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Address Book/Calendar Solutions for the Console?

Posted by Cliff on from the for-those-who-don't-go-gooey dept.

Florian Cramer asks: "There are many good addressbooks/calendars for GNU/Linux (plan, ical, jpilot, kalendar, gnome-calendar, gnome-card, to name only a few), but they all require X11. Does anyone know a decent console-based addressbook/calendaring solution, perhaps even one which can sync its data with Palm Pilots? That would be great for all the vi/mutt/lynx/bash people out there, and welcome for (a) underpowered hardware and (b) future Linux-based keyboard PDAs."

9 comments

  1. Re:Give me a break by nbvb · · Score: 1

    Hey!

    I still use a WYSE tube at work...

    Not all the time, but at least half the time..

    Why should I bother with 3D wingdings when Pine reads my mail just fine?

    Pfft. Once you show me a GUI that manipulates text easier than head, tail, cut, sed, awk, and grep, maybe we'll talk.

  2. Emacs by Bazzargh · · Score: 4

    emacs calendar/diary modes, and Jamie Zawinski's Big Brother Database for your rolodex. AFAIK there is sync software for this but as I havent used it now for 3 years I havent been keeping up[1]

    -Baz

    [1] Not because I didnt like it. I miss it today (sob!). However, because of a corporate misdecision our shop was having to switch to outlook mail (non-SMTP) and all that goes with it, so as the head of systems I felt I should switch - users kept reporting problems , but 'cos it didnt affect me I wasnt trying to find fixes hard enough...

  3. abook by Satai · · Score: 1

    I swear by Abook for my address book needs. Haven't found any good calendar apps for console, so I use calendar.yahoo.com.

    Abook even has hooks for mutt searching... ;-)

    ((And can anybody find any decent X11 apps? I never found one that made the grade.))

    Oh yeah. I wouldn't recommend learning Emacs just for this... Driving a tack with a sledge-hammer.

  4. /usr/bin/calendar & abook by krismon · · Score: 4

    On my FreeBSD box.. I use /usr/bin/calendar

    It's simple, and it works... it doesn't nag, and everything goes in a human readable text file(it checks for a date on the start of a line and goes from there), you can even run it off cron to email you you're schedule for the day everyday. I don't know if the linux version has as many features as the BSD version, I know the Solaris one sucks...

    I also use abook (an ncurses addressbook program) for my addresses, it exports to mutt,pine,elm,csv, and is pretty easy to navigate.

    Everything is console based and pretty easy to keep track of.

  5. w3m by Leknor · · Score: 3
    Are you familar with w3m? It is a text based web browser that does tables frames and lots of good stuff. If you're like me and lynx turned you off to text browers, do yourself a favor and give w3m a try. Try it. It will turn any web application into a console application. (Except for those that use a lot of javascript but javascript sucks anyway.)

    Leknor

    1. Re:w3m by sachachua · · Score: 1
      W3M lives inside Emacs, which is pretty cool. =)

      Links is a pretty good replacement for lynx. Links does tables, frames, threading _and_ downloading in the background, so if you're looking for a console browser, you might want to check it out as well. =)

  6. Perhaps a web-based interface? by spacewhale · · Score: 2

    I looked around on sourceforge a little, and found several group-collaboration web interfaces using PHP, perl, etc. Here is a link to Office-Business/Scheduling at sourceforge. If you're thinking about group-oriented things, some things there look pretty good, and you could access them with lynx.

    As for PalmOS, there are some console-based apps that interface with the Palm. I don't know how functional they are, but I assume you could find one that uses a standard format like iCal. This could then be combined with a web interface or whatever else you can find.

    My guess though, just from looking around, is that you'll have to separate the Palm synching from the scheduling app, I couldn't find a decently funtional console app that also syncs with Palm.

    One last thing: why no GUI? I know what some say about the console-GUI debate, but it seems to me that there is just more you can put in a GUI interface.

    --


    - "Ford, you're turing into a penguin. Stop it." Go Prefect!
    1. Re:Perhaps a web-based interface? by ryants · · Score: 3
      One last thing: why no GUI?

      I can't speak for the original question asker, but for myself no GUI is important since I often access my box via SSH on Winblows, so I don't have an X Server running (and even if I did, I wouldn't use it, since it would probably be painfully slow).

      That's why I use (e.g.) mutt and not evolution.

      Ryan T. Sammartino

      --

      Ryan T. Sammartino
      "Ancora imparo"

  7. Text Based PIMs by mahabakri · · Score: 3

    Hi.

    Your first option is using EMACS or XEMACS. They have a diary, and simple database system built in. However if you do not like the interface I would suggest you roll your own.

    The quickest option is to write a web based app that utilizes the following:
    1)mysql or whatever db u like
    2)apache
    3) perl or php
    4) w3m ( or lynx but w3m renders tables ).

    I have used the above set up to write a web based checkbook manager and addressbook for my own personal use. Initially I had written it all using perl but I switched all the web based stuff to php. I still use perl for my addressbook since I can quickly look up addresses/phone numbers from the command line. I also set my text-mode screen size to 80x50. Combined with w3m it works really well.

    Other options, which I haven't explored, is to use the curses lib with perl,python, or whatever language, along with some sql db. For these kinds of apps I think scripting languages are best. Faster development time.

    good luck.