I just started using org-journal (with org-mode 8.2.5h) and went through the customization options. I wanted my journal files to use YYYY-MM-DD instead of YYYYMMDD, so I changed two variables:

However, this breaks browsing journal entries with the calendar, as well as org-journal-open-next-entry and org-journal-open-previous-entry. Poking around, I found that those two functions, as well as org-journal-get-list, hard-code the parsing of the filename into year, month, day components. They assume YYYYMMDD.

That means there are /three/ ways in which the filename format is encoded: (1) org-journal-file-format to create new entries, (2) org-journal-file-pattern to find entries on disk and to set auto-mode-alist, and (3) these three functions, which parse the filename. All three need to be kept in sync for the calendar integration to work.

Unfortunately (3) is not user-customizable without copying those functions and modifying them. That means customizing (1) and (2) breaks things. Maybe org-journal-file-pattern could use explicitly numbered regexp groups to mark the year, month, day. Or maybe everything can be somehow derived from org-journal-file-format.

Cheers,

- Amit