Getting Quicksilver iCal syntax right

icalTerry posted a comment today in an earlier Hawk Wings post about the formal syntax for creating iCal events and to-dos with the Quicksilver iCal plugin. It was news to me; it might be to you too.

Although the iCal plugin does its best to parse the date, time and content from your text string, you can help it along.

The documentation for the Quicksilver iCal plugin sets out the correct syntax. For events, it expects your text to look like:

“date and time -- name of event”

For to-dos:

“date and time -- !! name of todo”

NB: Those long dashes are actually two hyphens.

Adding exclamation marks increases the priority of the to-do.

UPDATE: As Cooper points out in the comments, you need to enable Quicksilver’s advanced features option to make this work:

QS_advacnedfeatures.jpg

You will also find in the documentation some feature requests for the plugin that would be terrific, like the ability to mark to-dos done or add attendees.

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20 Responses to “Getting Quicksilver iCal syntax right”

  1. [...] A while ago we covered Quicksilver plugins for Gmail and Google Calendar, allowing you to send an email or create a new event (respectively) right from within Quicksilver’s interface. If you aren’t a Google Calendar user though, Quicksilver also offers the same kind of plugin for iCal. Somehow I lost this in my bloggable bookmarks, but last month Tim Gaden at Hawk Wings broke down the syntax for adding an event to iCal with this plugin, and it’s really pretty simple. When entering text, the event is written like so: TUAW [...]

  2. [...] A while ago we covered Quicksilver plugins for Gmail and Google Calendar, allowing you to send an email or create a new event (respectively) right from within Quicksilver’s interface. If you aren’t a Google Calendar user though, Quicksilver also offers the same kind of plugin for iCal. Somehow I lost this in my bloggable bookmarks, but last month Tim Gaden at Hawk Wings broke down the syntax for adding an event to iCal with this plugin, and it’s really pretty simple. When entering text, the event is written like so: TUAW [...]

  3. [...] Jeff Powell joins us today. Fission 1.0 from Rogue Amoeba MacBreak Episode #12 – Quicksilver Add a new iCal event from Quicksilver – also available for Gmail and Google Calendar Mighty Mouse Horizontal Scrolling Trick Burn – Open Source Alternative to Roxio’s Popular Toast Application Business Week on Jonathan Ive [...]

  4. George says:

    love this! is there a way to add a reminder? i tried just typing it in as part of the date/time (ie “reminder 1 hour before”), but it doesn’t seem to register. this would be a great feature if anyone knows the syntax.

    thanks,

    George

  5. Cooper says:

    To help out folks who are trying to turn on the iCal Plug-In in Quicksilver – you FIRST need to turn on “Enable advanced features” in the QS application preferences, THEN you can see and enable the iCal Plug-In in the list of Plug-ins.

  6. Tim says:

    Good point, Cooper. I’ve added that to the post.

  7. algal says:

    If you are curious, I’ve written a Quicksilver action which uses a more flexible syntax for adding iCal events. Its disadvantage is that you can’t specify in QS to which Calendar to add the event, so you need to that in iCal.

    The syntax my action uses is

    [dateandtime] @@ [event]

    or else

    [dateandtime] @@ [event] @@ [Note for event]

    But here’s the advantage. it’s easy to use because [dateandtime] can take a date formatted in the following styles:

    22 February 2004
    22 feb 2004
    22nd February, 2004
    22nd of February, 2004
    22 February
    February 22 2004
    February 22nd, 2004
    feb 22
    22-2-04
    22-2-2004
    22/2/04
    Friday
    next Friday
    tomorrow
    day after tomorrow
    today

    and time can be formatted in any of the following styles:

    4:00pm
    4:00 p.m.
    16:00
    4pm
    4p.m.
    4 p.m.

    So usually you can actually cut&paste a text phrase naming the date that was written to be human readbale — for instance, a passage in an email.

  8. Christian says:

    Your syntax makes the date and time appear in the title of the event (so that there is an event on friday at 10:00 called “friday 10:00 – Meeting”).

    The exact syntax according to the documentation has a dubble minus — in the middle: ““date and time — name of event”. If you use the title is just as you entered it – without date and time.

  9. Tim says:

    Thanks, Christian. That’s WordPress automatically turning two hyphens into one long dash, and me not picking it up. Thanks.

  10. Dave from Temecula, CA says:

    I’ve always loved QS and have been using this tip quite a bit.

    One question: There’s no way to add a note or location into an entry right away, right?

    I mean [date] [time] — [event] is quite simple

    But I still find myself going back to the iCal entry and filling out the location or notes to the entry (directions to the event or a conference bridge # for example).

  11. dave says:

    Lemme ask ya something. If I have to open iCal to see whether Quicksilver actually added anything to my iCal or not – doesn’t that mean that Quicksilver iCal i just a waste of time? Anyone?

  12. Bush -- not related says:

    Dave (if you ever check back) and anyone else with this concern:

    Growl is your best friend, here. Moments after hitting RETURN a pop-up will appear telling you the new item has been added to your (iCal or Google) calendar or a new task has been added to Remember the Milk or…

    It’s wunnuhful.

  13. Matt Martin says:

    Very surprised that all-day (or all day or allday) events don’t work using this method.

  14. dave says:

    I am using QuickCal Widget now.

    http://smellypuppy.com/wp/?page_id=29

  15. Jo says:

    Am confused. Can’t get it to specify the calendar so it just defaults to whichever calendar was last open – not ideal. Am I missing something? Also, Bush — not related – could you tell me how I get that functionality in Growl? How do I set it up to watch ical?
    Thanks,
    Jo

  16. Bush -- not related says:

    My apologies, Jo: the pop-up notification actually is a service of Quicksilver, not growl.

    I stopped using iCal because I still have a Tiger machine (and a few linux boxes, now) mixed in among my MacBooks and Apple lovingly made Tiger iCal and Leopard iCal not play nice together; I’m afraid I can’t help you refine that syntax.

  17. Benjamin says:

    @Bush:

    As Jo said, Growl notifications would be great after having added a new event with the QS.

    I just can’t find anything like that – is there any possibility that you remember the name or anything else? ;)

    I would love to have this integrated but have googled around without any results.

  18. Bush -- not related says:

    My understanding of Growl is it automagically works with Apps that use it; perhaps whomever is working to update QS can build that into it, but as I’ve seen no QS updates, I’m not sure we should hold our breath on that.

    I know that when I successfully post to my google calendar, I get a QS popup telling me the event was added. It appears in the middle of the screen.

    In preferences, I have the following turned ON — mayhap one of these is giving the effect?

    * Enable advanced features
    * Superfluous visual effects
    * !!? Under Handlers is “Notification [QS icon] Quicksilver (Built-in)

    When I click the up-down arrow to the right of these, GROWL is an option! I just switched it to that and will see what happens.

    IT WORKED IT WORKED! Now I have GROWL QS notifications! WHOOOP!

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