the user who made that post has tried more desktop apps than I have, and found most of them wanting as I did.
as of my last investigation, Thunderbird and Kalendar had showstopper issues, and a couple web apps I tried didn't do what I needed.
anyway, I have a few tabs open now with some candidates to look into, so maybe I'll figure something out this time around (I've been down this road 2 or 3 times over the past handful of years with no joy on desktop)