Porting Apple Calendars to org-mode

Porting Apple Calendars to org-mode

[Mohamed Wael Khobalatte]

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Hi guys, I posted a question to the Emacs StackExchange (
https://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/50137/show-apple-calendar-events-in-org-mode),
but I believe it's better asked here. Does anyone know how I can get my
Apple calendar to show up in org-mode as readonly (preferably)?

I had no luck with org-mac-iCal. Only one calendar (the Birthdays calendar)
shows up, eventhough all other calendars are *checked*, as the
documentation from that package requires. It is also rather old, so not
sure if it works anymore?

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Re: Porting Apple Calendars to org-mode

[Ken Mankoff]

Hi Mohamed,

On 2019-04-24 at 21:32 +0200, Mohamed Wael Khobalatte
<wael.khobalatte@gmail.com> wrote...
org-mode),
> Does anyone know how I can get my Apple calendar to show up in
> org-mode as readonly (preferably)? I had no luck with org-mac-iCal.

There are several tools named ical2org - different languages, implementations, and/or forks. I used to use one of them when I was on OS X and it worked well for me.

I'm not on OS X anymore but use something called "ical2orgpy" that downloads ICS files from Google and Outlook (and could from iCloud I think?) and converts them to read-only Org buffers. The top line is

-*- eval: (eval (progn (auto-revert-mode 1) (read-only-mode 1))); -*-

So they are read-only and Emacs updates them when the buffer gets changed on disk w/o any questions.

  -k.

Re: Porting Apple Calendars to org-mode

[Mohamed Wael Khobalatte]

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Hi Ken,

Thanks for your response. The file(s) you linked to usually assume a
generated list of ics files no? My problem right now is that I do not want
to generate those manually from my Mac (could be done of course, but this
search is for something that does that).

The one that comes close is org-mac-iCal, but again my problem with that
one is that it does not work for all the calendars, even personal one that
is not networked. Surprisingly, it works with the holidays calendar (sorry
I said birthdays before, but it's the holidays one that comes by default).
I do not know what's special about that one, but my guess is that perhaps
the formats or locations have changed for the others, although that would
be..surprising.

On Wed, Apr 24, 2019 at 3:42 PM Ken Mankoff <mankoff@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Mohamed,
>
> On 2019-04-24 at 21:32 +0200, Mohamed Wael Khobalatte
> <wael.khobalatte@gmail.com> wrote...
> org-mode),
> > Does anyone know how I can get my Apple calendar to show up in
> > org-mode as readonly (preferably)? I had no luck with org-mac-iCal.
>
> There are several tools named ical2org - different languages,
> implementations, and/or forks. I used to use one of them when I was on OS X
> and it worked well for me.
>
> I'm not on OS X anymore but use something called "ical2orgpy" that
> downloads ICS files from Google and Outlook (and could from iCloud I
> think?) and converts them to read-only Org buffers. The top line is
>
> -*- eval: (eval (progn (auto-revert-mode 1) (read-only-mode 1))); -*-
>
> So they are read-only and Emacs updates them when the buffer gets changed
> on disk w/o any questions.
>
>   -k.
>
>

-- 
Wael Khobalatte

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Re: Porting Apple Calendars to org-mode

[Mohamed Wael Khobalatte]

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See for instance
https://www.reddit.com/r/orgmode/comments/7vidfd/has_anyone_gotten_orgmacical_to_work/,
which describes the same problem (although I *do* see some events, namely
holidays, so I am closer to a solution).

On Wed, Apr 24, 2019 at 3:56 PM Mohamed Wael Khobalatte <
wael.khobalatte@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Ken,
>
> Thanks for your response. The file(s) you linked to usually assume a
> generated list of ics files no? My problem right now is that I do not want
> to generate those manually from my Mac (could be done of course, but this
> search is for something that does that).
>
> The one that comes close is org-mac-iCal, but again my problem with that
> one is that it does not work for all the calendars, even personal one that
> is not networked. Surprisingly, it works with the holidays calendar (sorry
> I said birthdays before, but it's the holidays one that comes by default).
> I do not know what's special about that one, but my guess is that perhaps
> the formats or locations have changed for the others, although that would
> be..surprising.
>
> On Wed, Apr 24, 2019 at 3:42 PM Ken Mankoff <mankoff@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Mohamed,
>>
>> On 2019-04-24 at 21:32 +0200, Mohamed Wael Khobalatte
>> <wael.khobalatte@gmail.com> wrote...
>> org-mode),
>> > Does anyone know how I can get my Apple calendar to show up in
>> > org-mode as readonly (preferably)? I had no luck with org-mac-iCal.
>>
>> There are several tools named ical2org - different languages,
>> implementations, and/or forks. I used to use one of them when I was on OS X
>> and it worked well for me.
>>
>> I'm not on OS X anymore but use something called "ical2orgpy" that
>> downloads ICS files from Google and Outlook (and could from iCloud I
>> think?) and converts them to read-only Org buffers. The top line is
>>
>> -*- eval: (eval (progn (auto-revert-mode 1) (read-only-mode 1))); -*-
>>
>> So they are read-only and Emacs updates them when the buffer gets changed
>> on disk w/o any questions.
>>
>>   -k.
>>
>>
>
> --
> Wael Khobalatte
>
>

-- 
Wael Khobalatte

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Re: Porting Apple Calendars to org-mode

[Ken Mankoff]

On 2019-04-24 at 21:56 +0200, Mohamed Wael Khobalatte <wael.khobalatte@gmail.com> wrote...
> The file(s) you linked to usually assume a generated list of ics files
> no?

I didn't link to any files. There are *many* ical2org packages, many different ones. The one I currently use does expect an ICS file. If you use iCloud you have access to these. If your calendar is 100% local, then try this ical2org code: https://github.com/mankoff/ical2org  I used to maintain that fork, and used it many years ago with an only-local iCal setup that did not have ICS files, just some weird Apple folder structure in ~/Library/.

Sorry I can't help more. The code is old and I'm going offline for the next 5 weeks. But if you look at these two different ical2org, the ruby implementation, the Perl implementation, etc. one of them might do what you want.

  -k.

Re: Porting Apple Calendars to org-mode

[Mohamed Wael Khobalatte]

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Thanks Ken, I'll check them out. If none works then I might try to code up
something.

On Wed, Apr 24, 2019 at 10:31 PM Ken Mankoff <mankoff@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> On 2019-04-24 at 21:56 +0200, Mohamed Wael Khobalatte <
> wael.khobalatte@gmail.com> wrote...
> > The file(s) you linked to usually assume a generated list of ics files
> > no?
>
> I didn't link to any files. There are *many* ical2org packages, many
> different ones. The one I currently use does expect an ICS file. If you use
> iCloud you have access to these. If your calendar is 100% local, then try
> this ical2org code: https://github.com/mankoff/ical2org  I used to
> maintain that fork, and used it many years ago with an only-local iCal
> setup that did not have ICS files, just some weird Apple folder structure
> in ~/Library/.
>
> Sorry I can't help more. The code is old and I'm going offline for the
> next 5 weeks. But if you look at these two different ical2org, the ruby
> implementation, the Perl implementation, etc. one of them might do what you
> want.
>
>   -k.
>
>

-- 
Wael Khobalatte

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Re: Porting Apple Calendars to org-mode

[David Masterson]

Mohamed Wael Khobalatte <wael.khobalatte@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi guys, I posted a question to the Emacs StackExchange
> (https://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/50137/show-apple-calendar-events-in-org-mode),
> but I believe it's better asked here. Does anyone know how I can get
> my Apple calendar to show up in org-mode as readonly (preferably)?
>
> I had no luck with org-mac-iCal. Only one calendar (the Birthdays
> calendar) shows up, eventhough all other calendars are *checked*, as
> the documentation from that package requires. It is also rather old,
> so not sure if it works anymore?

A suggestion is to look at https://github.com/pimutils/vdirsyncer.  I
don't know anything more, but it looks promising.

--
David

Re: Porting Apple Calendars to org-mode

[Mohamed Wael Khobalatte]

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Thanks, I actually got .org-mac-iCal working, and even changed it to be
able to load non-Apple calendars if present in the local calendar app. I
will try and push the modified version to github or send a patch.

On Thu, Apr 25, 2019 at 11:34 PM David Masterson <dsmasterson@outlook.com>
wrote:

> Mohamed Wael Khobalatte <wael.khobalatte@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > Hi guys, I posted a question to the Emacs StackExchange
> > (
> https://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/50137/show-apple-calendar-events-in-org-mode
> ),
> > but I believe it's better asked here. Does anyone know how I can get
> > my Apple calendar to show up in org-mode as readonly (preferably)?
> >
> > I had no luck with org-mac-iCal. Only one calendar (the Birthdays
> > calendar) shows up, eventhough all other calendars are *checked*, as
> > the documentation from that package requires. It is also rather old,
> > so not sure if it works anymore?
>
> A suggestion is to look at https://github.com/pimutils/vdirsyncer.  I
> don't know anything more, but it looks promising.
>
> --
> David
>
-- 
Wael Khobalatte

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Re: Porting Apple Calendars to org-mode

[Norman Walsh]

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Mohamed Wael Khobalatte <wael.khobalatte@gmail.com> writes:
> Hi guys, I posted a question to the Emacs StackExchange
> (https://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/50137/show-apple-calendar-events-in-org-mode),
> but I believe it's better asked here. Does anyone know how I can get
> my Apple calendar to show up in org-mode as readonly (preferably)?

Coincidentally, I just went through this exercise myself.

I fixed a couple of issues in icalevents[1] and then worked out how to
get the calendar details from database that the Mac actually uses to
track the calendars. I wrote icaldiary[2] to extract events from my
calendar(s) and create an emacs “diary” file which Org reads quite
happily.

> I had no luck with org-mac-iCal. Only one calendar (the Birthdays
> calendar) shows up, eventhough all other calendars are *checked*, as
> the documentation from that package requires. It is also rather old,
> so not sure if it works anymore?

Yeah, I found the same problem. I think that Apple stopped storing the
active calendar data in the plist files that org-mac-iCal checks. They
moved it into the cache which they store with sqlite3.

Hoping this is helpful…

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

[1] https://github.com/ndw/icalevents
[2] https://gist.github.com/ndw/e76a3dad862989deb0cb74b3e2b557b4

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com> | Throughout history the world has been
http://nwalsh.com/            | laid waste to ensure the triumph of
                              | conceptions that are now as dead as the
                              | men that died for them.--Henry De
                              | Montherlant

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