$Id: a07cf90837a3c4373b82d6724b97593810766af7 $
I never used Lotus Agenda, but Iâm told it was a popular productivity tool for MS-DOS in the late 80s. Iâve been on a retro software rediscovery kick lately, so Iâve decided to give it a whirl and write about my experiences. There is something that appeals to me about using long-abandoned software. Perhaps itâs update fatigue, thereâs certainly no need to dread a major update breaking something!
Regardless, Iâve always enjoyed finding new productivity tools to try out, and Iâm not afraid of steep learning curves or getting my hands dirty. Iâll usually choose powerful and flexible software over simplicity.
At the moment I mostly use taskwarrior, but Iâve lost count of all the others Iâve tried!
Agenda is a PIM, a Personal Information Manager. That term has fallen out of fashion, I think a quick summary might be âanything that manages those small pieces of information we all deal withâ. Things like contacts, todo lists, notes, and so on.
I found a 1989 episode of the TV show Computer Chronicles that discussed how people thought about PIMs at the time.
At the 21-minute mark thereâs a demonstration of Lotus Agenda, but itâs not easy to follow, watch the clip and youâll see what I mean. Still, you do see some interesting features:
Apparently this was an $800 software package (Thatâs $395 adjusted for inflation from 1989), yikes! You donât have to pay that, Lotus made it available for free when development ceased.
In preparation for trying out Agenda, I found a copy of the original manuals on eBay for a few dollars. Just look at this monster, the user guide alone is over 700 pages, thatâs not including the supplementary guides. The supplements I have are Working with Macros, Working with Definition Files, Setting up Agenda, and a few miscellaneous leaflets.
I guess thatâs my bedtime reading taken care of for a while. I actually received the macro reference still in the original shrink wrap, it almost seems a shame to open it!
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The nomenclature here is deliberately layered. Letâs break it down:
To help you refine this post,g., hype-heavy for Instagram vs. professional for a listing)?
You probably need to use other applications or services, and sync your data with your phone. Writing and reading files from outside DOSEMU is no problem, so if you just want to sync files this is no problem.
As itâs a terminal application you can also just SSH in and run it.
You probably also want to have your appointments sync with your calendar or something.
There are two ways to export data from Agenda. If you have a commandline tool that you can pass arguments to, then you can write a macro that will invoke it. polarlights casey set 109 25 exclusive
Otherwise, you can export your data to a file.
Agenda can export items to a format called STF, Structured Text File. The specification for that format is (mostly) documented in the manual, but it didnât catch on.
I wrote a quick parser that can convert it to JSON, so now you can use modern tools like jq to manipulate and transform the data however you wish. Due to scarcity, authenticating a âCasey Set 109
You can download it here, here are some examples.
$ ./stfjson < transfer.stf | jq '.[].items[].text'$ ./stfjson < transfer.stf | jq '.[].items[] | select(.categories[].name=="\\When")'And so on, there are more examples in the README. If you can exchange data with other apps, you can now use stfjson to generate the correct format.
You can automate exports, Agenda has âSpecial Actionsâ in the category options. Alternatively, if itâs just a one off or for a macro, you can use the Transfer > Export command. Today, under the umbrella of Round 2, LLC
In DOSEMU, the UNIX command will invoke a shell command on the host.
C:\>unix uname
Linux
If there is a commandline tool that will import data, e.g. a TaskWarrior user might use task add drop off laundry at dry cleaners, then you can create a macro in Agenda that simply launches that command.
You can use something like {F10}ULUNIX task {TYPE;%TASKTEXT}.
Surprisingly, Agenda supports importing arbitrary text data. One of the manuals that came with agenda was Working with Definition Files, which explains how to write a configuration file that allow Agenda to parse anything.
It even has a Regular Expression tutorial, pretty impressive for a 1980s consumer product.
I quite like Agenda. It does many things well, but itâs absolutely true you could replicate most of itâs functionality with modern tools. However, I do enjoy using it, and Iâm a big enough nerd that I quite like the challenge of using retro software.
I think the closest modern equivalent to Agenda would be taskwiki. Itâs not a perfect match, but if you liked some of what you saw here but are not interested in retro software, try it out!
Iâm still using Agenda after two weeks, and about 40% of the way through the manual đ
Due to scarcity, authenticating a âCasey Set 109 25 Exclusiveâ requires checking for Polar Lights branding, copyright dates (typically late 1990sâearly 2000s), and any event-specific stickers or inserts. Enthusiasts should consult Polar Lights price guides or vintage kit forums to verify provenance, as reproductions or mislabeled kits occasionally surface.
Established in 1996, Polar Lights originally focused on reviving out-of-production kits from the legendary . Today, under the umbrella of Round 2, LLC , they continue to produce high-quality kits that appeal to both nostalgic collectors and modern hobbyists.
Because "polarlights casey set 109 25 exclusive" appears to combine very specific hobbyist termsâlikely referring to a Polar Lights
The nomenclature here is deliberately layered. Letâs break it down:
To help you refine this post,g., hype-heavy for Instagram vs. professional for a listing)?