Emacs-Calendar export to iCal/vcal

Emacs-Calendar export to iCal/vcal

[Philipp Raschdorff]

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Hi,

I'm using emacs +org-mode mainly for organizing todos and for  
brainstorming in project planing and organizing tasks etc. So it's  
mainly a (very powerfull) outliner.

I playes arround with the DUE & DEADLINE features and realized that  
there is one thing missing for me:

synchronizing emacs-todos / appointments to iCal (Mac OS X 10.4)

To make it easier: I really would like to have it one way: Adding  
data from emacs to an iCal-file.

I'm using my mobile phone to synchronize with my calendar (iCal) and  
it would be nice to have EMacs copying data to iCal and then have  
this data on my mobile phone after the next sync.

What do you think? Are you using the emacs-calendar-functions and how  
to you synchronize to other applications?

Any suggestions would be great.

Best regards from Berlin / Germany

Phil
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Re: Emacs-Calendar export to iCal/vcal

[Carsten Dominik]

Hi Phillip,

have you read this?

http://staff.science.uva.nl/~dominik/Tools/org/org.html#iCalendar-export

If yes, can you be more specific about what you are missing?

- Carsten

On Aug 23, 2006, at 22:46, Philipp Raschdorff wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm using emacs +org-mode mainly for organizing todos and for 
> brainstorming in project planing and organizing tasks etc. So it's 
> mainly a (very powerfull) outliner.
>
> I playes arround with the DUE & DEADLINE features and realized that 
> there is one thing missing for me:
>
> synchronizing emacs-todos / appointments to iCal (Mac OS X 10.4)
>
> To make it easier: I really would like to have it one way: Adding data 
> from emacs to an iCal-file.
>
> I'm using my mobile phone to synchronize with my calendar (iCal) and 
> it would be nice to have EMacs copying data to iCal and then have this 
> data on my mobile phone after the next sync.
>
> What do you think? Are you using the emacs-calendar-functions and how 
> to you synchronize to other applications?
>
> Any suggestions would be great.
>
> Best regards from Berlin / Germany
>
> Phil
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> iD8DBQFE7L7HmbjPeL8dZWgRAt29AJ9JyQJK5Ps3UJyAuFDGGhlZq+WdQgCeIMvj
> Sl/n5RM1yFFlpSX8umWWH8A=
> =+rV9
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>
> _______________________________________________
> Emacs-orgmode mailing list
> Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode
>
>

--
Carsten Dominik
Sterrenkundig Instituut "Anton Pannekoek"
Universiteit van Amsterdam
Kruislaan 403
NL-1098SJ Amsterdam
phone: +31 20 525 7477

Re: Emacs-Calendar export to iCal/vcal

[Piotr Zielinski]

Hi Phil,

Not directly relevant, but here's what I use to synchronize the
calendar information in the other direction: from iCalendar calendars
to emacs org-mode.  The whole setup is rather hacky and complicated (I
didn't really have time to make it more presentable) but it might be
still useful to some.

I have all my org-files in ~/myfiles/org/.  File calendars.txt,
contains URLs of remote calendars I'd like to include in my
org-agenda.  The first word in each line is the name of the local file
to which the remote calendar will periodically be downloaded:

---------- calendars.txt STARTS ----------
camtalks http://talks.cam.ac.uk/show/ics/5245
msresearchtalks http://www.srcf.ucam.org/users/pz215/msr.ics
---------- calendars.txt ENDS ----------

Once a day I execute the following script (from cron):

---------- update-calendars STARTS ----------
#!/bin/bash

orgdir=~/myfiles/org
diary=$orgdir/calendars.diary
emacs=$orgdir/local-calendars.el

> $diary
echo "(setq local-calendars '(" > $emacs

cat $orgdir/calendars.txt | \
{
    while read name url ; do
	wget -N -O $orgdir/$name.ics $url
	echo "#include \"$orgdir/$name.diary\"" >> $diary
	echo "\"$name\" " >> $emacs
    done
}

echo "))" >> $emacs
---------- update-calendars ENDS ----------

It downloads all the remote calendars described in "calendars.txt" and
creates two new files.  First, "calendars.diary", which is an emacs
diary meta-file that just includes the proper calendar files.

---------- calendars.diary STARTS ----------
#include "/home/pz215/myfiles/org/camtalks.diary"
#include "/home/pz215/myfiles/org/msresearchtalks.diary"
---------- calendars.diary ENDS ----------

The second file created by "update-calendars" is "local-calendars.el",
an elisp file that contains a list of calendars:

---------- local-calendars.el STARTS ----------
(setq local-calendars '(
"camtalks"
"msresearchtalks"
))
---------- local-calendars.el ENDS ----------

What remains is to convert the downloaded icalendar files into the
diary files included by "calendars.diary".  To this end, I have the
following lines in my ".emacs":

---------- .emacs SNIPPET STARTS ----------
(require 'calendar)
(european-calendar)
(load "~/myfiles/org/local-calendars.el")
(dolist (name local-calendars)
  (let ((ical (concat "/home/pz215/myfiles/org/" name ".ics"))
	(diary (concat "/home/pz215/myfiles/org/" name ".diary")))
    (when (file-newer-than-file-p ical diary)
      (with-current-buffer (find-file-noselect diary)
	(kill-region (point-min) (point-max))
	(icalendar-import-file ical diary)))))
---------- .emacs SNIPPET ENDS ----------

That's it.  If you want emacs to notify you about your appointments,
take a look at the function "appt-activate" in the appt library.  If
you use a desktop environment that uses the standard notification
deamon (e.g., GNOME), you can set up the appt library to use it.  Take
a look at the "send-notify" command from the "libnotify-bin" package
(Debian/Ubuntu).

Thanks,
Piotr


On 23/08/06, Carsten Dominik <dominik@science.uva.nl> wrote:
>
> Hi Phillip,
>
> have you read this?
>
> http://staff.science.uva.nl/~dominik/Tools/org/org.html#iCalendar-export
>
> If yes, can you be more specific about what you are missing?
>
> - Carsten
>
> On Aug 23, 2006, at 22:46, Philipp Raschdorff wrote:
>
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > I'm using emacs +org-mode mainly for organizing todos and for
> > brainstorming in project planing and organizing tasks etc. So it's
> > mainly a (very powerfull) outliner.
> >
> > I playes arround with the DUE & DEADLINE features and realized that
> > there is one thing missing for me:
> >
> > synchronizing emacs-todos / appointments to iCal (Mac OS X 10.4)
> >
> > To make it easier: I really would like to have it one way: Adding data
> > from emacs to an iCal-file.
> >
> > I'm using my mobile phone to synchronize with my calendar (iCal) and
> > it would be nice to have EMacs copying data to iCal and then have this
> > data on my mobile phone after the next sync.
> >
> > What do you think? Are you using the emacs-calendar-functions and how
> > to you synchronize to other applications?
> >
> > Any suggestions would be great.
> >
> > Best regards from Berlin / Germany
> >
> > Phil
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> > Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (Darwin)
> >
> > iD8DBQFE7L7HmbjPeL8dZWgRAt29AJ9JyQJK5Ps3UJyAuFDGGhlZq+WdQgCeIMvj
> > Sl/n5RM1yFFlpSX8umWWH8A=
> > =+rV9
> > -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Emacs-orgmode mailing list
> > Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
> > http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode
> >
> >
>
> --
> Carsten Dominik
> Sterrenkundig Instituut "Anton Pannekoek"
> Universiteit van Amsterdam
> Kruislaan 403
> NL-1098SJ Amsterdam
> phone: +31 20 525 7477
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Emacs-orgmode mailing list
> Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode
>


-- 
Piotr Zielinski, Research Associate
Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~pz215/

Re: Emacs-Calendar export to iCal/vcal

[Philipp Raschdorff]

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Carsten, Piotr and Pete,

thanks for the replies so far - great to hear that it's possible to  
do plain ascii editing and still have the same data ready for syncing.

I tried to play with the ideas you mentioned, but I found out that I  
have no .ics-files in ~/Library/Calendars. I knew I had my iCal files  
stored there in the past (OS X 10.3.x). Currently I'm using OS X  
10.4.7 and it seems that some data is stored in

~/Library/Application Support/iCal/Sources

for each calendar in iCal, there seems to be a directory like:
E2A32ED1-CBD0-4A13-B397-3742B1680F17.calendar

which has 3 files in it:

corestorage.ics
Index
Info.plist

I was able to export my org-mode-data to an .ics file, but it seems  
that iCal imports data from that file and then creates a new file  
under the path given before (~/Library/Application Support/iCal/ 
Sources).

Question1: How can I force iCal to read and write to the .ics-file  
I've exported from org-mode?
Question2: Why isn't there a ~/Library/Calendars Folder?

Best regards from berlin

phil


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Re: Emacs-Calendar export to iCal/vcal

[Carsten Dominik]

On Aug 24, 2006, at 0:45, Philipp Raschdorff wrote:

> Carsten, Piotr and Pete,
>
> thanks for the replies so far - great to hear that it's possible to do 
> plain ascii editing and still have the same data ready for syncing. 
>
> I tried to play with the ideas you mentioned, but I found out that I 
> have no .ics-files in ~/Library/Calendars. I knew I had my iCal files 
> stored there in the past (OS X 10.3.x). Currently I'm using OS X 
> 10.4.7 and it seems that some data is stored in
>
> ~/Library/Application Support/iCal/Sources
>
> for each calendar in iCal, there seems to be a directory like:
> E2A32ED1-CBD0-4A13-B397-3742B1680F17.calendar
>

Yes, you are right, this seems to be the new convention in MacOSX.

Unfortunately, I don't have 10.4 and I am not going to get it soon, so 
I will probably not be driven to fix this soon either  :-(


- Carsten

Re: Emacs-Calendar export to iCal/vcal

[Pete Phillips]

Hi Philipp

>>>>> "Philipp" == Philipp Raschdorff <p.raschdorff@macnews.de> writes:

    Philipp> realized that there is one thing missing for me:
    Philipp> synchronizing emacs-todos / appointments to iCal (Mac OS X
    Philipp> 10.4)

    Philipp> To make it easier: I really would like to have it one way:
    Philipp> Adding data from emacs to an iCal-file.

    Philipp> What do you think? Are you using the
    Philipp> emacs-calendar-functions and how to you synchronize to
    Philipp> other applications?

It just so happens that I have been playing around with this myself in
the last few days.

I'm not sure whether you want to sync the org-mode dated items, or items
from the emacs diary/calendar files - your last sentence tends to
suggest the latter, so...

I needed to be able to export my emacs diary file to an icalendar file
(which I assume Mac iCal supports ?) so that I could copy it to our
Intranet (our lab staff can then point SunBird or Evolution to the file
on the Intranet and see my appointments).

Now I use CVS emacs, which comes with icalendar.el - if you can't find
this on your system, you can google for it.  You need this for the ical
export function.

The basic command line version is this:

/usr/local/emacs-cvs/bin/emacs -batch  --eval "(icalendar-export-file \"/home/pete/diary\"  \"/home/pete/diary.ics\")" 

The 'diary' file is the file you edit in emacs (you may call it
something else of course) and the 'diary.ics' file is the exported
icalendar file.

A word of warning - I'd advise setting up a shellscript to do all the
work for you, as you need to make sure you remove the diary.ics file
first, otherwise it appends the dates to it each time you run it. This
means that you will end up with multiple entries for the same
appointment (in some applications which aren't fussy about the files
they slurp in), or it just won't import in others - Google calendar
being one. I couldn't understand how it worked once, and then Google
Calendar just kept complaining and aborting.  It was only when I saw the
ics file getting bigger each time that it dawned on me ....... :-(

So, to enable you to read it in iCal (I am a Mac ignoramus - excuse me
here) you will either need to be able to copy it to the Mac partition
from your GNU Linux/UNIX partition, or to copy the file to a web server
which you can access from your Mac iCal.

Making another assumption, I assume you can point iCal to a disk file to
import, or to add another calendar to your setup ?  With sunbird and
evolution, you can have multiple calendars, and toggle them on and off.

My shell script is appended. Hope this helps.

Now of course, it could be that you are using emacs under some M$
product or Mac O/S, in which case the shellscript itself will only be of
use to you in giving you an idea how to do what you need. I have no idea
whether you can do similar things under thos O/Ss.

Note - my application only pulls out appointments I have tagged
with :SMTL:, so my personal appointments stay private.  This is an added
level of complexity - you can delete the appropriate lines.

Final point - if I have misunderstood, and you need to get dated items
from your org-mode file, you will need to use something like this:

  /usr/local/emacs-cvs/bin/emacs  -batch  --eval "(org-export-icalendar-combine-agenda-files)"

Or one of the other org-mode icalendar export functions.  I managed to
get this to work once, but it doesn't create the file ~/org.ics for me
anymore. I'm sure Carsten will be able to sort this for you anyway, if
this is what you need.

All the best,
Pete

---------------sync-icalendar-to-apache.sh----------------------
#!/bin/sh

#####################################################################
# FUNCTION: grab all my SMTL appointments from my emacs diary file, #
# export to ical, then copy to SMTL Intranet server.                #
#####################################################################

################
### IMPORTANT###
#########################################################################
# This script needs to be run *after* running ssh-add at login, so that #
# the ssh transfers will occur without human intervention.              #
#########################################################################

###########################################################################
# I use my ~/.xinitrc to run ssh-add and then run an 'at' job to schedule #
# it to run at 3:30 every morning:                                        #
#                                                                         #
#    xterm -bg red -e ssh-add $HOME/.ssh/id_dsa                           #
#    echo /home/pete/bin/sync-icalendar-to-apache.sh | at 3:30            #
#                                                                         #
# 1 -  takes my ~/diary file (maintained in emacs)                        #
# 2 - greps out the SMTL only appointments into another emacs diary file, #
# 3 - then uses the icalendar export function to export to ical format.   #
# 4 - copies to our internal Intranet server file system                  #
#                                                                         #
###########################################################################

####################
# SET UP VARIABLES #
####################
DIARY_COMPLETE=/home/pete/diary
DIARY_SMTL=/home/pete/pete.smtl
ICAL_SMTL=/home/pete/pete.ics
ICAL_INTRANET=/data/htdocs/Calendars/pete.ics

##############################
# Must remove the old copies #
##############################
rm $ICAL_COMPLETE
rm $ICAL_SMTL

#################################################################################
# filter out all SMTL stuff only. the smtl file will only be SMTL appointments. #
#################################################################################
egrep ":SMTL:" < $DIARY_COMPLETE | sed 's/\:SMTL\://g' > $DIARY_SMTL

##############################
# export to icalendar format #
##############################
/usr/local/emacs-cvs/bin/emacs -batch  --eval "(icalendar-export-file \"$DIARY_SMTL\"  \"$ICAL_SMTL\")"

#########################################################################
# Now copy to the correct directory on the internal file server so that #
# users can point sunbird/evolution to:                                 #
# http://intranet.smtl.co.uk/Calendars/pete.ics                         #
#########################################################################
scp $ICAL_SMTL intranet.smtl.co.uk:$ICAL_INTRANET

#################################################
# Finally, set up another job for the next day. #
#################################################
echo /home/pete/bin/sync-icalendar-to-apache.sh | at 03:30

Re: Emacs-Calendar export to iCal/vcal

[Carsten Dominik]

It just occurred to me that a possible solution may be to write the 
ical file to your public HTML directory and *subscribe* iCal to it.  I 
don't know the correct syntax, but there must be a way to specify a url 
on the local computer.  Maybe it does not even have to be in the public 
HTML folder, maybe you can subscribe to any location?  I don't know, if 
anybody does, please tell us.

Disadvantage would be that this would be a read-only calendar in iCal.  
However, since you would not be able to import any changes back into 
org-mode anyway, maybe this is not a big problem - you can just write 
to another calendar to which you own the write rights.

- Carsten

On Aug 23, 2006, at 22:46, Philipp Raschdorff wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm using emacs +org-mode mainly for organizing todos and for 
> brainstorming in project planing and organizing tasks etc. So it's 
> mainly a (very powerfull) outliner.
>
> I playes arround with the DUE & DEADLINE features and realized that 
> there is one thing missing for me:
>
> synchronizing emacs-todos / appointments to iCal (Mac OS X 10.4)
>
> To make it easier: I really would like to have it one way: Adding data 
> from emacs to an iCal-file.
>
> I'm using my mobile phone to synchronize with my calendar (iCal) and 
> it would be nice to have EMacs copying data to iCal and then have this 
> data on my mobile phone after the next sync.
>
> What do you think? Are you using the emacs-calendar-functions and how 
> to you synchronize to other applications?
>
> Any suggestions would be great.
>
> Best regards from Berlin / Germany
>
> Phil
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (Darwin)
>
> iD8DBQFE7L7HmbjPeL8dZWgRAt29AJ9JyQJK5Ps3UJyAuFDGGhlZq+WdQgCeIMvj
> Sl/n5RM1yFFlpSX8umWWH8A=
> =+rV9
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Emacs-orgmode mailing list
> Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode
>
>