Bye bye iCal, welcome org-mode
khinsen.wordpress.com
khinsen.wordpress.com
When I start working on a project, I use todo lists with notes, links, and tags to manage my tasks. I use org outlines to structure my work flow and organize my thoughts. I use the remember front-end to quickly capture notes on the fly. When I finish a task I just flick out the key stroke to clock out. Afterwards I can check a nicely formatted table to view my hours, paste it into an email within emacs and use org mode to reformat it into an HTML/multipart email with a properly formatted HTML table that I can send to my co-workers or clients to review.
For intense bits of code I use the literate programming features of org-babel.
Also, it has great export features. It can tangle, organize, and mine your org files for the information you want and export to a number of different formats. It's quite amazing.
I'd go as far to say that org-mode is practically a killer feature of emacs and one really good reason for switching to emacs if you don't use it already.
But I might be biased... :)
It's not a plug-in, so you can use any text editor (or install a GUI frontend). It has a powerful date scripting language that can be complex, but flexible enough to meet almost any need. Most events can be entered simply on one line of text and it will handle the sorting, so you can organize entries however you want (even including them from other files). Multiple output formats are available. I publish my calendar to my web site in HTML and PDF, while a cronjob emails a text version to me twice a day.
The only downside is that I end up managing the calendar for the whole family. I feel uneasy publishing my calendar to the cloud, but I'm considering using shared Google Calendars so everyone can manage there own schedules.
I found their attitude against Apple highly annoying. When I clicked on the source download link (in Chrome), I just got this message:
Please do not run Remind on Mac OS
Then I started ./configure and I got this:
az@74-112 1130 (remind-03.01.10) %./configure
**********************
* *
* Configuring REMIND *
* *
**********************
Please don't use Apple products. This script will continue in 30 seconds
if you insist on compiling Remind on Mac OS X.
The compilation went just fine.
But is that the right contrast class?
I wonder how you feel about software that:
- refuses to run if it detects that it's running on a virtual machine (OS X)
- refuses to run if it detects that it's running under a debugger (iTunes)
- refuses to execute programs that aren't cryptographically signed by a particular vendor (iOS)
To me, a preachy message that doesn't actually interfere with running the program looks downright friendly by comparison.
OT: I never have heard that OSX tries to detect if it is running inside a VM and if it detects that, it refuses to run. Do you have some background info about it?
Indeed, that is the difference. I'm not saying that Remind is not free; I'm saying that despite the message, it remains free software, and you are free to use it and modify it as you wish, which is more than can be said for much of Apple's software. The point of the message is not to be annoying, but to remind users that there is a significant difference between free and non-free software.
> OT: I never have heard that OSX tries to detect if it is running inside a VM and if it detects that, it refuses to run. Do you have some background info about it?
Here's a little bit: "The "Trusted Platform Module," or TPM, is a computer chip embedded inside Intel-based Macs to prevent the Intel-based version of Mac OS X from running on non-Apple hardware. (during installation of Mac OS X, Mac OS X interfaces with the TPM. If Mac OS X finds that the TPM doesn't exist, Mac OS X refuses to install or run.)" [1]
There are ways around this, I guess, and some people have succeeded in running OS X in a VM, but it's not permitted by the EULA, and I believe it's a lot more complicated than simply firing up VirtualBox and installing from an OS X disc.
[1] http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/FAQ#Do_I_need_Ap...
Read this for more in-depth info:
Even if they didn't, the EULA still forbids it. And I'll take "Please don't use this software on this platform (but we won't stop you)" over "Don't use this software on this platform (or we can sue you)" any day...
If the authors of this program decided that they didn't actually like Apple enough to build in copy protection, that would be fine, but nagging brings out the hacker in me, and I want to install it on every OS X machine I can get my hands on, just because they told me not to without a contractual obligation.
Would you prefer it if the software delayed you for 30 seconds while forcing you to watch commercials, thereby increasing profits?
As a user of free and commercial software, I would prefer in my dream world if everything was free under a BSD-like license. As a programmer, I realize that I need to feed myself just as the authors of the software I use do. Apple needs to protect their business model, one of which is that their OS should only run on hardware they sell. It ensures that their employees and shareholders can feed themselves and their families.
Compare that to Xchat, which is free in all forms except a Windows Binary. Reason being it takes significant effort and time to build and test on that platform. Remind has every opportunity to do something similar, by providing binaries and source free of charge for any other platform, but to distribute protection that makes sure that it does not run on OS X without payment or some other contribution. Just asking, without legally binding the end user, to not run it on the platform accomplishes and protects absolutely nothing.
Yes, exactly. Another way to say this is: an annoying message about platform "preferences" still ultimately respects your freedom, including your freedom to install and run the software on OS X. You are even free to distribute a copy that doesn't display the message -- indeed, I would encourage you to do so. A proprietary license and the technical means used to enforce it do not respect that freedom.
You seem to think that these two approaches carry the same moral status. If that's true, I must respectfully disagree. I don't believe that "protecting profits and secrets" is a sufficient justification for preventing people from using computers and software in a way that best suits their needs.
Disabling the download for Mac users (I guess it is based on the user agent string of the browser) and making it just hang for 30 seconds is something different.
[edit: ActiveSync, now supported in iCal, seems to work pretty well]
[1] http://orgmode.org/manual/Capture-_002d-Refile-_002d-Archive...
It's gross, but it means I can see everything I care about in one place. :)
Oh and complaining about iCal's interface is really moaning at a rather high level.
At work I have to use Outlook for email, contacts, team calendar and our team todos and I cannot stop wondering how this thing is used by anyone let alone tech un-savvy people.. so I thank the FSM for the noodley goodness and simplicity that iCal is for me.
And I wish Google Mail would finally allow me to update entries from iCal and offer syncing the todo list. Then I would be completely happy.
For Android, there's MobileOrg Android: https://github.com/matburt/mobileorg-android/wiki/
Both can be set up to sync Org files via DropBox.
MobileOrg is free software (https://github.com/richard/mobileorg), but it's so far from what I'm looking for that it might just be easier to start from scratch.