[Remind-Fans] Multi-day vs DURATION (was Re: DURATION enhancement)

[Tim Chase]

On 2023-01-20 13:03, Dianne Skoll wrote:
> On Fri, 20 Jan 2023 17:59:01 +0000
> Tim Chase <remind at tim.thechases.com> wrote:
> 
> >   REM Jan 18 2023 AT 3:14pm \
> >     ENDS Jan 28 AT 9:30am \
> >     MSG Business trip to DC
> 
> I like the idea of ENDS.  I worry that Remind is becoming unreadable;
> we already have THROUGH and UNTIL. :)

Indeed, I regularly have to look up which one require the repeat
and which one implies it.

> I'll consider ENDS, though your example is a little ambiguous
> because there's no year after the ENDS.  I guess Remind can infer
> it.

I *totally* meant to put the year in there, so I'd have no qualms
about requiring a fully specified date if it's provided:

  REM Jan 18 2023 AT 3:14pm \
    ENDS Jan 28 2023 AT 9:30am \
    MSG Business trip to DC

and let remind yell at me for the bogus yearless example I gave
above. :-)

>     REM Monday AT 2:00pm ENDS 4:00pm MSG whatever
>     REM 31 October AT 23:00 ENDS 02:00 MSG Late-night party!
> 
> which is going to make the parsing a bit annoying.

Would it be easier to require the AT in those?

  REM Monday AT 2:00pm ENDS AT 4:00pm MSG whatever
  REM 31 October AT 23:00 ENDS AT 02:00 MSG Late-night party!

That way, if you've started an ENDS and you hit an AT, but you don't
yet have a date, you can use the current trigdate (or trigdate+1
if the ENDS time is after the event time).

Anyways, just throwing ideas out there.  Thanks for entertaining
them. :-)

-tim