Re: getting nndiary to work

[lee <lee@yun.yagibdah.de>]

Didier Verna <didier@xemacs.org> writes:

> Steinar Bang <sb@dod.no> wrote:
>
>> What I've been missing with nndiary is a good step-by-step example
>> that explains how to use it.
>
>   Maybe I should re-read the documentation again, and see if I can come
> up with a quick start section.

There are a few things that could be improved upon in the documentation:


* The documentation doesn't mention that one must create the nndiary
  group manually for it to appear in the group view.

* It is unclear if one needs to set nndiary-split-methods.

* If is unclear if one needs to set nndiary-reminders. There's no
  description about what to set it to.

* There has been a discussion on this list concerning
  nndiary-get-new-mail in 2007. The question was whether
  nndiary-get-new-mail is a server variable or not and if it needs to be
  set when adding the nndiary backend to gnus-secondary-select-methods,
  or if it can be set independently. Some of the articles of this
  discussion were not available on gmane (anymore).

  The conclusion seemed to be that nndiary-get-new-mail is a server
  variable. I found that when setting it in the backend specification as
  suggested in the discussion, byte-compiling gnus.el yields an error
  message about it. The documentation tells one to just set it with a
  setq-statement somewhere.

> the idea is that the "diary behavior" should not depend on any backend
> at all. Ideally, you want any article to behave in a diary-fashion, so
> you add the proper set of extra headers[1] to the article and then, it
> pops up as new from time to time, according to your reminder settings,
> whether it be from nnml, gmail, nntp, whatever.

Yes, that's one of the things I'd have use for: a way to tell gnus to
show me a particular message (email) at a specified date and time. It
would also be nice if I could add comments to messages, like a comment
telling me why I have made it so that gnus shows me the message just
then.

The other thing I'm looking for is a calendar application like plan or
korganizer for the overview they provide, showing me a whole month and
its weeks and the reminders for each day. Such application must be able
to send reminders by email --- and their inability to do that is what
keeps me from using plan or korganizer.

I haven't really tried calendar applications available in emacs
yet. Perhaps there's already one that does what I need?

> Footnotes: 
> [1]  not even the current X-Diary ones. Maybe something more cal-like.

Hm. The way they are, they have their advantages. Another header could
be added, like "X-Diary-simple", which just takes a date and time and
assumes the current time zone:

  X-Dairy-simple: 2011-06-23, 21:00

That would send me a reminder in about 14 minutes from now :)