WhenFS: Calender Is Now a File System

Good tab expansion in a very virtual filesystem would work wonders:

    $ cat /cal/nexttues<TAB>
    $ cat /cal/2024/08/13/

    $ cat /cal/nextweek<TAB>
    $ cat /cal/2024/w32/

    $ grep -ir somebody /cal/2023/07/
    /cal/2023/07/12/events:13:00-14:00 Lunch with somebody

So the question begs: how hard would this be to write.

Because I want it!

This would be fantastic and very in line with Unix philosophy.

I was thinking about this and came to the conclusion that I'd want to define some events per date, like you illustrated (`"12:30 dentist" > /cal/2024/08/04`), but others I'd like to define per event, like `2024-08-23 12:30 > /cal/massage`, which seemed messy. I didn't really resolve this question for myself.

If I gzip my meetings, will they get shorter? If so, I'm on board.

Not this exactly, but I used to keep a calendar as a text file, where each day was a single line containing the date, week day and possibly some events.

Something like:

    4h sun: 1500 dentist's appointment, 1800 dinner with friends

The initial file was autogenerated with a 10-line Python script.

You can have variations on this, like allowing multiple rows per day, one row per event.

I also used to keep an unstructured "journal.txt" file, where notes were separated by two blank lines, and you could reference topics (like #toRead) and dates (like #4h24) with #, like social media hashtags.

I think you mean

  $ ls /cal/2024/08/04

  $ cat /cal/2024/08/04/*

Will all users on the system have to share the same calendar?

The point of such fake filesystems (like /proc or /sys) is that everyone immediately understands them. Yes, you could have a syscall for /proc, but it is more complicated.

Explain how it's worse than what's in OP. Look, sometimes you just want to see a fun idea turn into reality, right?

That's what I hoped this would be!

This is completely me talking out my but:

Could one use the txtai python libe to be told to train on the temporal relationships between events that pass through it as an fastAPI endpoint to a calender... then as the events head to whatever is holding them in the calendar - txtai is training and indexing, first on temporal notes, then on context. so you ould easly as it to give you a

"Show all the social events that happen on wednesdays with a dress code"

(but it learns the nature of certain events, when they occur and social clues around what /who /wheres are typically occuring...

"This venue typically holds events on W F S and the clientelle is typicalaly this, attendance that, rsvps x, cost ~$$"

Get close by mounting your CalDAV server directory with the usual WebDAV tooling.

It stores file data as calendar events, sort of like that YouTube FS from a while back

This is probably considered abuse under the ToS since you're using more storage than any typical user, and they can't use it for whatever they normally sell customer data for

This isn't exactly clear about the dangers of using the tool

https://github.com/lvkv/whenfs/commit/618d6c343b2660567256fa...

But there is no greater pleasure than to finish something, deliver it, get users in front of it, and get feedback you never expected from either grumpy or happy users. I think it's way more rewarding to try to work for profit, because while money is nice, profit also means it's so useful someone is ready to give you credit for future work (money) for what you did.

Even things that were neither novel (academia), profitable (industry), nor impactful (nonprofits).

You classifications are good but it's a bit simplistic. Generally across the spectrum people is looking for breakthrough (e.g. deep learning) and/or game changing (e.g. transformer) contributions regardless if you're in academia, industry, non-profit, government labs, etc. But for pure joy, it can be from any simple creative projects as you've mentioned or it can be giving up seats for the elderly in a crowded metro trains.

Even if it makes just you happy, it's impactful. You are the person others have to put up with. Making yourself happy improves the world for those around you.