[Remind-Fans] loving and hating the syntax

[martin f krafft]

the greatest thing about remind is the flexibility that results from
its easy to very difficult syntax. no doubt about that.

however, this syntax still isn't complex enough for my tastes -- or
i am simply doing it wrongly.

all my entries take the following form:

  REM <date> ... AT <time> ... MSG %# - %"Important meeting%" %a %3 (%1)

This will make the remind show "Important meeting" together with the
AT time, but when remind displays the message, it will be in this
format (if displayed 30 minutes before):

  9:30 - Important meeting today at 10:00 (30 minutes from now)

Perfect!

However, this is a pain to enter and maintain! Is there no easier way
to manage these static pre- and suffix strings? msgprefix() and
msgsuffix() do *not* parse the % arguments, and a function:

  fset _msg(x) ["%# - %\"" + x + " %a %3 (%1)"]

still requires this invocation:

  REM ... MSG [_msg("Important meeting")]

which is not really making it easier nor more usable.

Yet another alternative are simply two variable, PREFIX and SUFFIX
which then make the remind command look like this:

  REM ... MSG [PREFIX] Important meeting [POSTFIX]

... probably the best method so far. But isn't there a way to take
that maintenance burden away from me and to make parseable and
automatic prefix and postfix strings possible (short of writing
a parser that generates remind command files from metadata)?

thanks,

-- 
martin;              (greetings from the heart of the sun.)
  \____ echo mailto: !#^."<*>"|tr "<*> mailto:" net at madduck
 
sed -e '/^[when][coders]/!d' \
    -e '/^...[discover].$/d' \
    -e '/^..[real].[code]$/!d' \
    /usr/share/dict/words
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