130 lines
4.7 KiB
Markdown
130 lines
4.7 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "Calcurse Notifications"
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description: "Configuring descriptive and attractive notifications for calcurse"
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cover: /assets/pngs/calendar.png
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date: 2020-05-13T22:23:25-04:00
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categories:
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- Technology
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tags:
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- Calcurse
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- CLI
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- Notifications
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- 100 Days To Offload
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---
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I recently started using [calcurse](https://github.com/lfos/calcurse)
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for my calendar and one of its limitations is good notification support
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in the generally accepted meaning of the word. The developer has [a
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different
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opinion](https://github.com/lfos/calcurse/issues/285#issuecomment-620841221)
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and that's perfectly alright but traditional notifications are a feature
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I heavily rely on and calcurse doesn't handle handle them very well; it
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leaves the user to figure something out on their own. Inspired by [one
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individual's
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issue,](https://github.com/lfos/calcurse/issues/286#issue-608118188) I
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did just that.
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A quick glance at `man calcurse` reveals this section:
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``` text
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-n, --next
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Print the first appointment within the next 24 hours. The
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printed time is the number of hours and minutes left before
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this appointment.
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```
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The output of running `calcurse -n`, for me and at the moment, looks
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like this:
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``` text
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❯ calcurse -n
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next appointment:
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[17:25] DnD on Mumble
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```
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It's all well and good but not really something you'd want in a
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notification; it needs to be filtered down so it only shows the name of
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the event, `DnD on Mumble`. To do this, I turned to the man pages of
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standard CLI utilities `tail` and `cut`. `tail` allows us to filter the
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output to only the last line[^1] with `tail -1`. `cut` is a little more
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complicated but will allow us to remove the first few columns of text.
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`cut -d ' ' -f 5-` is the next snippet in this one-liner. `-d ' '` tells
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cut to use a single space as the delimiter, `-f` specifies the fields to
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keep, and `-5` says to use all fields starting with the 5th because
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there are a few spaces preceding the content we want. Chain all of this
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mess together with pipes and we get:
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``` bash
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calcurse -n | tail -1 | cut -d ' ' -f 5-
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```
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Great. Now we need to actually get a notification containing the
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resulting string. This can be achieved by storing it in a variable then
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using it with `notify-send`. You likely already have `notify-send`
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installed if you're using Linux but, if you don't, I would recommend
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looking around to see what's default and using that instead.
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``` bash
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CONT="$(calcurse -n | tail -1 | cut -d ' ' -f 5- -)" && notify-send "Calcurse Event" "$CONT"
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```
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Now we're actually getting somewhere. With my setup, the notification
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looks like this: 
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It's certainly passable and sufficient for some but I'd like an icon so
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I can see what the notification is for out of the corner of my eye and
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decide whether or not to glance over. Thankfully, `notify-send` has this
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built in with the `-i` flag.
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``` text
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-i, --icon=ICON[,ICON...]
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Specifies an icon filename or stock icon to display.
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```
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Now it's just a matter of figuring out what icon to use. You can
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certainly pass the path of whatever image you want to it, such as
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`~/Pictures/calendar-icon.png`, but I want something that fits in with
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the rest of my icons. These are found in:
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``` bash
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/usr/share/icons/<theme>/it/depends/on/theme
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```
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I use [Suru++ Dark](https://github.com/gusbemacbe/suru-plus-dark) and
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the icon I'm using can be found at:
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``` bash
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/usr/share/icons/Suru++-Dark/apps/32@2x/calendar.svg
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```
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It's different for Adwaita and all the rest though; you'll have to do
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some digging. It's also worth noting that, if you don't have this theme
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installed on another device, the icon won't show up.
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After all that, here's my notification command and a screenshot.
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``` bash
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CONT="$(calcurse -n | tail -1 | cut -d ' ' -f 5-)" && notify-send -i /usr/share/icons/Suru++-Dark/apps/32@2x/calendar.svg "Calcurse Event" "$CONT"
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```
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---
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This was posted as part of
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[#100DaysToOffload,](https://100daystooffload.com/) an [awesome
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idea](https://fosstodon.org/@kev/104053977554016690) from [Kev
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Quirk.](https://kevq.uk/) If you want to participate, just write
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something every day for 100 days and post a link on social media with
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the hashtag!
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[^1]: The opposite of `tail` is `head` and allows for exactly the same
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thing in reverse: `head -1` will return the first line of whatever
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input it's given.
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