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XEmacs provides several mail-reading packages. Each one comes with its own manual, which is included in each package.
The recommended mail-reading package for new users is VM. VM works with standard Unix-mail-format folders and was designed as a replacement for the older Rmail.
XEmacs also provides a sophisticated and comfortable front-end to the MH mail-processing system, called `MH-E'. Unlike in other mail programs, folders in MH are stored as file-system directories, with each message occupying one (numbered) file. This facilitates working with mail using shell commands, and many other features of MH are also designed to integrate well with the shell and with shell scripts. Keep in mind, however, that in order to use MH-E you must have the MH mail-processing system installed on your computer.
The Everything including the kitchen sink package `Gnus' is also available as an XEmacs package. Gnus also handles Usenet articles as well as mail.
`MEW' (Messaging in the Emacs World) is another mail-reading package available for XEmacs.
Finally, XEmacs provides the Rmail package. Rmail is (currently) the only mail reading package distributed with FSF GNU Emacs, and is powerful in its own right. However, it stores mail folders in a special format called `Babyl', that is incompatible with all other frequently-used mail programs. A utility program is provided for converting Babyl folders to standard Unix-mail format; however, unless you already have mail in Babyl-format folders, you should consider using Gnus, VM, or MH-E instead.
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Emacs provides the functions of a desk calendar, with a diary of planned or past events. To enter the calendar, type M-x calendar; this displays a three-month calendar centered on the current month, with point on the current date. With a numeric argument, as in C-u M-x calendar, it prompts you for the month and year to be the center of the three-month calendar. The calendar uses its own buffer, whose major mode is Calendar mode.
Button2 in the calendar brings up a menu of operations on a particular date; Buttons3 brings up a menu of commonly used calendar features that are independent of any particular date. To exit the calendar, type q. See section `Calendar' in The XEmacs Lisp Reference Manual, for customization information about the calendar and diary.
| 26.1.1 Movement in the Calendar | Moving through the calendar; selecting a date. | |
| 26.1.2 Scrolling the Calendar through Time | Bringing earlier or later months onto the screen. | |
| 26.1.3 The Mark and the Region | Remembering dates, the mark ring. | |
| 26.1.4 Miscellaneous Calendar Commands | Exiting or recomputing the calendar. | |
| 26.2 LaTeX Calendar | Print a calendar using LaTeX. | |
| 26.2.1 Holidays | Displaying dates of holidays. | |
| 26.2.2 Times of Sunrise and Sunset | Displaying local times of sunrise and sunset. | |
| 26.2.3 Phases of the Moon | Displaying phases of the moon. | |
| 26.2.4 Conversion To and From Other Calendars | Converting dates to other calendar systems. | |
| 26.5.2 The Diary | Displaying events from your diary. | |
| 26.5.8 Customizing the Calendar and Diary | Altering the behavior of the features above. |
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Calendar mode lets you move through the calendar in logical units of time such as days, weeks, months, and years. If you move outside the three months originally displayed, the calendar display "scrolls" automatically through time to make the selected date visible. Moving to a date lets you view its holidays or diary entries, or convert it to other calendars; moving longer time periods is also useful simply to scroll the calendar.
| 26.1.1.1 Motion by Integral Days, Weeks, Months, Years | Moving by days, weeks, months, and years. | |
| 26.1.1.2 Beginning or End of Week, Month or Year | Moving to start/end of weeks, months, and years. | |
| 26.1.1.3 Particular Dates | Moving to the current date or another specific date. |
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The commands for movement in the calendar buffer parallel the commands for movement in text. You can move forward and backward by days, weeks, months, and years.
calendar-forward-day).
calendar-backward-day).
calendar-forward-week).
calendar-backward-week).
calendar-forward-month).
calendar-backward-month).
calendar-forward-year).
calendar-backward-year).
The day and week commands are natural analogues of the usual Emacs commands for moving by characters and by lines. Just as C-n usually moves to the same column in the following line, in Calendar mode it moves to the same day in the following week. And C-p moves to the same day in the previous week.
The arrow keys are equivalent to C-f, C-b, C-n and C-p, just as they normally are in other modes.
The commands for motion by months and years work like those for weeks, but move a larger distance. The month commands M-} and M-{ move forward or backward by an entire month's time. The year commands C-x ] and C-x [ move forward or backward a whole year.
The easiest way to remember these commands is to consider months and years analogous to paragraphs and pages of text, respectively. But the commands themselves are not quite analogous. The ordinary Emacs paragraph commands move to the beginning or end of a paragraph, whereas these month and year commands move by an entire month or an entire year, which usually involves skipping across the end of a month or year.
All these commands accept a numeric argument as a repeat count. For convenience, the digit keys and the minus sign specify numeric arguments in Calendar mode even without the Meta modifier. For example, 100 C-f moves point 100 days forward from its present location.
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A week (or month, or year) is not just a quantity of days; we think of weeks (months, years) as starting on particular dates. So Calendar mode provides commands to move to the beginning or end of a week, month or year:
calendar-beginning-of-week).
calendar-end-of-week).
calendar-beginning-of-month).
calendar-end-of-month).
calendar-beginning-of-year).
calendar-end-of-year).
These commands also take numeric arguments as repeat counts, with the repeat count indicating how many weeks, months, or years to move backward or forward.
By default, weeks begin on Sunday. To make them begin on Monday
instead, set the variable calendar-week-start-day to 1.
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Calendar mode provides commands for moving to a particular date specified in various ways.
calendar-goto-date).
calendar-other-month).
calendar-goto-today).
g d (calendar-goto-date) prompts for a year, a month, and a day
of the month, and then moves to that date. Because the calendar includes all
dates from the beginning of the current era, you must type the year in its
entirety; that is, type `1990', not `90'.
o (calendar-other-month) prompts for a month and year,
then centers the three-month calendar around that month.
You can return to today's date with .
(calendar-goto-today).
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The calendar display scrolls automatically through time when you move out of the visible portion. You can also scroll it manually. Imagine that the calendar window contains a long strip of paper with the months on it. Scrolling it means moving the strip so that new months become visible in the window.
scroll-calendar-left).
scroll-calendar-right).
scroll-calendar-left-three-months).
scroll-calendar-right-three-months).
The most basic calendar scroll commands scroll by one month at a time. This means that there are two months of overlap between the display before the command and the display after. C-x < scrolls the calendar contents one month to the left; that is, it moves the display forward in time. C-x > scrolls the contents to the right, which moves backwards in time.
The commands C-v and M-v scroll the calendar by an entire "screenful"---three months--in analogy with the usual meaning of these commands. C-v makes later dates visible and M-v makes earlier dates visible. These commands take a numeric argument as a repeat count; in particular, since C-u multiplies the next command by four, typing C-u C-v scrolls the calendar forward by a year and typing C-u M-v scrolls the calendar backward by a year.
The function keys NEXT and PRIOR are equivalent to C-v and M-v, just as they are in other modes.
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The concept of the mark applies to the calendar just as to any other buffer, but it marks a date, not a position in the buffer. The region consists of the days between the mark and point (including the starting and stopping dates).
calendar-set-mark).
calendar-exchange-point-and-mark).
calendar-count-days-region).
You set the mark in the calendar, as in any other buffer, by using C-@
or C-SPC (calendar-set-mark). You return to the marked date
with the command C-x C-x (calendar-exchange-point-and-mark)
which puts the mark where point was and point where mark was. The calendar
is scrolled as necessary, if the marked date was not visible on the
screen. This does not change the extent of the region.
To determine the number of days in the region, type M-=
(calendar-count-days-region). The numbers of days printed is
inclusive; that is, it includes the days specified by mark and
point.
The main use of the mark in the calendar is to remember dates that you may
want to go back to. To make this feature more useful, the mark ring
(see section 9.1.4 The Mark Ring) operates exactly as in other buffers: Emacs remembers
16 previous locations of the mark. To return to a marked date, type C-u
C-SPC (or C-u C-@); this is the command calendar-set-mark given
a numeric argument. It moves point to where the mark was, restores the mark
from the ring of former marks, and stores the previous point at the end of
the mark ring. So, repeated use of this command moves point through all
the old marks on the ring, one by one.
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calendar-print-day-of-year).
describe-calendar-mode).
redraw-calendar).
scroll-other-window).
exit-calendar).
If you want to know how many days have elapsed since the start of
the year, or the number of days remaining in the year, type the p d
command (calendar-print-day-of-year). This displays both
of those numbers in the echo area.
To display a brief description of the calendar commands, type ?
(describe-calendar-mode). For a fuller description, type C-h m.
You can use SPC (scroll-other-window) to scroll the other
window. This is handy when you display a list of holidays or diary entries
in another window.
If the calendar window text gets corrupted, type C-c C-l
(redraw-calendar) to redraw it. (This can only happen if you use
non-Calendar-mode editing commands.)
In Calendar mode, you can use SPC (scroll-other-window)
to scroll the other window. This is handy when you display a list of
holidays or diary entries in another window.
To exit from the calendar, type q (exit-calendar). This
buries all buffers related to the calendar, selecting other buffers.
(If a frame contains a dedicated calendar window, exiting from the
calendar iconifies that frame.)
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The Calendar LaTeX commands produce a buffer of LaTeX code that prints as a calendar. Depending on the command you use, the printed calendar covers the day, week, month or year that point is in.
cal-tex-cursor-month).
cal-tex-cursor-month-landscape).
cal-tex-cursor-day).
cal-tex-cursor-week).
cal-tex-cursor-week2).
cal-tex-cursor-week-iso).
cal-tex-cursor-week-monday).
cal-tex-cursor-filofax-2week).
cal-tex-cursor-filofax-week).
cal-tex-cursor-year).
cal-tex-cursor-year-landscape).
cal-tex-cursor-filofax-year).
Some of these commands print the calendar sideways (in "landscape mode"), so it can be wider than it is long. Some of them use Filofax paper size (3.75in x 6.75in). All of these commands accept a prefix argument which specifies how many days, weeks, months or years to print (starting always with the selected one).
If the variable cal-tex-holidays is non-nil (the
default), then the printed calendars show the holidays in
calendar-holidays. If the variable cal-tex-diary is
non-nil (the default is nil), diary entries are included
also (in weekly and monthly calendars only).
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The Emacs calendar knows about all major and many minor holidays, and can display them.
calendar-cursor-holidays).
mark-calendar-holidays).
calendar-unmark).
list-calendar-holidays).
To see if any holidays fall on a given date, position point on that date in the calendar window and use the h command. Alternatively, click on that date with Button2 and then choose Holidays from the menu that appears. Either way, this displays the holidays for that date, in the echo area if they fit there, otherwise in a separate window.
To view the distribution of holidays for all the dates shown in the calendar, use the x command. This displays the dates that are holidays in a different face (or places a `*' after these dates, if display with multiple faces is not available). The command applies both to the currently visible months and to other months that subsequently become visible by scrolling. To turn marking off and erase the current marks, type u, which also erases any diary marks (see section 26.5.2 The Diary).
To get even more detailed information, use the a command, which displays a separate buffer containing a list of all holidays in the current three-month range. You can use SPC in the calendar window to scroll that list.
The command M-x holidays displays the list of holidays for the current month and the preceding and succeeding months; this works even if you don't have a calendar window. If you want the list of holidays centered around a different month, use C-u M-x holidays, which prompts for the month and year.
The holidays known to Emacs include United States holidays and the major Christian, Jewish, and Islamic holidays; also the solstices and equinoxes.
The command M-x list-holidays displays the list of holidays for a range of years. This function asks you for the starting and stopping years, and allows you to choose all the holidays or one of several categories of holidays. You can use this command even if you don't have a calendar window.
The dates used by Emacs for holidays are based on current practice, not historical fact. Historically, for instance, the start of daylight savings time and even its existence have varied from year to year, but present United States law mandates that daylight savings time begins on the first Sunday in April. When the daylight savings rules are set up for the United States, Emacs always uses the present definition, even though it is wrong for some prior years.
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Special calendar commands can tell you, to within a minute or two, the times of sunrise and sunset for any date.
calendar-sunrise-sunset).
Within the calendar, to display the local times of sunrise and sunset in the echo area, move point to the date you want, and type S. Alternatively, click Button2 on the date, then choose Sunrise/Sunset from the menu that appears. The command M-x sunrise-sunset is available outside the calendar to display this information for today's date or a specified date. To specify a date other than today, use C-u M-x sunrise-sunset, which prompts for the year, month, and day.
You can display the times of sunrise and sunset for any location and any date with C-u C-u M-x sunrise-sunset. This asks you for a longitude, latitude, number of minutes difference from Coordinated Universal Time, and date, and then tells you the times of sunrise and sunset for that location on that date.
Because the times of sunrise and sunset depend on the location on earth, you need to tell Emacs your latitude, longitude, and location name before using these commands. Here is an example of what to set:
(setq calendar-latitude 40.1) (setq calendar-longitude -88.2) (setq calendar-location-name "Urbana, IL") |
Use one decimal place in the values of calendar-latitude and
calendar-longitude.
Your time zone also affects the local time of sunrise and sunset. Emacs usually gets time zone information from the operating system, but if these values are not what you want (or if the operating system does not supply them), you must set them yourself. Here is an example:
(setq calendar-time-zone -360) (setq calendar-standard-time-zone-name "CST") (setq calendar-daylight-time-zone-name "CDT") |
The value of calendar-time-zone is the number of minutes
difference between your local standard time and Coordinated Universal
Time (Greenwich time). The values of
calendar-standard-time-zone-name and
calendar-daylight-time-zone-name are the abbreviations used in
your time zone. Emacs displays the times of sunrise and sunset
corrected for daylight savings time. See section 26.5.8.5 Daylight Savings Time,
for how daylight savings time is determined.
As a user, you might find it convenient to set the calendar location variables for your usual physical location in your init file. And when you install Emacs on a machine, you can create a `default.el' file which sets them properly for the typical location of most users of that machine. See section 27.7 The Init File.
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These calendar commands display the dates and times of the phases of the moon (new moon, first quarter, full moon, last quarter). This feature is useful for debugging problems that "depend on the phase of the moon."
calendar-phases-of-moon).
Within the calendar, use the M command to display a separate buffer of the phases of the moon for the current three-month range. The dates and times listed are accurate to within a few minutes.
Outside the calendar, use the command M-x phases-of-moon to
display the list of the phases of the moon for the current month and the
preceding and succeeding months. For information about a different
month, use C-u M-x phases-of-moon, which prompts for the month and
year.
The dates and times given for the phases of the moon are given in
local time (corrected for daylight savings, when appropriate); but if
the variable calendar-time-zone is void, Coordinated Universal
Time (the Greenwich time zone) is used. See section 26.5.8.5 Daylight Savings Time.
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The Emacs calendar displayed is always the Gregorian calendar, sometimes called the "new style" calendar, which is used in most of the world today. However, this calendar did not exist before the sixteenth century and was not widely used before the eighteenth century; it did not fully displace the Julian calendar and gain universal acceptance until the early twentieth century. The Emacs calendar can display any month since January, year 1 of the current era, but the calendar displayed is the Gregorian, even for a date at which the Gregorian calendar did not exist.
While Emacs cannot display other calendars, it can convert dates to and from several other calendars.
| 26.3 Supported Calendar Systems | The calendars Emacs understands | |
| (aside from Gregorian). | ||
|---|---|---|
| 26.4 Converting To Other Calendars | Converting the selected date to various calendars. | |
| 26.5 Converting From Other Calendars | Moving to a date specified in another calendar. | |
| 26.5.1 Converting from the Mayan Calendar | Moving to a date specified in a Mayan calendar. | |
If you are interested in these calendars, you can convert dates one at a time. Put point on the desired date of the Gregorian calendar and press the appropriate keys. The p is a mnemonic for "print" since Emacs "prints' the equivalent date in the echo area.
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The ISO commercial calendar is used largely in Europe.
The Julian calendar, named after Julius Caesar, was the one used in Europe throughout medieval times, and in many countries up until the nineteenth century.
Astronomers use a simple counting of days elapsed since noon, Monday, January 1, 4713 B.C. on the Julian calendar. The number of days elapsed is called the Julian day number or the Astronomical day number.
The Hebrew calendar is used by tradition in the Jewish religion. The Emacs calendar program uses the Hebrew calendar to determine the dates of Jewish holidays. Hebrew calendar dates begin and end at sunset.
The Islamic calendar is used in many predominantly Islamic countries. Emacs uses it to determine the dates of Islamic holidays. There is no universal agreement in the Islamic world about the calendar; Emacs uses a widely accepted version, but the precise dates of Islamic holidays often depend on proclamation by religious authorities, not on calculations. As a consequence, the actual dates of observance can vary slightly from the dates computed by Emacs. Islamic calendar dates begin and end at sunset.
The French Revolutionary calendar was created by the Jacobins after the 1789 revolution, to represent a more secular and nature-based view of the annual cycle, and to install a 10-day week in a rationalization measure similar to the metric system. The French government officially abandoned this calendar at the end of 1805.
The Maya of Central America used three separate, overlapping calendar systems, the long count, the tzolkin, and the haab. Emacs knows about all three of these calendars. Experts dispute the exact correlation between the Mayan calendar and our calendar; Emacs uses the Goodman-Martinez-Thompson correlation in its calculations.
The Copts use a calendar based on the ancient Egyptian solar calendar. Their calendar consists of twelve 30-day months followed by an extra five-day period. Once every fourth year they add a leap day to this extra period to make it six days. The Ethiopic calendar is identical in structure, but has different year numbers and month names.
The Persians use a solar calendar based on a design of Omar Khayyam. Their calendar consists of twelve months of which the first six have 31 days, the next five have 30 days, and the last has 29 in ordinary years and 30 in leap years. Leap years occur in a complicated pattern every four or five years.
The Chinese calendar is a complicated system of lunar months arranged into solar years. The years go in cycles of sixty, each year containing either twelve months in an ordinary year or thirteen months in a leap year; each month has either 29 or 30 days. Years, ordinary months, and days are named by combining one of ten "celestial stems" with one of twelve "terrestrial branches" for a total of sixty names that are repeated in a cycle of sixty.
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The following commands describe the selected date (the date at point) in various other calendar systems:
calendar-print-iso-date).
calendar-print-julian-date).
calendar-print-astro-day-number).
calendar-print-hebrew-date).
calendar-print-islamic-date).
calendar-print-french-date).
calendar-print-chinese-date).
calendar-print-coptic-date).
calendar-print-ethiopic-date).
calendar-print-persian-date).
calendar-print-mayan-date).
If you are using X, the easiest way to translate a date into other calendars is to click on it with Button2, then choose Other Calendars from the menu that appears. This displays the equivalent forms of the date in all the calendars Emacs understands, in the form of a menu. (Choosing an alternative from this menu doesn't actually do anything--the menu is used only for display.)
Put point on the desired date of the Gregorian calendar, then type the appropriate keys. The p is a mnemonic for "print" since Emacs "prints" the equivalent date in the echo area.
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You can use the other supported calendars to specify a date to move to. This section describes the commands for doing this using calendars other than Mayan; for the Mayan calendar, see the following section.
calendar-goto-iso-date).
calendar-goto-julian-date).
calendar-goto-astro-day-number).
calendar-goto-hebrew-date).
calendar-goto-islamic-date).
calendar-goto-french-date).
calendar-goto-chinese-date).
calendar-goto-persian-date).
calendar-goto-coptic-date).
calendar-goto-ethiopic-date).
These commands ask you for a date on the other calendar, move point to the Gregorian calendar date equivalent to that date, and display the other calendar's date in the echo area. Emacs uses strict completion (see section 6.3 Completion) whenever it asks you to type a month name, so you don't have to worry about the spelling of Hebrew, Islamic, or French names.
One common question concerning the Hebrew calendar is the computation of the anniversary of a date of death, called a "yahrzeit." The Emacs calendar includes a facility for such calculations. If you are in the calendar, the command M-x list-yahrzeit-dates asks you for a range of years and then displays a list of the yahrzeit dates for those years for the date given by point. If you are not in the calendar, this command first asks you for the date of death and the range of years, and then displays the list of yahrzeit dates.
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Here are the commands to select dates based on the Mayan calendar:
calendar-goto-mayan-long-count-date).
calendar-next-tzolkin-date).
calendar-previous-tzolkin-date).
calendar-next-haab-date).
calendar-previous-haab-date).
calendar-next-calendar-round-date).
calendar-previous-calendar-round-date).
To understand these commands, you need to understand the Mayan calendars. The long count is a counting of days with these units:
1 kin = 1 day 1 uinal = 20 kin 1 tun = 18 uinal 1 katun = 20 tun 1 baktun = 20 katun |
Thus, the long count date 12.16.11.16.6 means 12 baktun, 16 katun, 11 tun, 16 uinal, and 6 kin. The Emacs calendar can handle Mayan long count dates as early as 7.17.18.13.1, but no earlier. When you use the g m l command, type the Mayan long count date with the baktun, katun, tun, uinal, and kin separated by periods.
The Mayan tzolkin calendar is a cycle of 260 days formed by a pair of independent cycles of 13 and 20 days. Since this cycle repeats endlessly, Emacs provides commands to move backward and forward to the previous or next point in the cycle. Type g m p t to go to the previous tzolkin date; Emacs asks you for a tzolkin date and moves point to the previous occurrence of that date. Similarly, type g m n t to go to the next occurrence of a tzolkin date.
The Mayan haab calendar is a cycle of 365 days arranged as 18 months of 20 days each, followed a 5-day monthless period. Like the tzolkin cycle, this cycle repeats endlessly, and there are commands to move backward and forward to the previous or next point in the cycle. Type g m p h to go to the previous haab date; Emacs asks you for a haab date and moves point to the previous occurrence of that date. Similarly, type g m n h to go to the next occurrence of a haab date.
The Maya also used the combination of the tzolkin date and the haab date. This combination is a cycle of about 52 years called a calendar round. If you type g m p c, Emacs asks you for both a haab and a tzolkin date and then moves point to the previous occurrence of that combination. Use g m n c to move point to the next occurrence of a combination. These commands signal an error if the haab/tzolkin date combination you have typed is impossible.
Emacs uses strict completion (see section 6.3 Completion) whenever it asks you to type a Mayan name, so you don't have to worry about spelling.
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The Emacs diary keeps track of appointments or other events on a daily basis, in conjunction with the calendar. To use the diary feature, you must first create a diary file containing a list of events and their dates. Then Emacs can automatically pick out and display the events for today, for the immediate future, or for any specified date.
By default, Emacs uses `~/diary' as the diary file. This is the
same file that the calendar utility uses. A sample
`~/diary' file is:
12/22/1988 Twentieth wedding anniversary!!
&1/1. Happy New Year!
10/22 Ruth's birthday.
* 21, *: Payday
Tuesday--weekly meeting with grad students at 10am
Supowit, Shen, Bitner, and Kapoor to attend.
1/13/89 Friday the thirteenth!!
&thu 4pm squash game with Lloyd.
mar 16 Dad's birthday
April 15, 1989 Income tax due.
&* 15 time cards due.
|
This example uses extra spaces to align the event descriptions of most of the entries. Such formatting is purely a matter of taste.
Although you probably will start by creating a diary manually, Emacs provides a number of commands to let you view, add, and change diary entries. You can also share diary entries with other users (see section 26.5.8.9 Included Diary Files).
| 26.5.3 Commands Displaying Diary Entries | Viewing diary entries and associated calendar dates. | |
| 26.5.4 The Diary File | Entering events in your diary. | |
| 26.5.5 Date Formats | Various ways you can specify dates. | |
| 26.5.6 Commands to Add to the Diary | Commands to create diary entries. | |
| 26.5.7 Special Diary Entries | Anniversaries, blocks of dates, cyclic entries, etc. |
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Once you have created a `~/diary' file, you can use the calendar to view it. You can also view today's events outside of Calendar mode.
view-diary-entries).
show-all-diary-entries).
mark-diary-entries).
calendar-unmark).
Displaying the diary entries with d shows in a separate window the diary entries for the selected date in the calendar. The mode line of the new window shows the date of the diary entries and any holidays that fall on that date. If you specify a numeric argument with d, it shows all the diary entries for that many successive days. Thus, 2 d displays all the entries for the selected date and for the following day.
Another way to display the diary entries for a date is to click Button2 on the date, and then choose Diary from the menu that appears.
To get a broader view of which days are mentioned in the diary, use the m command. This displays the dates that have diary entries in a different face (or places a `+' after these dates, if display with multiple faces is not available). The command applies both to the currently visible months and to other months that subsequently become visible by scrolling. To turn marking off and erase the current marks, type u, which also turns off holiday marks (see section 26.2.1 Holidays).
To see the full diary file, rather than just some of the entries, use the s command.
Display of selected diary entries uses the selective display feature to hide entries that don't apply.
The diary buffer as you see it is an illusion, so simply printing the
buffer does not print what you see on your screen. There is a special
command to print hard copy of the diary buffer as it appears;
this command is M-x print-diary-entries. It sends the data
directly to the printer. You can customize it like lpr-region
(see section 26.9 Hardcopy Output).
The command M-x diary displays the diary entries for the current
date, independently of the calendar display, and optionally for the next
few days as well; the variable number-of-diary-entries specifies
how many days to include (see section 27. Customization).
If you put (diary) in your init file, this
automatically displays a window with the day's diary entries, when you
enter Emacs. See section 27.7 The Init File. The mode line of the displayed window
shows the date and any holidays that fall on that date.
Many users like to receive notice of events in their diary as email.
To send such mail to yourself, use the command M-x
diary-mail-entries. A prefix argument specifies how many days
(starting with today) to check; otherwise, the variable
diary-mail-days says how many days.
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Your diary file is a file that records events associated with
particular dates. The name of the diary file is specified by the
variable diary-file; `~/diary' is the default. The
calendar utility program supports a subset of the format allowed
by the Emacs diary facilities, so you can use that utility to view the
diary file, with reasonable results aside from the entries it cannot
understand.
Each entry in the diary file describes one event and consists of one or more lines. An entry always begins with a date specification at the left margin. The rest of the entry is simply text to describe the event. If the entry has more than one line, then the lines after the first must begin with whitespace to indicate they continue a previous entry. Lines that do not begin with valid dates and do not continue a preceding entry are ignored.
You can inhibit the marking of certain diary entries in the calendar window; to do this, insert an ampersand (`&') at the beginning of the entry, before the date. This has no effect on display of the entry in the diary window; it affects only marks on dates in the calendar window. Nonmarking entries are especially useful for generic entries that would otherwise mark many different dates.
If the first line of a diary entry consists only of the date or day name with no following blanks or punctuation, then the diary window display doesn't include that line; only the continuation lines appear. For example, this entry:
02/11/1989
Bill B. visits Princeton today
2pm Cognitive Studies Committee meeting
2:30-5:30 Liz at Lawrenceville
4:00pm Dentist appt
7:30pm Dinner at George's
8:00-10:00pm concert
|
appears in the diary window without the date line at the beginning. This style of entry looks neater when you display just a single day's entries, but can cause confusion if you ask for more than one day's entries.
You can edit the diary entries as they appear in the window, but it is
important to remember that the buffer displayed contains the entire
diary file, with portions of it concealed from view. This means, for
instance, that the C-f (forward-char) command can put point
at what appears to be the end of the line, but what is in reality the
middle of some concealed line.
Be careful when editing the diary entries! Inserting
additional lines or adding/deleting characters in the middle of a
visible line cannot cause problems, but editing at the end of a line may
not do what you expect. Deleting a line may delete other invisible
entries that follow it. Before editing the diary, it is best to display
the entire file with s (show-all-diary-entries).
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Here are some sample diary entries, illustrating different ways of formatting a date. The examples all show dates in American order (month, day, year), but Calendar mode supports European order (day, month, year) as an option.
4/20/93 Switch-over to new tabulation system apr. 25 Start tabulating annual results 4/30 Results for April are due */25 Monthly cycle finishes Friday Don't leave without backing up files |
The first entry appears only once, on April 20, 1993. The second and third appear every year on the specified dates, and the fourth uses a wildcard (asterisk) for the month, so it appears on the 25th of every month. The final entry appears every week on Friday.
You can use just numbers to express a date, as in `month/day' or `month/day/year'. This must be followed by a nondigit. In the date itself, month and day are numbers of one or two digits. The optional year is also a number, and may be abbreviated to the last two digits; that is, you can use `11/12/1989' or `11/12/89'.
Dates can also have the form `monthname day' or `monthname day, year', where the month's name can be spelled in full or abbreviated to three characters (with or without a period). Case is not significant.
A date may be generic; that is, partially unspecified. Then the entry applies to all dates that match the specification. If the date does not contain a year, it is generic and applies to any year. Alternatively, month, day, or year can be a `*'; this matches any month, day, or year, respectively. Thus, a diary entry `3/*/*' matches any day in March of any year; so does `march *'.
If you prefer the European style of writing dates--in which the day
comes before the month--type M-x european-calendar while in the
calendar, or set the variable european-calendar-style to t
before using any calendar or diary command. This mode interprets
all dates in the diary in the European manner, and also uses European
style for displaying diary dates. (Note that there is no comma after
the monthname in the European style.) To go back to the (default)
American style of writing dates, type M-x american-calendar.
You can use the name of a day of the week as a generic date which
applies to any date falling on that day of the week. You can abbreviate
the day of the week to three letters (with or without a period) or spell
it in full; case is not significant.
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While in the calendar, there are several commands to create diary entries:
insert-diary-entry).
insert-weekly-diary-entry).
insert-monthly-diary-entry).
insert-yearly-diary-entry).
You can make a diary entry for a specific date by selecting that date in the calendar window and typing the i d command. This command displays the end of your diary file in another window and inserts the date; you can then type the rest of the diary entry.
If you want to make a diary entry that applies to a specific day of the week, select that day of the week (any occurrence will do) and type i w. This inserts the day-of-week as a generic date; you can then type the rest of the diary entry. You can make a monthly diary entry in the same fashion. Select the day of the month, use the i m command, and type rest of the entry. Similarly, you can insert a yearly diary entry with the i y command.
All of the above commands make marking diary entries by default. To make a nonmarking diary entry, give a numeric argument to the command. For example, C-u i w makes a nonmarking weekly diary entry.
When you modify the diary file, be sure to save the file before exiting Emacs.
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In addition to entries based on calendar dates, the diary file can contain sexp entries for regular events such as anniversaries. These entries are based on Lisp expressions (sexps) that Emacs evaluates as it scans the diary file. Instead of a date, a sexp entry contains `%%' followed by a Lisp expression which must begin and end with parentheses. The Lisp expression determines which dates the entry applies to.
Calendar mode provides commands to insert certain commonly used sexp entries:
insert-anniversary-diary-entry).
insert-block-diary-entry).
insert-cyclic-diary-entry).
If you want to make a diary entry that applies to the anniversary of a specific date, move point to that date and use the i a command. This displays the end of your diary file in another window and inserts the anniversary description; you can then type the rest of the diary entry. The entry looks like this:
The effect of i a is to add a diary-anniversary sexp to your
diary file. You can also add one manually, for instance:
%%(diary-anniversary 10 31 1948) Arthur's birthday |
This entry applies to October 31 in any year after 1948; `10 31 1948' specifies the date. (If you are using the European calendar style, the month and day are interchanged.) The reason this expression requires a beginning year is that advanced diary functions can use it to calculate the number of elapsed years.
A block diary entry applies to a specified range of consecutive dates. Here is a block diary entry that applies to all dates from June 24, 1990 through July 10, 1990:
%%(diary-block 6 24 1990 7 10 1990) Vacation |
The `6 24 1990' indicates the starting date and the `7 10 1990' indicates the stopping date. (Again, if you are using the European calendar style, the month and day are interchanged.)
To insert a block entry, place point and the mark on the two dates that begin and end the range, and type i b. This command displays the end of your diary file in another window and inserts the block description; you can then type the diary entry.
Cyclic diary entries repeat after a fixed interval of days. To create one, select the starting date and use the i c command. The command prompts for the length of interval, then inserts the entry, which looks like this:
%%(diary-cyclic 50 3 1 1990) Renew medication |
This entry applies to March 1, 1990 and every 50th day following; `3 1 1990' specifies the starting date. (If you are using the European calendar style, the month and day are interchanged.)
All three of these commands make marking diary entries. To insert a nonmarking entry, give a numeric argument to the command. For example, C-u i a makes a nonmarking anniversary diary entry.
Marking sexp diary entries in the calendar is extremely time-consuming, since every date visible in the calendar window must be individually checked. So it's a good idea to make sexp diary entries nonmarking (with `&') when possible.
Another sophisticated kind of sexp entry, a floating diary entry,
specifies a regularly occurring event by offsets specified in days,
weeks, and months. It is comparable to a crontab entry interpreted by
the cron utility. Here is a nonmarking, floating diary entry
that applies to the last Thursday in November:
&%%(diary-float 11 4 -1) American Thanksgiving |
The 11 specifies November (the eleventh month), the 4 specifies Thursday
(the fourth day of the week, where Sunday is numbered zero), and the
-1 specifies "last" (1 would mean "first", 2 would mean
"second", -2 would mean "second-to-last", and so on). The
month can be a single month or a list of months. Thus you could change
the 11 above to `'(1 2 3)' and have the entry apply to the last
Thursday of January, February, and March. If the month is t, the
entry applies to all months of the year.
The sexp feature of the diary allows you to specify diary entries based on any Emacs Lisp expression. You can use the library of built-in functions or you can write your own functions. The built-in functions include the ones shown in this section, plus a few others (see section 26.5.8.10 Sexp Entries and the Fancy Diary Display).
The generality of sexps lets you specify any diary entry that you can describe algorithmically. Suppose you get paid on the 21st of the month if it is a weekday, and to the Friday before if the 21st is on a weekend. The diary entry
&%%(let ((dayname (calendar-day-of-week date))
(day (car (cdr date))))
(or (and (= day 21) (memq dayname '(1 2 3 4 5)))
(and (memq day '(19 20)) (= dayname 5)))
) Pay check deposited
|
to just those dates. This example illustrates how the sexp can depend
on the variable date; this variable is a list (month
day year) that gives the Gregorian date for which the diary
entries are being found. If the value of the sexp is t, the
entry applies to that date. If the sexp evaluates to nil, the
entry does not apply to that date.
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There are many customizations that you can use to make the calendar and diary suit your personal tastes.
| 26.5.8.1 Customizing the Calendar | Defaults you can set. | |
| 26.5.8.2 Customizing the Holidays | Defining your own holidays. | |
| 26.5.8.3 Date Display Format | Changing the format. | |
| 26.5.8.4 Time Display Format | Changing the format. | |
| 26.5.8.5 Daylight Savings Time | Changing the default. | |
| 26.5.8.6 Customizing the Diary | Defaults you can set. | |
| 26.5.8.7 Hebrew- and Islamic-Date Diary Entries | How to obtain them. | |
| 26.5.8.8 Fancy Diary Display | Enhancing the diary display, sorting entries. | |
| 26.5.8.9 Included Diary Files | Sharing a common diary file. | |
| 26.5.8.10 Sexp Entries and the Fancy Diary Display | Fancy things you can do. | |
| 26.5.8.11 Customizing Appointment Reminders | Customizing appointment reminders. |
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If you set the variable view-diary-entries-initially to
t, calling up the calendar automatically displays the diary
entries for the current date as well. The diary dates appear only if
the current date is visible. If you add both of the following lines to
your init file:
(setq view-diary-entries-initially t) (calendar) |
this displays both the calendar and diary windows whenever you start Emacs. See section 27.7 The Init File.
Similarly, if you set the variable
view-calendar-holidays-initially to t, entering the
calendar automatically displays a list of holidays for the current
three-month period. The holiday list appears in a separate
window.
You can set the variable mark-diary-entries-in-calendar to
t in order to mark any dates with diary entries. This takes
effect whenever the calendar window contents are recomputed. There are
two ways of marking these dates: by changing the face (see section 27.9 Faces),
if the display supports that, or by placing a plus sign (`+')
beside the date otherwise.
Similarly, setting the variable mark-holidays-in-calendar to
t marks holiday dates, either with a change of face or with an
asterisk (`*').
The variable calendar-holiday-marker specifies how to mark a
date as being a holiday. Its value may be a character to insert next to
the date, or a face name to use for displaying the date. Likewise, the
variable diary-entry-marker specifies how to mark a date that has
diary entries. The calendar creates faces named holiday-face and
diary-face for these purposes; those symbols are the default
values of these variables, when Emacs supports multiple faces on your
terminal.
The variable calendar-load-hook is a normal hook run when the
calendar package is first loaded (before actually starting to display
the calendar).
Starting the calendar runs the normal hook
initial-calendar-window-hook. Recomputation of the calendar
display does not run this hook. But if you leave the calendar with the
q command and reenter it, the hook runs again.
The variable today-visible-calendar-hook is a normal hook run
after the calendar buffer has been prepared with the calendar when the
current date is visible in the window. One use of this hook is to
replace today's date with asterisks; to do that, use the hook function
calendar-star-date.
(add-hook 'today-visible-calendar-hook 'calendar-star-date) |
Another standard hook function marks the current date, either by changing its face or by adding an asterisk. Here's how to use it:
(add-hook 'today-visible-calendar-hook 'calendar-mark-today) |
The variable calendar-today-marker specifies how to mark today's
date. Its value should be a character to insert next to the date or a
face name to use for displaying the date. A face named
calendar-today-face is provided for this purpose; that symbol is
the default for this variable when Emacs supports multiple faces on your
terminal.
A similar normal hook, today-invisible-calendar-hook is run if
the current date is not visible in the window.
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Emacs knows about holidays defined by entries on one of several lists.
You can customize these lists of holidays to your own needs, adding or
deleting holidays. The lists of holidays that Emacs uses are for
general holidays (general-holidays), local holidays
(local-holidays), Christian holidays (christian-holidays),
Hebrew (Jewish) holidays (hebrew-holidays), Islamic (Moslem)
holidays (islamic-holidays), and other holidays
(other-holidays).
The general holidays are, by default, holidays common throughout the
United States. To eliminate these holidays, set general-holidays
to nil.
There are no default local holidays (but sites may supply some). You
can set the variable local-holidays to any list of holidays, as
described below.
By default, Emacs does not include all the holidays of the religions
that it knows, only those commonly found in secular calendars. For a
more extensive collection of religious holidays, you can set any (or
all) of the variables all-christian-calendar-holidays,
all-hebrew-calendar-holidays, or
all-islamic-calendar-holidays to t. If you want to
eliminate the religious holidays, set any or all of the corresponding
variables christian-holidays, hebrew-holidays, and
islamic-holidays to nil.
You can set the variable other-holidays to any list of
holidays. This list, normally empty, is intended for individual use.
Each of the lists (general-holidays, local-holidays,
christian-holidays, hebrew-holidays,
islamic-holidays, and other-holidays) is a list of
holiday forms, each holiday form describing a holiday (or
sometimes a list of holidays).
Here is a table of the possible kinds of holiday form. Day numbers and month numbers count starting from 1, but "dayname" numbers count Sunday as 0. The element string is always the name of the holiday, as a string.
(holiday-fixed month day string)
(holiday-float month dayname k string)
(holiday-hebrew month day string)
(holiday-islamic month day string)
(holiday-julian month day string)
(holiday-sexp sexp string)
year to compute and return the date of a
holiday, or nil if the holiday doesn't happen this year. The
value of sexp must represent the date as a list of the form
(month day year). string is the name of
the holiday.
(if condition holiday-form &optional holiday-form)
(function [args])
For example, suppose you want to add Bastille Day, celebrated in France on July 14. You can do this by adding the following line to your init file:
(setq other-holidays '((holiday-fixed 7 14 "Bastille Day"))) |
See section 27.7 The Init File.
The holiday form (holiday-fixed 7 14 "Bastille Day") specifies the
fourteenth day of the seventh month (July).
Many holidays occur on a specific day of the week, at a specific time of month. Here is a holiday form describing Hurricane Supplication Day, celebrated in the Virgin Islands on the fourth Monday in August:
(holiday-float 8 1 4 "Hurricane Supplication Day") |
Here the 8 specifies August, the 1 specifies Monday (Sunday is 0, Tuesday is 2, and so on), and the 4 specifies the fourth occurrence in the month (1 specifies the first occurrence, 2 the second occurrence, -1 the last occurrence, -2 the second-to-last occurrence, and so on).
You can specify holidays that occur on fixed days of the Hebrew, Islamic, and Julian calendars too. For example,
(setq other-holidays
'((holiday-hebrew 10 2 "Last day of Hanukkah")
(holiday-islamic 3 12 "Mohammed's Birthday")
(holiday-julian 4 2 "Jefferson's Birthday")))
|
adds the last day of Hanukkah (since the Hebrew months are numbered with 1 starting from Nisan), the Islamic feast celebrating Mohammed's birthday (since the Islamic months are numbered from 1 starting with Muharram), and Thomas Jefferson's birthday, which is 2 April 1743 on the Julian calendar.
To include a holiday conditionally, use either Emacs Lisp's if or the
holiday-sexp form. For example, American presidential elections
occur on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November of years
divisible by 4:
(holiday-sexp (if (= 0 (% year 4))
(calendar-gregorian-from-absolute
(1+ (calendar-dayname-on-or-before
1 (+ 6 (calendar-absolute-from-gregorian
(list 11 1 year))))))
"US Presidential Election"))
|
or
(if (= 0 (% displayed-year 4))
(fixed 11
(extract-calendar-day
(calendar-gregorian-from-absolute
(1+ (calendar-dayname-on-or-before
1 (+ 6 (calendar-absolute-from-gregorian
(list 11 1 displayed-year)))))))
"US Presidential Election"))
|
Some holidays just don't fit into any of these forms because special
calculations are involved in their determination. In such cases you
must write a Lisp function to do the calculation. To include eclipses,
for example, add (eclipses) to other-holidays
and write an Emacs Lisp function eclipses that returns a
(possibly empty) list of the relevant Gregorian dates among the range
visible in the calendar window, with descriptive strings, like this:
(((6 27 1991) "Lunar Eclipse") ((7 11 1991) "Solar Eclipse") ... ) |
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You can customize the manner of displaying dates in the diary, in mode
lines, and in messages by setting calendar-date-display-form.
This variable holds a list of expressions that can involve the variables
month, day, and year, which are all numbers in
string form, and monthname and dayname, which are both
alphabetic strings. In the American style, the default value of this
list is as follows:
((if dayname (concat dayname ", ")) monthname " " day ", " year) |
while in the European style this value is the default:
((if dayname (concat dayname ", ")) day " " monthname " " year) |
+The ISO standard date representation is this:
(year "-" month "-" day) |
This specifies a typical American format:
(month "/" day "/" (substring year -2)) |
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The calendar and diary by default display times of day in the
conventional American style with the hours from 1 through 12, minutes,
and either `am' or `pm'. If you prefer the European style,
also known in the US as military, in which the hours go from 00 to 23,
you can alter the variable calendar-time-display-form. This
variable is a list of expressions that can involve the variables
12-hours, 24-hours, and minutes, which are all
numbers in string form, and am-pm and time-zone, which are
both alphabetic strings. The default value of
calendar-time-display-form is as follows:
(12-hours ":" minutes am-pm
(if time-zone " (") time-zone (if time-zone ")"))
|
Here is a value that provides European style times:
(24-hours ":" minutes
(if time-zone " (") time-zone (if time-zone ")"))
|
gives military-style times like `21:07 (UT)' if time zone names are defined, and times like `21:07' if they are not.
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Emacs understands the difference between standard time and daylight savings time--the times given for sunrise, sunset, solstices, equinoxes, and the phases of the moon take that into account. The rules for daylight savings time vary from place to place and have also varied historically from year to year. To do the job properly, Emacs needs to know which rules to use.
Some operating systems keep track of the rules that apply to the place where you are; on these systems, Emacs gets the information it needs from the system automatically. If some or all of this information is missing, Emacs fills in the gaps with the rules currently used in Cambridge, Massachusetts. If the resulting rules are not what you want, you can tell Emacs the rules to use by setting certain variables.
If the default choice of rules is not appropriate for your location,
you can tell Emacs the rules to use by setting the variables
calendar-daylight-savings-starts and
calendar-daylight-savings-ends. Their values should be Lisp
expressions that refer to the variable year, and evaluate to the
Gregorian date on which daylight savings time starts or (respectively)
ends, in the form of a list (month day year).
The values should be nil if your area does not use daylight
savings time.
Emacs uses these expressions to determine the starting date of daylight savings time for the holiday list and for correcting times of day in the solar and lunar calculations. The values for Cambridge, Massachusetts are as follows:
(calendar-nth-named-day 1 0 4 year) (calendar-nth-named-day -1 0 10 year) |
That is, the first 0th day (Sunday) of the fourth month (April) in
the year specified by year, and the last Sunday of the tenth month
(October) of that year. If daylight savings time were
changed to start on October 1, you would set
calendar-daylight-savings-starts to this:
(list 10 1 year) |
For a more complex example, suppose daylight savings time begins on
the first of Nisan on the Hebrew calendar. You should set
calendar-daylight-savings-starts to this value:
(calendar-gregorian-from-absolute
(calendar-absolute-from-hebrew
(list 1 1 (+ year 3760))))
|
because Nisan is the first month in the Hebrew calendar and the Hebrew year differs from the Gregorian year by 3760 at Nisan.
If there is no daylight savings time at your location, or if you want
all times in standard time, set calendar-daylight-savings-starts
and calendar-daylight-savings-ends to nil.
The variable calendar-daylight-time-offset specifies the
difference between daylight savings time and standard time, measured in
minutes. The value for Cambridge, Massachusetts is 60.
The two variables calendar-daylight-savings-starts-time and
calendar-daylight-savings-ends-time specify the number of minutes
after midnight local time when the transition to and from daylight
savings time should occur. For Cambridge, Massachusetts both variables'
values are 120.
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Ordinarily, the mode line of the diary buffer window indicates any
holidays that fall on the date of the diary entries. The process of
checking for holidays can take several seconds, so including holiday
information delays the display of the diary buffer noticeably. If you'd
prefer to have a faster display of the diary buffer but without the
holiday information, set the variable holidays-in-diary-buffer to
nil.
The variable number-of-diary-entries controls the number of
days of diary entries to be displayed at one time. It affects the
initial display when view-diary-entries-initially is t, as
well as the command M-x diary. For example, the default value is
1, which says to display only the current day's diary entries. If the
value is 2, both the current day's and the next day's entries are
displayed. The value can also be a vector of seven elements: for
example, if the value is [0 2 2 2 2 4 1] then no diary entries
appear on Sunday, the current date's and the next day's diary entries
appear Monday through Thursday, Friday through Monday's entries appear
on Friday, while on Saturday only that day's entries appear.
The variable print-diary-entries-hook is a normal hook run
after preparation of a temporary buffer containing just the diary
entries currently visible in the diary buffer. (The other, irrelevant
diary entries are really absent from the temporary buffer; in the diary
buffer, they are merely hidden.) The default value of this hook does
the printing with the command lpr-buffer. If you want to use a
different command to do the printing, just change the value of this
hook. Other uses might include, for example, rearranging the lines into
order by day and time.
You can customize the form of dates in your diary file, if neither the
standard American nor European styles suits your needs, by setting the
variable diary-date-forms. This variable is a list of patterns
for recognizing a date. Each date pattern is a list whose elements may
be regular expressions (see section 12.5 Syntax of Regular Expressions) or the symbols
month, day, year, monthname, and
dayname. All these elements serve as patterns that match certain
kinds of text in the diary file. In order for the date pattern, as a
whole, to match, all of its elements must match consecutively.
A regular expression in a date pattern matches in its usual fashion, using the standard syntax table altered so that `*' is a word constituent.
The symbols month, day, year, monthname,
and dayname match the month number, day number, year number,
month name, and day name of the date being considered. The symbols that
match numbers allow leading zeros; those that match names allow
three-letter abbreviations and capitalization. All the symbols can
match `*'; since `*' in a diary entry means "any day", "any
month", and so on, it should match regardless of the date being
considered.
The default value of diary-date-forms in the American style is
this:
((month "/" day "[^/0-9]") (month "/" day "/" year "[^0-9]") (monthname " *" day "[^,0-9]") (monthname " *" day ", *" year "[^0-9]") (dayname "\\W")) |
Emacs matches of the diary entries with the date forms is done with the standard syntax table from Fundamental mode (see section `Syntax Tables' in XEmacs Lisp Reference Manual), but with the `*' changed so that it is a word constituent.
The date patterns in the list must be mutually exclusive and
must not match any portion of the diary entry itself, just the date and
one character of whitespace. If, to be mutually exclusive, the pattern
must match a portion of the diary entry text--beyond the whitespace
that ends the date--then the first element of the date pattern
must be backup. This causes the date recognizer to back
up to the beginning of the current word of the diary entry, after
finishing the match. Even if you use backup, the date pattern
must absolutely not match more than a portion of the first word of the
diary entry. The default value of diary-date-forms in the
European style is this list:
((day "/" month "[^/0-9]") (day "/" month "/" year "[^0-9]") (backup day " *" monthname "\\W+\\<[^*0-9]") (day " *" monthname " *" year "[^0-9]") (dayname "\\W")) |
Notice the use of backup in the third pattern, because it needs
to match part of a word beyond the date itself to distinguish it from
the fourth pattern.
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Your diary file can have entries based on Hebrew or Islamic dates, as well as entries based on the world-standard Gregorian calendar. However, because recognition of such entries is time-consuming and most people don't use them, you must explicitly enable their use. If you want the diary to recognize Hebrew-date diary entries, for example, you must do this:
(add-hook 'nongregorian-diary-listing-hook 'list-hebrew-diary-entries) (add-hook 'nongregorian-diary-marking-hook 'mark-hebrew-diary-entries) |
If you want Islamic-date entries, do this:
(add-hook 'nongregorian-diary-listing-hook 'list-islamic-diary-entries) (add-hook 'nongregorian-diary-marking-hook 'mark-islamic-diary-entries) |
Hebrew- and Islamic-date diary entries have the same formats as Gregorian-date diary entries, except that `H' precedes a Hebrew date and `I' precedes an Islamic date. Moreover, because the Hebrew and Islamic month names are not uniquely specified by the first three letters, you may not abbreviate them. For example, a diary entry for the Hebrew date Heshvan 25 could look like this:
HHeshvan 25 Happy Hebrew birthday! |
and would appear in the diary for any date that corresponds to Heshvan 25 on the Hebrew calendar. And here is Islamic-date diary entry that matches Dhu al-Qada 25:
IDhu al-Qada 25 Happy Islamic birthday! |
and would appear in the diary for any date that corresponds to Dhu al-Qada 25 on the Islamic calendar.
As with Gregorian-date diary entries, Hebrew- and Islamic-date entries are nonmarking if they are preceded with an ampersand (`&').
Here is a table of commands used in the calendar to create diary entries that match the selected date and other dates that are similar in the Hebrew or Islamic calendar:
insert-hebrew-diary-entry).
insert-monthly-hebrew-diary-entry). This diary
entry matches any date that has the same Hebrew day-within-month as the
selected date.
insert-yearly-hebrew-diary-entry). This diary
entry matches any date which has the same Hebrew month and day-within-month
as the selected date.
insert-islamic-diary-entry).
insert-monthly-islamic-diary-entry).
insert-yearly-islamic-diary-entry).