Relaunch website with MODx?

Hi at all
I started building a website for my local fire brigade with CMS Made Simple. CMSMS is a good CMS, it’s really simple, but it has too much limitations for me.
Here a quick overview of the 4 basic things my clients should can do.

1. Edit pages -> no problem

2. Add dates to calendar -> no problem. Are there categories, too? Can I only display dates with certain categories?

3. Events that happend should be entered in a custom layout (radio button, drop downs ...) and displayed on the website with a certain layout
Now this is done by a table with a WYSISYG-Editor, but I want more control over the layout and make use of statistics.

4. The last thing is a gallery, which is only generated of the default settings and the filesystem. For example, if somebody loads up pictures, the thumbnails should be auto generated and when the path to the new folder was /photos/category1/2008/xyz, where he uploaded the pictures, the album should be viewable under the same URL. Here is a script that can do that http://photostack.org/
Photoupload will be done by a flash filebrowser, which can handle multiple uploads once.
http://www.lunarvis.com/products/tinymcefilebrowserwithupload.php

5. I’m familiar with HTML and css and can edit and read php files.
Can I do these things without writing much code or should I spend more time in learning php better?

6. MODx is using Mootools, is it possible to use jQuery in the frontend, because both libraries intersect?

7. Is it possible to customize the input fields for adding normal contant?
Edit: Yes http://modxcms.com/ManagerManager-1565.html

2) I did not understand about the categories, but I am sure the answer will be yes (now I am worried)

3) In modx you have full control over the layout so you can display the events however you need. I personally use a date TV as the start date and another for the end date. Then I can list them using Ditto and use PHx (or a snippet) to identify past events from future events.

4) There are a few plugins that can generate thumbnails (DirectResize is a good one).

5) minimal php may be required.

6) MODx uses MOO in the Manager only. QuickEdit loads it in the front end while logged in as Manager but not to regular visitors. Some legacy snippets like AjaxSearch may load MOO as well but there may be a jQuery ersion as well (AjaxSearch has a jQuery version I think). And finally if you are concerned you can use jQuery in NoConflict mode which makes work with any other library.

You might want to just use the MaxiGallery snippet for your photo galleries, I think it will do just what you want quite nicely.

There are several events snippets --

http://modxcms.com/EventCalendar-1185.html
or
http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,21007.0.html

might work for you.

See also: The "porting your site to MODx" page at the site in my sig.

@Question 3:
I took a look at TV, but I think you or I misunderstood you. I wanted to create a data table, for one site. The client should only have to enter the values of each row. I don´t want to add for each line in the data table a new TV. How can I realize the array function?

I will try version a) first.

When I understand it right TV can import tables from a database and make use of arrays, but you can´t manage this informations? For this you need a additional plugin.
We have about 200 events a year. This means for 5 years 1000 Documents.

Should I start when Revolution is Beta or with the actual MODx?

I would start with the current version. revolution will include an upgrade path and be backwards compatible so you should be good with that.