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.

Under an event’s notes are its work and its log, in the order a goal’s page reads, on the web and on the phone alike. Tasks lists what is filed under the event, open work first and finished work behind Show finished; the line under it files a new task under the event and gives it the event’s life area. Journal shows what you have written on the event under a heading for each day, and the bar at its foot writes an ordinary journal entry that reaches that day like anything else. Archive at the foot of the page takes the event off the list and keeps everything written on it, and Restore puts it back.

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 event, with New note at the foot of its notes list. That starts a note already filed under the event and opens it with the name field ready. The notes filed that way are listed on the event’s own page under Notes, above the work and the log, 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 one timeline, read from the past into the future. Recent comes first, holding what is over, most recently ended first, and it arrives folded, since an event that is over is something to look up rather than something to read past. Ahead is under it, holding what has not reached its end date, soonest first, and it arrives open. 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 line runs down the left of the list and every row hangs off it, with a dot on the line where each event begins. A row is that dot, the day the event begins as the weekday over the day, its name, and how long it runs on a second line under the name. The month is not on the rows. It stands once on the line above the first row of each month, with a year on it only where the year turns, so reading down gives the calendar in order without saying September thirty times. A word stands at the right end only where the event is something other than what its heading already said. An event's end date is not on this list at all, and you set it on the event's own page; the length on the row is what the row says about it, with a tilde in front of it where that end is approximate. 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. Its life area and your notes about it are on the event itself rather than on the row.

Under Ahead, the days no event holds get a row of their own, reading Empty with the number of free days under it and dashing the line for as long as the stretch lasts, so a clear stretch looks like one. Pressing that row points the naming field at exactly those days: a chip beside the field says which days they are, and the next name you type becomes an event that fills them, from the first free day to the last.

Two chevrons beside the date appear when your pointer is over a row or the row holds the focus, and each moves the whole event a day, start and end together, so how long it runs does not change. The left and right arrow keys do the same from the date itself. Pressing the date opens your browser's own date field for the start, which is the other act: it moves one end and changes the length.

An event that sits inside another is drawn within it. A shut one has a hollow dot beside its triangle, which is how the row says it holds more. Opening it thickens the line into a bar that runs from its own row to the end of what it holds, and the events inside hang off a thinner line stepped in beside it, each with its own dot and date. The days inside it that none of them covers stand there as empty rows too, and pressing one names an event inside that event. Moving an event that holds others moves them with it, so what is inside stays where it was inside.

The phone reads the same list under the same headings, and it still draws the older row: the weekday, the month and the day in three columns, Nothing scheduled where the days are free, and a hairline under the triangle of an opened event. The line, the empty rows you can press and the chevrons are on the web for now.

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.

To put a new event inside one you already have, open the row's own menu — right-click it in a browser, hold it on the phone — and choose New event inside. A chip beside the naming field then names the event you chose, and the next name you type is filed inside it. The × on the chip files at the top instead, and the chip clears itself once the event is made.

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.