Re: Emacs-Calendar export to iCal/vcal

["Piotr Zielinski" <piotr.zielinski@gmail.com>]

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
>
>
>
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>


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