org-gcal.el VS emacs-calfw

So to be clear, this? https://github.com/myuhe/org-gcal.el

Calfw is nice, but doesn't support recurrent events, which may be a deal-breaker. https://github.com/kiwanami/emacs-calfw/issues/8 (it was for me).

I want to say I wanted to do something like this, and the response I got was you can't, or try https://github.com/kiwanami/emacs-calfw

You might be interested in https://github.com/kiwanami/emacs-calfw but be aware that there is no row-centric view as described on https://github.com/kiwanami/emacs-calfw/issues/22 which I pity.

I use org-caldav with emacs-calfw.

I've summarized my thoughts on https://github.com/kiwanami/emacs-calfw/issues/22 but the author did not find time to address this since 2015. Maybe somebody wants to hand in a patch for that to reduce stress for the author?

Emacs Calendar Framework! https://github.com/kiwanami/emacs-calfw/

Not sure what you mean on the first one. The second one's easiest solution is probably org-transclusion as what you're asking is to translude notes. But other packages with a similar concept of collecting your notes and adding them in a separate buffer are things such as delve or (shameless self plug) zetteldesk. I got no clue how to do the third one. I agree with you on that todos should work in more places, but I also don't know how to fix it. For the one with the calendar, I am pretty sure calfw has an extension that does that. I think calfw-org?

for just viewing, maybe calfw would do the trick

Take a look at calfw. It's not exactly what you want, but might be of interest.

I am at the moment trying to turn my Kindle into a calendar device, and settled on using the excellent calfw from kiwanami -- but yours would look waaay better, mostly because the event names have a good horizontal space.