HN user
https://TeroKarvinen.com
My favourite would be 'sudo apt-get autoupgrade'. It does not exist, but would upgrade everything, right now, no questions asked.
I wonder why 'sudo unattended-upgrade -v' does not do an unattended upgrade when run.
ps. Thanks for linking my article, speckx.
I have found Leaf [1] to be a simple and plain spaced repetition program. It has very few features compared to Anki.
It does not have a large ecosystem of stack sharing, it's mostly aimed for those who write their own decks. You can compile it to a static binary and be sure that the decks you create work for a long time.
Those pta example files you linked, marttt, really make the case for this software. It looks simple, transparent, auditable, versionable and unixy.
Dpifke, beancounter looks nice, big and well tought out. I bookmarked the docs/ to have a more troughout look at it later.
Update: Had a more detailed look on Beancount.
Nice!
Static binaries generated by Go are indeed large, even if the source code here is under 30 lines with support to some additional minor features (US and Finnish day names, command line help, optional week headings, day counts and parameter handling).
Here are some more scripts to generate calendar.txt date format:
SimpleTask Cloudless has been my favourite todo.txt app for Android. Unfortunately, SimpleTask is in low maintenance mode [1], and does not work well in my setup.
According to mpcjanssen: "The suspending of the applications by Google #1102 and the continuously fixing breakage by Android API changes have reduced my Simpletask motivation to a very low level." [1].
[1] https://github.com/mpcjanssen/simpletask-android/issues/1110
Based on the man page, calendar(3) would not suit my use well. It's quite different from calendar.txt. But I'm happy to hear that you use it.
I installed it just to read the man page: """
LANG=C
Easter=Ostern
#include <calendar.usholiday>
#include <calendar.birthday>
6/15\tJune 15 (if ambiguous, will default to month/day).
Jun. 15\tJune 15.
15 June\tJune 15.
Thursday\tEvery Thursday.
June\tEvery June 1st.
15 *\t15th of every month.
May Sun+2\tsecond Sunday in May (Muttertag)
04/SunLast\tlast Sunday in April,
\tsummer time in Europe
Easter\tEaster
Ostern-2\tGood Friday (2 days before Easter)
Paskha\tOrthodox Easter
Yes [1]. In the unlikely event you need a calendar after 2038-01-19 w03 Tue, the program can generate you templates [2] for hundreds of years [3].
[1] https://terokarvinen.com/2021/calendar-txt/calendartxt-gener...
[2] https://terokarvinen.com/2024/format-date-calendar-txt/dateg...
[2] https://terokarvinen.com/2024/format-date-calendar-txt/
Update: Added the template until 2400.
Mdq seems just what I've been looking for. I have yet to test it.
Based on documentation, you can mdq for the chapter whose heading is "## Foobar"; or extract all lists in chapter "### Xyzzy".
Thanks, abound!
Update: mdq discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43152704
I use a template [1] that includes week numbers.
With some traditional GUI calendar software, I was often hunting and miscopying week numbers. Some software also had a weird (non ISO-8601) idea of week numbers.
In case you need calendar.txt after 2033, I wrote a small tool [2] to generate more templates.
[1] https://terokarvinen.com/2021/calendar-txt/calendar-txt-unti...
[2] https://terokarvinen.com/2021/calendar-txt/calendartxt-gener...
So many tempting options...
Can you recommend a tool and open your accounting workflow, marttt?
Are there any pain points, like filling tax forms or handling travel paperwork?
I recommend https://syncthing.net/
Works with all file formats, from photos and movies to text files. Cross platform: Linux, Windows, Android, probably also Mac and BSD.
Update: And it's end-to-end encrypted and free, open-source software.
It's unfair to computers how well paper planners worked. Among with todo.txt, paper calendars were an inspiration and a benchmark for writing calendar.txt.
I especially like your 'mgrep', please do write it!
I have considered similar tools that make use of MarkDown syntax, I feel that there are many tools waiting to be written here.
As you guessed, roland35, I do track my calendar.txt in git.
One main benefit from git is also to work as an insurance against (user) errors, and make the whole process much more transparent. When I have used calendars with automatic synchronization, I would have enjoyed a "change log" to make sure that my timezones and meetings are not mistakenly modified by software.
For your dentist example, I would probably just use 'grep' or find in my text editor. After all, six months of days is very little text.
Interesting ideas for formalization and metadata, jeroendh. Some comments on those:
Calendar.txt is indeed a personal calendar. So feel free to violate the spec as much as you need or want to. My main use for calendar.txt is editing with text editor, and thus, I have not given emphasis to automatic modification.
Time notation is ISO-8601 date and week number. In my view, ISO-8601 is an international standard and not tied to a specific country. I find it convenient to read and sort.
I use local time for physical events. For international calls, I just write down the timezone "13:00Z" or "11:00EET" (update: or mark it in my local time).
At-sign "@" for context was chosen to match todo.txt, as I also use that. As the calendar is personal, it does not need to be fully machine readble. But for your example on email addresses, you could still do it: @WORK email bob@example.com. The context starts with an at "@", email does not.
Full stop "." is easy to type on a cell phone. It's true that a rare char would be more suitable for automatic parsing.
Thanks for the ideas!
Such an alarm system would be interesting (and even sounds feasible), even though I don't use reminders myself.
I use a template [1] that has the dates (including week numbers) there already. That way, I only need a text editor.
In my work, similar events happen on the same week numbers in different years. The importance of week numbers probably depends on your area of work.
For me, one thing is a day. That's also the context I need when reviewing and planning. But if I remember correctly, previous HN thread on calendar.txt had a suggestion where someone had an event-per-line format, if you prefer that.
[1] https://terokarvinen.com/2021/calendar-txt/calendar-txt-unti...
For reminders and other automated actions, pydry suggested "orgzly revived with org mode"; and kruffalon suggested 'remind'. I have not tried those, but they might be better options for notifications and reminding than calendar.txt.
I use calendar.txt on a cell phone with Markor text editor. For my desktop, I just use micro editor on terminal, the same I use for most text editing tasks.
Bookkeeping using plain text files sounds both interesting and challenging.
Now my homepage should answer in under 300 ms again. Thanks for visiting!
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.
I can recommend todo.txt, as I've been using it for years. Todo.txt was one of the inspirations to create calendar.txt.
It also works nicely together with calendar.txt for me. I can 'grep' trough both to see all todos and events related to a project or a +tag.
Thank you for bringing up calendar.txt. My homepage is feeling the hug. In the meanwhile:
https://web.archive.org/web/20250216110151/https://terokarvi...
My students Dianne, Pauli, Mikko and Juho tried [1] this. They wrote a blog [2] and a git repository [3]. It's not a ready to use product, but an exploration and learning journey to using machine learning for identifying signals.
Multiple steps are required to get to readable or audible output: identifying a signal, identifying modulation and demodulating.
[1] https://terokarvinen.com/2022/ai-sdr-analyze-radio-signals-w... [2] https://muikkurf.wordpress.com/ [3] https://github.com/kajami/SDR-project
Author of calendar.txt here. I use scripts to pick whatever information I need. For example, I have a command called 'today'. It shows X next days of my calendar and summary of next X weeks.
Marymkearney, you could write a similar program for your grid calendar.
1. Print HTML start boilerplate. Start an HTML table and row (tr). 2. Read a line of calendar.txt. 3. Print contents of the day as table cell (td). 4. If day is Sunday (string matches "\bSun\b"), print row change (/tr, tr). 5. ... 6. Profit.
HTML is quite convenient for printing, and you can modify it with CSS. As an added bonus for Quinzel, you can copy your static calendar to your devices, and make any device show it - so you don't need to turn those pages. To make the static HTML file available to your devices, you could use syncthing or a web server in local network.
If you enjoy command line and TUI, I've collected some offline resources as 'ks'.
Plain text takes very little space. Only 75 MB for MDN (Mozilla Developer Network), Devhints.io, tldr, Go by Example, some OWASP and some docs for specific software (Apache, Hugo, Django, Flask, Arduino, micro, Pandoc, Lua...). All Free and open source.
If you're preparing for offline, you could download it while you still have the net:
https://terokarvinen.com/2022/ks-kanasirja-offline-tui-dicti...
And I am writing my dissertation, so technically, those stats & the guess are also correct.
2b3a51, interesting planning process. My system with calendar.txt and planning courses: I use week headings for marking the periods and period weeks (4p1). When reserving course days, I just put the tags there (+pw). Later, when I decide the main theme, I add it ("+pw deploy"). If there is a special channel, guests and other info, I add it as it arrives.
For past events, calendar forms a nice basis. At least for me, most of the stuff I plan, happens. I understand you add some insight there, maybe I should try that, too.
Nice work, chootisk. I can see our systems are quite similar, with some adaptations to preferences. For me, week numbers and weekdays are what I think about, and dates (2022-06-01) is what I need for communicating with others.
Your syntax highlight sounds like a nice addition.
Can't help but agree with the great minds, tux2bsd. Do you have a web page for your calendar?
Calendar.txt uses the ISO-8601 standard, where weeks start on Monday.
But you should use whatever works for you. If you want to use the US system, you can easily adapt to this. The short Go code for generating the template is on calendar.txt homepage.
I'm using todo.txt and calendar.txt together (but as two separate files). I've chosen some conventions for calendar.txt to work smoothly with todo.txt, such as @contexts and +tags.
They work nicely together. To check for all calendar events and todos for a project, I can 'grep +pw calendar.txt todo.txt'. This also shows the start and end date of the project (first and last event date)
Todo.txt is a great format!