missing appointments

missing appointments

[Rodrigo Amestica]

Hi,

I use appt to connect desktop notifications to appointments in my
agenda. However, the connection between the appointments and the
notification system does not happen until I visit the agenda with, for
example, "C-c a a", which I sometimes forget to invoke and I end up
missing appointments.

Trying to automate I created a short cut like this:

emacs -f org-agenda-list my-main-org-file

However, this seems to execute org-agenda-list before my-main-org-file
has fully opened in its own buffer and I end up with the window split into
two buffers: top one scratch and bottom one my-main-org-file, which is
visually very annoying. It is completely mysterious to me the timing
at which different actions take place within emacs and how to control
and sequence them, like a 'wait' call. 

Is there a way to automatically execute org-agenda-list after
my-main-org-file has fully finished opening in its buffer?

Is it there some more streamlined way to connect agenda to
notifications such that I would not need to explicitly enable them
every time I open the file?

thanks,
 Rodrigo

Re: missing appointments

[Nick Dokos]

Rodrigo Amestica <ramestica@lavabit.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I use appt to connect desktop notifications to appointments in my
> agenda. However, the connection between the appointments and the
> notification system does not happen until I visit the agenda with, for
> example, "C-c a a", which I sometimes forget to invoke and I end up
> missing appointments.
> 
> Trying to automate I created a short cut like this:
> 
> emacs -f org-agenda-list my-main-org-file
> 
> However, this seems to execute org-agenda-list before my-main-org-file
> has fully opened in its own buffer and I end up with the window split into
> two buffers: top one scratch and bottom one my-main-org-file, which is
> visually very annoying. It is completely mysterious to me the timing
> at which different actions take place within emacs and how to control
> and sequence them, like a 'wait' call. 
> 
> Is there a way to automatically execute org-agenda-list after
> my-main-org-file has fully finished opening in its buffer?
> 

I think this is the wrong way to go about it.

> Is it there some more streamlined way to connect agenda to
> notifications such that I would not need to explicitly enable them
> every time I open the file?
> 

The way to do it is to call org-agenda-to-appt. The trick is to
call this function at all the necessary places/times. I have the following
code in my initialization file, after the rest of org initialization:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
...
(org-agenda-to-appt)

(defadvice  org-agenda-redo (after org-agenda-redo-add-appts)
  "Pressing `r' on the agenda will also add appointments."
  (progn 
    (setq appt-time-msg-list nil)
    (org-agenda-to-appt)))
(ad-activate 'org-agenda-redo)

(add-hook 'org-capture-after-finalize-hook
	  (function org-agenda-to-appt)
)

;; wrong
(setq org-appt-timer (run-at-time "00:01" nil (function org-agenda-to-appt)))
...
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

There are four pieces here:

o an explicit call - this gets executed at initialization and loads
  up the appt-time-msg-list from the agenda.

o advising org-agenda-redo so that after it's done, it resets
  appt-time-msg-list and calls org-agenda-to-appt again. That
  way, if something goes wrong, I can pop up the agenda, press "r"
  and start afresh.

o add a call to org-capture-after-finalize-hook - that way
  when I  capture an appointment for today, it will be added
  automatically.

o finally, I would like to add a call at midnight every day to
  recalculate appointments for the next day - unfortunately, the call
  above is not correct, so for now I do it manually with an
  org-agenda-redo as above.  One of these days I'll get that fixed. If
  anybody has done that already, I'll gladly steal your code :-)

I *think* that should catch everything. BTW, there is an org-hacks
entry by Russell Adams:

  http://orgmode.org/worg/org-hacks.html#org-agenda-appt-zenity

where he suggests also adding it to org-agenda-finalize-hook: that way
it gets done every time you display the agenda as well. Not sure whether
it's necessary or overkill for me, but it certainly wouldn't hurt.

Nick

Re: missing appointments

[Memnon Anon]

Nick Dokos <nicholas.dokos@hp.com> writes:

> ;; wrong
> (setq org-appt-timer (run-at-time "00:01" nil (function org-agenda-to-appt)))
[...]
> o finally, I would like to add a call at midnight every day to
>   recalculate appointments for the next day - unfortunately, the call
>   above is not correct, so for now I do it manually with an
>   org-agenda-redo as above.  One of these days I'll get that fixed. If
>   anybody has done that already, I'll gladly steal your code :-)

http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html#sec-14-1

Memnon

Re: missing appointments

[Bernt Hansen]

Memnon Anon <gegendosenfleisch@googlemail.com> writes:

> Nick Dokos <nicholas.dokos@hp.com> writes:
>
>> ;; wrong
>> (setq org-appt-timer (run-at-time "00:01" nil (function org-agenda-to-appt)))
> [...]
>> o finally, I would like to add a call at midnight every day to
>>   recalculate appointments for the next day - unfortunately, the call
>>   above is not correct, so for now I do it manually with an
>>   org-agenda-redo as above.  One of these days I'll get that fixed. If
>>   anybody has done that already, I'll gladly steal your code :-)
>
> http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html#sec-14-1
>
> Memnon

Heh!  Even I had to look that up... and it's my document!

For the list archives I think this is the relevant part of the above
link (since the sec-14-1 is likely to change in the future)

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
; If we leave Emacs running overnight - reset the appointments one minute after midnight
(run-at-time "24:01" nil 'bh/org-agenda-to-appt)
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

This originally came from Carsten Dominik years ago ... when I was
setting up my appt for the first time.

Thanks Carsten!

Regards,
Bernt

Re: missing appointments

[Nick Dokos]

Bernt Hansen <bernt@norang.ca> wrote:

> Memnon Anon <gegendosenfleisch@googlemail.com> writes:
> 
> > Nick Dokos <nicholas.dokos@hp.com> writes:
> >
> >> ;; wrong
> >> (setq org-appt-timer (run-at-time "00:01" nil (function org-agenda-to-appt)))
> > [...]
> >> o finally, I would like to add a call at midnight every day to
> >>   recalculate appointments for the next day - unfortunately, the call
> >>   above is not correct, so for now I do it manually with an
> >>   org-agenda-redo as above.  One of these days I'll get that fixed. If
> >>   anybody has done that already, I'll gladly steal your code :-)
> >
> > http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html#sec-14-1
> >
> > Memnon
> 
> Heh!  Even I had to look that up... and it's my document!
> 
> For the list archives I think this is the relevant part of the above
> link (since the sec-14-1 is likely to change in the future)
> 
> ; If we leave Emacs running overnight - reset the appointments one minute after midnight
> (run-at-time "24:01" nil 'bh/org-agenda-to-appt)
> 
> This originally came from Carsten Dominik years ago ... when I was
> setting up my appt for the first time.
> 
> Thanks Carsten!
> 

Thanks, Memnon! And Bernt and Carsten (and also Russell Adams who had it in
the hack I mentioned yesterday)!

I'm not sure I understand how it works, but I've added it (plus some
debugging) and we'll see how it goes: is the "24:01" a relative time or
an absolute time? I can't make heads or tails of the run-at-time doc.
And what reschedules it for next time? Doesn't the timer fire once (if REPEAT
is nil) and then it's done? I remember I had some misconceptions
about run-at-time before and these are probably more misconceptions on
my part. One of these days, I'll dust the cobwebs out (but they keep
returning...)

Nick

Re: missing appointments

[Nick Dokos]

Nick Dokos <nicholas.dokos@hp.com> wrote:

> 
> I'm not sure I understand how it works, but I've added it (plus some
> debugging) and we'll see how it goes: is the "24:01" a relative time or
> an absolute time? I can't make heads or tails of the run-at-time doc.

I went through the code: it's an absolute time and it represents one minute
past midnight of the next day (my original "00:01" was one minute past midnight
of the current day, i.e. some time in the past).

> And what reschedules it for next time? Doesn't the timer fire once (if REPEAT
> is nil) and then it's done?

Still not clear about this though. I'll see what happens at midnight tonight.

Nick

PS. BTW, I was just looking through Bernt's document and saw that in my earlier
mail, I missed the activation of appointments:

(appt-activate 1)

So that's one more thing for the OP to add to his .emacs.