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(emacs)Appointments

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Appointments
============

   If you have a diary entry for an appointment, and that diary entry
begins with a recognizable time of day, Emacs can warn you several
minutes beforehand that that appointment is pending.  Emacs alerts you
to the appointment by displaying a message in the mode line.

   To enable appointment notification, you must enable the time display
feature of Emacs, `M-x display-time' (Note: Mode Line).  You must
also add the function `appt-make-list' to the `diary-hook', like this:

     (add-hook 'diary-hook 'appt-make-list)

Adding this text to your `.emacs' file does the whole job:

     (display-time)
     (add-hook 'diary-hook 'appt-make-list)
     (diary 0)

   With these preparations done, when you display the diary (either with
the `d' command in the calendar window or with the `M-x diary'
command), it sets up an appointment list of all the diary entries found
with recognizable times of day, and reminds you just before each of
them.

   For example, suppose the diary file contains these lines:

     Monday
       9:30am Coffee break
      12:00pm Lunch

Then on Mondays, after you have displayed the diary, you will be
reminded at 9:20am about your coffee break and at 11:50am about lunch.

   You can write times in am/pm style (with `12:00am' standing for
midnight and `12:00pm' standing for noon), or 24-hour European/military
style.  You need not be consistent; your diary file can have a mixture
of the two styles.

   Emacs updates the appointments list automatically just after
midnight.  This also displays the next day's diary entries in the diary
buffer, unless you set `appt-display-diary' to `nil'.

   You can also use the appointment notification facility like an alarm
clock.  The command `M-x appt-add' adds entries to the appointment list
without affecting your diary file.  You delete entries from the
appointment list with `M-x appt-delete'.

   You can turn off the appointment notification feature at any time by
setting `appt-issue-message' to `nil'.