copy2calendar's date and time recognition (parser)

At the core of copy2calendar is a recognition engine (parser) that automatically searches text for date and time information.

Recognized date and time formats

In addition to language independent (numeric only) formats, copy2calendar recognizes date and time specifications in the following 13 languages:

• Catalan
• Danish
• Dutch
• English
• Finnish
• French
• German
• Icelandic
• Italian
• Norwegian
• Portuguese
• Spanish
• Swedish

For each language, copy2calendar recognizes the following language dependent elements:

• Weekday names - full or abbreviated (Monday, Mon, Mo, etc.)
• Month names - full or abbreviated (January, Jan, etc.)
• Range markers (till, to, until, etc.)
• Time markers (o’clock, am, pm, etc.)
• Relative dates (today, tomorrow, etc.)

Date and time ranges

Examples:
       29 Mar. - 3 Apr.
       February 1-3
       9-10:30am

Relative date specifications

For each language selected in the Settings, the following date specifications are interpreted relative to today’s date:

• Today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow
• Monday, Tuesday, ..…, Sunday: (starting with today, always the next Monday, Tuesday, ..., Sunday is always assumed)

NOTE! copy2calendar does not recognize relative date specifications that lie in the past (yesterday, ...)

Ambiguous date and time specifications

See Ambiguous Formats for information on how copy2calendar handles potentially ambiguous date and time information.

Avoiding ambiguity

copy2calendar’s parser is designed to recognize date and time specifications in potentially all formats used. If you create calendar entries using type2calendar, you can prevent copy2calendar from bringing up a dialog box that would let you decide which ambiguous interpretation to use. With type2calendar, unambiguous date strings can be specified if you use these simple rules:

• Use four-digit year numbers
  Example: specify 2005 instead of 05
  
  
• Do not specify the month with digits; use month names instead
  Example: specify 1/Dec rather than 1/12
  
  
• Use a time marker for time specifications
  Example: specify 11 o’clock, 11am or 11.00h rather than 11.00
  
  
• Separate the date and time parts by a comma or a semicolon
  Example: specify 12 May, 05-07 pm rather than 12 May 05-07pm