AutoHotkey Community

keyboardfreak · Joined: 09 Oct 2004 Posts: 216 Location: Budapest, Hungary

I use a calendar to schedule various tasks and I always wanted a desktop popup for due tasks with the ability to add the tasks immediately to a todo list, so when I acknowledge the notification, the popup disappears and the tasks is added to my todo items. Furthermore, I like to see a permanent indicator on the screen if I have pending todo items.

That's what this script does. It's pretty much does what I want and I don't plan many more improvements, so I put it here as is, if someone's interested.

The script also provides an effortless way to add new items to the calendar using the Quick Add syntax of Google Calendar. The Quick Add format is so easy and effortless to use that I even use it to schedule trivial tasks at home for which I wouldn't use a calendar otherwise. E.g. "walk the dog 5pm"

The script is completely keyboard driven:

pause shows the todo list if there are items.

pause again shows the quick add dialog which can be used to add calendar items or regular todo items

in the quickadd dialog enter adds the typed item, esc cancels the dialog. It will be a calendar item if the last word contains a number (e.g. "do something 4pm" - see the quickadd syntax), otherwise it will be a regular todo item. In case of a calendar item if the item text contains the word "silent" then no msgbox is shown when the entry is due and it is added silently to the todo list.

delete deletes items from the list.

insert can be used to quickly reschedule an exitsing item, so it disappears from the list until its time comes again.

If the script is called with a parameter then it fetches new items from the calendar when started. It also fetches new items every time when a new calendar item is added.

bnbn2000 · Joined: 10 Jul 2006 Posts: 6

I also want on of this. Thanks!

cedardoc · Guest

Has anyone got this to work on windows 7? I tried it with python 2.6 and 3.0 and get the same error "Error when contacting server Errorlevel: ERROR"

or, has anyone come across another script to do quick adds to google calendar without opening the browser?

(I'd love to be able to use this!)

keyboardfreak · Joined: 09 Oct 2004 Posts: 216 Location: Budapest, Hungary

cedardoc · Guest

keyboardfreak · Joined: 09 Oct 2004 Posts: 216 Location: Budapest, Hungary

keyboardfreak · Joined: 09 Oct 2004 Posts: 216 Location: Budapest, Hungary

I'm getting very used to the fact there is an instant google calendar quickadd dialog accessible from anywhere. It's very easy to juggle your tasks with it and send yourself quick reminders as Gina Trapani describes in this article:

http://lifehacker.com/127823/geek-to-live--tickle-yourself-with-yahoo-calendar

She uses Yahoo Calendar, but the concept is the same.

shajul · Joined: 15 Sep 2006 Posts: 564

this is my errorlog file..

keyboardfreak · Joined: 09 Oct 2004 Posts: 216 Location: Budapest, Hungary

keyboardfreak · Joined: 09 Oct 2004 Posts: 216 Location: Budapest, Hungary

The great thing in a calendar-based todo list is that it's very easy to hide tasks which you cannot work on at the moment and get notified when the task is due again.

To streamline the process even more I added two small improvements to the reschedule/postpone feature:

1. The default date for reschedule is tomorrow at the same time the task was scheduled originally, so you can quickly postpone the task by a day. Of course, the date can be modified to anything you want, it's just the default.

2. The date/time part is highlighted automatically in the quickadd dialog when the task is rescheduled, so you can easily overwrite it by simply typing a new time (e.g. 4pm) if you only want to postpone the task by a few hours.

See the updated script in the first post.

keyboardfreak · Joined: 09 Oct 2004 Posts: 216 Location: Budapest, Hungary

Until now the user had to choose when adding a new item if the item is a calendar item or a normal item. This was not convenient and as it turned out it was unnecessary too.

From now on the quickadd dialog is a single input field. If the user types an item in which the last word contains a number (e.g. walk the dog 4pm) then it will be handled as a calendar item and it is added to the calendar.

Otherwise, it will be handled as a regular item and added to the todo list immediately (e.g. empty trashcan).

So the only rule is the last word must contain a number, but it is always true for calendar items and not usual for normal todo items.

If you specify the day too then make sure you write it before the time and everything will be OK. E.g. instead of "walk the dog 4pm friday" write "walk the dog friday 4pm"

See the updated script in the first post.

keyboardfreak · Joined: 09 Oct 2004 Posts: 216 Location: Budapest, Hungary

Sometimes when we can't deal with a task we reschedule it to a later time, so that it disappears from the current todo list. If we do that and the task is not time sensitive then popping up a msgbox is not always needed when the task is due again, since we don't need a new notification we only want the task on the todo list now that we can deal with it.

I added support for this by cheking if the task description contains the word "silent". If it does then the task is added to the todo list automatically when it's due again. No questions asked.

See the updated script in the first post.

keyboardfreak · Joined: 09 Oct 2004 Posts: 216 Location: Budapest, Hungary

The silent option mentioned in the previous post proved to be useful, but it's too verbose, so from now on if an entry ends with " s" (before the time specification) then it is considered silent.