Using Org-Mode With the Gnome 3 Calendar

Question

Gnome 3 has a beautiful calendar panel that drops down from the menu bar, and includes a space for your upcoming appointments. By default this appointment manager reads from the calendar in Evolution Mail. I was curious as to whether it's possible to get it working with Org-Mode. I know Evolution can import .ics files and Org-Mode can write them, so that's a start. Does anyone have thoughts as to how you might (a) get the Gnome 3 Calendar working directly with Org-Mode, or (b) set up an efficient sync between Org-Mode and Evolution Mail's calendar, such that it would be reflected in the Gnome 3 Calendar panel?

Answer 1

I assume you already use the org-agenda. What you are looking for is org-write-agenda to get the exported ics file. I'd wrap that function with your own custom sync-cal function. sync-call should go ahead write the agenda /tmp and then you should issue some shell commands (see start-process) to sync with Evolution (how to do that, I do not know). Now, you maybe want to hook your sync-cal function to some file save functions and run it depending on the file name.

Hacky, but that's how I'd do it if I'd use Gnome.

Answer 2

An idea that occurred to me later in the day—a bit circuitous, but possible—is to go through Google Calendar. There are existing Org-Mode scripts for writing to Google Calendar, and a standard procedure in Evolution Mail for reading from Google Calendar. So if you don't mind going through a third party or having calendar updates depend on Internet access, it should be possible to sync through Google. It's not an elegant solution, but it's at least well documented.

Answer 3

For synchronisation between Evolution and a dedicated org file (one-way only, for now), here's a Python script: org-agenda-evolution.

(Disclaimer: (1) I am the author, (2) as of 2022-08, the tool lacks a configuration system, so right now you may have to tweak some top-level constants in the source to make it work for your org-mode setup.)