KHAL(1)

NAME
khal - khal Documentation

Khal is a calendar program for the terminal for viewing, adding and editing events and calendars. Khal is build on the iCalendar and vdir (allowing the use of vdirsyncer(1) for CalDAV compatibility) standards.

USAGE

Khal offers a set of commands, most importantly list, calendar, interactive, new, printcalendars, printformats, and search. See below for a description of what every command does. khal does currently not support any default command, i.e., run a command, even though none has been specified. This is intentional.

  Options

khal (without any commands) has some options to print some information about khal:

--version
    Prints khal's version number and exits

-h, --help
    Prints a summary of khal's options and commands and then exits

    Several options are common to almost all of khal's commands (exceptions are described below):

-v, --verbosity LVL
    Configure verbosity (e.g. print debugging information), LVL needs to be one of CRITICAL, ERROR, WARNING, INFO, or DEBUG.

-l, --logfile LOFILE
    Use logfile LOGFILE for logging, default is logging to stdout.

-c CONFIGFILE
    Use an alternate configuration file.

-a CALENDAR
    Specify a calendar to use (which must be configured in the configuration file), can be used several times. Calendars not specified will be disregarded for this run.

-d CALENDAR
    Specify a calendar which will be disregarded for this run, can be used several times.

--color/--no-color
    khal will detect if standard output is not a tty, e.g., you redirect khal's output into a file, and if so remove all highlighting/coloring from its output. Use --color if you want to force highlighting/coloring and --no-color if you want coloring always removed.

--format FORMAT
    For all of khal's commands that print events, the formatting of that event can be specified with this option. FORMAT is a template string, in which identifiers delimited by curly braces ({}) will be expanded to an event's properties. FORMAT supports all formatting options offered by python's str.format() <https://docs.python.org/3/library/string.html#formatstrings> (as it is used internally). The available template options are:

title
    The title of the event.

description
    The description of the event.

start
    The start datetime in datetimeformat.

start-long
    The start datetime in longdatetimeformat.

start-date
    The start date in dateformat.

start-date-long
    The start date in longdateformat.

start-time
    The start time in timeformat.

end The end datetime in datetimeformat.

end-long
    The end datetime in longdatetimeformat.

end-date
    The end date in dateformat.

end-date-long
    The end date in longdateformat.

end-time
    The end time in timeformat.

repeat-symbol
    A repeating symbol (loop arrow) if the event is repeating.

description
    The event description.

description-separator
    A separator: " :: " that appears when there is a description.

location
    The event location.

calendar
    The calendar name.

calendar-color
    Changes the output color to the calendar's color.

start-style
    The start time in timeformat OR an appropriate symbol.

to-style
    A hyphen "-" or nothing such that it appropriately fits between start-style and end-style.

end-style
    The end time in timeformat OR an appropriate symbol.

start-end-time-style
    A concatenation of start-style, to-style, and end-style OR an appropriate symbol.

end-necessary
    For an allday event this is an empty string unless the end date and start date are different. For a non-allday event this will show the time or the datetime if the event start and end date are different.

end-necessary-long
    Same as end-necessary but uses datelong and datetimelong.

status
    The status of the event (if this event has one), something like CONFIRMED or CANCELLED.

cancelled
    The string CANCELLED (plus one blank) if the event's status is cancelled, otherwise nothing.

organizer
    The organizer of the event. If the format has CN then it returns "CN (email)" if CN does not exist it returns just the email string. Example: ORGANIZER;CN=Name Surname:mailto:name@mail.com returns Name Surname (name@mail.com) and if it has no CN attribute it returns the last element after the colon: ORGANIZER;SENT-BY="mailto:toemail@mail.com":mailto:name@mail.com returns name@mail.com

    By default, all-day events have no times. To see a start and end time anyway simply add -full to the end of any template with start/end, for instance start-time becomes start-time-full and will always show start and end times (instead of being empty for all-day events).

    In addition, there are colors: black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, white (and their bold versions: red-bold, etc.). There is also reset, which clears the styling, and bold, which is the normal bold.

    A few control codes are exposed. You can access newline (nl), 'tab', and 'bell'. Control codes, such as nl, are best used with --list mode.

    Below is an example command which prints the title and description of all events today.

    khal list --format "{title} {description}"

--day-format DAYFORMAT
    works similar to --format, but for day headings. It only has a few options (in addition to all the color options):

date
    The date in dateformat.

date-long
    The date in longdateformat.

name
    The date's name (Monday, Tuesday,…) or today or tomorrow.

    If the --day-format is passed an empty string then it will not print the day headers (for an empty line pass in a whitespace character).

  dates

Almost everywhere khal accepts dates, khal should recognize relative date names like today, tomorrow and the names of the days of the week (also in three letters abbreviated form). Week day names get interpreted as the date of the next occurrence of a day with that name. The name of the current day gets interpreted as that date next week (i.e. seven days from now).

If a short datetime format is used (no year is given), khal will interpret the date to be in the future. The inferred it might be in the next year if the given date has already past in the current year.

  Commands

  list

shows all events scheduled for a given date (or datetime) range, with custom formatting:

khal list [-a CALENDAR ... | -d CALENDAR ...] [--format FORMAT]
[--day-format DAYFORMAT] [--once] [--notstarted] [START [END | DELTA] ]

START and END can both be given as dates, datetimes or times (it is assumed today is meant in the case of only a given time) in the formats configured in the configuration file. If END is not given, midnight of the start date is assumed. Today is used for START if it is not explicitly given. If DELTA, a (date)time range in the format I{m,h,d}, where I is an integer and m means minutes, h means hours, and d means days, is given, END is assumed to be START + DELTA. A value of eod is also accepted as DELTA and means the end of day of the start date. In addition, the DELTA week may be used to specify that the daterange should actually be the week containing the START.

The --once option only allows events to appear once even if they are on multiple days. With the --notstarted option only events are shown that start after START.

  at

shows all events scheduled for a given datetime. khal at should be supplied with a date and time, a time (the date is then assumed to be today) or the string now. at defaults to now. The at command works just like the list command, except it has an implicit end time of zero minutes after the start.

khal at [-a CALENDAR ... | -d CALENDAR ...] [--format FORMAT]
[--notstarted] [[START DATE] TIME | now]

  calendar

shows a calendar (similar to cal(1)) and list. khal calendar should understand the following syntax:

khal calendar [-a CALENDAR ... | -d CALENDAR ...] [START DATETIME]
[END DATETIME]

Date selection works exactly as for khal list. The displayed calendar contains three consecutive months, where the first month is the month containing the first given date. If today is included, it is highlighted. Have a look at khal list for a description of the options.

  configure

will help users creating an initial configuration file. configure will refuse to run if there already is a configuration file.

  import

lets the user import .ics files with the following syntax:

khal import [-a CALENDAR] [--batch] [--random-uid|-r] ICSFILE

If an event with the same UID is already present in the (implicitly) selected calendar khal import will ask before updating (i.e. overwriting) that old event with the imported one, unless --batch is given, than it will always update. If this behaviour is not desired, use the --random-uid flag to generate a new, random UID. If no calendar is specified (and not --batch), you will be asked to choose a calendar. You can either enter the number printed behind each calendar's name or any unique prefix of a calendar's name.

  interactive

invokes the interactive version of khal, can also be invoked by calling ikhal. While ikhal can be used entirely with the keyboard, some elements respond if clicked on with a mouse (mostly by being selected).

When the calendar on the left is in focus, you can

•   move through the calendar (default keybindings are the arrow keys, space and backspace, those keybindings are configurable in the config file)

•   focus on the right column by pressing tab or enter

•   re-focus on the current date, default keybinding t as in today

•   marking a date range, default keybinding v, as in visual, think visual mode in Vim, pressing esc escapes this visual mode

•   if in visual mode, you can select the other end of the currently marked range, default keybinding o as in other (again as in Vim)

•   create a new event on the currently focused day (or date range if a range is selected), default keybinding n as in new

•   search for events, default keybinding /, a pop-up will ask for your search term

    When an event list is in focus, you can

•   view an event's details with pressing enter (or tab) and edit it with pressing enter (or tab) again (if [default] event_view_always_visible is set to True, the event in focus will always be shown in detail)

•   toggle an event's deletion status, default keybinding d as in delete, events marked for deletion will appear with a D in front and will be deleted when khal exits.

•   duplicate the selected event, default keybinding p as in duplicate (d was already taken)

•   export the selected event, default keybinding e

    In the event editor, you can

•   jump to the next (previous) selectable element with pressing tab (shift+tab)

•   quick save, default keybinding meta+enter (meta will probably be alt)

•   use some common editing short cuts in most text fields (ctrl+w deletes word before cursor, ctrl+u (ctrl+k) deletes till the beginning (end) of the line, ctrl+a (ctrl+e) will jump to the beginning (end) of the line

•   in the date and time fields you can increment and decrement the number under the cursor with ctrl+a and ctrl+x (time in 15 minute steps)

•   in the date fields you can access a miniature calendar by pressing enter

•   activate actions by pressing enter on text enclosed by angled brackets, e.g. < Save > (sometimes this might open a pop up)

    Pressing esc will cancel the current action and/or take you back to the previously shown pane (i.e. what you see when you open ikhal), if you are at the start pane, ikhal will quit on pressing esc again.

  new

allows for adding new events. khal new should understand the following syntax:

khal new [-a CALENDAR] [OPTIONS] [START [END | DELTA] [TIMEZONE] SUMMARY
[:: DESCRIPTION]]

where start- and enddatetime are either datetimes, times, or keywords and times in the formats defined in the config file. If no calendar is given via -a, the default calendar is used. new does not support -d and also -a may only be used once.

new accepts these combinations for start and endtimes (specifying the end is always optional):

•   datetime [datetime|time] [timezone]

•   time [time] [timezone]

•   date [date]

    where the formats for datetime and time are as follows:

•   datetime = (longdatetimeformat|datetimeformat|keyword-date timeformat)

•   time = timeformat

•   date = (longdateformat|dateformat)

    and timezone, which describes the timezone the events start and end time are in, should be a valid Olson DB identifier (like Europe/Berlin or America/New_York. If no timezone is given, the defaulttimezone as configured in the configuration file is used instead.

    The exact format of longdatetimeformat, datetimeformat, timeformat, longdateformat and dateformat can be configured in the configuration file. Valid keywords for dates are today, tomorrow, the English name of all seven weekdays and their three letter abbreviations (their next occurrence is used).

    If no end is given, the default length of one hour or one day (for all-day events) is used. If only a start time is given the new event is assumed to be starting today. If only a time is given for the event to end on, the event ends on the same day it starts on, unless that would make the event end before it has started, then the next day is used as end date

    If a 24:00 time is configured (timeformat = %H:%M) an end time of 24:00 is accepted as the end of a given date.

    If the summary contains the string ::, everything after :: is taken as the description of the new event, i.e., the "body" of the event (and :: will be removed).

    Passing the option --interactive (-i <https://docs.python.org/3/using/cmdline.html#cmdoption-i>) makes all arguments optional and interactively prompts for required fields, then the event may be edited, the same way as in the edit command.

  Options

•   -l, --location=LOCATION specify where this event will be held.

•   -g, --categories=CATEGORIES specify which categories this event belongs to. Comma separated list of categories. Beware: some servers (e.g. SOGo) do not support multiple categories.

•   -r, --repeat=RRULE specify if and how this event should be recurring. Valid values for RRULE are daily, weekly, monthly and yearly

•   -u, --until=UNTIL specify until when a recurring event should run

•   --alarm DURATION will add an alarm DURATION before the start of the event, DURATION should look like 1day 10minutes or 1d3H10m, negative DURATIONs will set alarm after the start of the event.

  Examples

khal new 18:00 Awesome Event

adds a new event starting today at 18:00 with summary 'awesome event' (lasting for the default time of one hour) to the default calendar

khal new tomorrow 16:30 Coffee Break

adds a new event tomorrow at 16:30

khal new 25.10. 18:00 24:00 Another Event :: with Alice and Bob

adds a new event on 25th of October lasting from 18:00 to 24:00 with an additional description

khal new -a work 26.07. Great Event -g meeting -r weekly

adds a new all day event on 26th of July to the calendar work in the meeting category, which recurs every week.

  edit

an interactive command for editing and deleting events using a search string

khal edit [--show-past] event_search_string

the command will loop through all events that match the search string, prompting the user to delete, or change attributes.

  printcalendars

prints a list of all configured calendars.

  printformats

prints a fixed date (2013-12-21 21:45) in all configured date(time) formats. This is supposed to help check if those formats are configured as intended.

  search

search for events matching a search string and print them. Currently, search will print one line for every different event in a recurrence set, that is one line for the master event, and one line for every different overwritten event. No advanced search features are currently supported.

The command

khal search party

prints all events matching party.

CONFIGURATION

khal reads configuration files in the ini syntax, meaning it understands keys separated from values by a =, while section and subsection names are enclosed by single or double square brackets (like [sectionname] and [[subsectionname]]).

  Help with initial configuration

If you do not have a configuration file yet, running khal configure will launch a small, interactive tool that should help you with initial configuration of khal.

  Location of configuration file

khal is looking for configuration files in the following places and order: $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/khal/config (on most systems this is ~/.config/khal/config), ~/.khal/khal.conf (deprecated) and a file called khal.conf in the current directory (deprecated). Alternatively you can specify which configuration file to use with -c path/to/config at runtime.

  The [calendars] section

The [calendars] section is mandatory and must contain at least one subsection. Every subsection must have a unique name (enclosed by two square brackets). Each subsection needs exactly one path setting, everything else is optional. Here is a small example:

[calendars]
  [[home]]
    path = ~/.calendars/home/
    color = dark green
    priority = 20
  [[work]]
    path = ~/.calendars/work/
    readonly = True

color
    khal will use this color for coloring this calendar's event. The following color names are supported: black, white, brown, yellow, dark gray, dark green, dark blue, light gray, light green, light blue, dark magenta, dark cyan, dark red, light magenta, light cyan, light red. Depending on your terminal emulator's settings, they might look different than what their name implies. In addition to the 16 named colors an index from the 256-color palette or a 24-bit color code can be used, if your terminal supports this. The 256-color palette index is simply a number between 0 and 255. The 24-bit color must be given as #RRGGBB, where RR, GG, BB is the hexadecimal value of the red, green and blue component, respectively. When using a 24-bit color, make sure to enclose the color value in ' or "! If color is set to auto (the default), khal looks for a color value in a color file in this calendar's vdir. If the color file does not exist, the default_color (see below) is used. If color is set to '', the default_color is always used. Note that you can use vdirsyncer metasync to synchronize colors with your caldav server.

type
    color

default
    auto

path
    The path to an existing directory where this calendar is saved as a vdir. The directory is searched for events or birthdays (see type). The path also accepts glob expansion via * or ? when type is set to discover. This allows for paths such as ~/accounts/*/calendars/*, where the calendars directory contains vdir directories. In addition, ~/calendars/* and ~/calendars/default are valid paths if there exists a vdir in the default directory. (The previous behavior of recursively searching directories has been replaced with globbing).

type
    string

default
    None

priority
    When coloring days, the color will be determined based on the calendar with the highest priority. If the priorities are equal, then the "multiple" color will be used.

type
    integer

default
    10

readonly
    setting this to True, will keep khal from making any changes to this calendar

type
    boolean

default
    False

type
    Setting the type of this collection (default calendar).

    If set to calendar (the default), this collection will be used as a standard calendar, that is, only files with the .ics extension will be considered, all other files are ignored (except for a possible color file).

    If set to birthdays khal will expect a VCARD collection and extract birthdays from those VCARDS, that is only files with .vcf extension will be considered, all other files will be ignored. birthdays also implies readonly=True.

    If set to discover, khal will use globbing <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glob_(programming)> to expand this calendar's path to (possibly) several paths and use those as individual calendars (this cannot be used with birthday collections`). See Exemplary discover usage for an example.

    If an individual calendar vdir has a color file, the calendar's color will be set to the one specified in the color file, otherwise the color from the calendars subsection will be used.

type
    option, allowed values are calendar, birthdays and discover

default
    calendar

  The [default] section

Some default values and behaviors are set here.

default_calendar
    The calendar to use if none is specified for some operation (e.g. if adding a new event). If this is not set, such operations require an explicit value.

type
    string

default
    None

highlight_event_days
    If true, khal will highlight days with events. Options for highlighting are in [highlight_days] section.

type
    boolean

default
    False

print_new
    After adding a new event, what should be printed to standard out? The whole event in text form, the path to where the event is now saved or nothing?

type
    option, allowed values are event, path and False

default
    False

show_all_days
    By default, khal displays only dates with events in list or calendar view. Setting this to True will show all days, even when there is no event scheduled on that day.

type
    boolean

default
    False

timedelta
    Controls for how many days into the future we show events (for example, in khal list) by default.

type
    timedelta

default
    2d

  The [highlight_days] section

When highlight_event_days is enabled, this section specifies how the highlighting/coloring of days is handled.

color
    What color to use when highlighting -- explicit color or use calendar color when set to ''

type
    color

default

default_color
    Default color for calendars without color -- when set to '' it actually disables highlighting for events that should use the default color.

type
    color

default

method
    Highlighting method to use -- foreground or background

type
    option, allowed values are foreground, fg, background and bg

default
    fg

multiple
    How to color days with events from multiple calendars -- either explicit color or use calendars' colors when set to ''

type
    color

default

  The [keybindings] section

Keybindings for ikhal are set here. You can bind more then one key (combination) to a command by supplying a comma-separated list of keys. For binding key combinations concatenate them keys (with a space in between), e.g. ctrl n.

delete
    delete the currently selected event

type
    list

default
    d

down
    move the cursor down (in the calendar browser)

type
    list

default
    down, j

duplicate
    duplicate the currently selected event

type
    list

default
    p

export
    export event as a .ics file

type
    list

default
    e

external_edit
    edit the currently selected events' raw .ics file with $EDITOR Only use this, if you know what you are doing, the icalendar library we use doesn't do a lot of validation, it silently disregards most invalid data.

type
    list

default
    meta E

left
    move the cursor left (in the calendar browser)

type
    list

default
    left, h, backspace

log show logged messages

type
    list

default
    L

mark
    go into highlight (visual) mode to choose a date range

type
    list

default
    v

new create a new event on the selected date

type
    list

default
    n

other
    in highlight mode go to the other end of the highlighted date range

type
    list

default
    o

quit
    quit

type
    list

default
    q, Q

right
    move the cursor right (in the calendar browser)

type
    list

default
    right, l, space

save
    save the currently edited event and leave the event editor

type
    list

default
    meta enter

search
    open a text field to start a search for events

type
    list

default
    /

today
    focus the calendar browser on today

type
    list

default
    t

up  move the cursor up (in the calendar browser)

type
    list

default
    up, k

view
    show details or edit (if details are already shown) the currently selected event

type
    list

default
    enter

  The [locale] section

It is mandatory to set (long)date-, time-, and datetimeformat options, all others options in the [locale] section are optional and have (sensible) defaults.

dateformat
    khal will display and understand all dates in this format, see timeformat for the format

type
    string

default
    %x

datetimeformat
    khal will display and understand all datetimes in this format, see timeformat for the format.

type
    string

default
    %c

default_timezone
    this timezone will be used for new events (when no timezone is specified) and when khal does not understand the timezone specified in the icalendar file. If no timezone is set, the timezone your computer is set to will be used.

type
    timezone

default
    None

firstweekday
    the first day of the week, where Monday is 0 and Sunday is 6

type
    integer, allowed values are between 0 and 6

default
    0

local_timezone
    khal will show all times in this timezone If no timezone is set, the timezone your computer is set to will be used.

type
    timezone

default
    None

longdateformat
    khal will display and understand all dates in this format, it should contain a year (e.g. %Y) see timeformat for the format.

type
    string

default
    %x

longdatetimeformat
    khal will display and understand all datetimes in this format, it should contain a year (e.g. %Y) see timeformat for the format.

type
    string

default
    %c

timeformat
    khal will display and understand all times in this format.

    The formatting string is interpreted as defined by Python's strftime <https://docs.python.org/3/library/time.html#time.strftime>, which is similar to the format specified in man strftime.

type
    string

default
    %X

unicode_symbols
    by default khal uses some unicode symbols (as in 'non-ascii') as indicators for things like repeating events, if your font, encoding etc. does not support those symbols, set this to False (this will enable ascii based replacements).

type
    boolean

default
    True

weeknumbers
    Enable weeknumbers in calendar and interactive (ikhal) mode. As those are iso weeknumbers, they only work properly if firstweekday is set to 0

type
    weeknumbers

default
    off

  The [sqlite] section

path
    khal stores its internal caching database here, by default this will be in the $XDG_DATA_HOME/khal/khal.db (this will most likely be ~/.local/share/khal/khal.db).

type
    string

default
    None

  The [view] section

The view section contains configuration options that effect the visual appearance when using khal and ikhal.

agenda_day_format
    Specifies how each day header is formatted.

type
    string

default
    {bold}{name}, {date-long}{reset}

agenda_event_format
    Default formatting for events used when the user asks for all events in a given time range, used for list, calendar and in interactive (ikhal). Please note, that any color styling will be ignored in ikhal, where events will always be shown in the color of the calendar they belong to. The syntax is the same as for --format.

type
    string

default
    {calendar-color}{cancelled}{start-end-time-style} {title}{repeat-symbol}{description-separator}{description}{reset}

bold_for_light_color
    Whether to use bold text for light colors or not. Non-bold light colors may not work on all terminals but allow using light background colors.

type
    boolean

default
    True

dynamic_days
    Defines the behaviour of ikhal's right column. If True, the right column will show events for as many days as fit, moving the cursor through the list will also select the appropriate day in the calendar column on the left. If False, only a fixed ([default] timedelta) amount of days' events will be shown, moving through events will not change the focus in the left column.

type
    boolean

default
    True

event_format
    Default formatting for events used when the start- and end-date are not clear through context, e.g. for search, used almost everywhere but list and calendar. It is therefore probably a sensible choice to include the start- and end-date. The syntax is the same as for --format.

type
    string

default
    {calendar-color}{cancelled}{start}-{end} {title}{repeat-symbol}{description-separator}{description}{reset}

event_view_always_visible
    Set to true to always show the event view window when looking at the event list

type
    boolean

default
    False

event_view_weighting
    weighting that is applied to the event view window

type
    integer

default
    1

frame
    Whether to show a visible frame (with box drawing characters) around some (groups of) elements or not. There are currently several different frame options available, that should visually differentiate whether an element is in focus or not. Some of them will probably be removed in future releases of khal, so please try them out and give feedback on which style you prefer (the color of all variants can be defined in the color themes).

type
    option, allowed values are False, width, color and top

default
    False

monthdisplay
    Display month name on row when the week contains the first day of of the month ('firstday') or when the first day of the week is in the month ('firstfullweek')

type
    monthdisplay

default
    firstday

theme
    Choose a color theme for khal.

    This is very much work in progress. Help is really welcome! The two currently available color schemes (dark and light) are defined in khal/ui/colors.py, you can either help improve those or create a new one (see below). As ikhal uses urwid, have a look at urwid's documentation <http://urwid.org/manual/displayattributes.html> for how to set colors and/or at the existing schemes. If you cannot change the color of an element (or have any other problems) please open an issue on github.

    If you want to create your own color scheme, copy the structure of the existing ones, give it a new and unique name and also add it as an option in khal/settings/khal.spec in the section [default] of the property theme.

type
    option, allowed values are dark and light

default
    dark

    A minimal sample configuration could look like this:

  Example

[calendars]
[[home]]
path = ~/.calendars/home/
[[work]]
path = ~/.calendars/work/
[locale]
local_timezone= Europe/Berlin
default_timezone= Europe/Berlin
timeformat= %H:%M
dateformat= %d.%m.
longdateformat= %d.%m.%Y
datetimeformat= %d.%m. %H:%M
longdatetimeformat= %d.%m.%Y %H:%M

  Exemplary discover usage

If you have the following directory layout:

~/calendars
├- work/
├- home/
└─ family/

where work, home and family are all different vdirs, each containing one calendar, a matching calendar section could look like this:

[[calendars]]
path = ~/calendars/*
type = discover
color = dark green

  Syncing

To get khal working with CalDAV you will first need to setup vdirsyncer <https://github.com/pimutils/vdirsyncer>. After each start khal will automatically check if anything has changed and automatically update its caching db (this may take some time after the initial sync, especially for large calendar collections). Therefore, you might want to execute khal automatically after syncing with vdirsyncer (e.g. via cron).

STANDARDS

khal tries to follow standards and RFCs (most importantly RFC 5545 <https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5545.html> iCalendar) wherever possible. Known intentional and unintentional deviations are listed below.

  RDATE;VALUE=PERIOD

RDATE s with PERIOD values are currently not supported, as icalendar <https://github.com/collective/icalendar> does not support it yet. Please submit any real world examples of events with RDATE;VALUE=PERIOD you might encounter (khal will print warnings if you have any in your calendars).

  RANGE=THISANDPRIOR

Recurrent events with the RANGE=THISANDPRIOR are and will not be [1] supported by khal, as applications supporting the latest standard <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5546> MUST NOT create those. khal will print a warning if it encounters an event containing RANGE=THISANDPRIOR.

[1] unless a lot of users request this feature

  Events with neither END nor DURATION

While the RFC states:

A calendar entry with a "DTSTART" property but no "DTEND"
property does not take up any time. It is intended to represent
an event that is associated with a given calendar date and time
of day, such as an anniversary. Since the event does not take up
any time, it MUST NOT be used to record busy time no matter what
the value for the "TRANSP" property.

khal transforms those events into all-day events lasting for one day (the start date). As long a those events do not get edited, these changes will not be written to the vdir (and with that to the CalDAV server). Any timezone information that was associated with the start date gets discarded.

NOTE: While the main rationale for this behaviour was laziness on part of khal's main author, other calendar software shows the same behaviour (e.g. Google Calendar and Evolution).

  Timezones

Getting localized time right, seems to be the most difficult part about calendaring (and messing it up ends in missing the one important meeting of the week). So I'll briefly describe here, how khal tries to handle timezone information, which information it can handle and which it can't.

In general, there are two different type of events. Localized events (with localized start and end datetimes) which have timezone information attached to their start and end datetimes, and floating events (with floating start and end datetimes), which have no timezone information attached (all-day events, events that last for complete days are floating as well). Localized events are always observed at the same UTC <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_Universal_Time> (no matter what time zone the observer is in), but different local times. On the other hand, floating events are always observed at the same local time, which might be different in UTC.

In khal all localized datetimes are saved to the local database as UTC. Datetimes that are already UTC, e.g. 19980119T070000Z, are saved as such, others are converted to UTC (but don't worry, the timezone information does not get lost). Floating events get saved in floating time, independently of the localized events.

If you want to look up which events take place at a specified datetime, khal always expects that you want to know what events take place at that local datetime. Therefore, the (local) datetime you asked for gets converted to UTC, the appropriate localized events get selected and presented with their start and end datetimes converted to your local datetime. For floating events no conversion is necessary.

Khal (i.e. icalendar <https://github.com/collective/icalendar>) can understand all timezone identifiers as used in the Olson DB <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tz_database> and custom timezone definitions, if those VTIMEZONE components are placed before the VEVENTS that make use of them (as most calendar programs seem to do). In case an unknown (or unsupported) timezone is found, khal will assume you want that event to be placed in the default timezone (which can be configured in the configuration file as well).

khal expects you always want all start and end datetimes displayed in local time (which can be set in the configuration file as well, otherwise your computer's timezone is used).

FAQ

Frequently asked questions:

•

start up of khal and ikhal is very slow
    In some case the pytz (python timezone) is only available as a zip file, as pytz accesses several parts during initialization this takes some time. If time python -c "import pytz; pytz.timezone('Europe/Berlin')" takes nearly as much time as running khal, uncompressing that file via pytz via (sudo) pip unzip pytz might help.

•

ikhal raises an Exception: AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'SimpleFocusListWalker'
    You probably need to upgrade urwid to version 1.1.0, if your OS does come with an older version of urwid you can install the latest version to userspace (without messing up your default installation) with pip install --upgrade urwid --user.

•

Installation stops with an error: source/str_util.c:25:20: fatal error: Python.h: No such file or directory
    You do not have the Python development headers installed, on Debian based Distributions you can install them via aptitude install python-dev.

LICENSE

khal is released under the Expat/MIT License:

Copyright (c) 2013-2017 Christian Geier et al.
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of
this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in
the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to
use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of
the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so,
subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS
FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR
COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER
IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN
CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

AUTHOR
Christan Geier et al.

COPYRIGHT
2014-2019, Christan Geier et al.