31 The Calendar and the Diary

Emacs provides the functions of a desk calendar, with a diary of planned or past events. It also has facilities for managing your appointments, and keeping track of how much time you spend working on certain projects.

To enter the calendar, type M-x calendar. This displays a three-month calendar centered on the current month, with point on the current date. With a numeric argument, as in C-u M-x calendar, it prompts you for the month and year to be the center of the three-month calendar. The calendar uses its own buffer, whose major mode is Calendar mode.

mouse-3 in the calendar brings up a menu of operations on a particular date; mouse-2 brings up a menu of commonly used calendar features that are independent of any particular date. To exit the calendar, type q.

• Calendar Motion		Moving through the calendar; selecting a date.
• Scroll Calendar		Bringing earlier or later months onto the screen.
• Counting Days		How many days are there between two dates?
• General Calendar		Exiting or recomputing the calendar.
• Writing Calendar Files		Writing calendars to files of various formats.
• Holidays		Displaying dates of holidays.
• Sunrise/Sunset		Displaying local times of sunrise and sunset.
• Lunar Phases		Displaying phases of the moon.
• Other Calendars		Converting dates to other calendar systems.
• Diary		Displaying events from your diary.
• Daylight Saving		How to specify when daylight saving time is active.
• Time Intervals		Keeping track of time intervals.
• Advanced Calendar/Diary Usage		Advanced Calendar/Diary customization.