Action Tags

Action Tags provide an extensible mechanism for setting attributes that are rarely used or which only a few power user might use. They are also used for items that typically no other calendar application supports, so there would be no field in which to put that information. These functions are embedded as tags.

Creating/Modifying an Action Tag

To create a new tag, tap on the button New Tag  near the bottom of the Edit Dialog. If the item already has one or more tags set, the button will display Edit Tags instead. A list of all the available tags will appear. To select a tag, check the box at the end of the line. Many tags (such as the birthday tag) also need additional information. To set that additional information, tap the Edit button and insert the appropriate text immediately after the tag. Some care needs to be taken in editing tags in this dialog as syntax errors will result in tags not being properly processed.

Anniversary:

Use this tag to set an anniversary for an event. The value for this tag is the first year for the anniversary. Pimlical will then display the anniversary in most views in angle brackets. Example, if you had an Anniversary labeled John and Joan and set a tag of Anniversary: 1946, Pimlical in the year 2011 would display the event as <65>John and Joan. If you just check the box and don't add a four-digit year, Pimlical will use the starting year of the event for the birthday (note that this feature allows you to enter an event like 1776 in the year 1950 and still have the anniversary calculated based upon 1776).

Birthday:

Use this tag to set a birthday for an event. The value for this tag is the birth year for person. Pimlical will then display the person's age in most views in angle brackets. Example, if you had a birthday labeled John Williams and set a tag of Birthday: 1890, Pimlical in the year 2011 would display the event as <121>John Williams. Note that the birth year (or anniversary year may fall outside the range of the Pimlical calendar). As with an anniversary, if the year is omitted, the starting year for the event is used instead.

AddTime:

This tag is used in the Pimlical/Desktop's export function to add a fixed amount of time to an event, when Pimlical/Desktop's feature of using events to track consulting/expense revenues is used.

Add$:

This tag is used in the Pimlical/Desktop's export function to add an additional $ value to an event, when Pimlical/Desktop's feature of using events to track consulting/expense revenues is used.

ScheduleIn:

Use this tag in a template to insert it at a fixed time in the future. The time is specified as a duration type string (3h30m or 4d6h etc.). If you enter no value at all, Pimlical will pop up a dialog that allows you to enter any duration. If you just enter an integer, it is treated as minutes. If you want to insert an item at the current time, use a value of '0'.

This is useful for example for a 2 hour parking meter that you frequently use - just set up a template for the reminder and use 2h as the value. When you insert that template, it will go off two hours from when you insert it. Or you might have a template set with '10' to remind you the spaghetti will be ready in ten minutes! 

FixedTime

This tag is used in templates to ensure that the template is always inserted at a designated time, regardless of whether a time-slot was tapped in the day or Day+ views (which would otherwise set the default time for insertion of the template).

NP

If this tag is present on an event then the NoPurge status is set on the item which will prevent it from being purged by any purge routine.

NK

If this tag is present on an event then the NoKill status is set on the item which will prevent an Advance Reminder generated for this item being killed when it catches up to the target event (normally, when an advance reminder catches up to its target event, it is automatically killed by the Advance Floating Events routine).

If this tag is present on an event then the event will be automatically killed by the system when the date of this event is in the past and the Floating Update is performed (similar to how an advanced reminder for an event gets automatically purged when it catches up to the event).

FloatDays

This tag specifies which days of the week a floating event will float through. Originally, the days were specified using 0=Sunday, 1 = Monday, 2 = Tuesday, etc., but you can now use the three letters of the day of the week either run together or separated with a slash (such as Mon/Tue/Wed). A typical use of this tag would be to have the value 12345 (or  Mon/Tue/Wed/Thu/Fri) which would mean a floating event would float from Mon->Tue->Wed->Thu->Fri->Mon - skipping the weekends, or just 06 (or Sat/Sun) where a floating event would only float through weekend days (Sat->Sun->Sat->Sun...) for chores that needed to be done on the weekend. If using the three-letter designation of the day of the week, it is not case-sensitive so mon/tue/wed or MON/TUE/WED is acceptable. Using a delimiter is actually optional, so montuewedthufri would work, but be certain not to use a comma! (commas are used to separate off different Action Tags internally).

Use this tag to avoid speaking an alarm when the preference SpeakAlarms is set true. You can create a Quick Entry Template with an alarm set along with Tag to create alarmed events that are never spoken -- for the template description, put in something like <<No Voice Alarm>> (which gets stripped on insertion) so you can quickly find it.

NoAlarmOnReminder

If this tag is present on an event that has an advance, then when the reminder is created, no alarm will be present on the reminder event.

ContactsDB:

If this tag is present on a template, then when birthdays/anniversaries are imported from the contacts database, this template will be used to format the item (the template should also have the birthday or Anniversary tag present, so Pimlical knows which template to use for the imported item).

SkipEdit

If this tag is present on an event then when it gets inserted, the Edit Dialog is skipped and the item is inserted directly into the calendar and displayed. SkipEdit is automatically set on Subordinate Templates as they are inserted automaticallay when the associated Master Template is inserted.

MasterTemplate

CustomNotificationSound

If this tag is present on an event and if notifications are being used for alarms (as opposed to displaying the full-page alarm dialog), the custom notification sound (as defined by the preference: CustomNotificationSound) is used for the notification sound.

AdvancedRepeatOnlyInSameMonth

If this tag is present on an event on a repeat event that is using the advanced repeat specification of repeating on one or more days of the week after a specific day of the month, this tag says that if the resulting date would not be in the same month as the event itself then that occurrence should be ignored. Where would this be used? if you set up a repeat on the 29th of the month and then select a day of the week, the item will only repeat in those months that have a fifth week - months that do not have a fifth week would show no occurrence of the item. Contrast this with a normal repeat on the last week of the month that would display it on the fourth week in those months that had no fifth week).

AlwaysHide

If this tag is present on an event, the event will not be displayed (although it will display if the Hide/Show latch in an event selection list is set to Show) - subscription only. This can be useful when handling shared calendars and a person does not want to hear the alarm that the other person set on a specific event (as opposed to hiding the entire calendar or category).

SpanEventsUseStartEndDay

Normally, timed, span events (events which span one or more days and have a start and end time) will block out every timeslot from the start time on the starting day through the end time of the ending day. But that also causes ALL timeslots to be displayed which in some cases might not be desirable. By setting this Action Tag, Pimlical constricts the display to the starting/ending times for the day as controlled by the preference DayStartMinute and DayEndMinute. But the range will be extended (if necessary) to cover the start time on the starting day and the end time on the ending day.

NoAlarms

If this tag is present on an event no alarm will ever be triggered (even though alarms may be set on the event). This can be useful when handling shared calendars and a person does not want to hear the alarm that the other person set on a specific event.

ForceReminder

This tag is used in Pimlical/Desktop to set a reminder at some future time, and can be entered in Pimlical/Android, but it is not acted upon by Pimlical/Android.