Natural Language

[drplokta]

Everyone is trying to sell "natural language" calendar programs, that let you enter new appointments and reminders more naturally. And that's great, but all the examples they use to sell them are completely noddy ones like "10am next Monday", because doing it properly is very, very difficult. If you want to sell me your program, show me it can cope

Comments

[autopope]

One that google calendar signally fails to serve for me:

* On the last Tuesday of the month, except in August and December.

[bohemiancoast]

Lots and lots of 'every month at this time, except August' in fact -- that's a very common pattern.

The first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

[owlfish]

i'd quite like "every month at this time, except June-August".

[bohemiancoast]

Oh, wow, drplokta hasn't included any of the 'term time only' examples.

[owlfish]

And useful as they would be, they can be very institution-dependent.
(I managed to miss out Fall Break from my syllabus because it wasn't listed in the academic calendar for the university in question when I was putting my syllabus together. But it's happening and is now listed there.)