.TH bday 1
.SH NAME
bday \- inform about upcoming birthdays and other events
.SH SYNOPSIS
.BR bday\  [ -f
.IR file ]
.RB [ -W
.IR defwarn ]

.SH DESCRIPTION
The 
.B bday
command reads a file, by default
.IR ~/.birthdays ,
which gives a list of birthdays and events (see section
.B FILE FORMAT
for details). It produces a list of events which are coming up within the next few weeks.

.SH OPTIONS

.TP
.BI -f\  file
Read the events from
.I file
rather than
.IR ~/.birthdays.
If
.I file
is a single hyphen, read the events from the standard input (usually
the terminal).

.TP
.BI -W\  warn
Warn
.I warn
days in advance, for entries that have no
.B w
flag (see
.BR FILE\ FORMAT ).
If this switch is not specified, it defaults to 21 days.


.SH FILE FORMAT

Each line beginning with a hash sign, 
.RB ` # ',
is a comment and will be ignored.

Any other line specifies the name of a person or event, followed by an equals sign and
a date and finally some extra options. The date has to be in ISO 8601 date format (YYYY-MM-DD).
The extra options are:
.TP
.B bd
This line is a birthday (the default). The year, if given, should be when the person was born. A line designated as a
birthday will produce output like
.B Erin has a birthday in 3 days' time
or
.BR "Jemima is 3 in 2 weeks' time" .
.TP
.B ann
This line is an anniversary. The year, if given, should be the year in which the thing happened, producing output like
.B Pen exploded 3 years ago tomorrow
given a line such as
.BR "Pen exploded=1993-09-12 ann" .
.TP
.B ev
This line is an event of some sort. If a year is given, the text will be displayed in that year only; otherwise, it will
be displayed every year. The remaining time is simply appended to the text; for instance, the input
.B Easter=1996-04-07 ev
would give rise to the text
.BR "Easter in 1 week's time" .
.TP
.BI w n
Warn
.I n
days in advance of the date, rather than the default of 21 days or the number given with the
.B -W
flag.
.TP
.BI for days
The event lasts for
.B days
days.
.TP
.BI to date
The event lasts until
.IR date ,
which should be in the same format as for the date of the event.

.SH DATE SPECIFICATION

This version of of the programm is patched to only handle standard ISO 8601 date format now.
The intention to do change this behavior was to eliminate all those problems with different date formats.
IMHO we have standards to use them. Backward compatibility is not that important here, in my eyes.

.SH EXAMPLE

Joe Blow=1974-04-25

.SH FILES

.TP
.I ~/.birthdays
Your default birthdays file.

.SH SEE ALSO

.BR birthday (1),
cal (1)

.SH BUGS
The program cannot warn more than one year in advance of anything.

.SH CREDITS

This Program is heavily based on birthday. But without all non essential stuff. Nevertheless, much thanks for birthday, Andy!

.SH AUTHOR
Andy Mortimer <andy.mortimer@zetnet.co.uk> and markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de>