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ical(1) |
FreeBSD General Commands Manual |
ical(1) |
ical - An X based Calendar Program
Ical provides an X interface for maintaining a calendar. A calendar is
basically just a set of items. An item is either an appointment, or a notice.
An appointment starts at a particular time of the day, and finishes at a
particular time of the day. A notice does not have any starting or ending
time. Notices are useful for marking certain days as special. For example, a
calendar may contain a notice for April 15th indicating that taxes are due.
When the documentation below refers to an item, it applies both to
notices and appointments. The main features of ical are:
* Items can be created and edited easily.
* Items can be cut, copied and pasted.
* Items can be made to repeat in various ways.
* Ical will generate alarms for upcoming appointments.
* Users can view many calendars at a time.
* Calendars can be shared by many users.
* Related items can be grouped in their own calendar.
You can specify various command line options to control ical.
The following options can be used even when you are not logged in on an X
display.
- -calendar file-name
- The calendar is read from the specified file. See the description of
calendar files for more information.
- -date date
- Set the starting date for item listings or window display to the specified
date. For example: ical -date 1/aug/1997
- -list
- Print a listing of the starting date's items and exit immediately. See the
description of listing items for details on the actual items printed by
this option. The starting date is usually today, but may be changed with
the -date option.
- -show +days
- Print a listing for items in the range [starting date...(starting date +
days - 1)] and exit immediately. See the description of listing items for
details on the actual items printed by this option. The starting date is
usually today, but may be changed with the -date option.
- -print 1|2|4|8|10|month
- Generate postscript on standard output for range of days and exit. The
starting date is usually today, but may be changed with the -date
option.
The following options are valid only if you are logged in on an X display.
- -iconic
- Start up with the main window iconified.
- -iconposition x,y
- Icon is placed at the specified position.
- -popup
- Popup a window containing a listing of the starting date's items and exit
as soon as the window is dismissed. See the description of listing items
for details on the actual items printed by this option. The starting date
is usually today, but may be changed with the -date option.
- -geometry geometry
- Use geometry as the geometry for the main window.
- -fg color
- Use color as the foreground for all windows.
- -bg color
- Use color as the background for all windows.
- -display display
- Run ical on the specified X display.
The main calendar window displays the appointments and notices for a particular
date.
- Date Selector
- The top left portion of the window contains a date selector. You can click
on the various arrows to change the month or the year. The day of the
month can be selected by clicking on the appropriate day in the month
display. The date selector contains various other buttons for convenient
date selection.
- Notice Window
- The bottom left portion of the window contains the notices for the
selected date. A scroll bar is provided if all of the notices for the
selected date do not fit into the notice window.
- Appointment Window
- The right portion of the window contains the appointments for the selected
day. You can scroll this region by using the scroll bar, or by dragging
with the middle mouse button in the background.
- Menubar
- A menubar runs along the top of the calendar window. The File menu
allows you to create and destroy application windows.
- Status Line
- The bottom portion of the window contains a status line. This status line
indicates the calendar from which the selected item comes and whether or
not the selected item repeats.
A calendar is stored in a calendar file. The default calendar file is named
.calendar and is kept in the user's home directory. If the CALENDAR
environment variable is set, its value is used as the name of the calendar
file. The CALENDAR environment variable and the default can both be overridden
by specifying a file name on the command line as follows -- ical -calendar
file-name. Ical periodically saves any modifications made to a
calendar to the corresponding calendar file. It also periodically incorporates
changes made to a shared calendar file by other instances of ical. You can
explicitly trigger these periodic saves and reads by using the File menu.
You can include other calendars into your private calendar. This facility is
mainly useful for allowing a group of people to share a common set of items.
For example, members of a particular group might have a calendar that contains
the birthdays for each member of the group. This calendar can be included in
each group member's private calendar. Use the File menu to include and exclude
shared calendars. Use the Move Item To ... entry from the Item menu to
move items between calendars. Use the From Calendar ... entry in the
List menu to list all items a particular calendar.
You can enter notices by clicking in the background in the bottom-left portion
of the main calendar window. This click will create a new notice for the
selected date. You can enter text into the notice by typing into it while it
is selected (selected notices are highlighted by being displayed in different
colors). A notice can be selected for editing by clicking with left button.
You can enter appointments by left-clicking in the background in the right
portion of the main calendar window. This click will create a new appointment
for the selected date. The start time for this appointment is determined by
the click location. You can move the appointment by dragging it with the
middle mouse button held down. The appointment can be resized by dragging with
the right mouse button held down.
Appointment text can be edited by typing into the appointment
window while it is selected. If the appointment text you are typing in does
not fit into the appointment area, then it will overflow out of the
appointment area, but will be editable normally. If you do not like
overflowing text, you should turn off the Allow Text Overflow option
in the Options menu . With this option turned off, if the current text
completely fills the area allocated to the appointment, then any attempts to
add to the appointment text will be ignored until the appointment is
enlarged with the right mouse button. Likewise, the right mouse button will
refuse to shrink an appointment window if the appointment text completely
fills the appointment window.
Ical generates alarms for appointments. By default, the first alarm is
generated fifteen minutes before the appointment is supposed to start and
successive alarms are generated every five minutes until the appointment
actually starts. You can change this default behavior by selecting the
Default Alarms entry from the Options menu. You can also change the
timings of these alarms on an appointment-by-appointment basis by
double-clicking on the appointment, or by selecting the appointment and then
chosing the Properties entry in the Item menu.
Items can be made to repeat in various ways. Item repetition can be controlled
by using the entries in the Repeat menu. These entries make the item repeat in
certain frequently used ways. For example, the Monthly entry makes the
selected item repeat once per month and the Weekly entry makes the
selected item repeat once per week. The Edit Monthly... and Edit
Weekly... entries can be used to make items that repeat in more complex
ways: for example, an item that occurs on the last Friday of each month, or an
item that occurs on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday every week.
In addition to making an item repeat in one of the pre-defined
ways, you can also restrict an item's starting and finishing date by
selecting the Set Range... entry from the Repeat menu.
Normally, a modification to a repeating item applies to all
occurrences of that item. A single occurrence of a repeating item can be
modified by selecting the occurrence and then choosing the Make
Unique entry from the Repeat menu. The selected occurrence can now be
modified independently of the repeating item.
Items can be marked as todo items by selecting the Todo entry in
the Item menu. A todo item is automatically moved forward to today's
date every day until the item is deleted or marked as done. An item can be
marked as done by clicking in the little check-box right next to the displayed
item.
By default, if any item occurs on a date, then the date is highlighted in the
date selector located in the top-left corner of the calendar window. You can
use the Highlight entries in the Item menu to control this highlighting
behavior on an item-by-item basis.
This section is currently incomplete.
Dragging with the left mouse button in a selected appointment or notice sets the
X selection. The Edit menu provides commands for dealing with the X selection.
Ical also has a clipboard that can store a single item. The
Copy entry in the Edit menu copies the selected item into the
clipboard. The Cut entry does the same, but it also deletes the item
from the calendar. If the selected item repeats, then the Cut command
allows the user to delete all occurrences of the item, or just the selected
occurrence. However, if the selected item does not belong to you, then
Cut just hides the item from you. Other people will still see the
item. An item in the clipboard can be inserted into the current day by
selecting Paste entry. The newly pasted item loses all repetition
information, and occurs just on the day in which it was pasted.
You can generate listings of imminent items by selecting one of the listing
options in the List menu. You can also use the command line options -list,
-show, or -popup to generate item listings. The command line options are most
useful in .login files.
By default an item is included in a listing for a particular date
if it occurs either on that date, or on the very next day. You can control
this feature of item listings with the List item entry in the Item
menu.
Calendar contents can be printed by selecting the Print option from the
File menu.
Some of ical's behavior can be customized via the Options menu. Other
aspects of ical's behavior can be controlled via X Resources.
The following X resources can be used to control various aspects of ical's
behavior.
- Ical.pollSeconds
- Shared calendars are checked for changes made by other people once every
pollSeconds seconds. The default value is 120. If ical
appears sluggish, or if it is using too much CPU time, increase this
value.
- Ical.saveSeconds
- Calendar files are saved once every saveSeconds seconds. The
default value is 30. If ical appears sluggish, or if it is using
too much CPU time, increase this value.
The following X resources can be used to control various dimensions of ical's
appearance.
- Ical.itemSelectWidth
- The border width of selected items is set to the value of this option to
display the selected status of the item to to the user. On color displays,
the default value of this option is 1 because on color displays selection
is indicated by changing the color of the selected item. On monochrome
displays, the default value of itemSelectWidth is 4.
- Ical.Dayview.geometry
- X geometry specification for main calendar window. Usually, you will just
specify the window position here. The size of the window is easier to
control via the Options menu.
- Ical.Reminder.geometry
- X geometry specification for alarms. Usually, you will just specify the
window position here. The window size will be calculated
automatically.
- Ical.Listing.geometry
- X geometry specification for item listings. Usually, you will just specify
the window position here. The window size will be calculated
automatically.
The following X resources can be used to customize ical's use of colors. If ical
windows show up with illegible colors (not enough distinction between
background and foreground), it may be because your X resources contain
definitions for *foreground or *background that conflict with ical colors. In
general, it is a bad idea to define *foreground and *background in your
resources because it will break a number of programs. You will be better off
defining resources on an application by application basis.
- Ical*Foreground/Ical*Background
- Foreground and background colors for most of ical's windows.
- Ical*disabledForeground
- Foreground color assigned to disabled buttons and menu entries.
- Ical.itemFg/Ical.itemBg
- Foreground and background colors for unselected items. The default
foreground is black and the default background is gray.
- Ical.itemSelectFg/Ical.itemSelectBg
- Foreground and background colors for selected items. The default
foreground is black and the default background is SlateBlue1.
- Ical.itemOverflowColor/Ical.itemOverflowStipple
- Background color and stippling used for appointment text that overflows
out of the appointment area. On color displays, the default overflow
background is SlateBlue3 and no stippling is done (specified by an empty
stipple option). On monochrome displays, the default overflow background
is black, and the default overflow stippling is gray50.
- Ical.apptLineColor
- The color for the background lines and times displayed in the appointment
window.
- Ical.weekdayColor
- The color used to display days of the week. The default is black.
- Ical.weekendColor
- The color used to display weekends. The default is red.
- Ical.interestColor
- The color used to highlight interesting dates. The default is blue.
- Ical.weekendInterestColor
- The color used to highlight interesting dates on weekends and holidays.
The default is purple.
The following resources can be used to customize ical's use of fonts.
- Ical.fontFamily
- Preferred font family. Fonts for various purposes are obtained from this
family unless overridden with one of the specifications below. The default
font family is times. Some other font families you can specify here are
charter, new century schoolbook, and helvetica. My personal favorite is
new century schoolbook.
- Ical.fixedFontFamily
- Preferred font family for fixed-width fonts. Fixed-width fonts for various
purposes are obtained from this family unless overridden with one of the
specifications below. The default font family is courier. Some other font
families you can specify here are fixed and terminal.
- Ical.fontSize
- Font sizes used for ical. Use the value small to use small font sizes
everywhere. Any other value for this option defaults to the normal
fonts.
- Ical*itemFont
- Font used to display item contents.
- Ical.weekdayFont
- Font used for displaying days of the week.
- Ical.weekendFont
- Font used for displaying weekends.
- Ical.interestFont
- Font used to highlight interesting dates.
- Ical.weekendInterestFont
- Font used to highlight interesting dates on weekends and holidays.
- Ical.smallHeadingFont
- Font used for small headings.
- Ical.largeHeadingFont
- Font used for large headings.
- Ical*<class>*font:
- Font used for windows of a certain class. Possible values for
<class> are Dialog, Button, Label, Menubutton, Menu, Listbox,
and Reminder.
Users can also customize ical by writing tcl code and storing it in the file
~/.tk/ical/user.tcl. The code stored in this file is executed when ical starts
up.
Ical also looks for site-specific customizations at startup. These
customizations can be placed in the file site.tcl in either the ical library
directory, or its parent directory. (By default, ical looks for site.tcl in
/usr/local/lib/ical/v[version]/, and /usr/local/lib/ical/, but these
directories may be located elsewhere on your system.) The site specific
files will be loaded in before any user specific customization file is
loaded in.
See the "Tcl Interface to Ical" document available via
the Ical help menu.
Ical can run even when X is not available, therefore
customization files should be written so that they will function
even when Tk commands are not available.
- Save
- Save any modifications to the appropriate calendar files.
- Re-Read
- Read any changes made to a shared calendar by another user or another
instance of ical. Ical will automatically invoke this function
periodically. It is provided as a menu entry only so for people who do not
want to wait for ical's periodic checks.
- Print
- Print calendar contents. The user has the option of saving the print-out
to a file, pre viewing the print-out by specifying a PostScript displaying
program, or sending the print-out directly to a PostScript printer by
specifying a printing command.
- Include Calendar
- Select a calendar to include into your private calendar. Included
calendars are normally used to share calendars between different
users.
- Remove Include
- Remove a previously included calendar from your private calendar.
- New Window
- Open a new calendar window. This new window can be used to view the items
for a different date than the original window.
- Close Window
- Close the selected window.
- Exit
- Save any changes and kill ical.
- Cut Item
- Delete the currently selected item and store it in the clipboard.
- Copy Item
- Copy selected item to the clipboard.
- Paste Item
- Paste item from clipboard into calendar.
- Delete Text
- Delete the currently selected text from the selected item.
- Insert Text
- Insert the current X selection into the selected item.
- Import Text
- Import the current X selection as a new item into the calendar. The date
and time of this new item are parsed from the X selection if
possible.
- Todo
- Toggle the item between being a todo item and not being a todo item.
- Always Highlight
- The item always causes the corresponding date to be highlighted. This is
the default behavior.
- Never Highlight
- The item never causes the corresponding date to be highlighted.
- Highlight Future
- The item causes the corresponding date to be highlighted if and only if
the date is not in the past.
- Holiday
- The item causes the corresponding date to be highlighted as a
holiday.
- Change Alarms
- This item pops up a dialog box that allows you to edit the alarm times for
an appointment.
Note that this will only change the alarm times for the selected
appointments. You can make this change for all appointments that do not have
special alarm times by using the Default Alarms entry in the Options
menu.
- Early Warning
- By default an item is included in a listing for a particular date if it
occurs either on that date, or on the very next day. Sometimes, you may
want to include an item in listings for earlier dates. For example, if you
have an item reminding you of a birthday on March 17th, you might want
this item to be included in all listings from March 7th to March 17th so
that you will have enough time to go out and buy a present. You can
achieve this effect by selecting this menu entry and then entering
"10 days" into the resulting dialog.
Note that this will only change the listing behavior for the
selected item. You can make this change for all items you create from now on
by using the Default Listings entry in the Options menu.
- Properties ...
- Edit various item properties, including the calendar to which the item
belongs, highlighting information, early warning options, alarm times, and
starting and ending times for appointments. You can also double-click on
an item to pop up the property editing dialog.
- Search Forward
- Search forward looking for an item that contains a user specified
string.
- Search Backward
- Search backward looking for an item that contains a user specified
string.
- Don't Repeat
- Make the selected item a non-repeating item.
- Daily
- Make the item repeat every day.
- Weekly
- Make the item repeat once every week.
- Monthly
- Make the item repeat once every month.
- Annually
- Make the item repeat once every year.
- Edit Weekly
- Make the item repeat on a weekly basis in a complicated fashion. For
example, on Tuesday and Thursday every week.
- Edit Monthly
- Make the item repeat on a monthly basis in a complicated fashion. For
example, on the third Sunday in June, or the last working day of each
month.
- Set Range...
- Restrict the range for a repeating item.
- Last Occurrence
- Make the current occurrence the last occurrence of the selected item.
I.e., remove any occurrences after the current date.
- Make Unique
- If you want to modify just a single occurrence of a repeating item, select
the item occurrence you want to modify and then activate this menu entry.
Now all modifications to this item occurrence will only affect this
particular occurrence.
- One Day
- List the item occurrences for one day.
- Seven Days
- List the item occurrences for the next seven days.
- Ten Days
- List the item occurrences for the next ten days.
- Thirty Days
- List the item occurrences for the next thirty days.
- Week
- List the item occurrences for this week.
- Month
- List the item occurrences for this month.
- Year
- List the item occurrences for this year.
- From Calendar ...
- List all item occurrences from a selected calendar.
- Appointment Range
- Controls the subset of a day displayed by default in the appointment
listing. The factory settings display 8:00am to 6:00pm.
- Notice Window Height
- This entry can be used to change the height of the notice window.
- Item Width
- This entry can be used to change the width of displayed appointments and
notices.
- Allow Text Overflow
- If this option is selected, then you can type in any amount of text into
an appointment. The part of the text that does not fit into the
appointment will be allowed to overflow out of the appointment. If you do
not like text overflowing out of an appointment, then you should turn off
this option.
- Display Am/Pm
- If this option is selected, time will be printed in twelve hour mode with
am or pm indicators. Otherwise, time will be printed in twenty-four hour
mode.
- Start Week on Monday
- If this option is selected, month displays will start each week off on a
Monday. Otherwise, each week will start on a Sunday.
- Default Alarms
- Use this menu entry to change the time intervals at which alarms go off.
The factory settings cause alarms to be triggered fifteen minutes before
each appointment, and then once every five minutes until the appointment
actually starts. This menu entry changes the default alarm behavior for
all appointments. You can override this default behavior on an
appointment-by-appointment basis by selecting an appointment and then
selecting the Change Alarms entry in the item
menu.
- Default Listings
- This menu can be used to select the default listing behavior for newly
created items. If the On Occurrence entry is selected, then a newly
created item will only be shown in the listing of the day on which the
item occurs. If the A Day Early entry is selected, then a
new item will be shown in listings starting a day before the item
occurrence. Similarly, the other menu entries can be selected to make new
items show up in listings a number of days before their actual occurrence.
This menu selects the default behavior for new items. Individual item
behavior can be controlled by similar entries in the Item menu.
- About Ical
- Displays ical version number and author information.
- User Guide
- Displays this document.
Sanjay Ghemawat (sanjay@pa.dec.com)
http://www.research.digital.com/SRC/personal/Sanjay_Ghemawat/home.html
Copyright (c) 1993 by Sanjay Ghemawat. Permission is granted to make and
distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and
this permission notice are preserved on all copies.
Ical http://www.research.digital.com/SRC/personal/Sanjay_Ghemawat/ical/home.html
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