AC.10 The Diary

The Emacs diary keeps track of appointments or other events on a daily basis, in conjunction with the calendar. To use the diary feature, you must first create a diary file containing a list of events and their dates. Then Emacs can automatically pick out and display the events for today, for the immediate future, or for any specified date.

By default, Emacs uses `~/diary' as the diary file. This is the same file that the calendar utility uses. A sample `~/diary' file is:

12/22/1988 Twentieth wedding anniversary!! &1/1. Happy New Year! 10/22 Ruth's birthday. * 21, *: Payday Tuesday--weekly meeting with grad students at 10am Supowit, Shen, Bitner, and Kapoor to attend. 1/13/89 Friday the thirteenth!! &thu 4pm squash game with Lloyd. mar 16 Dad's birthday April 15, 1989 Income tax due. &* 15 time cards due.

This example uses extra spaces to align the event descriptions of most of the entries. Such formatting is purely a matter of taste.

Although you probably will start by creating a diary manually, Emacs provides a number of commands to let you view, add, and change diary entries.

AC.10.1 Commands Displaying Diary Entries		Viewing diary entries and associated calendar dates.
AC.10.2 The Diary File		Entering events in your diary.
AC.10.3 Date Formats		Various ways you can specify dates.
AC.10.4 Commands to Add to the Diary		Commands to create diary entries.
AC.10.5 Special Diary Entries		Anniversaries, blocks of dates, cyclic entries, etc.