This is NXCalendar.txt in view mode; [Download] [Up]
Remember an Important Meeting with calendar.
Eric "E.T." Tremblay
May 23, 1992
Have your memory cells ever let you down? Did you ever miss an
important meeting or anniversary? I'm sure you answered yes to at least one
of the above questions. So what are you going to do about it? You can go on
as you did before or you can use your NeXT to help you get organized. What
you need is already in your machine the only thing holding you back from
using it is knowing that it's there. This little Unix utility is called calendar and
it's a part of every NeXT computer.
What does calendar do for you? It looks for a calendar text file in your
local directory, and if it finds the file it looks therein for today's date. If it finds
a line with the current date, it will send you electronic mail containing the
corresponding message.Found below is a simple example of the calendar
text file.
# Example of a calendar file located in a users local directory.
# This calendar file belongs to Joe Blow.
# This is a remark statement.
January 10 This is the message that will be sent in the e-mail.
May 23 This is another message that will be sent...
September 19 Happy birthday John!
You can make your text file as big as you want and include as many events
as you wish. The only rule you have to follow are that the date be in the above
format, you can use wildcards etc. Consult the Unix documentation using
the Digital Librarian with the keyword calendar for further details about the
format of the file.
Once your calendar file is ready, you most likely want your reminders to be
sent automatically. Well, that is not hard to do either. What you have to do is
modify a file called rc.local found in the /etc directory. What this modification
will do is that every time you power-up your NeXT, it will execute this script
which in turn will execute the calendar command. If your NeXT computer is
always on you need to execute the calendar command using another method.
Please consult Digital Librarian with the keyword crontab. The difference is
that when the NeXT is always on it would be more appropriate to execute
calendar command at a specific time on each day using the crontab file.
Here's an example of what the file called rc.local found in the /etc directory
looks like. What you have to do is load the rc.local file in a text editor and add
the "calendar -" command to the script. Then save the edited file and the next
time you boot your NeXT you will receive and electronic mail reminding you
of a special event. (If you have an event for that day of coarse.)
/etc/rc.local
#
# This script is for augmenting the standard startup commands. It is
# executed automatically by the system during boot up.
#
# In its released form, this script does nothing. you may customize
# it to your heart's content.
#
etc...
#
# Run you own commands here
#
(echo '.') >/dev/console
# calendar utility added here
calendar -
# It is very important to include the "-" sign after the calendar
# command
I hope that this article will help you take advantage of a very useful
command found in Unix library and make you more productive using your
NeXT computer
This article appeared in the magazine called InterFace Volume 4 No.7 August
1992 published by Le Club MacIntosh de Montreal 2250 rue Guy, suite 303
Montreal (Quebec) H3H 2N2.
These are the contents of the former NiCE NeXT User Group NeXTSTEP/OpenStep software archive, currently hosted by Netfuture.ch.