[Remind-Fans] Letting an OMIT drive the SKIP/BEFORE/AFTER?

[Dianne Skoll]

On Fri, 30 Jun 2023 07:33:55 -0500
Tim Chase via Remind-fans <remind-fans at lists.skoll.ca> wrote:

> However, recently they opted to cancel or shift it *forward* a week
> instead.  In those occasions, it would be nice to have the deflecting
> SKIP/BEFORE/AFTER information associated with the OMIT instead, so
> I hoped I could do something like this (concocted) syntax

This is an interesting idea.  I think we'd also need syntax in the REM
command that explicitly indicates we're taking BEFORE/AFTER/SKIP from the
OMIT setting, otherwise it could get confusing.

So something like:

OMIT ... BEFORE
OMIT ... AFTER
OMIT ... SKIP

REM ... ADJUST ...

where "ADJUST" means to adjust the before/after/skip according to the
OMIT setting.  If anyone has a better word than ADJUST, I'm open to ideas.

Anyway, this does seem like a pretty good idea to me.

> I get that it's possible to have two conflicting OMITs like

>   OMIT Jul 1 2023 SKIP MSG nah
>   OMIT Jul 1 2023 AFTER MSG later

In that case, the second would overwrite the first.  The real problem
comes from:

    OMIT Jul 1 SKIP
    OMIT Jul 1 2023 AFTER

in which case I think a reasonable resolution is to apply the keyword
associated with the most specific OMIT specification.  So on Jul 1
2023 it would be AFTER, but on any other Jul 1 it would be SKIP.

So yeah.  If/when I have time, I'll look into this.  Thanks for the
suggestion!  (We'll also need a companion to the isomitted() function
that can return the skip type, if any, associated with an omitted day.)

Oh darn... here's another problem:

OMIT Jul 1 AFTER
OMIT Jul 2 BEFORE

REM Jul 1 ADJUST MSG WTF???

So hmm... not sure...  Maybe the first one is respected and the rest
ignored, so that'd trigger on July 3?  But then REM JUL 2 ADJUST would
trigger on June 30th.

Regards,

Dianne.