Best practice for canceled/moved recurring events

Best practice for canceled/moved recurring events

[SabreWolfy]

I have a meeting at 09:00 every Monday:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
* Diary
** TODO Weekly Meeting
   DEADLINE: <2016-07-18 Mon 09:00 +1w>
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

What is the best way of dealing with scenarios where (1) the meeting "next
week" is on the Wednesday and (2) the meeting "two weeks" after that (or
whatever) is canceled?

Should I create a large set of time-shift entries for each week individually
and edit accordingly?

Re: Best practice for canceled/moved recurring events

[Jason Riedy]

And sabrewolfy@gmail.com writes:
> What is the best way of dealing with scenarios where (1) the meeting "next
> week" is on the Wednesday and (2) the meeting "two weeks" after that (or
> whatever) is canceled?

Right now, I keep the typical meeting (titled with "Standing: ")
and add exceptions as separate events ("Exception: ").  The
version of owncloud I'm using as a sync target for org and my
phone doesn't handle exceptions anyways.

Re: Best practice for canceled/moved recurring events

[Christoph LANGE]

SabreWolfy on 2016-07-22 15:29:
> I have a meeting at 09:00 every Monday:
>
> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
> * Diary
> ** TODO Weekly Meeting
>    DEADLINE: <2016-07-18 Mon 09:00 +1w>
> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
>
> What is the best way of dealing with scenarios where (1) the meeting "next
> week" is on the Wednesday and (2) the meeting "two weeks" after that (or
> whatever) is canceled?

If you need this to be a TODO, then I can't answer your question.
However, for non-TODO entries like this …

* Meeting
  <2016-07-18 Mon 09:00>
  <2016-07-25 Mon 09:00>
  ...

I often use Lisp functions that work on dates.  Essentially, you convert
the entry to

* Meeting 09:00
  <%% SEXP >

or

* Meeting 09:00-10:00
  <%% SEXP >

When SEXP evaluates to true for a given day, the entry shows up on the
agenda for that day.  The basics of this are documented at
http://orgmode.org/manual/Timestamps.html.

Here are some examples from my diary.  Note that I'm using

(setq calendar-date-style 'iso)

<%%(org-class 2016 02 17 2016 04 30 3 8 12 14 16 18 20)>

Every Wednesday (3rd day of the week, starting with 0 = Sunday) in the
given date range, except ISO calendar weeks 12, 14, etc.

<%%(and (not (diary-block 2016 07 22 2016 08 31)) (org-class 2016 01 07
2016 12 31 4 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 18 20 21 22 24 26 27 28 30 32 34 36
38 40 42 44 46 48 50 52))>

Like above, but not if the date is between 2016-07-22 and 2016-08-31.

<%%(and (diary-float t 5 1) (diary-block 2016 03 01 2018 12 31) (not
(diary-date 2016 06 03)))>

First (1) Friday (day 5) of every month (t) in the given range
(diary-block), but not on 2016-06-03.

Hope this helps,

Christoph

-- 
Dr. Christoph Lange, Enterprise Information Systems Department
Applied Computer Science @ University of Bonn; Fraunhofer IAIS
http://langec.wordpress.com/about, Skype duke4701

→ Please note: I will be on parental leave from 29 July to 28 October.
  Colleagues will stand in for me by project.