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Comment by smikhanov | Hacker News Reader

Sorry to be a Luddite, but isn’t this completely useless?

- one line per event, so good luck finding multi-day events like “Grandma is visiting”;

- rigid metadata (dates, week numbers, weekdays) stored right next to the editable data (events), so copy-pasting errors are inevitable;

- the most important feature of the real calendar software (reminders) is thrown out;

- grepping is really not how most people interact with a calendar.

If you’re ready to ditch reminders, attachments, locations, use the paper diary planner. At least it won’t let you screw the dates with botched copy-paste.

Update: also, sorting by date must be done manually, my god.

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> one line per event, so good luck finding multi-day events like “Grandma is visiting”

The format allows for variable granularity and ranges. If Grandma were visiting for a week, it would be fine:

  2021-02-20 w07

Right now, the range (start-end) can only be hours, but changing that could fulfil your requirement, e.g.

  2012-02-20 w07 Mon-Fri Grandma is visiting

> grepping is really not how most people interact with a calendar.

I don't think the creator ever suggested for one minute that this is a calendar for "most people"! Most people don't use Linux, macOS, or a command line.

> sorting by date must be done manually, my god.

  | sort

is not much of a hardship. At least it's possible, unlike a typical GUI app that doesn't support sort.

You're quite right, oneeyedpigeon. The main audience of calendar.txt are people who always have terminal open, and who are using grep, sort and similar all the time anyway.

I use +plustags for multiday and recurring events. So for each line +grandma is visiting, I would add the tag +grandma.

I take similar approach with my courses, +tt for pentesting (from the word in Finnish). I found that for me, creating and validating recurring and multiday events was easier for me. Of course, your mileage may vary.

Smikhanov, you found copy pasting challenging. For me, copy pasting from some dedicated calendar software was a challenge. Copy-pasting with calendar .txt makes it easier for me to keep date, week number, weekday and the event together. And your comment on paper planners was on the spot, I wanted to catch some of their benefits, transparency and reliability with calendar.txt.

The format is probably ok for non-edit logging like journalling or recording something like weight loss.

Oh I agree … but

I believe software is a form of literacy, not engineering. And I believe everyone should be literate it brings great benefits socially and individually

And if this works for him/her it’s a calendar on a piece of paper stuck to the fridge. Great, it works for them and some people might find it good for them too

But yeah.

“One day I will get organisssseed”

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