BSD Main Utilities ('bsdmainutils') package -- this is the source of the old, simple Unix/BSD 'calendar' program, which can be used with PCAL and the '-c' option. This old program does not seem to be included with most GNU/Linux distributions these days.

source of 'deskcal2' by Richard J. Mathar -- an alternate version of the 'dodecahedron' calendar mentioned above. Per the website: this is "a C-shell script to create a PostScript file of an unfolded Dodecahedron with a calendar of 12 months covering the 12 faces. The original by A Rogers has been enhanced by a scaling option, a colorizing option and a German/French/Spanish/Italian output option." This 'deskcal2' version does not have as many features as Ole Arntzen's version (described above), however.

Aside: Robert's original URL has "gone dark" as first noticed in Dec 2012, so I (Bill Marr) am supplying his Postscript code, tweaked ever-so-slightly each year to simply start the spiral with the current year.

The Chinese Zodiac spiral (by way of PostScript) -- a neat PostScript-generated spiral, by Robert Simms, showing the (12-animal) Chinese zodiac around the edge, with all the years shown, starting from the current year and going backwards as the spiral tightens

I recommend throwing a few marbles, a bunch of unpopped popcorn kernels, or (in a pinch) a few coins inside, just before gluing the last face down. This adds some much-needed weight to it, so that it won't blow away so easily!

It helps immensely to (carefully!) score all of the 'fold' lines with a very sharp (e.g. 'X-ACTO') knife (very lightly all the way across or slightly harder, in several short segments) before assembling and gluing the final product.

If you make one of these dodecahedron calendars, I would recommend 2 things:

By tweaking the '/holidays', '/bdays', '/rdays' and '/bluerange' arrays in the PostScript source code, you can define which days get colored red, which days get a blue box, which days get a red box, and which _range_ of days get colored blue.

It prints Sundays (or whatever is defined as 'holyday' in the PostScript source code) in red, which is a nice, colorful touch. (Some other calendars show all days in black.)

By tweaking the '/weeknumbers' setting in the PostScript source code, you can enable little brownish-colored 'week numbers' (1-53 for 2008) in front of each week row.

The glue-able tabs are designed in a way that makes them easier to cut out (i.e. with scissors), using fewer cuts and angles.

It prints the calendars in what I consider to be the "proper side up" orientation, for a dodecahedron sitting on your desk.

It maximizes the use of the available space, making the calendar faces as large as possible, resulting in a nice, large dodecahedron, with larger text.

Of the 3 variants of the 'dodecahedron' calendars mentioned in this section, I (Bill Marr) have found Ole's version to be the best overall version, for the following reasons:

Calendar on a regular/rhombic dodecahedron -- an excellent site (including photos of the finished product) by Ole Arntzen on how to download and make a nifty, 3D calendar on a dodecahedron (1 month on each of 12 faces)

PCAL and LCAL on Mac OS X, using Fink -- generously provided by someone going by the handle "Monic Polynomial"

This review includes some good examples of various event specifications for use in your configuration file(s).

'PCAL gets dates down on paper' -- a Jul 2007 Linux.com review by James John Eaton

Iain Mac Donald's tutorial , which includes screenshots, describes the creation of a yearly calendar superimposed over a full-page background image (with the help of the pstoedit conversion utility and either the Skencil or Inkscape vector graphics editor)

Thomas Zastrow's page (mostly in German) about PCAL which includes an example (with the help of Scribus) of a monthly calendar with a full-page background image

source of 'pcalyacc' utility -- a small lex-YACC preprocessor tool by Richard J. Mathar to convert certain date ranges in a PCAL calendar file into lists of single day specifications recognized by PCAL

As of Jan 2013, thanks to Jörg Kühne, 'ical2pcal' now supports simple repeating events like this: every n-th [day|week|month|year] from <DATE> until <DATE> except <DATE>,...

'ical2pcal' -- a Unix shell script by Francisco José Marín Pérez (with some enhancements by Jörg Kühne) which converts iCalendar ('.ics') data files to a format suitable for use in your PCAL configuration file(s)

email-reminder and group-calendaring Unix shell scripts -- these useful Unix shell scripts, written and generously provided by Kristofer Bergstrom, help automate his usage of PCAL

Quoting Eugene, here's some useful general advice for those seeking to experiment with rescaling of PCAL-generated calendars:

Try it out sometime.... You'll wind up with a convenient wallet-/pocket-sized calendar that can't be beat, with all of your favorite PCAL events and calendar graphics embedded! Follow the link above to Eugene's website for a sample calendar booklet and further instructions.

Specify 15 of your favorite calendar images at the end of the command line and they will appear sequentially above each month, scaled to fit. By default, a PostScript-generated logo (which can be customized via the 'defscover.ps' file's 'DrawLogo' routine) will appear on the front and back covers of the booklet, with text annotation of your making. Furthermore, by tweaking the 'USERereimer=' and the 'B=' lines in the 'mk-calendar-covers' script, you can replace the front cover's PostScript-generated logo with a user-specified, auto-resized, PNG-format image, which can also be annotated.

wallet-sized, 15-month, calendar booklet creation shell scripts -- these useful Unix shell scripts and attendant PostScript code, written and generously provided by Eugene Reimer (R.I.P. Feb 1949 - Nov 2011), are used to make nifty, customizable, 15-month (with overhead image on each month), wallet-/pocket-sized calendar booklets in any user-specified size paper (e.g. 'letter' or A4) that gets cut, stacked, stapled, and folded into a compact booklet

The current maintainer (since Nov 2004) is Bill Marr. Although the mailing list is the preferred method of communication, Bill can be reached here:

As of January 2007, to combat the mailing list spammers, you must be subscribed to the list in order to post messages there.

There is a mailing list for PCAL and LCAL. Questions and topics about how to use the programs and about their further development can be raised there.

If you're running in a DOS (or Windows) environment and you want to avoid compiling (or just cannot compile) the source code, pre-built executable files ('pcal-4.11.0.exe' and 'lcal-2.1.0.exe') for those environments are also available at the same website.

Please note that links to the 'man' pages for PCAL and LCAL (in Postscript, HTML, and ASCII formats) are available below. These 'man' pages contain information not available in the 'ReadMe.txt' files, including a detailed description of the options and other important information related to the actual use of these programs.

Here are the 'ReadMe.txt' files (with application description, build instructions, and a detailed history of changes) that are included with the download, but made available here for convenient perusal:

New, improved versions of PCAL and LCAL are available here:

Both programs were previously released by Andrew W. Rogers, whose web page has disappeared.

LCAL generates a graphical ''lunar phase'' calendar for an entire year (see below).

PCAL is usually used to generate monthly-format (one month per page) calendars with optional embedded text and images to mark special events (e.g. holidays, birthdays, etc). It can also generate yearly-format (one year per page) calendars.