Events

The app already holds two things with dates on them. A goal is an effort that progresses and eventually finishes. A meeting on Day is an appointment at a time. An event is neither. It is a run of days with a name, so there is no progress on it and nothing to finish — it starts, it runs, and at some point it is over.

Because an event is its span, its row leads with its dates rather than its name. Two months of choppy travel is the same shape whether you call it a trip or a stretch, and the dates are what tell you which one you are reading.

An event can start on a date, end on a date, or run open-ended from its start. An end can also be marked as soft, which means a horizon rather than a finish line — the point where the thing is expected to wind down rather than the day it stops. A soft end shows with a tilde before it, and an event that runs past a soft end is still running. Only a hard end completes one.

That distinction exists because most real stretches have one. Leaving in late September for about two months is not a commitment to a particular Thursday, and a date printed flat would claim a precision you never gave.

You mark an event as Committed, Maybe or Canceled. Everything else about its state is read off the calendar: a committed event reads as committed before its start date, active once it has begun, and completed after a hard end has passed. An event you marked Maybe stays Maybe until you commit to it, and a canceled one stays canceled whatever its dates say.

An event therefore cannot claim to be running on a week it had not started. The status is worked out each time it is read, so time passing keeps it right on its own.

An event is a run of days, so the days inside it belong to it, and so does everything you wrote on those days. That holds without anything being filed, so an event never needs tidying and can never hold a stale list, and moving its dates moves what it covers.

A note can also be put in an event by hand, which is how a note written weeks before the days it is about still belongs to them. You do that from the note rather than from here, on the row labelled Event under its title, and Notes says how. The notes filed that way gather on the event’s own page behind References, with a count beside it, on the web and on the phone alike. A row there opens the note on both. An event with nothing filed under it shows no such line.

Renaming an event keeps everything filed under it. Deleting one keeps the notes and drops only the link, so nothing you wrote goes with it.

An event can sit inside another one. A single trip inside a longer travel stretch is one event within another, and both are true at once.

Events is on the menu between Goals and Notes, in a browser and in the installed phone app alike, and both read the same list the same way. It is a flat list under two headings. Ahead holds what has not reached its end date, soonest first, and arrives open. Recent holds what is over, most recently ended first, and arrives folded with a count beside it, since an event that is over is something to look up rather than something to read past. Either heading folds, and what you fold is remembered on the device you folded it on, so the phone and the browser each keep their own answer.

The list holds events, and only events. An event is on it when it has both a start and an end and runs ninety days or fewer, which keeps a long weekend and a four-week trip. A stretch you left open-ended, or one that runs longer than that, is not on this list at all — it is still yours and still opens at its own address, and this list is not the way to it.

A row holds one line. Its dates run in a column down the left, its name sits beside them, and a word stands at the right end only where the event is something other than what its heading already said. An event you marked Maybe reads Maybe under Ahead. An approximate end never finishes anything, so one whose end was approximate can read Active under Recent. An event that sits inside another is drawn within its parent's row, smaller. Its life area and your notes about it are on the event itself rather than on the row.

A field reading Name an event makes one: type a name and add it. It exists from that moment with no dates on it, which is an intention rather than a span — and with no dates it is not on this list yet, so it appears once above the field you named it in, marked as having no dates, until you open it and give it some.

Opening an event's name opens the event, on the web and on the phone alike. The title is the field that renames it. Under the title are four words, Stance, Dates, Area and Inside, and each one is the control for the thing it names, so the life area the event belongs to and the event it sits inside are set from the same line. Dates asks for both days at once, from a month grid on the phone and from your browser's own date field on the web. The end offers On that day or Around then, which is how a soft end is written.

The state read off the calendar stands beside the stance wherever the two differ, and it takes no edit, so a committed event you are inside reads Active there. Beside the dates is how long the event runs, counted to its end date or to today where it has no end. Your own note about the event goes under all of it, and Delete permanently is at the foot and asks first. The days inside keep what you wrote on them.