6.8 Email Based Diary
This section describes a special
mail back end called nndiary, and its companion
library gnus-diary. It is “special” in
the sense that it is not meant to be one of the standard
alternatives for reading mail with Gnus. See Choosing
a Mail Back End for that. Instead, it is used to treat
some of your mails in a special way, namely, as event
reminders.
Here is a typical scenario:
- You've got a date with Andy Mc Dowell or Bruce Willis
(select according to your sexual preference) in one month. You
don't want to forget it.
- So you send a “reminder” message (actually, a
diary one) to yourself.
- You forget all about it and keep on getting and reading new
mail, as usual.
- From time to time, as you type `g' in the group buffer and
as the date is getting closer, the message will pop up again to
remind you of your appointment, just as if it were new and
unread.
- Read your “new” messages, this one included,
and start dreaming again of the night you're gonna have.
- Once the date is over (you actually fell asleep just after
dinner), the message will be automatically deleted if it is
marked as expirable.
The Gnus Diary back end has the ability to handle regular
appointments (that wouldn't ever be deleted) as well as punctual
ones, operates as a real mail back end and is configurable in
many ways. All of this is explained in the sections below.