writing-schedule 0.1.0

Turn a weekly org-mode block table into a dated schedule, an iCalendar file, and a printable time-block PDF.

writing-schedule (Python)

A Python port of mooerslab/writing-schedule.el. It reads the same weekly org-mode block table and produces the same three outputs, namely the dated schedule .org file, an iCalendar .ics file, and a printable time-block PDF. A person who cannot install Emacs gets the same artifacts from a single pip install, because the PDF is drawn with ReportLab rather than TeX.

The org table stays the planning surface, because it is plain text that any editor can handle. The two implementations are two performances of one score: the format specification in formatspec.org is the score, the elisp package is the reference recording, and a shared fixture directory keeps the Python variant from drifting into a dialect of its own.

Installation

pip install writing-schedule        # once published to PyPI
pipx install writing-schedule        # isolated console tool
pip install -e .                     # from a checkout, for development

The only runtime dependency is ReportLab. The iCalendar writer and the parser use the standard library alone, including zoneinfo for daylight saving.

Command line

The subcommands mirror the shell front end of the elisp package.

writing-schedule generate  TABLE --week 2026-01-19 [--dir OUT] [--no-ics] [--no-todo] [--tz ZONE]
writing-schedule export    TABLE --week 2026-01-19 [--dir OUT] [--tz ZONE]
writing-schedule sheets    TABLE --week 2026-01-19 [--dir OUT] [--engine reportlab|latex] [--format pdf|org|both] [--per-day]
writing-schedule template  N [--out FILE]
writing-schedule weeks     [--dir OUT]

--week takes any date inside the target week, because the week snaps to the Monday on or before that date. Examples:

writing-schedule generate projects-and-tasks.org --week 2026-01-19 --dir out
writing-schedule sheets   projects-and-tasks.org --week 2026-01-19 --dir out --format both
writing-schedule sheets   projects-and-tasks.org --week 2026-01-19 --dir out --engine latex

Library

from writing_schedule import parse_text, generate_schedule, build_ics, render_week_pdf

parsed = parse_text(open("projects-and-tasks.org").read())
monday, title, body = generate_schedule(parsed, "2026-01-19")
open("writing-2026-01-19.org", "w").write(body)
open("writing-2026-01-19.ics", "w", newline="").write(build_ics(parsed, monday, title))
render_week_pdf(parsed, monday, "sheets-week-2026-01-19.pdf")

Module layout

Module	Responsibility	Mirrors
parser.py	Read the org table into events	writing-schedule--parse
orgtable.py	Split org-table text into rows	org-table-to-lisp
model.py	Event, ParsedTable, MapEntry	the reference plists
week.py	Week arithmetic and date stamping	--week-monday, --iso-date
schedule.py	Write the dated schedule org file	writing-schedule-generate
ics.py	Emit RFC 5545 events directly	the ox-icalendar export
vtimezone.py	Build a VTIMEZONE from zoneinfo	(improvement over floating time)
sheet.py	Draw the time-block PDF (ReportLab)	the --timeblock-* family
sheet_latex.py	Emit the LaTeX sheet (optional engine)	--timeblock-document
sheet_org.py	Write the editable week org file	--timeblock-org-document
template.py	Blank weekly-table scaffold	--template-string
archive.py	List archived weeks, newest first	--archived-weeks
cli.py	Subcommands and options	writing-schedule.sh

The parser is free of any knowledge of output formats. It returns a plain data structure of events, the legend, the codes, and the day columns, so a bug in the PDF layout can never corrupt the calendar output.

The PDF decision

ReportLab is the default, because a person who cannot install Emacs is unlikely to enjoy installing a multi-gigabyte TeX distribution. Drawing the grid is a good fit for a canvas, because each planned block is a box placed at its exact time range rather than snapped to the five-row-per-hour grid the tabular model forces. The five sub-rows survive only as light guide lines. A block that reaches a page boundary is left open at that edge, so a block crossing the page break reads as one block across two pages.

The LaTeX emitter is kept behind --engine latex for users who have TeX and want output that is byte-comparable with the Emacs version.

Daylight saving

Times are written as local wall-clock values with a TZID, and the file carries a VTIMEZONE derived from zoneinfo. A 04:00 block therefore stays at 04:00 in every week, and a calendar client resolves the correct absolute instant on either side of a transition. The test suite verifies that a 04:00 block resolves to 10:00 UTC in a winter week and 09:00 UTC in a summer week.

Testing and parity

pip install -e ".[test]"
pytest

tests/test_writing_schedule.py ports the ERT suite to pytest and keeps the same test names, so the two suites read side by side. tests/test_parity.py asserts that the parser finds forty-four events with the correct codes, offsets, and times in tests/fixtures/projects-and-tasks.org, which is the hardest shared contract. tests/test_ics.py covers the calendar subset and daylight saving. tests/test_sheet.py checks the PDF page count and the block-box geometry, because byte comparison across two rendering engines is not realistic.