CALCURSE - text-based organizer
Abstract
This manual describescalcurse functionnalities,
and how to use them. The installation from source is first described, together
with the available command line arguments. The user interface
is then presented, with all of the customizable options that change
calcurse behavior. Last, bug reporting procedure is explained, as
well as the way one can contribute to calcurse development.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
calcurse is a text-based calendar and scheduling application. It helps
keeping track of events, appointments and everyday tasks. 
A configurable notification system reminds user of upcoming deadlines,
and the curses based interface can be customized to suit user needs.
All of the commands are documented within an online help system.  
2. Overview
2.1 Creation history
I started thinking about this project when I was finishing my Ph.D. in Astrophysics... It started to be a little hard to organize myself, and I really needed a good tool to help me in that difficult task ;)
	I like programs which use Text User Interfaces, because they 
	are simple, fast, portable and efficient, so I thought about 
	working on coding a simple calendar using such an interface. 
	Moreover, I wanted to go on learning the C 
	language, which I only used for a while during my undergraduate 
	studies. So I thought that would be the good project to start 
	in order to get organized and to learn about a few 
	C things !
	Unfortunately, I finished my Ph.D. before finishing 
	calcurse, 
	but anyway, I still wanted to work on it, hoping it would
	be helpful to other people.  So here it is...
But why 'calcurse' anyway ? Well, it is simply the concatenation of 'CALendar' and 'nCURSEs', the name of the library used to build the user interface.
2.2 Important features
        Calcurse is multi-platform and intended to be
        lightweight, fast and reliable. It is to be used inside a 
        console or terminal, locally or on a distant machine within 
        an ssh (or similar) connection.
        Calcurse can be run in two different modes : 
        interactive or non-interactive mode. The first mode allows 
        oneself to view its own personal organizer almost everywhere,
        thanks to the text-based interface. 
        The second mode permits to easily build reminders just by adding 
        calcurse with appropriate command line arguments 
        inside a cron tab or within a shell init script.
        Moreover, calcurse was created with the end-user 
        in mind, and tends to be as friendly as possible. This means 
        a complete on-line help system, together with having all of 
        the possible actions displayed at any time inside a status bar. 
        The user interface is configurable, and one can choose 
        between several color and layout combinations.
        Key bindings are also configurable, to fit everyone's needs.
	Last, a configurable notification system reminds user of upcoming
	appointments. The reminders are sent even if the user's interface 
        is not running, as calcurse is able to run in background.
3. Installation
3.1 Requirements
3.1.1 ncurses library
	Calcurse requires only a C compiler, such as 
        cc or gcc, and the ncurses
        library. 
        It would be very surprising not to have a valid ncurses
        library already installed on your computer, but if not, you can 
        find it at the following url :
http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ncurses/
Note: 
        It is also possible to link calcurse against the
        ncursesw library (ncurses with support for unicode).
        However, UTF-8 is not yet supported by calcurse.
3.1.2 gettext library
        calcurse supports internationalization
        (i18n hereafter) through the gettext
        utilities. This means calcurse can produce
        multi-lingual messages if compiled with native language
        support (i.e. NLS). 
	However, 
	NLS is
        optionnal and if you do not want to have support for
        multi-lingual messages, you can disable this feature.  This is
        done by giving the --disable-nls option to
        configure (see section Install process).
        To check if the gettext utilities are
        installed on your system, you can search for the
        libintl.h header file for instance:
locate libintl.h
        If this header file is not found, then you can obtain the
        gettext sources at the following url :
http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/gettext/
Note: 
	Even if libintl.h is found on your
        system, it can be wise to specify its location during the install process, by using the
        --with-libintl-prefix option with
        configure. Indeed, the configure
        could fail to locate this library if installed in an uncommon
        place.
3.2 Install process
First you need to gunzip and untar the source archive:
tar zxvf calcurse-2.8.tar.gz
Once you meet the requirements and have extracted the archive, the install process is quite simple, and follows the standard three steps process:
- ./configure
- make
- make install(may require root privilege)
	Use ./configure --help to obtain a list of 
	possible options.
4. calcurse basics
4.1 Invocation
4.1.1 Command line arguments
        calcurse takes the following options from the 
        command line (both short and long options are supported):
- -a, --appointment
- 
	    Print the appointments and events for the current day and exit.
	    Note: the calendar from which to read the appointments can be specified using the '-c' flag. 
- -c <file>, --calendar <file>
- 
	    Specify the calendar file to use.
	    The default  calendar is ~/.calcurse/apts(see sectioncalcursefiles).
- -d <date|num>, --day <date|num>
- 
	    Print the appointments for the given date  or  for  the
	    given  number  of upcoming days, depending on the argument
	    format. Two possible formats are supported:
	    - a date (possible formats described below).
- a number 'n'.
 calcurse -d 3will display your appointments for today, tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow. Possible formats for specifying the date are defined inside the general configuration menu (see General options), using theinput_datefmtvariable.Note: as for the '-a' flag, the calendar from which to read the appointments can be specified using the '-c' flag. 
- -D <dir>, --directory <dir>
- 
            Specify  the  data directory to use. This option is
            incompatible  with  -c.   If  not  specified,   the
            default directory is '~/.calcurse/'.
- -h, --help
- Print a short help text describing the supported command-line options, and exit.
- -i <file>, --import <file>
- 
            Import the icalendar data contained in file.
- -n, --next
- 
	    Print the next appointment within upcoming 24 hours and exit.
	    The indicated time is the number of hours and minutes left 
	    before this appointment.
	    Note: the calendar from which to read the appointments can be specified using the '-c' flag. 
- -N, --note
- When used with the '-a' or '-t' flag, also print note content if one is associated with the displayed item.
- -r[num], --range[=num]
- Print events and appointments for the num number of days and exit. If no num is given, a range of 1 day is considered.
- -s[date], --startday[=date]
- Print events and appointments from date and exit. If no date is given, the current day is considered.
- -S<regex>, --search=<regex>
- When used with the '-a', '-d', '-r', '-s', or '-t' flag, print only the items having a description that matches the given regular expression.
- --status
- Display the status of running instances of calcurse. If calcurse is running, this will tell if the interactive mode was launched or if calcurse is running in background. The process pid will also be indicated.
- -t[num], --todo[=num]
- 
	    Print the 'todo' list and exit. If the optional number
	    numis given, then only todos having a priority equal tonumwill be returned. The priority number must be between 1 (highest) and 9 (lowest). It is also possible to specify '0' for the priority, in which case only completed tasks will be shown.
- -v, --version
- 
	    Display calcurseversion and exit.
- -x[format], --export[=format]
- 
	    Export user data to specified format. Events, appointments and
	    todos are converted and echoed to stdout.
            Two possible formats are available: ical and pcal 
            (see section Links below). 
            If the optional argument formatis not given, ical format is selected by default.Note: redirect standard output to export data to a file, by issuing a command such as: $ calcurse --export > my_data.dat
4.1.2 Environment variable for i18n
        calcurse can be compiled with native language
        support (see gettext
        library). Thus, if you wish to have messages displayed
        into your native language, first make sure it is available by
        looking at the po/LINGUAS file. 
        This file indicates the set of available languages by showing
        the two-letters corresponding code (for exemple, 
	fr
        stands for french).  If you do not find your language, it
        would be greatly appreciated if you could help translating
        calcurse (see the How to
        contribute? section).
        If your language is available, run
        calcurse with the following command:
LC_ALL=fr_FR calcurse
where fr_FR is the locale name in this exemple, but should be replaced by the locale corresponding to the desired language.
	You should also specify the charset to be used, because in some
	cases the accents and such are not displayed correctly. 
	This charset is indicated at the beginning of the po file 
	corresponding to the desired language. For instance, you can see 
	in the fr.po file that it uses the iso-8859-1 charset, so you 
	could run calcurse using the following command:
LC_ALL=fr_FR.ISO8859-1 calcurse
4.1.3 Other environment variables
	The following environment variables affect the way calcurse
	operates:
- VISUAL
- Specifies the external editor to use for writing notes.
- EDITOR
- If the VISUALenvironment variable is not set, thenEDITORwill be used as the default external editor. If none of those variables are set, then/usr/bin/viis used instead.
- PAGER
- Specifies the default viewer to be used for reading notes. 
	    If this variable is not set, then /usr/bin/lessis used.
4.2 User interface
4.2.1 Non-interactive mode
        When called with at least one of the following arguments:
        -a, -d, -h, 
	-n, -t, -v,
	-x,
        calcurse is started in non-interactive mode.
        This means the desired information will be displayed, and 
        after that, calcurse simply quits and you are 
        driven back to the shell prompt.
        That way, one can add a line such as 
	'calcurse --todo --appointment' 
        in its init config file to display at logon the list of tasks 
        and appointments scheduled for the current day. 
4.2.2 Interactive mode
Note:
        Key bindings that are indicated in this manual correspond to
        the default ones, defined when calcurse is launched
        for the first time. If those key bindings do not suit user's needs,
        it is possible to change them within the keys configuration menu
        (see key bindings).
When called without any argument or only with the
        -c option, calcurse is started in
        interactive mode. In this mode, you are shown an interface
	containing three different panels which you can browse using 
        the 'TAB' key, plus a notification bar and a status bar 
	(see figure below).
 appointment panel---.                                   .---calendar panel
                     |                                   |  
                     v                                   v
 +------------------------------------++----------------------------+
 |          Appointments              ||          Calendar          |
 |------------------------------------||----------------------------|
 |                 (|)  April 6, 2006 ||         April 2006         |
 |                                    ||Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun |
 |                                    ||                      1   2 |
 |                                    ||  3   4   5   6   7   8   9 |
 |                                    || 10  11  12  13  14  15  16 |
 |                                    || 17  18  19  20  21  22  23 |
 |                                    || 24  25  26  27  28  29  30 |
 |                                    ||                            |
 |                                    |+----------------------------+
 |                                    |+----------------------------+
 |                                    ||            ToDo            | todo
 |                                    ||----------------------------| panel
 |                                    ||                            |   |
 |                                    ||                            |   |
 |                                    ||                            |<--.
 |                                    ||                            |
 +------------------------------------++----------------------------+
 |---[ Mon 2006-11-22 | 10:11:43 ]---(apts)----> 01:20 :: lunch <---|<--.
 +------------------------------------------------------------------+ notify-bar
 | ? Help     R Redraw    H/L -/+1 Day      G GoTo       C Config   | 
 | Q Quit     S Save      J/K -/+1 Week   Tab Chg View              |<-. 
 +------------------------------------------------------------------+  |
                                                                       |
                                                                 status bar
        
The first panel represents a calendar which allows to highlight a particular day, the second one contains the list of the events and appointments on that day, and the last one contains a list of tasks to do but which are not assigned to any specific day.
Depending on the selected view, the calendar could either display a monthly (default as shown in previous figure) or weekly view. The weekly view would look like the following:
+------------------------------------+
|              Calendar              |
|----------------------------(# 13)--|
|    Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun     |
|     29  30  31  01  02  03  04     |
|                               <----+--  slice 1: 00:00 to 04:00 AM
|       --  --  --  --  --  --       |
|                               <----+--  slice 2: 04:00 to 08:00 AM
|       --  --  --  --  --  --       |
|                               <----+--  slice 3: 08:00 to 12:00 AM
|    -  --  --  --  --  --  --  -  <-+--  midday
|                               <----+--  slice 4: 12:00 to 04:00 PM
|       --  --  --  --  --  --       |
|                               <----+--  slice 5: 04:00 to 08:00 PM
|       --  --  --  --  --  --       |
|                               <----+--  slice 6: 08:00 to 12:00 PM
+------------------------------------+
        
The current week number is displayed on the top-right side of the panel (# 13 meaning it is the 13th week of the year in the above example). The seven days of the current week are displayed in column. Each day is divided into slices of 4 hours each (6 slices in total, see figure above). A slice will appear in a different color if an appointment falls into the corresponding time-slot.
In the appointment panel, one can notice the '(|)' sign just in front of the date. This indicates the current phase of the moon. Depending on which is the current phase, the following signs can be seen:
- '|)':
- first quarter
- '(|)':
- full moon
- '(|':
- last quarter
- '|':
- new moon
- no sign:
- phase of the moon does not correspond to any of the above ones
At the very bottom of the screen there is a status bar, which indicates the possible actions and the corresponding keystrokes.
Just above this status bar is the notify-bar, which indicates from left to right : the current date, the current time, the calendar file currently in use (apts on the above example, which is the default calendar file, see the following section), and the next appointment within the upcoming 24 hours. Here it says that it will be lunch time in one hour and twenty minutes.
Note: Some actions, such as editing or adding an item, require to type in some text. This is done with the help of the built-in input line editor.
Within this editor, if a line is longer than the screen width, a '>', '*', or '<' character is displayed in the last column indicating that there are more character after, before and after, or before the current position, respectively. The line is scrolled horizontally as necessary.
Moreover, some editing commands are bound to particular control characters. Hereafter are indicated the available editing commands ('^' stands for the control key):
- ^a:
- moves the cursor to the beginning of the input line
- ^b:
- moves the cursor backward
- ^d:
- deletes one character forward
- ^e:
- moves the cursor to the end of the input line
- ^f:
- moves the cursor forward
- ^h:
- deletes one character backward
- ^k:
- deletes the input from the cursor to the end of the line
- ESCAPE:
- cancels the editing
4.3 Background mode
When the daemon mode is enabled in the notification configuration menu
(see Notify-bar settings), calcurse will stay
in background when the user interface is not running. In background mode,
calcurse checks for upcoming appointments and runs the user-defined 
notification command when necessary. When the user interface is started again,
the daemon automatically stops.
calcurse background activity can be logged (set the 
notify-daemon_log variable in the notification configuration
menu), and in that case, information about the daemon
start and stop time, reminders' command launch time, signals received... will be written
in the daemon.log file (see section files).
Using the --status command line option (see section 
Command line arguments), 
one can know if calcurse is currently running in background or not.
If the daemon is running, a message like the following one will be displayed (the pid of
the daemon process will be shown):
calcurse is running in background (pid 14536)
Note:
To stop the daemon, just send the TERM signal to it, using a command such as:
'kill daemon_pid', where daemon_pid is the process id
of the daemon (14536 in the above example).
4.4 calcurse files
        The following structure is created in your $HOME  
	directory (or in the directory you specified with  the  -D  option)
        the first time calcurse is run :
$HOME/.calcurse/
           |___notes/
           |___conf
           |___keys
           |___apts
           |___todo
        
	- notes/:
- this subdirectory contains descriptions of the notes which are attached to appointments, events or todos. One text file is created per note, whose name is built using mkstemp(3) and should be unique, but with no relation with the corresponding item's description.
- conf:
- this file contains the user configuration
- keys:
- this file contains the user-defined key bindings
- apts:
- this file contains all of the events and user's appointments
- todo:
- this file contains the todo list
Note:
        If the logging of calcurse daemon activity was set in the notification
        configuration menu, the extra file daemon.log will appear
        in calcurse data directory. This file contains logs about calcurse activity
        when running in background.
        
4.5 Import/Export capabilities
        The import and export capabilities offered by calcurse
        are described below.
4.5.1 Import
Data in icalendar format as described in the rfc2445 specification (see links section below) can be imported into calcurse. Calcurse ical parser is based on version 2.0 of this specification, but for now on, only a subset of it is supported.
The following icalendar properties are handled by calcurse:
- VTODOitems:
 "PRIORITY", "VALARM", "SUMMARY", "DESCRIPTION"
- VEVENTitems:
 "DTSTART", "DTEND", "DURATION", "RRULE", "EXDATE", "VALARM", "SUMMARY", "DESCRIPTION"
The icalendar "DESCRIPTION" property will be converted into calcurse format by adding a note to the item. If a "VALARM" property is found, the item will be flagged as important and the user will get a notification (this is only applicable to appointments).
Here are the properties that are not implemented:
- negative time durations are not taken into account (item is skipped)
- some recurence frequences are not recognize:
 "SECONDLY" / "MINUTELY" / "HOURLY"
- some recurrence keywords are not recognized 
            (all those starting with 'BY'):
 "BYSECOND" / "BYMINUTE" / "BYHOUR" / "BYDAY" / "BYMONTHDAY"
 "BYYEARDAY" / "BYWEEKNO" / "BYMONTH" / "BYSETPOS"
 plus "WKST"
- the recurrence exception keyword "EXRULE" is not recognized
- timezones are not taken into account
4.5.2 Export
        Two possible export formats are available: ical and 
        pcal (see section Links below
        to find out about those formats). 
4.6 Online help
At any time, the built-in help system can be invoked by pressing the '?' key. Once viewing the help screens, informations on a specific command can be accessed by pressing the keystroke corresponding to that command.
5. Options
	All of the calcurse parameters are configurable from the 
	Configuration menu available when pressing 'C'. You are then 
	driven to a submenu with five possible choices : pressing 'C' 
	again will lead you to the Color scheme configuration, 
	pressing 'L' allows you to choose the layout of the main 
	calcurse screen (in other words, where to put the three 
	different panels on screen), pressing 'G' permits you to choose between
	different general options, pressing 'K' opens the key bindings configuration
        menu, and last you can modify the notify-bar settings by pressing 'N'.
5.1 General options
        These options control calcurse general behavior,
        as described below:
- auto_save(default: yes)
- This option allows to automatically save the user's data 
		(if set to yes) when quitting.
		warning: No data will be automatically saved if auto_saveis set to no. This means the user must press 'S' (for saving) in order to retrieve its modifications.
- periodic_save(default: 0)
- If different from '0', user's data will be automatically
                saved every periodic_save minutes.
                When an automatic save is performed, two asterisks 
                (i.e. '**') will appear on the top right-hand side of the screen).
- confirm_quit(default: yes)
- If set to yes, confirmation is required before 
		quitting, otherwise pressing 'Q' will cause calcurseto quit without prompting for user confirmation.
- confirm_delete(default: yes)
- If this option is set to yes, pressing 'D' for deleting an item (either a todo, appointment, or event), will lead to a prompt asking for user confirmation before removing the selected item from the list. Otherwise, no confirmation will be needed before deleting the item.
- skip_system_dialogs(default: no)
- Setting this option to yes will result in skipping the system dialogs related to the saving and loading of data. This can be useful to speed up the input/output processes.
- skip_progress_bar(default: no)
- If set to yes, this will cause the disappearing of the 
		progress bar which is usually shown when saving data to file. 
		If set to no, this bar will be displayed, together with 
		the name of the file being saved 
		(see section calcursefiles).
- calendar_default_view(default: 0)
- If set to 0, the monthly calendar view will be displayed by default otherwise it is the weekly view that will be displayed.
- week_begins_on_monday(default: yes)
- One can choose between Monday and Sunday as the first day of the
		week. If the option week_begins_on_mondayis set to yes, Monday will be first in the calendar view. Else if the option is set to no, then Sunday will be the first day of the week.
- output_datefmt(default: %D)
- This option indicates the format to be used when displaying dates
                in non-interactive mode. Using the default values, dates are displayed the
                following way: mm/dd/aa.
                You can see all of the possible formats by typing man 3 strftimeinside a terminal.
- input_datefmt(default: 1)
- This option indicates the format that will be used to enter dates in
                calcurse. Four choices are available:
                - mm/dd/yyyy
- dd/mm/yyyy
- yyyy/mm/dd
- yyyy-mm-dd
 
5.2 Key bindings
        One can define it's own keybindings within the 'Keys' configuration
        menu. The default keys look like the one used by the vim
        editor, especially the displacement keys. Anyway, within this
        configuration menu, users can redefine all of the keys available from
        within calcurse's user interface.
To define new keybindings, first highlight the action to which it will apply. Then, delete the actual key binding if necessary, and add a new one. You will then be asked to press the key corresponding to the new binding. It is possible to define more than one key binding for a single action.
An automatic check is performed to see if the new key binding is not already set for another action. In that case, you will be asked to choose a different one. Another check is done when exiting from this menu, to make sure all possible actions have a key associated with it.
The following keys can be used to define bindings:
- lower-case, upper-case letters and numbers, such as 'a', 'Z', '0'
- CONTROL-key followed by one of the above letters
- escape, horizontal tab, and space keys
- arrow keys (up, down, left, and right)
- 'HOME' and 'END' keys
While inside the key configuration menu, an online help is available for each one of the available actions. This help briefly describes what the highlighted action is used for.
5.3 Color themes
	calcurse color theme can be customized to suit user's 
	needs. To change the default theme, the configuration page
	displays possible choices for foreground and background colors.
	Using arrows or calcurse displacement keys to move, and 'X' or space
	to select a color, user can preview the theme which will be applied.
	It is possible to keep the terminal's default colors by selecting the
       corresponding choice in the list.
The chosen color theme will then be applied to the panel borders, to the titles, to the keystrokes, and to general informations displayed inside status bar. A black and white theme is also available, in order to support non-color terminals.
Notes:
        Depending on your terminal type and on the value of the
        $TERM environnement variable, color could or
        could not be supported. An error message will appear if you
        try to change colors whereas your terminal does not support
        this feature.
        If you do know your terminal supports colors but could
        not get calcurse to display them, try to set your
        $TERM variable to another value (such as
        xterm-xfree86 for instance).
        
5.4 Layout configuration
        The layout corresponds to the position of the panels inside
        calcurse screen. The default layout makes the 
        calendar panel to be displayed on the top-right corner of the
        terminal, the todo panel on the bottom-right corner, while the
        appointment panel is displayed on the left hand-side of the
        screen (see the figure in section 
        Interactive mode
        for an exemple of the default layout).
        By choosing another layout in the configuration screen, user
        can customize calcurse appearence to best suit 
        his needs by placing the different panels where needed.
The following option is used to modify the layout configuration:
- layout(default: 0)
- Eight different layouts are to be chosen from (see layout configuration screen for the description of the available layouts).
5.5 Sidebar configuration
The sidebar is the part of the screen which contains two panels: the calendar and, depending on the chosen layout, either the todo list or the appointment list.
The following option is used to change the width of the sidebar:
- side-bar_width(default: 0)
- Width (in percentage, 0 being the minimum width) of the side bar.
5.6 Notify-bar settings
The following options are used to modify the notify-bar behavior:
- notify-bar_show(default: yes)
- This option indicates if you want the notify-bar to be displayed or not.
- notify-bar_date(default: %a %F)
- With this option, you can specify the format to be used to 
	display the current date inside the notification bar. You can
	see all of the possible formats by typing man 3 strftimeinside a terminal.
- notify-bar_time(default: %T)
- With this option, you can specify the format to be used to 
	display the current time inside the notification bar. You can
	see all of the possible formats by typing man 3 strftimeinside a terminal.
- notify-bar_warning(default: 300)
- When there is an appointment which is flagged as 'important'
	within the next 'notify-bar_warning'
	seconds, the display of that appointment inside the notify-bar 
	starts to blink. 
	Moreover, the command defined by the notify-bar_commandoption will be launched. That way, the user is warned and knows there will be soon an upcoming appointment.
- notify-bar_command(default: printf '\a')
- This option indicates which command is to be launched when there is an
	upcoming appointment flagged as 'important'. This command will be
	passed to the user's shell which will interpret it. To know what shell
	must be used, the content of the $SHELLenvironment variable is used. If this variable is not set,/bin/shis used instead.Example: Say the mailcommand is available on the user's system, one can use the following command to get notified by mail of an upcoming appointment (the appointment description will also be mentioned in the mail body):calcurse --next | mail -s "[calcurse] upcoming appointment!" user@host.com
- notify-daemon_enable(default: no)
- If set to yes, daemon mode will be enabled, meaning calcursewill run into background when the user's interface is exited. This will allow the notifications to be launched even when the interface is not running. More details can be found in section 'Background mode'.
- notify-daemon_log(default: no)
- If set to yes, calcursedaemon activity will be logged (see section files).
6. Known bugs
        Incorrect highlighting of items appear when using calcurse 
        black and white theme together with a $TERM 
        variable set to xterm-color.
        To fix this bug, and as advised by Thomas E. Dickey 
        (xterm maintainer), xterm-xfree86 
        should be used instead of xterm-color to set 
        the $TERM variable:
"The xterm-color value for $TERM is a bad choice for XFree86 xterm because it is commonly used for a terminfo entry which happens to not support bce. Use the xterm-xfree86 entry which is distributed with XFree86 xterm (or the similar one distributed with ncurses)."
7. Reporting bugs and feedback
Please send bug reports and feedback to:
calcurse .at. culot .dot. org
or to the author:
frederic .at. culot .dot. org
8. How to contribute?
        If you would like to contribute to the project,
        you can first send your feedback on what you like or dislike,
        and if there are features you miss in calcurse.
        For now on, possible contributions concern the translation
        of calcurse messages and documentation. 
Note:
        any help in getting calcurse
        internationalized would be very welcomed, but before
        contributing, send a mail to
        calcurse-i18n .at. culot .dot. org to know if someone
        already started the translation process into your language.
8.1 Translating documentation
        The doc/ directory of the source package already
        contains translated version of calcurse
        manual. However, if the manual is not yet available into your 
        native language, it would be appreciated if you could help
        translating it.
        To do so, just copy one of the existing manual
        file to manual_XX.html, where XX
        identifies your language. Then translate this newly created
        file and send it to the author (see Reporting
        bugs and feeback), so that it can be included in the
        next calcurse release.
8.2 calcurse i18n
        As already mentioned, gettext utilities are used
        by calcurse to produce multi-lingual
        messages. This section provides informations about how to
        translate those messages into your native language. However,
        this howto is deliberately incomplete, focusing on working
        with gettext for calcurse
        specifically.  For more comprehensive informations or to grasp
        the Big Picture of Native Language Support, you should refer
        to the GNU gettext manual at:
http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/
Basically, three different people get involved in the translation chain: coders, language coordinator, and translators. After a quick overview of how things work, the translator tasks will be described hereafter.
8.2.1 Overview
To be able to display texts in the native language of the user, two steps are required: internationalization (i18n) and localization (l10n).
	
	i18n is about making
        calcurse support multiple languages. It is
        performed by coders, who will mark translatable texts and
        provide a way to display them translated at runtime.
	l10n is
        about making the i18n'ed calcurse adapt to the
        specific language of the user, ie translating the strings
        previously marked by the developers, and setting the
        environment correctly for calcurse to use the
        result of this translation.
        So, translatable strings are first marked by the coders within
        the C source files, then gathered in a template
        file (calcurse.pot - the pot extension
        meaning portable object template). The content of
        this template file is then merged with the translation files
        for each language (fr.po for french, for instance -
        with po standing for portable object, ie
        meant to be read and edited by humans). A given translation
        team will take this file, translate its strings, and send it
        back to the developers. At compilation time, a binary version
        of this file (for efficiency reasons) will be produced
        (fr.mo - mo stands for 
	machine
        object, ie meant to be read by programs), and then
        installed.  Then calcurse will use this file at
        runtime, translating the strings according to the locale
        settings of the user.
8.2.2 Translator tasks
Suppose someone wants to initiate the translation of a new language. Here are the steps to follow:
- First, find out what the locale name is. For instance, for
        french, it is 'fr_FR', or simply 'fr'. This is the value the
        user will have to put in his LC_ALLenvironment variable for software to be translated (see Environment variable for i18n).
- Then, go into the po/ directory, and create a new po-file
        from the template file using the following command: 
        'msginit -i calcurse.pot -o fr.po -l fr --no-translator'If you do not havemsginitinstalled on your system, simply copy the calcurse.pot file to fr.po and edit the header by hand.
Now, having this fr.po file, the translator is ready to begin.
8.2.3 po-files
The format of the po-files is quite simple. Indeed, po-files are made of four things:
- location lines: tells you where the strings can be seen (name of file and line number), in case you need to see a bit of context.
- msgid lines: the strings to translate.
- msgstr lines: the translated strings.
- lines prefixed with '#': comments (some with a special meaning, as we will see below).
Basically, all you have to do is fill the msgstr lines with the translation of the above msgid line.
A few notes:
- Fuzzy strings
- You will meet strings marked with a "#, fuzzy"comment.calcursewon't use the translations of such strings until you do something about them. A string being fuzzy means either that the string has already been translated but has since been changed in the sources of the program, or that this is a new string for whichgettextmade a 'wild guess' for the translation, based on other strings in the file. It means you have to review the translation. Sometimes, the original string has changed just because a typo has been fixed. In this case, you won't have to change anything. But sometimes, the translation will no longer be accurate and needs to be changed. Once you are done and happy with the translation, just remove the"#, fuzzy"line, and the translation will be used again incalcurse.
- c-format strings and special sequences
- Some strings have the following comment: "#, c-format". This tells that parts of the string to translate have a special meaning for the program, and that you should leave them alone. For instance, %-sequences, like"%s". These means thatcalcursewill replace them with another string. So it is important it remains. There are also \-sequences, like\nor\t. Leave them, too. The former represents an end of line, the latter a tabulation.
- Translations can be wrapped
- If lines are too long, you can just break them like this:
        msgid "" "some very long line" "another line"
- po-file header
- At the very beginning of the po-file, the first string form a
        header, where various kind of information has to be filled
        in. Most important one is the charset. It should resemble
        "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8\n"You should also fill in the Last-Translator field, so that potential contributors can contact you if they want to join you in the translation team, or have remarks/typo fixes to give about the translations. You can either just give your name/nick, or add an email address, for exemple:"Last-Translator: Frederic Culot <frederic@culot.org>\n"
- Comments
- Adding comments (lines begining with the '#' character) can be a good way to point out problems or translation difficulties to proofreaders or other members of your team.
- Strings size
- calcurseis a curses/console program, thus it can be heavily dependant on the terminal size (number of columns). You should think about this when translating. Often, a string must fit into a single line (standard length is 80 characters). Don't translate blindly, try to look where your string will be displayed to adapt your translation.
- A few useful tools
- The po-file format is very simple, and the file can be edited
        with a standard text editor.  But if you prefer, there are few
        specialized tools you may find convenient for translating:
           - poEdit( http://www.poedit.org/)
- KBabel( http://i18n.kde.org/tools/kbabel/)
- GTranslator( http://gtranslator.sourceforge.net/)
- Emacspo mode
- Vimpo mode
 
- And finally
- I hope you'll have fun contributing to a more internationalized world. :) If you have any more questions, don't hesitate to contact me at frederic .at. culot .dot. org.
9. Links
This section contains links and references that may be of interest to you.
9.1 calcurse homepage
	The calcurse homepage can be found at 
http://culot.org/calcurse
9.2 calcurse announce list
	If you are interested in the project and want to be warned 
	when a new release comes out, you can subscribe to the 
	calcurse announce list. In doing so, you will 
        receive an email as soon as a new feature appears in 
        calcurse.
To subscribe to this list, send a message to calcurse-announce .at. culot .dot. org with "subscribe" in the subject field.
9.3 calcurse RSS feed
Another possibility to get warned when new releases come out is to follow the RSS feed at:
http://culot.org/calcurse/news_rss.xml
This RSS feed is updated each time a new version of calcurse is available, describing newly added features.
9.4 Other links
You may want to look at the ical format specification (rfc2445) at:
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2445
The pcal project page can be found at:
http://pcal.sourceforge.net/
10. Thanks
Its time now to thank other people without whom this program would not exist! So here is a list of contributing persons I would like to thank :
- Alex for its patches, help and advices with Cprogramming
- Gwen for testing and general discussions about how to 
	improve calcurse
- Herbert for packaging calcursefor FreeBSD
- Zul for packaging calcursefor NetBSD
- Wain, Steffen and Ronald for packaging calcursefor Archlinux
- Kevin, Ryan, and fEnIo for packaging calcursefor Debian and Ubuntu
- Pascal for packaging calcursefor Slackware
- Alexandre and Markus for packaging calcursefor Mac OsX and Darwin
- Igor for packaging calcursefor ALT Linux
- Joel for its calendar script which inspired calcursecalendar view
- Michael Schulz and Chris M. for the german translation of
	calcurseand its manual
- Jose Lopez for the spanish translation of
	calcurseand its manual
- Neil Williams for the english translation
- Leandro Noferini for the italian translation
- Tony for its patch which helped improving the recur_item_inday() function, and for implementing the date format configuration options
- Jeremy Roon for the dutch translation
- Erik Saule for its patch implementing the '-N', '-s', '-S', '-r' and '-D' flags
- people who write softwares I like and which inspired me, 
	especially :
		- vimfor the displacement keys
- orpheusand- abookfor documentation
- pineand- aptitudefor the text user interface
- tmuxfor coding style
 
        And last, many many thanks to all of the calcurse
        users who sent me their feedback.