Re: Using properties for diary-anniversaries

[Nick Dokos <nicholas.dokos@hp.com>]

lecodesportif@eml.cc wrote:


> > > * John
> > >   :PROPERTIES:
> > >   :Name: John
> > >   :Birthday: 5 4 1900
> > >   :END:
> > > 
> > > I would like to add the "Birthday" and "Name" properties to Org Agenda
> > > automatically. What I have so far is:
> > > 
> > > %%(apply 'diary-anniversary (read (org-entry-get nil "Birthday"))) John
> > > 
> > > When I enter this line right after the properties, the anniversary is
> > > added at the correct date in the agenda. But I still have to enter the
> > > name manually.
> > > 
> > 
> > Try something like this:
> > 
> > %%(apply 'diary-anniversary (mapcar 'string-to-number (split-string
> > (org-entry-get nil "Birthday")))) John is %d years old
> 
> The %d was already working with my above code and the entry was
> displayed at the correct date. What I am looking for is a way to get the
> value of the name property ("John") automatically. That way I wouldn't
> have to insert all names manually in the %%(apply... line following the
> properties.
> 

Yes, sorry: I figured that I had answered the wrong question after I
sent it, but I was too tired to fix my mistake at that time. However, I
could not make your formulation work for me at all. I still don't
understand how it could possibly work: afaict, org-entry-get returns the
birthday as a string, "5 4 1900", the read returns the month as a
number, 5, and diary-anniversary should blow up because it needs at least two
arguments (a month and a day) - and it does in my case.

Be that as it may, re. filling in the name, I don't know how to do it
and I'm not sure that it can be done: the string after the function call
is scanned for %d but no other evaluation is done. org just passes the
string along and all of that work is done in diary-anniversary whose
doc string says:

,----
| The diary entry can contain `%d' or `%d%s'; the %d will be replaced
| by the number of years since the MONTH, DAY, YEAR, and the %s will
| be replaced by the ordinal ending of that number (that is, `st',
| `nd', `rd' or `th', as appropriate).  The anniversary of February 29
| is considered to be March 1 in non-leap years.
`----

So I think that's all you can do.

Nick