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mccal is mainly useful for giving you reminders, which you can snooze, as often as you like, for however many minutes, hours, or days that you would like. When I originally wrote mccal in the mid 2000s, none of the available calendars for Linux/UNIX had this kind of snoozing functionality. This is the main reason I wrote mccal.
When an appointment becomes due, the program will pop up a window with the appointment text, which you can then dismiss or snooze as desired. The program also allows you to optionally send an email in addition to a popup. mccal uses wxPython to implement its (pretty basic) UI. If you are using Debian GNU/Linux you may install wxPython by running
sudo apt install wxpython-tools
- Download the source code for the latest
alpha
release of
mccal and
copy the folling files to a directory in your executable path (usually
~/bin/):addappointmentsfindappointmentremindviewcalgetminspause_mccalunpause_mccalrun_findapps.sh
To start the mccal daemon, you may simply run
$ findappointment &
in, e.g., a terminal window or via your window manager's initialisation
script. For command line options run findappointment --help (see also below).
The shell script, run_findapps.sh, is a wrapper around the findappointment
daemon that first kills any existing findappointment processes before starting
up a new daemon process. It is recommended that you customize your window
manager's initialization script to automatically run run_findapps.sh in the
background at startup.
$ viewcal
2024-03-28 09:30 Standup meeting
2024-03-28 10:05 Call with customer
$ viewcal tomorrow
2024-03-29 12:00 Zoom meeting with George
$ viewcal -v next week
Monday, April 01, 2024
---
08:00 Submit invoice
10:00 Regular Monday morning meeting with Joan
---
Tuesday, April 02, 2024
---
13:00 Afternoon workshop
---
Wednesday, April 03, 2024
---
00:01 Larry birthday
---
$ echo "remind 15 2024-03-30 12:00 Lunch with Nancy"|addappointments
OK
$ viewcal saturday
2024-03-30 00:01 Barbara birthday
2024-03-30 12:00 Lunch with Nancy
This is the main daemon process that periodically checks the calendar file for
reminders that have become due. It may be convenient to start this daemon
automatically in your window manager's initialisation script or in some other
way. Note that the wrapper run_findapps.sh has been provided as a
convenience. When run, this script will kill any currently running
findappointment processes before starting up a new instance of the daemon.
$ findappointment --help
usage: findappointment [-h] [--adm ADDR] [--calendar FILE] [--pause_on FILE] [--sleep N] [-t] [-m ADDR] [--once]
[--dev]
Simple reminder calendar -- findappointment
options:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--adm ADDR (defaults to 'root' if unspecified) the email address of the administrator to send an email
to in the case of an error. Note that, regardless of this value, error messages will always
also be written to STDERR
--calendar FILE read from the calendar FILE instead of from '~/.mycalendar.txt'
--pause_on FILE use the existence of FILE, instead of '~/.pause_mccal', as an indication to
findappointment that it should postpone any user notifications until the next iteration
--sleep N sleep for N seconds, instead of the default 300, between iterations
-t, --text_mode write all reminder notifications to the console without any popups
-m ADDR, --mail ADDR when a reminder becomes due, send an email using 'mail' to ADDR in addition to the usual
notification
--once do not iterate; look once through the calendar file for reminders that are due, generate
notifications, and exit.
--dev assume that all other mccal commands are located in the current working directory
The command addappointments is used to add appointment entries to the
calendar file. This can be accomplished either by providing a file,
APPOINTMENTS, as an argument to addappointments, or by instructing
addappointments to read in the entries from STDIN.
$ addappointments --help
usage: addappointments [-h] [--calendar FILE] [--id ID] [APPOINTMENTS]
Simple reminder calendar -- addappointments
Adds the contents of APPOINTMENTS, which contains events specified in the format:
[<weekly|biweekly|monthly|yearly> <N>] [remind <M>] [yyyy-mm-dd] HH:mm [<text>]
where N indicates how often to repeat the reminder, and M is the number of
minutes before the reminder is due to notify the user of it,
to the given CALENDAR.
positional arguments:
APPOINTMENTS the file from which the appointments are read, or STDIN if ommitted
options:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--calendar FILE use the given calendar file instead of '~/.mycalendar.txt'
--id ID use the given ID to identify new events instead of generating IDs randomly
This command displays the events that have been scheduled during a given time period.
$ viewcal --help
usage: viewcal [-h] [--calendar FILE] [-a] [-r] [--show_id] [-v] [{this,next,last}] PERIOD
Simple reminder calendar -- viewcal
positional arguments:
{this,next,last} (if left unspecified, defaults to 'this'); show the events for this PERIOD, the next PERIOD, or
the last PERIOD, respectively.
PERIOD (if left unspecified, defaults to 'today'); can be one of: year, month, week, monday, tuesday,
wednesday, thursday, friday, saturday, sunday, today, tomorrow, yesterday, january, february,
march, april, may, june, july, august, september, october, november, december, yyyy-mm-dd, yyyy-
mm, yyyy
options:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--calendar FILE use the given calendar file instead of '~/.mycalendar.txt'
-a, --all also show snoozed events that will trigger reminders during the given PERIOD
-r, --reminders show the date and time at which the reminder for a given event will be triggered
--show_id show the event ID of matching events
-v, --verbose display the events in a somewhat more readable format
This command is used to remind the user of an appointment. Note that remind
should normally not be called directly by a user. It is normally called
automatically through the findappontment daemon when a reminder becomes due.
$ remind --help
usage: remind [-h] [-t] [-m ADDR] CALENDAR ID REMINDER_TEXT
Simple reminder calendar -- remind
positional arguments:
CALENDAR a calendar file
ID the event ID associated with this reminder
REMINDER_TEXT the text associated with this reminder
options:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-t, --text_mode after processing the reminder, output the reminder text to STDOUT and exit, without
providing the user with an option to snooze
-m ADDR, --mail ADDR use the program 'mail' to send the reminder text as an email to the given email address in
addition to notifying the user that the reminder is due
When run, this script will kill any currently running findappointment processes before starting up a new instance of the daemon. It may be useful to run this command from your window manager's initialization script.
A handy extra tool to help in specyfying reminder times. Use like this:
Usage: getmins NUMBER[m|h|d|w]
$ echo "remind `getmins 24h` 2015-07-09 20:00 Office party"|addappointments
To contact the author, see: https://www.michaelcuffaro.com