Re: org-contacts and dates before 1970

Re: org-contacts and dates before 1970

[Le Wang]

On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 1:46 PM, Le Wang <l26wang@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Is it possible to specify birthdays without year?  I often want to jot
>>> down someone's birthday so I'm not surprised next year, but don't want
>>> to ask them how old they are.  :)
>>
>> Not really :(
>
> Fair enough.  I'll use 1900 as a place holder for now.

I'm seeing another issue now, where if any org contact has a birthday
pre 1970, I get the error "Bad sexp at line xxx ...".  Does this work
for anyone else?

I'm on Windows 7 runing native build of Emacs CVS and 23.2.1.  My
org-mode is less than a week old.

-- 
Le

Re: org-contacts and dates before 1970

[Eric S Fraga]

Le Wang <l26wang@gmail.com> writes:

> On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 1:46 PM, Le Wang <l26wang@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Is it possible to specify birthdays without year?  I often want to jot
>>>> down someone's birthday so I'm not surprised next year, but don't want
>
>>>> to ask them how old they are.  :)
>>>
>>> Not really :(
>>
>> Fair enough.  I'll use 1900 as a place holder for now.
>
> I'm seeing another issue now, where if any org contact has a birthday
> pre 1970, I get the error "Bad sexp at line xxx ...".  Does this work
> for anyone else?
>
> I'm on Windows 7 runing native build of Emacs CVS and 23.2.1.  My
> org-mode is less than a week old.

This is probably related to the same problem as discussed in this
thread:

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/39206

on the limitations of unix time (whether on Unix or not...).
-- 
: Eric S Fraga (GnuPG: 0xC89193D8FFFCF67D) in Emacs 24.0.50.1
: using Org-mode version 7.5 (release_7.5.288.gcec8.dirty)

Re: org-contacts and dates before 1970

[Le Wang]

On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 2:03 AM, Eric S Fraga <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk> wrote:
> Le Wang <l26wang@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 1:46 PM, Le Wang <l26wang@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> Is it possible to specify birthdays without year?  I often want to jot
>>>>> down someone's birthday so I'm not surprised next year, but don't want
>>
>>>>> to ask them how old they are.  :)
>>>>
>>>> Not really :(
>>>
>>> Fair enough.  I'll use 1900 as a place holder for now.
>>
>> I'm seeing another issue now, where if any org contact has a birthday
>> pre 1970, I get the error "Bad sexp at line xxx ...".  Does this work
>> for anyone else?
>>
>> I'm on Windows 7 runing native build of Emacs CVS and 23.2.1.  My
>> org-mode is less than a week old.
>
> This is probably related to the same problem as discussed in this
> thread:
>
> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/39206
>
> on the limitations of unix time (whether on Unix or not...).

Thanks for the pointer, Eric.  Most of that thread was over my head.
AFAIK, there is no 64 bit version of Emacs on Windows, so I guess I'm
SOL.

Just to clarify, diary-anniversary worked fine for my birthdays
pre-1970, but org-contacts can't?

-- 
Le

Re: org-contacts and dates before 1970

[Eric S Fraga]

Le Wang <l26wang@gmail.com> writes:

> On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 2:03 AM, Eric S Fraga <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk> wrote:
>> Le Wang <l26wang@gmail.com> writes:

[...]

>>> I'm seeing another issue now, where if any org contact has a birthday
>>> pre 1970, I get the error "Bad sexp at line xxx ...".  Does this work
>>> for anyone else?
>>>
>>> I'm on Windows 7 runing native build of Emacs CVS and 23.2.1.  My
>>> org-mode is less than a week old.
>>
>> This is probably related to the same problem as discussed in this
>> thread:
>>
>> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/39206
>>
>> on the limitations of unix time (whether on Unix or not...).
>
> Thanks for the pointer, Eric.  Most of that thread was over my head.
> AFAIK, there is no 64 bit version of Emacs on Windows, so I guess I'm
> SOL.
>
> Just to clarify, diary-anniversary worked fine for my birthdays
> pre-1970, but org-contacts can't?

This is something that the developer(s) of org-contacts will have to
respond to themselves.  My response was simply to highlight that org
mode's date calculations are definitely dependent on some of the
implementation quirks of Emacs and that these could be responsible for
the problems you are observing!  I have no idea how the Emacs diary
functions differ from org mode in this respect.  Sorry.

-- 
: Eric S Fraga (GnuPG: 0xC89193D8FFFCF67D) in Emacs 24.0.50.1
: using Org-mode version 7.5 (release_7.5.288.gcec8)

Re: org-contacts and dates before 1970

[Christoph Lange]

Dear all,

please allow me to follow up on this mail with the question of how
this is really done.

On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 20:03, Eric S Fraga <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk> wrote:
> Le Wang <l26wang@gmail.com> writes:
>> I'm seeing another issue now, where if any org contact has a birthday
>> pre 1970, I get the error "Bad sexp at line xxx ...".  Does this work
>> for anyone else?
>> …
>
> This is probably related to the same problem as discussed in this
> thread:
>
> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/39206

I had the same problem and studied that thread, but still I have no
idea of what to put into the BIRTHDAY field of an org-contact. It must
be something like

:BIRTHDAY: %%(…)

but what expression do I have to use? I tried something like
%%(org-date 2011 08 22), but that does not work (same error: "Bad
sexp")

Cheers, and thanks in advance for any help,

Christoph

-- 
Christoph Lange, http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Langec, ICQ# 51191833

Re: org-contacts and dates before 1970

[Christoph LANGE]

Dear all,

a late follow-up on the problem that, out of the box, org-contacts's
BIRTHDAY properties don't work with a 32-bit Emacs on Windows when there
are dates before 1970 (details quoted below).

For now I have "solved" this in an extremely pragmatic way: enabling the
display of anniversaries on 64-bit Linux only (which is the "other"
system on which I'm using my org file, and where it works).

In ~/.emacs:

(defun maybe-org-contacts-anniversaries (&optional field format)
  (if (equal system-configuration "x86_64-pc-linux-gnu")
      (org-contacts-anniversaries field format)))

In the contacts org file:

%%(maybe-org-contacts-anniversaries)

I guess that this could be handled more elegantly with an advice around
org-contacts-anniversaries, but I'm not yet an expert and couldn't
figure out how to do it.

Cheers,

Christoph

2011-08-22 13:59 Christoph Lange:
> …
> 
> On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 20:03, Eric S Fraga <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk> wrote:
>> Le Wang <l26wang@gmail.com> writes:
>>> I'm seeing another issue now, where if any org contact has a birthday
>>> pre 1970, I get the error "Bad sexp at line xxx ...".  Does this work
>>> for anyone else?
>>> …
>>
>> This is probably related to the same problem as discussed in this
>> thread:
>>
>> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/39206
>
> I had the same problem and studied that thread, but still I have no
> idea of what to put into the BIRTHDAY field of an org-contact. It must
> be something like
>
> :BIRTHDAY: %%(…)
>
> but what expression do I have to use? I tried something like
> %%(org-date 2011 08 22), but that does not work (same error: "Bad
> sexp")

-- 
Christoph Lange, http://www.facebook.com/ch.lange, Skype duke4701

Re: org-contacts and dates before 1970

[Bastien]

Hi Christoph,

Christoph LANGE <ch.lange@jacobs-university.de> writes:

> a late follow-up on the problem that, out of the box, org-contacts's
> BIRTHDAY properties don't work with a 32-bit Emacs on Windows when there
> are dates before 1970 (details quoted below).

I guess this problem is still there -- hopefully Julien will have 
time to take a look at some point!

Thanks,

-- 
 Bastien