of BVI holiday schedules is available here.

Adding the BVI to Yosemite’s “Contacts.app”

In Mac OS X Lion the British Virgin Islands are still missing in the list of supplied countries in the “Address Book.app” application. We are either too small or too beautiful!

Adding the approbriate country information requires administative privileges and is done by editing system files. As always keep a backup of the files involved in case You have to start over.

Close “Address Book.app”. Copy the address format definition file from /System/Library/Frameworks/AddressBook.framework/Versions/A/Resources/
ABAddressFormats.plist
to a temporary location like the desktop.

Open this copy with a text editor capable of displaying .plist files in XML format. I am using Textmate.

Locate the entry for the US Virgin Islands with country code “vi”. In the Mac OS X Yosemite 10.10.3 file the start is at line number 5928.

	<key>vi</key>
	<dict>
	...
	<dict/>

Copy and paste the following XML code before.

<key>vg</key>
<dict>
	<key>City</key>
	<string>City</string>
	<key>COUNTRY</key>
	<string>British Virgin Islands</string>
	<key>Country</key>
	<string>Country</string>
	<key>EDIT_FORMAT</key>
	<string>Street City State ZIP Country</string>
	<key>EDIT_WEIGHTS</key>
	<dict>
		<key>City</key>
		<string>0.5</string>
		<key>ZIP</key>
		<string>0.5</string>
	</dict>
	<key>FORMAT</key>
	<string>Street
City State ZIP
Country</string>
	<key>kbdSettings</key>
	<dict>
		<key>State</key>
		<dict>
			<key>caps</key>
			<string>Word</string>
			<key>fmt</key>
			<string>Alpha</string>
			<key>suggest</key>
			<string>never</string>
		</dict>
	</dict>
	<key>PHONETIC_COUNTRY</key>
	<string>Phonetic British Virgin Islands</string>
	<key>State</key>
	<string>Island</string>
	<key>Street</key>
	<string>Street</string>
	<key>STREET_NUMBER_BEFORE_NAME</key>
	<string>YES</string>
	<key>URL_FORMAT</key>
	<string>Street, City, State, ZIP, Country</string>
	<key>ZIP</key>
	<string>ZIP</string>
</dict>

Save the edited file under a new file name.

Replace /System/Library/Frameworks/AddressBook.framework/Versions/A/Resources/
ABAddressFormats.plist
with this amended file.