mutt-ical

This is a collection of scripts that make it easier to work with iCalendar files in mutt. (Note that this is for calendar information in the iCalendar file format. It has nothing to do with the OSX calendar program.)

viewical

viewical takes an iCalendar file on standard input and prints out a more human-friendly rendering of the data in the file. It's intended to be used as a display filter in mutt.

Requirements

Usage

This is easiest if you maintain a mutt-specific mailcap, e.g. having this in your ~/.muttrc:

set mailcap_path="${HOME}/.mutt/mailcap:/etc/mailcap"

In your mailcap, add entries for the appropriate MIME types:

text/calendar; /path/to/viewical; copiousoutput
application/ics; /path/to/viewical; copiousoutput

In your .muttrc, tell mutt to automatically display calendar data:

auto_view text/calendar
auto_view application/ics

Finally, you need to add (or modify) the alternative_order setting in your .muttrc to prefer iCalendar attachments over their HTML or text alternatives, for messages sent with such alternatives:

alternative_order text/calendar text/plain text/html

Output

Most of the script's output should be self-explanatory. Most fields are optional, so it'll only print information (from event end times to locations to event descriptions) if they're present in the original data.

One thing to note is the encoding of attendees (or, in iCalendar terminology, "participants"). They're presented in a list with a checkbox of sorts next to them, something like this:

[ ] Barb Example <barb@example.com>

People will get different boxes depending on the role defined for them in the iCalendar data. The boxes are as follows:

{ } - Event chairperson.
[ ] - Attendee, participation required. (Most programs use this as the default role.)
< > - Attendee, participation optional.
( ) - Non-participant. (The author of these scripts has never seen this in actual use.)
_ _ - No role defined in the data.
? ? - Unknown role.

The script places text in the box to indicate the status of the person. The statuses are as follows:

blank - Unknown. (Officially, this is "needs action", i.e. "waiting for a response".)
Y - Attending.
- - Not attending.
~ - Maybe attending.
? - Status not recognized by script.

(In the event that the iCalendar data does not define a status, the box will be empty, not just blank. This is "status unknown to organizer": [ ]. This is "status not present in data": []. That's not a huge difference, but every file the script's author has observed has had some status defined for every person attached to an event.)

Example

Here's an event with a chairperson, two required attendees, and two non-required attendees. The chairperson and one required attendee have responded that they will attend. The other required attendee has not yet responded. One of the non-required attendees will not attend and the other is tentative.

Organizer: Admin Aid <admin@example.com>
Event:     Example Event
Date:      Thursday, August 4, 2016
Starts:    9:00 am
Ends:      10:00 am
Location:  Meeting Room 7
Attendees: {Y} Important Executive <exec@example.com>
           [Y] Relevant Manager <mgr@example.com>
           [ ] Relevant Subordinate <worker@example.com>
           <-> Affiliated Manager <aff@example.com>
           <~> Irrelevant Manager <irr@example.com>

ical-reply

ical-reply is intended to facilitate responses to iCalendar emails. It's not ready for use yet.