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2-cent Tip: command line calendar with cal

Mulyadi Santosa [mulyadi.santosa at gmail.com]


Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:51:50 +0700

A quick way to show current month's calendar is by executing "cal" command. By default, it will show current month calendar.

Should you need to show calendar of certain month and year, simply type it as parameter. For example:

$ cal 1 1979
will show you calendar of January 1979

regards,

Mulyadi.


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Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]


Mon, 10 Nov 2008 15:54:34 -0500

On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 12:51:50AM +0700, Mulyadi Santosa wrote:

> A quick way to show current month's calendar is by executing "cal"
> command. By default, it will show current month calendar.
> 
> Should you need to show calendar of certain month and year, simply
> type it as parameter. For example:
> $ cal 1 1979
> will show you calendar of January 1979

'gcal' does the above plus much more:

  Gcal displays  hybrid  and  proleptic  Julian  and  Gregorian  calendar
  sheets,  respectively, for one month, three months or a whole year.  It
  also displays eternal holiday  lists  for  many  countries  around  the
  globe,  and  features a very powerful creation of fixed date lists that
  can be used for reminding purposes.  Gcal can calculate various  astro‐
  nomical  data  and  times  of  the Sun and the Moon for at pleasure any
  location, precisely enough for most civil purposes.  Gcal supports some
  other  calendar systems, for example the Chinese and Japanese calendar,
  the Hebrew calendar and the civil Islamic calendar, too.
 
  If Gcal is started without any options or commands, a calendar  of  the
  current month is displayed.

One thing I've always liked about it is that today's date is highlighted.

-- 
* Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *


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Thomas Adam [thomas.adam22 at gmail.com]


Mon, 10 Nov 2008 21:18:43 +0000

2008/11/10 Ben Okopnik <[email protected]>:

> One thing I've always liked about it is that today's date is
> highlighted.

FWIW, that happens with plain "cal", too.

-- Thomas Adam


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Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]


Mon, 10 Nov 2008 19:21:48 -0500

On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 09:18:43PM +0000, Thomas Adam wrote:

> 2008/11/10 Ben Okopnik <[email protected]>:
> > One thing I've always liked about it is that today's date is
> > highlighted.
> 
> FWIW, that happens with plain "cal", too.

Interesting. As I recall, the reason that I started using 'gcal' over 'cal' is that, at the time, it was a distinct difference between the two.

-- 
* Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *


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Jim Jackson [jj at franjam.org.uk]


Tue, 11 Nov 2008 15:52:28 +0000 (GMT)

On Mon, 10 Nov 2008, Ben Okopnik wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 09:18:43PM +0000, Thomas Adam wrote:
>> 2008/11/10 Ben Okopnik <[email protected]>:
>>> One thing I've always liked about it is that today's date is
>>> highlighted.
>>
>> FWIW, that happens with plain "cal", too.
>
> Interesting. As I recall, the reason that I started using 'gcal' over
> 'cal' is that, at the time, it was a distinct difference between the
> two.

Yeah I remember that too. But now the only difference I see is gcal's current month is indented by a space, whereas cal is flush upto the left :-) Style guru's will no doubt argue about the aesthetics.

I have tried to come to grips with the gcalrc configuration for diary/events etc. But I've found the documentation to be difficult and not always matching what actually happens. Of course it may just be me being thick. But if anyone knows of a good tutorial, I'd love to retry.


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Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]


Tue, 11 Nov 2008 20:21:04 -0500

On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 03:52:28PM +0000, Jim Jackson wrote:

> On Mon, 10 Nov 2008, Ben Okopnik wrote:
> 
> > Interesting. As I recall, the reason that I started using 'gcal' over
> > 'cal' is that, at the time, it was a distinct difference between the
> > two.
> 
> Yeah I remember that too. But now the only difference I see is gcal's 
> current month is indented by a space, whereas cal is flush upto the left 
> :-) Style guru's will no doubt argue about the aesthetics.
gcal|sed 's/^ //'

There. Difference all gone. :)

> I have tried to come to grips with the gcalrc configuration for 
> diary/events etc. But I've found the documentation to be difficult and not 
> always matching what actually happens. Of course it may just be me being 
> thick. But if anyone knows of a good tutorial, I'd love to retry.

Unfortunately, I have to agree: gcal's documentation demonstrates the pitfalls of the Unix "here-a-doc, there-a-doc, everywhere-a-doc" method (this is, fortunately, a very rare case; most packages are nowhere nearly this confusing.) The man page is misleadingly short, and the doc directory (/usr/share/doc/gcal) is mind-bendingly irrelevant. I.e., unless you already know how the .gcalrc files work, you will not learn it from there - and any hints on where to search for that information have been carefully destroyed and their corpses buried in the deepest forest at darkest midnight.

'info gcal' is - ta-daa! - full of stuff. And I mean FULL. After you wade through a huge list of seemingly useless entries, you'll get to juicy-sounding bits like "Resource file configuration"... only to find out that you can't make any sense of it without all of the foregoing (a mass of documentation read only by those for whom "War and Peace" seemed too laconic and devoid of detail.)

I'm sure that the author had good intentions when writing all of that, but between the hyper-verbose style, the scattered and fractured nature of the docs, and his somewhat non-standard English, it's difficult to say the least. Add in the fact that 'gcal' really is capable of some unbelievably complicated stuff - i.e., requires tons of complex options - and you're instantly swimming with the sharks.

Despite all of that, I still like it for the small subset of features that I use.

-- 
* Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *


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Rick Moen [rick at linuxmafia.com]


Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:35:21 -0800

Quoting Ben Okopnik ([email protected]):

> 'info gcal' is - ta-daa! - full of stuff. And I mean FULL.

Haha. Of course. The letter "g" does not stand for "generally known locations for information", you know. It stands for Gfree Gsoftware Gfoundation's Ggargantuan Gpiles Gof Gdocumentation Gin GGNU Ginfo Gformat. And we love their "info" fixation. We really do.


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Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]


Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:33:08 -0500

On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 05:35:21PM -0800, Rick Moen wrote:

> Quoting Ben Okopnik ([email protected]):
> 
> > 'info gcal' is - ta-daa! - full of stuff. And I mean FULL.
> 
> Haha.  Of course.  The letter "g" does not stand for "generally known
> locations for information", you know.  It stands for Gfree Gsoftware
> Gfoundation's Ggargantuan Gpiles Gof Gdocumentation Gin GGNU Ginfo Gformat.  

[*Gag*]

> And we love their "info" fixation.  We really do.

I'll admit, it took me a while to remember that I could look there - even though I've been guilty of recommending it as an information source in the past... despite the fact that it's used only by Venusians on left-handed Tuesdays during riots caused by falling coffee prices. In this one case, it was the right place to look - but only by accident.

-- 
* Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *


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Jim Jackson [jj at franjam.org.uk]


Wed, 12 Nov 2008 10:35:53 +0000 (GMT)

On Tue, 11 Nov 2008, Ben Okopnik wrote:

>> Yeah I remember that too. But now the only difference I see is gcal's
>> current month is indented by a space, whereas cal is flush upto the left
>> :-) Style guru's will no doubt argue about the aesthetics.
>
> ``
> gcal|sed 's/^ //'
> ''
>
> There. Difference all gone. :)

:-) style gurus subdued

And I'm really glad of the comments below (sorry for sort of top posting). I really did think it was just me not getting it. Good to know I'm not on my own.

[[[ I took the liberty of taking out the uncommented-on remainder. -- Kat ]]]


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