Usage

Khal offers a set of commands, namely calendar, agenda, new, printcalendars, and interactive. See below for a description of what each of these commands does. Calling khal without any command will invoke the default command, which can be specified in the config file.

Options

khal (without any commands) has some options to print some information about khal:

--version

Prints khal’s version number and exits

-h, --help

Prints a summary of khal’s options and commands and then exits

Several options are common to almost all of khal‘s commands (exceptions are described below):

-v

Be more verbose (e.g. print debugging information)

-c CONFIGFILE

Use an alternate configuration file

-a CALENDAR

Specify a calendar to use (which must be configured in the configuration file), can be used several times. Calendars not specified will be disregarded for this run.

-d CALENDAR

Specifiy a calendar which will be disregarded for this run, can be used several times.

Commands

agenda

shows all events scheduled for given dates. khal agenda should understand the following syntax:

khal agenda [-a CALENDAR ... | -d CALENDAR ...] [--days N] [DATE ...]

If no dates are supplied as arguments, today and tomorrow are used. Dates must be given in the format specified in khal’s config file as dateformat or longdateformat. If dateformat is used, the current year is implied.

--days N

Specify how many days’ (following each DATE) events should be shown.

calendar

shows a calendar (similiar to cal(1)) and agenda. khal calendar should understand the following syntax:

khal calendar [-a CALENDAR ... | -d CALENDAR ...] [--days N] [DATE ...]

Date selection works exactly as for khal agenda. The displayed calendar contains three consecutive months, where the first month is the month containing the first given date. If today is included, it is highlighted. Have a look at khal agenda for a descrption of the options.

interactive

invokes the interactive version of khal, can also be invoked by calling ikhal.

Use the arrow keys to navigate in the calendar. Press ‘tab’ or ‘enter’ to move the focus into the events column and ‘left arrow’ to return the focus to the calendar area. You can navigate the events column with the up and down arrows and view an event via pressing ‘enter’. Pressing ‘d’ will delete an event (a ‘D’ will appear in front of the events description, or ‘RO’ if you cannot delete that event). Pressing ‘d’ again will undelete that event.

When viewing an event’s details, pressing ‘enter’ again will open the currently selected event in a simple event editor; you can navigate with the arrow keys again. As long as the event has not been edited you can leave the editor with pressing ‘escape’. Once it has been edited you need to move down the ‘Cancel’ button and press the ‘enter’ key to discard your edits or press the ‘Save’ button to save your edits (and upload them on the next sync).

While the calendar area is focused, pressing ‘n’ will add a new event on the currently selected date.

new

allows for quick adding of new events. khal new should understand the following syntax:

khal new [-a CALENDAR] startdatetime [enddatetime] summary [description]

where start- and enddatetime are either datetimes or times in the formats defined in the config file. If no calendar is given via -a, the default calendar is used. new does no support -d and also -a may only be used once.

Start- and enddatetime can be one of the following:

  • datetime datetime: start and end datetime specified, if no year is given (like the non-long version of dateformat, see config file, should allow), this year is used.
  • datetime time: end date will be same as start date, unless that would make the event end before it has started, then the next day is used as end date
  • datetime: event will last for defaulttime
  • time time: event starting today at the first time and ending today at the second time, unless that would make the event end before it has started, then the next day is used as end date
  • time: event starting today at time, lasting for the default length
  • date date: all day event starting on the first and ending on the last event
  • date: all day event starting at given date and lasting for default length

description is a string started by :: (which will be removed) and will be used as the new event’s description, i.d., the body of the event.

At the moment default length is either 1 hour or 1 day (should be configurable soon, too).

Some examples:

khal new 18:00 Awesome Event

adds a new event starting today at 18:00 with summary ‘awesome event’ (lasting for the default time of one hour) to the default calendar

khal new 25.10. 16:00 18:00 Another Event :: with Alice and Bob

adds a new event on 25th of October lasting from 16:00 to 18:00 with an additional description

khal new -a work 26.07. Great Event

adds a new all day event on 26th of July to the calendar work.

printcalendars

prints a list of all configured calendars.