7.8 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.