pal - Online in the Cloud

PROGRAM:

NAME

pal - calendar with events

SYNOPSIS

pal [options]

DESCRIPTION

pal is a command‐line calendar utility. It displays a cal(1)‐like calendar and events
specified in text files.

OPTIONS

The following options are provided by pal:

-d date
Show events on the given date. Valid formats for date include: dd, mmdd, yyyymmdd,
'yesterday', 'today', 'tomorrow', 'n days away', 'n days ago', first two letters of
weekday, 'next ' followed by first two letters of weekday, 'last ' followed by
first two letters of weekday, '1 Jan 2000', 'Jan 1 2000'.

-r n Display events occurring in the next n days (counting today). By default, n is 0
and no events are displayed. For example, using -r 1 makes pal display events
occurring today. If -d is used too, the range is relative to date instead of the
current date.

-r p-n Display a list of events occurring in the past p days (not counting today) and the
next n days (counting today). For example -r 1-1 will show yesterday's and today's
events. If -d is used too, the range is relative to date instead of the current
date.

-s regex
Search for any occurrences of an event matching the regular expression (regex)
occurring in the range of dates specified with -r. This command searches both the
event description and the type of event (specified at the top of a calendar file).
This search is case insensitive.

-x n Expunge events that are n or more days old if they do not occur again in the
future. pal will not expunge events from the calendars loaded from /usr/share/pal;
even if you are root and you have added events to the calendars that are not
recurring. When -x is used with -v, the events that are expunged will be
displayed.

-c n Display a calendar with n lines (default: 5).

-f file
Load file instead of ~/.pal/pal.conf.

-u username
Load /home/username/.pal/pal.conf instead of ~/.pal/pal.conf.

-p palfile
Override the .pal files loaded from pal.conf. This will only load palfile. For
convenience, if palfile is a relative path, pal looks for the file relative from
~/.pal/, if not found, it tries relative to /usr/share/pal/, if not found it tries
relative to your current directory. (This behavior might change in the future.)
Using an absolute path will work as you expect it to.

-m Manage events interactively. Events can be added, modified and deleted with this
interface.

--color
Force use of colors, regardless of terminal type.

--nocolor
Do not use colors, regardless of terminal type.

--mail Generates output readable by sendmail by adding "From:" and "Subject:" fields and
forcing --nocolor. For example, you could mail yourself a reminder of the upcoming
events in the next week with pal --mail -r 7 | sendmail username. Note: For the
calendar to appear correctly, make sure your email client is using a fixed width
font.

--html Generates a HTML calendar suitable for display on a web page. It does not generate
a complete HTML document so that you can add your website's header and footer
around the calendar. The number of months shown on the calendar can be adjusted
with -c. You will need to use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to change how the
calendar appears; if you do not use a style sheet, the calendar will not have any
borders. See /usr/share/doc/pal/examples/example.css for an example style.
SECURITY NOTE: If you set up pal so it is being executed server‐side, it is
recommended that you do not allow web page visitors to directly change the
parameters sent to pal. Allowing users to pass strange parameters (such as
extremely long ones) can be a security risk.

--latex
Generates a LaTeX source for a calendar that can be used to generate a printer‐
friendly DVI (run "pal --latex > file.tex; latex file.tex"), PostScript or PDF (run
"pal --latex > file.tex; pdflatex file.tex"). The number of months shown on the
calendar can be adjusted with -c.

-v Verbose output.

--version
Display version information.

-h, --help
Display a help message.

EVENT DESCRIPTIONS

Years since year YYYY
pal will replace !YYYY! (where YYYY is a year) with the current year minus YYYY. This
feature is particularly useful for birthdays. For example, the event text for a
birthday could be: John Doe was born on this day in 1990. He is !1990! years old.

Sort by time
If events have a time in the event description, pal will sort these events by time.
The time in the event description must be of the format h:mm or hh:mm (where hh is
0-23). If an event has more than one time in the event description, pal will sort the
event by the first time. Events that do not have times in them are shown before all
the events that do have times. Events without times are sorted in the order that they
are loaded in pal.conf.

FILE FORMATS

Unless -f or -u is used, pal looks for (or tries to create if it doesn't exist) a
configuration file named ~/.pal/pal.conf. pal.conf contains settings for pal and a list
other files that contain events to be displayed on the calendar. The file formats for
pal.conf and the event files are described below.

pal.conf

file filename [ (color) ]
Loads an event file named filename. If filename isn't found in ~/.pal, pal will
look for it in /usr/share/pal. The color parameter is optional, it will display
the events in the file with the given color. Valid colors: black, red, green,
yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, white

file_hide filename [ (color) ]
Loads an event file name filename. These events are not indicated in the
calendar that is printed, but they are displayed when the -r argument is used.
If filename isn't found in ~/.pal, pal will look for it in /usr/share/pal. The
color parameter is optional, it will display the events in the file with the
given color. Valid colors: black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan,
white

event_color color
The default color used for events. Valid colors: black, red, green, yellow,
blue, magenta, cyan, white

week_start_monday
If this keyword is defined, the calendar weeks start on Monday instead of
Sunday.

date_fmt string
Changes how dates are displayed when the -r -d or -s arguments are used. string
can be a date format string that follows the format used by strftime(3). Type
man strftime for more information. string is set to %a %e %b %Y by default
(example: Sun 8 Aug 2010).

reverse_order
Display all event listings in descending order.

hide_event_type
Hide the event type (shown in before a ':') when listing events. The event type
is defined at the top of the file that the event is found in.

cal_on_bottom
Display calendar at the end of the output.

no_columns
Display calendar in one column instead of two.

compact_list
List events that are shown when using -r in a more compact form.

compact_date_fmt
Format for the date displayed when compact_list is used. See date_fmt for more
information.

default_range range
If you get tired of always using -r, you can set the default value for -r here.
See the information on -r above to see possible values for range. Note:
Remember that this will affect what is displayed when -d and -s are used too.

Event Files
Event files are ASCII or UTF-8 text files (usually with a .pal ending) that define
events for pal to show. Example event files can be found in /usr/share/pal. The first
line in these files indicate settings that apply to all of the events in the file. The
first line starts with two characters that should be used in the calendar that pal
displays. A longer description of the kinds of events in the file follows the two
characters. This description will be displayed when the -r argument is used. All
other lines in the file are in the format date event. date defines when the event
occurs and event is a string that describes the event. Below is a description of the
different strings that can be used with date:

Events that occur only once
Use the format yyyymmdd.

Daily events
The format DAILY can be used for an event that happens every day.

Weekly events
The format MON, TUE, WED, THU, FRI, SAT and SUN can be used for an event that
happens every week.

Monthly events
Use the format 000000dd.

Annual events
Use the format 0000mmdd.

Annual: Events that occur on the Nth day of a month.
Use the format *mmnd. Where d is the day (1 = Sunday, 7 = Saturday). Example:
*1023 (10=Oct; 2="second"; 3=Tuesday ==> Second Tuesday in October, every year).

Monthly: Events that occur on the Nth day of a month.
Use the format *00nd. Where d is the day (1 = Sunday, 7 = Saturday). Example:
*0023 (2="second"; 3=Tuesday ==> Second Tuesday of every month).

Annual: Events that occur on a certain last day of a month
Use the format *mmLd. Example: *10L3 (10=Oct; L=Last; 3=Tuesday ==> Last
Tuesday in October). This is useful for some holidays.

Monthly: Events that occur on a certain last day of a month
Use the format *00Ld. Example: *00L3 (3=Tuesday ==> Last Tuesday of every
month).

Todo events
The format TODO can be used for an event that always happens on the day that you
run pal. This enables you to use pal to keep track of items in your todo
list(s).

Easter related events
Use the format Easter for Easter Sunday. Use the format Easter+nnn for events
that occur nnn days after Easter. Use the format Easter‐nnn for events that
occur nnn days before easter.

Recurring events with start and end dates
If a recurring event has a starting date and an ending date, you can use the
date format DATE:START:END where DATE is a recurring date format above. START
and END are dates in the yyyymmdd format that specify the starting and ending
date of the recurring event. START and END dates are inclusive. For example,
if an event happens every Wednesday in October 2010, you could use this format:
WED:20101001:20101031

Bi-weekly, Bi-annual, etc. events
If a recurring event does only occurs every Nth occurence, you can add a /N to
the event of the date string for that event. A start date must be specified.
For example, a bi-monthly event that occurs on the first of the month can be
specified as 00000001/2:20000101.

INTERNATIONALIZATION AND LOCALIZATION

The calendar files that pal uses must be ASCII encoded or UTF-8 encoded text files (ASCII
is a subset of UTF-8). UTF-8 enables the calendar files to work on any system regardless
of the default encoding scheme. When pal prints text, it converts the UTF-8 characters
into the local encoding for your system. If pal does not display international characters
and you are using a UTF-8 calendar file, check to make sure that your locale is set
correctly. You can see your locale settings by running "locale". You can see the
character set that pal is using for output by running pal with "-v". If pal does not have
a translation for your language and you are interested in creating a translation, see the
po/README file that is distributed with the source code for pal.

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