Zmail calendar mode

[Barry Margolin <barmar@THINK.COM>]

    Date: Fri, 24 Jun 88 15:42:36 pdt
    From: lbaum@boeing.com (Larry Baum)

    I have some basic questions about Zmail's calendar mode capabilities.

Ahah!  So I'm not the only one with these questions.  I managed to
figure out how to use this by trial and error, and later by reading some
source.

    In that mode, you can create "reminders".  Reminders can be "once only"
    or "periodic".

    1) In what sense are these reminders; i.e. how do I get the machine to
    remind me of something?  If I go to Zmail and put it in calendar mode I
    see the reminders, but I would like to get them when I log in.

I haven't managed to find anything like this, although I haven't looked
hard for this particular thing.  I've been tempted to write something
that I could run in my init file that would look through my memos.babyl
file and show me the current reminders.  Even more important, I would
like to get a notification if a reminder becomes current while I am
logged in.

    2) Once only reminders have a start time and an end time.  What do these
    mean?  If I set a reminder to start on 7/1/88 at 11:00 and end at 8:00
    on 7/5/88, what does this cause to occur?

When you display the calendar for July, the first line of the reminder
will be shown on the days July 1 through July 5.  If you display the
calendar for the day July 1 you will get an hourly appointment book for
the day, and the reminder will be shown at 11am.  Expiration dates can
be used to delete messages; you can select "Expired" in a filter, and
when you expunge a mailbox you will be offered the option of deleting
expired messages.

    3) To issue a periodic reminder, you have to specify a "reminder period
    specification".  The help facility provides a few examples of such, but
    does not tell you the complete syntax of a reminder period spec.  What
    is the complete syntax?

You need the optional sources to find this out; they are all defined in
SYS:ZMAIL;DATE-EXPRESSIONS.LISP.

    4) Why isn't this stuff documented?  It seems like the support is there
    for a fairly decent personal calendar maintenance facility, but the
    documenation is non-existent and what the interface is not
    self-explanatory.

I was once told by a Symbolics developer that calendar mode is
undocumented because they consider it a piece of sh*t and they don't
want to encourage people to use it.  Except for the issue Larry
mentioned in question 1 above I think it is great, except that it could
be faster.


                                                barmar