APPT(1) COMMAND REFERENCE APPT(1)
NAME
appt - display an appointments calendar
SYNOPSIS
appt [ #weekslong ] [ -#weeksback ] [ source-filename ]
DESCRIPTION
Appt reads in the source file ($HOME/.appt is the default),
compiles it into calendar form and displays a portion of the
calendar on the standard output. If a positive number
(greater than zero) is given on the command line, that is
taken to be the number of weeks of the calendar to show
(default is 2). A non-positive number (less than or equal
to zero) specifies the starting point of the output in
number of weeks from current (default is zero). So the
command "appt cal -2 3" would print out three weeks worth of
appointments starting two week ago and going through the
current week (the displayed calendar always starts on a
Sunday). Note that the order of the command arguments is
arbitrary.
An entry in the source file is of the form "month/day <time>
[repeat] ;message" or "daylist <time> [which] ;message" or
simply ";message". The characters <,>,[,] and ; are part of
the entry and must be included (see examples below) if the
time or a repeat factor are desired.
In the first case, month may be the numbers 1-12, the names
"january" - "december" (or nonambiguous abbreviations) or
'*', which means every month. Similarly, day may be the
numbers 1-31, '*', or '$', which means the last day of the
month. Thus, '*/$' means the last day of every month. Time
is in 24 hr time, and is optional. Some sample times are
'<15>', '<15-18>', 1:15-1:45am, and 3:15-3:45am. Note that
it is also possible to use <11am-1pm> and <11Am-1:00pm> to
specify 11:00am to 1:00pm. Repeat indicates to repeat the
message every n days in the listed months, where n is a
number optionally followed by a comma-separated list of
months (see examples below). The months, if present, are
given by name, not number. The repeat field may be omitted.
It is useful for payday, as in "1/4 [14] Pay Day!!!", which
says that every 14 days after Jan 4 is a pay day. Message is
any length message beginning with a semicolon (the semicolon
is not displayed on the printed calendar). Any words longer
than 10 letters will be truncated, however.
The second form is of particular use for holidays. A daylist
is a comma-separated list of days or '*' which means every
day. A day is any unambiguous representation of a day of
the week (ambiguity is shared between month names and
weekday names). 'T' for example, would be ambiguous, but
month names. Time is the same as above. 'Which' can specify
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APPT(1) COMMAND REFERENCE APPT(1)
which day of the month this message should be shown. For
Thanksgiving, the 4th Thursday of Nov, the entry could be
"Th [nov,4] Thanksgiving" or "thur [fourth,no]". The
message field is the same as above, also.
An entry containing only a message (prefixed by a semicolon
and ended with a newline) is treated as a comment and is not
dislayed. Whitespace (spaces, tabs and newlines) is
generally ignored by appt, except in messages.
Syntax errors are reported. Semantic errors, like
scheduling an appointment for the 7th thursday in month 13,
are also diagnosed.
EXAMPLES
Here is a short .appt file:
;******Birthdays*******
10/28 ;Adam's Birthday
7/1 ;Rita's Birthday
;******Holidays********
mon [May,last] ;Memorial Day
Sund [May,2] ;Mother's Day
july/4 ;Fireworks
12/25 ;Christmas
* [last,june] ;Vacation
;******Anniversaries****
7/14 ;Jim and Chris' Anniv.
;****** Business *******
1/10 [14] ;Pay day!!
1/17 [14] ;Pay day w/P.S.!!
Wednesday <14> [first] ;Meeting with group
Thursday [3,jun,dec] ;Semi annual profit share check
3/7 <8-930> [7,mar,april] ;strategy meeting
;***** Miscellaneous ***
*/$ ;Make house payment
*/15 ;House payment due!!!
*/26 ;Car payment
tuesday <1930> ;Recorder group practice
monday,wednesday,friday <16-19> [sept,oct,nov,dec] ;AI class
FILES
$HOME/.appt
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APPT(1) COMMAND REFERENCE APPT(1)
DIAGNOSTICS
If it cannot find a file to read from it will complain.
Syntax errors are diagnosed and zeros used to fill in
missing quantities. No guarantees on calendar accuracy if
there are syntax or semantic errors. In fact, there are no
guarantees at all for this program.
AUTHOR
Jonathan W. Krueger
BUGS
Are you kidding? They're all FEATURES!
Printed 7/4/87 3
%%index%%
na:72,75;
sy:147,119;
de:266,2667;3077,621;
ex:3698,1255;
fi:4953,59;
di:5156,552;
%%index%%000000000116