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(elisp)Diary Customizing

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Customizing the Diary
=====================

   Ordinarily, the mode line of the diary buffer window indicates any
holidays that fall on the date of the diary entries.  The process of
checking for holidays can take several seconds, so including holiday
information delays the display of the diary buffer noticeably.  If you'd
prefer to have a faster display of the diary buffer but without the
holiday information, set the variable `holidays-in-diary-buffer' to
`nil'.

   The variable `number-of-diary-entries' controls the number of days
of diary entries to be displayed at one time.  It affects the initial
display when `view-diary-entries-initially' is `t', as well as the
command `M-x diary'.  For example, the default value is 1, which says
to display only the current day's diary entries.  If the value is 2,
both the current day's and the next day's entries are displayed.  The
value can also be a vector of seven elements: for example, if the value
is `[0 2 2 2 2 4 1]' then no diary entries appear on Sunday, the
current date's and the next day's diary entries appear Monday through
Thursday, Friday through Monday's entries appear on Friday, while on
Saturday only that day's entries appear.

   The variable `print-diary-entries-hook' is a normal hook run after
preparation of a temporary buffer containing just the diary entries
currently visible in the diary buffer.  (The other, irrelevant diary
entries are really absent from the temporary buffer; in the diary
buffer, they are merely hidden.)  The default value of this hook does
the printing with the command `lpr-buffer'.  If you want to use a
different command to do the printing, just change the value of this
hook.  Other uses might include, for example, rearranging the lines into
order by day and time.

   You can customize the form of dates in your diary file, if neither
the standard American nor European styles suits your needs, by setting
the variable `diary-date-forms'.  This variable is a list of patterns
for recognizing a date.  Each date pattern is a list whose elements may
be regular expressions (Note: Regular Expressions) or the symbols
`month', `day', `year', `monthname', and `dayname'.  All these elements
serve as patterns that match certain kinds of text in the diary file.
In order for the date pattern, as a whole, to match, all of its
elements must match consecutively.

   A regular expression in a date pattern matches in its usual fashion,
using the standard syntax table altered so that `*' is a word
constituent.

   The symbols `month', `day', `year', `monthname', and `dayname' match
the month number, day number, year number, month name, and day name of
the date being considered.  The symbols that match numbers allow
leading zeros; those that match names allow three-letter abbreviations
and capitalization.  All the symbols can match `*'; since `*' in a
diary entry means "any day", "any month", and so on, it should match
regardless of the date being considered.

   The default value of `diary-date-forms' in the American style is
this:

     ((month "/" day "[^/0-9]")
      (month "/" day "/" year "[^0-9]")
      (monthname " *" day "[^,0-9]")
      (monthname " *" day ", *" year "[^0-9]")
      (dayname "\\W"))

   The date patterns in the list must be _mutually exclusive_ and must
not match any portion of the diary entry itself, just the date and one
character of whitespace.  If, to be mutually exclusive, the pattern
must match a portion of the diary entry text--beyond the whitespace
that ends the date--then the first element of the date pattern _must_
be `backup'.  This causes the date recognizer to back up to the
beginning of the current word of the diary entry, after finishing the
match.  Even if you use `backup', the date pattern must absolutely not
match more than a portion of the first word of the diary entry.  The
default value of `diary-date-forms' in the European style is this list:

     ((day "/" month "[^/0-9]")
      (day "/" month "/" year "[^0-9]")
      (backup day " *" monthname "\\W+\\<[^*0-9]")
      (day " *" monthname " *" year "[^0-9]")
      (dayname "\\W"))

Notice the use of `backup' in the third pattern, because it needs to
match part of a word beyond the date itself to distinguish it from the
fourth pattern.