$Id: a07cf90837a3c4373b82d6724b97593810766af7 $
I never used Lotus Agenda, but I’m told it was a popular productivity tool for MS-DOS in the late 80s. I’ve been on a retro software rediscovery kick lately, so I’ve decided to give it a whirl and write about my experiences. There is something that appeals to me about using long-abandoned software. Perhaps it’s update fatigue, there’s certainly no need to dread a major update breaking something!
Regardless, I’ve always enjoyed finding new productivity tools to try out, and I’m not afraid of steep learning curves or getting my hands dirty. I’ll usually choose powerful and flexible software over simplicity.
At the moment I mostly use taskwarrior, but I’ve lost count of all the others I’ve tried!
Agenda is a PIM, a Personal Information Manager. That term has fallen out of fashion, I think a quick summary might be “anything that manages those small pieces of information we all deal with”. 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 there’s a demonstration of Lotus Agenda, but it’s not easy to follow, watch the clip and you’ll see what I mean. Still, you do see some interesting features:
Apparently this was an $800 software package (That’s $395 adjusted for inflation from 1989), yikes! You don’t 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, that’s 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 that’s 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!
As the lights go out, the house isn't truly silent. There’s the low hum of the ceiling fan and the comfort of knowing that tomorrow, the pressure cooker will whistle, the tea will brew, and the beautiful, messy cycle will begin all over again. or a particular to see how the daily routine changes?
In the kitchen, his wife, daughter-in-law, and daughter work in tandem, flipping hot parathas (flatbreads). There is a constant debate about who gets the bathroom first, a missing set of car keys, and what vegetables to buy from the vendor downstairs. Despite the noise and lack of privacy, no one feels lonely. When Ramesh’s son faces a stressful day at his textile business, the burden is distributed across six pairs of shoulders over dinner. Story 2: The Nair Family (Tech-Hub Bengaluru)
The Indian housewife’s life is often romanticized, but in reality, it is a management degree executed without a salary. Once the family left, Meena didn't sit down. She tied her hair back and attacked the pile of clothes on the 'string cot' ( charpai ) in the spare room.
By 6:00 AM, the kitchen becomes the command center of the home. The preparation of breakfast and school lunches is a high-speed operation. Unlike Western breakfasts centered around cold cereal, an Indian morning demands fresh, hot food: crisp paranthas in the north, fluffy idlis or savory upma in the south, or golden theplas in the west.
The departure was a chaotic dance. Shoes were hunted, keys were jingled, and a final checklist was recited by Meena: "Tiffin? Water bottle? Handkerchief? Wallet?"
In an Indian home, the kitchen is the command center. Daily life stories are often narrated over the rolling of rotis or the tempering of spices ( tadka ).
No discussion of is complete without the wedding. A wedding is not a one-day event; it is a three-year project.
In urban areas, the lifestyle may be more fast-paced, with family members pursuing careers and education. However, in rural areas, life is often more simple, with families relying on agriculture, farming, or small-scale industries for their livelihood.
Despite these challenges, Indian families are adapting and evolving. Many families are embracing modernity while still maintaining their traditional values and customs.
An exploration of how the "family" extends beyond the front door. From the local vegetable vendor who knows everyone’s preferences to the neighbours who exchange bowls of sugar and gossip over balconies, this feature illustrates the social safety net and communal lifestyle unique to Indian residential colonies. 4. Digital Dharma: WhatsApp and the Modern Home
By 2:00 PM, the house exhales. After a heavy lunch of rice, sambar, and papad, the "afternoon nap" is a sacred ritual for the elders. However, the silence is short-lived. By 4:30 PM, the neighborhood awakens for
Modern Indian family life is not without its friction. The current generation is navigating a unique cultural bridge. Young adults are balancing individualistic career goals, financial independence, and progressive global views with deeply ingrained filial piety and respect for traditional family hierarchies.
Shoes are strictly left at the front door to keep the living space spiritually and physically clean.
As the heat of the day fades, the family converges. Evening tea ( chai ) is a non-negotiable ritual. Served with savory snacks like samosas or rusks , this hour is dedicated to unwinding and debriefing. After homework and evening prayers, dinner is served late—often between 8:30 PM and 10:00 PM—and is strictly eaten together. 3. Food as the Ultimate Expression of Love
Young adults migrate to metro cities like Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Delhi for career opportunities. This has made nuclear families the new urban norm.
Between 4 PM and 6 PM, the Indian city holds its breath. Offices wind down, schools let out, and the universal call for Chai (tea) goes out.
: Eating together is a non-negotiable ritual in many families, serving as a "mini roundtable conference" for life and laughter. While traditional hierarchies sometimes saw men eat before women, modern families increasingly view mealtime as a time for gender-equal bonding.
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 it’s 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.
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 didn’t 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.
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 “Special Actions” in the category options. Alternatively, if it’s just a one off or for a macro, you can use the Transfer > Export command.
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 it’s absolutely true you could replicate most of it’s functionality with modern tools. However, I do enjoy using it, and I’m 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. It’s not a perfect match, but if you liked some of what you saw here but are not interested in retro software, try it out!
I’m still using Agenda after two weeks, and about 40% of the way through the manual 😂
As the lights go out, the house isn't truly silent. There’s the low hum of the ceiling fan and the comfort of knowing that tomorrow, the pressure cooker will whistle, the tea will brew, and the beautiful, messy cycle will begin all over again. or a particular to see how the daily routine changes?
In the kitchen, his wife, daughter-in-law, and daughter work in tandem, flipping hot parathas (flatbreads). There is a constant debate about who gets the bathroom first, a missing set of car keys, and what vegetables to buy from the vendor downstairs. Despite the noise and lack of privacy, no one feels lonely. When Ramesh’s son faces a stressful day at his textile business, the burden is distributed across six pairs of shoulders over dinner. Story 2: The Nair Family (Tech-Hub Bengaluru)
The Indian housewife’s life is often romanticized, but in reality, it is a management degree executed without a salary. Once the family left, Meena didn't sit down. She tied her hair back and attacked the pile of clothes on the 'string cot' ( charpai ) in the spare room.
By 6:00 AM, the kitchen becomes the command center of the home. The preparation of breakfast and school lunches is a high-speed operation. Unlike Western breakfasts centered around cold cereal, an Indian morning demands fresh, hot food: crisp paranthas in the north, fluffy idlis or savory upma in the south, or golden theplas in the west.
The departure was a chaotic dance. Shoes were hunted, keys were jingled, and a final checklist was recited by Meena: "Tiffin? Water bottle? Handkerchief? Wallet?" As the lights go out, the house isn't truly silent
In an Indian home, the kitchen is the command center. Daily life stories are often narrated over the rolling of rotis or the tempering of spices ( tadka ).
No discussion of is complete without the wedding. A wedding is not a one-day event; it is a three-year project.
In urban areas, the lifestyle may be more fast-paced, with family members pursuing careers and education. However, in rural areas, life is often more simple, with families relying on agriculture, farming, or small-scale industries for their livelihood.
Despite these challenges, Indian families are adapting and evolving. Many families are embracing modernity while still maintaining their traditional values and customs. In the kitchen, his wife, daughter-in-law, and daughter
An exploration of how the "family" extends beyond the front door. From the local vegetable vendor who knows everyone’s preferences to the neighbours who exchange bowls of sugar and gossip over balconies, this feature illustrates the social safety net and communal lifestyle unique to Indian residential colonies. 4. Digital Dharma: WhatsApp and the Modern Home
By 2:00 PM, the house exhales. After a heavy lunch of rice, sambar, and papad, the "afternoon nap" is a sacred ritual for the elders. However, the silence is short-lived. By 4:30 PM, the neighborhood awakens for
Modern Indian family life is not without its friction. The current generation is navigating a unique cultural bridge. Young adults are balancing individualistic career goals, financial independence, and progressive global views with deeply ingrained filial piety and respect for traditional family hierarchies.
Shoes are strictly left at the front door to keep the living space spiritually and physically clean. When Ramesh’s son faces a stressful day at
As the heat of the day fades, the family converges. Evening tea ( chai ) is a non-negotiable ritual. Served with savory snacks like samosas or rusks , this hour is dedicated to unwinding and debriefing. After homework and evening prayers, dinner is served late—often between 8:30 PM and 10:00 PM—and is strictly eaten together. 3. Food as the Ultimate Expression of Love
Young adults migrate to metro cities like Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Delhi for career opportunities. This has made nuclear families the new urban norm.
Between 4 PM and 6 PM, the Indian city holds its breath. Offices wind down, schools let out, and the universal call for Chai (tea) goes out.
: Eating together is a non-negotiable ritual in many families, serving as a "mini roundtable conference" for life and laughter. While traditional hierarchies sometimes saw men eat before women, modern families increasingly view mealtime as a time for gender-equal bonding.