outlook message/diary handling

outlook message/diary handling

[Nic Ferrier]

We have function diary-from-outlook and the diary-outlook-formats alist
to help integrate with MS-Outlook appointment madness.

I've got an additional format for that which I'll try and submit but I
think the interface could do with changing.

1. Right now diary-from-outlook is fixed to two email implementations,
rmail and gnus. But we have lots of other mailers that would benefit
from the same functionality.

2. diary-from-outlook ends with diary-from-outlook-internal which only
handles diary entries in Emacs' diary format. But many people like to
keep their diary in org mode. So being able to add entries in either
format would be good.

I'd be happy to provide some improvement here if people agree.

Re: outlook message/diary handling

[Glenn Morris]

More entries for diary-outlook-formats are welcome.
(The one time I got Outlook appointment messages, this feature was no
use, as I explain in the comments before that variable.)

Nic Ferrier wrote:

> 1. Right now diary-from-outlook is fixed to two email implementations,
> rmail and gnus. But we have lots of other mailers that would benefit
> from the same functionality.

I think code for mailers that don't come with Emacs doesn't belong in
Emacs. I added diary-from-outlook-function that those mail clients can
set to whatever.

> 2. diary-from-outlook ends with diary-from-outlook-internal which only
> handles diary entries in Emacs' diary format. But many people like to
> keep their diary in org mode. So being able to add entries in either
> format would be good.

If Org mode needs something different for some reason, I think that's
code that belongs in Org mode. So try emacs-orgmode@gnu.

Re: outlook message/diary handling

[Nic Ferrier]

Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org> writes:

> More entries for diary-outlook-formats are welcome.
> (The one time I got Outlook appointment messages, this feature was no
> use, as I explain in the comments before that variable.)

Ok... well, I'll do that if I can get a useable dev tree going so I can
submit up to date patches.

[insert bzr rant here]

> I think code for mailers that don't come with Emacs doesn't belong in
> Emacs. I added diary-from-outlook-function that those mail clients can
> set to whatever.

Why would you think that? we allow things to be packaged. We should
encourage good APIs for separations sake.

Encouraging cohesive code is just a quick way to build spagehetti. Which
is what this looks like.

diary-from-outlook-function is kind of what I was thinking of doing. I
was going to suggest a buffer-local variable for something like that so
modes could set it up if they wanted to.


>> 2. diary-from-outlook ends with diary-from-outlook-internal which only
>> handles diary entries in Emacs' diary format. But many people like to
>> keep their diary in org mode. So being able to add entries in either
>> format would be good.
>
> If Org mode needs something different for some reason, I think that's
> code that belongs in Org mode. So try emacs-orgmode@gnu.

Well, it's the Emacs code that's doing this. I would add a further layer
of indirection to the entry handling code that allowed the user to
choose a type of diary entry which then selected an appropriate
function.

I'll send patches I guess, again, when I have a working emacs repo.