On Aug 15, 2008, at 10:45 AM, Ulf Stegemann wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I was recently playing around with marking org agenda items in the
> calendar using (org-diary) in the diary file. I encountered a problem
> already described by Wanrong Lin some time ago (see
> http://www.mail-archive.com/emacs-orgmode@gnu.org/msg05839.html).
> Unfortunately no answers were given to his original request so here it
> comes again:
>
> Including agenda items into the diary with '&%%(org-diary ...' is
> something I personally find pretty useless as the dates of those items
> are not fontified in the calendar. Using '%%(org-diary ...' would be
> fine but the entries to use (':scheduled', ':todo' aso) cannot be
> limited any further. This not only leads to unacceptable delays while
> calendar tries to fontify its buffer but also to a calendar with  
> nearly
> everyday marked. My intent was to mark dates with appointments only (I
> have scheduled items, todos etc. nearly everyday so there's no need to
> mark them). In my case this means that (org-diary) would need to
> distinct between different TODO keywords. However, filtering based on
> tags or date/time formats would be fine, too.
>
> My question now is: Is there currently any way to achieve such a
> filtering with (org-diary)? And if not, are there any plans to enhance
> (org-diary) in that direction?
>
> Regards,
>
> Ulf

Hi Ulf,

this is not supported yet, and I have no concrete plans to implement
this.  Marking entries in the calendar will always be unacceptably
slow, because the way the calendar/diary implements this is creating
the list of appointment for each of the 90+ days in the calendar
display.  Even with filtering, this would be slow - basically one
would have to rewrite the code in the diary.

Why don't you just use the week agenda to see which days are free?
Since version 6.05, we have the following functionality:

- Carsten


            Making use of the cursor position in the agenda
            ===============================================

* Calling remember with the cursor date in the agenda

   If you want to use the date at the agenda cursor in a
   remember template, start remember from the agenda with the
   keys `k r'.  While the template is being filled in, the
   default date for all time stamps, and also for all
   interactive escapes like `%^t' is now the date at the cursor
   in the agenda.  The exact same command can also be used from
   the calendar if you prefer that.

* Picking a date for scheduling/deadline in the agenda

   You may now pick the date for scheduling an item or for
   setting a deadline in the agenda, where you have the best
   overview over free time slots.  This is a two step process.

   1. First you pick the entry that should be acted upon.  In
      the agenda, you use the keys `k m'.  In an org-mode file,
      this is on `C-c C-x C-k'.

   2. Then you find the agenda date you want to apply.  When the
      cursor is anywhere in the block belonging to that date,
      press `k s' to schedule, or `k d' to put a deadline.  The
      agenda is not updated immediately, press `r' if you want
      it to show the affected entry in the right place.