I'm sure I found something like this a while ago but now all I can find is blogs.
I'm after something that's half way between an appointments calendar (or even a PIM) and a diary/journal. I.e. I want a program that allows me to remind myself about things but also allows me to wax lyrical about my doings for the day. Ideally it will allow me to write using my choice of text editor but that's not absolutely essential, it certainly doesn't *have* to have a GUI interface but on the other hand I don't mind if it does. Being able to view the calendar/diary from the web would be a plus but isn't really important.
Any suggestions anyone?
On Mon, May 21, 2007 at 09:39:45PM +0100, Chris G wrote:
I'm sure I found something like this a while ago but now all I can find is blogs.
I'm after something that's half way between an appointments calendar (or even a PIM) and a diary/journal. I.e. I want a program that allows me to remind myself about things but also allows me to wax lyrical about my doings for the day. Ideally it will allow me to write using my choice of text editor but that's not absolutely essential, it certainly doesn't *have* to have a GUI interface but on the other hand I don't mind if it does. Being able to view the calendar/diary from the web would be a plus but isn't really important.
Any suggestions anyone?
If you have no requirement to share it with anyone else, get a decent paper diary. My siblings bought me Edward Gorey's "The Gashlycrumb Times" Engagement Calendar a couple of years ago and I have to say the user interface is far superior to anything I've found on a computer so far. Plus it's funny, if you like gallows humour.
Alternatively, have you considered just waxing lyrical in text files in a suitable directory structure?
J.
On Mon, May 21, 2007 at 10:07:31PM +0100, Jonathan McDowell wrote:
On Mon, May 21, 2007 at 09:39:45PM +0100, Chris G wrote:
I'm sure I found something like this a while ago but now all I can find is blogs.
I'm after something that's half way between an appointments calendar (or even a PIM) and a diary/journal. I.e. I want a program that allows me to remind myself about things but also allows me to wax lyrical about my doings for the day. Ideally it will allow me to write using my choice of text editor but that's not absolutely essential, it certainly doesn't *have* to have a GUI interface but on the other hand I don't mind if it does. Being able to view the calendar/diary from the web would be a plus but isn't really important.
Any suggestions anyone?
If you have no requirement to share it with anyone else, get a decent paper diary. My siblings bought me Edward Gorey's "The Gashlycrumb Times" Engagement Calendar a couple of years ago and I have to say the user interface is far superior to anything I've found on a computer so far. Plus it's funny, if you like gallows humour.
The one *major* disadvantage of a paper diary for my requirement is that it's not searchable. I want, for example, to be able to find when it was I saw Fred Bloggs and what was that company that I bought some widgets from. It's also much more vulnerable to loss (as long as your computer has a good backup strategy anyway).
Alternatively, have you considered just waxing lyrical in text files in a suitable directory structure?
That is definitely a possibility and it may well be the direction I take. I'd like some sort of interface to the structure though so I can easily select a specific date without having to navigate the structure.
On 21-May-07 20:39:45, Chris G wrote:
I'm sure I found something like this a while ago but now all I can find is blogs.
I'm after something that's half way between an appointments calendar (or even a PIM) and a diary/journal. I.e. I want a program that allows me to remind myself about things but also allows me to wax lyrical about my doings for the day. Ideally it will allow me to write using my choice of text editor but that's not absolutely essential, it certainly doesn't *have* to have a GUI interface but on the other hand I don't mind if it does. Being able to view the calendar/diary from the web would be a plus but isn't really important.
Possibly a bit off-target for your purposes, but you could consider 'plan'. See:
http://me.in-berlin.de/~bitrot/plan.html
This is primarily a calendar and reminder utility: You get an on-screen monthly calendar (with various additional view formats: "Day": the next 7 days in 7 columns, each running from say 08:00 to 20:00; "Week": similar to "Date" transposed but compact; "Year": an array of calendar days for the year with days highlighted when something is happening; etc.). You can schedule an "alarm" to flash up an xterm with a reminder, and/or send you a reminder email, or execute a script, at preset intervals prior to the event.
That's the "reminder" side. But it also lets you associate with any calendar entry a text, called a "message" (which can be long) about it. For example, if I'm going to a seminar or a meeting, I may cut&paste the full info from the announcement into this (Date, time, title, summary, venue, about-the-speaker, how to get there, plus aything else that occurs to me). The "message" will be emailed to you if you set this up as part of the "alarm" mechanism.
If you click on the day with the entry, you get a list of entries for that day; click on the "message" button for the entry you want, and you get the "message" window which you can edit (or simply read).
I think the editor is what you get -- I'm not aware of a choice in this respect (but could be wriong).
Ted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@manchester.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 21-May-07 Time: 22:49:35 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
On Mon, May 21, 2007 at 11:00:28PM +0100, Ted Harding wrote:
On 21-May-07 20:39:45, Chris G wrote:
I'm sure I found something like this a while ago but now all I can find is blogs.
I'm after something that's half way between an appointments calendar (or even a PIM) and a diary/journal. I.e. I want a program that allows me to remind myself about things but also allows me to wax lyrical about my doings for the day. Ideally it will allow me to write using my choice of text editor but that's not absolutely essential, it certainly doesn't *have* to have a GUI interface but on the other hand I don't mind if it does. Being able to view the calendar/diary from the web would be a plus but isn't really important.
Possibly a bit off-target for your purposes, but you could consider 'plan'. See:
That looks quite interesting, thank you, I'll have a play with it. A bonus is the fact that it can interface with a Palm PDA.
On 22-May-07 09:26:57, Chris G wrote:
On Mon, May 21, 2007 at 11:00:28PM +0100, Ted Harding wrote:
[...] Possibly a bit off-target for your purposes, but you could consider 'plan'. See:
That looks quite interesting, thank you, I'll have a play with it. A bonus is the fact that it can interface with a Palm PDA.
-- Chris Green
I should add that the data file (by default ~/.dayplan) is a plain text file and is parseable. Some examples from mine:
10/8/1998 10:0:0 0:0:0 0:0:0 0:0:0 ---------- 0 0 N Monday is Payroll Deadline S elm -s "Payroll Deadline" efh << EOT S Monday is Payroll Deadline S EOT 10/12/1998 10:0:0 0:0:0 0:0:0 0:0:0 ---------- 0 0 N Payroll Deadline 10/12/1998 10:30:0 2:0:0 0:0:0 0:0:0 ---------- 0 0 N J Logsdon may call 10/14/1998 13:30:0 3:0:0 23:0:0 1:0:0 ---------- 0 0 N Maths DAB 10/17/1998 14:0:0 8:0:0 0:0:0 0:0:0 ---------- 0 0 N ManLUG Meeting
(NB US-style date format).
Thus on 8 Oct 1998 it has a calendar entry ("N") and executes a script "S" to send me an email as well. On 12 Oct 1998 it has 2 calendar entries ("N"), and one each on 14 and 17 Oct.
The text on an "N" line is what appears in the Calendar display.
Here's an example of a calendar entry "N" with a "message" ("M"):
3/9/2002 20:0:0 0:0:0 0:0:0 0:0:0 ---------- 0 0 N CONCERT M Saturday March 9 M Anglia Chorus and Anglia Chamber M Music by Haydn, Weber & Kevin Flanagan M Emmanuel United Reform Church M Trumpington St, CB M £7/£5 from (01223) 503 333 8pm
(and of course the "message" can be as long as you like). The "message" is what appears in the xterm, or is emailed to you, if you have flagged the entry to forewarn you, and is readable at any time by opening that calendar entry and clicking on the "Message" button.
Anyway, the point is that since it's a structured text file you could write a little search engine in (say) awk, which would throw up dates when references to something occurred, etc.
Hoping this helps, Ted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@manchester.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 22-May-07 Time: 11:38:17 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
On 22-May-07 10:39:24, Ted Harding wrote:
On 22-May-07 09:26:57, Chris G wrote:
On Mon, May 21, 2007 at 11:00:28PM +0100, Ted Harding wrote:
[...] Possibly a bit off-target for your purposes, but you could consider 'plan'. See:
That looks quite interesting, thank you, I'll have a play with it. A bonus is the fact that it can interface with a Palm PDA.
-- Chris Green
I should add that the data file (by default ~/.dayplan) is a plain text file and is parseable. Some examples from mine: [...]
I should also have added that the "Calendar" window itself has a "Search" button, which initially offers you a choice between
Today Tomorrow This week Next week This month All Private One file Search keywords
All but the last two give you an instance of the Appointment edit window, with an item for every day with an appointment.
The last but one gives access to different data files.
The last one opens a different dialogue box with radio buttons
Search mode: Literal case sensitive Literal case insensitive Regular expression
and a "Search for" text entry box. So basic search can be done directly from within 'plan' itself, and you don't need to go to the underlying data file. However, if you're after anything more complicated then a "search engine" applied to the file itself would give better results.
Cheers, Ted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) ted.harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 22-May-07 Time: 14:07:21 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
On Monday 21 May 2007 21:39:45 Chris G wrote:
I'm sure I found something like this a while ago but now all I can find is blogs.
I'm after something that's half way between an appointments calendar (or even a PIM) and a diary/journal. I.e. I want a program that allows me to remind myself about things but also allows me to wax lyrical about my doings for the day. Ideally it will allow me to write using my choice of text editor but that's not absolutely essential, it certainly doesn't *have* to have a GUI interface but on the other hand I don't mind if it does. Being able to view the calendar/diary from the web would be a plus but isn't really important.
Any suggestions anyone?
If this was my project I would write a little XML schema, a bunch of XSLT transforms and a cron job. And then a little bit of mod_python if I wanted a web interface.
Though I do use KDE's PIM software, Kontact, which provides an encapsulating interface to its email client, RSS aggregator, contacts manager, calendar, journal, sticky notes and phone/PDA synchroniser, I don't really use it in the way you describe, but I guess its probably capable of being used for your requirements. It probably doesn't appeal though. I often wonder how KDE ever gets any developers - ask any Linux geek and they'll tell you how evil Qt, Trolltech and KDE are. But have they ever tried it?
Cheers, Richard
On Tue, May 22, 2007 at 09:19:41AM +0100, Richard Lewis wrote:
On Monday 21 May 2007 21:39:45 Chris G wrote:
I'm sure I found something like this a while ago but now all I can find is blogs.
I'm after something that's half way between an appointments calendar (or even a PIM) and a diary/journal. I.e. I want a program that allows me to remind myself about things but also allows me to wax lyrical about my doings for the day. Ideally it will allow me to write using my choice of text editor but that's not absolutely essential, it certainly doesn't *have* to have a GUI interface but on the other hand I don't mind if it does. Being able to view the calendar/diary from the web would be a plus but isn't really important.
Any suggestions anyone?
If this was my project I would write a little XML schema, a bunch of XSLT transforms and a cron job. And then a little bit of mod_python if I wanted a web interface.
If I was really into XML and XSLT I might do the same but they are really not my thing even though I did have to use them at work. I have never felt comfortable with the look/shape of XML as a way of creating software.
Python though is growing on me as a good general purpose way of doing lots of things which is much 'cleaner' than Perl.
Though I do use KDE's PIM software, Kontact, which provides an encapsulating interface to its email client, RSS aggregator, contacts manager, calendar, journal, sticky notes and phone/PDA synchroniser, I don't really use it in the way you describe, but I guess its probably capable of being used for your requirements. It probably doesn't appeal though. I often wonder how KDE ever gets any developers - ask any Linux geek and they'll tell you how evil Qt, Trolltech and KDE are. But have they ever tried it?
Yes, I suspect that KDE's "does everything" approach is not much to my liking.
On Tuesday 22 May 2007 09:19, Richard Lewis wrote:
Ask Linux geek and there's up to a 50% chance they'll tell you how evil Qt, Trolltech and KDE are.
Fixed. ;)
PS: Qt is the veritable dog's danglies to lots of people, as is KDE - although other desktops are available and much loved, as we all know.
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Chris G -
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