ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN NOVEMBER 1991 LIMA NEWSLETTER ^^^^^^ REMIND ME: ^AN APPOINTMENT CALENDAR ^^^^^^^^THAT IS FASTER AND EASIER THAN SOME ^^^^SIMILAR SOFTWARE DESIGNED FOR MS-DOS USERS ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^reviewed by Charles Good ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Lima Ohio User Group I must confess I have a MS-MOS computer for home use. I like some of the reference software currently available such as PC GLOBE and PC USA that takes large amounts of memory. My kids like some of the new games available in MS-DOS format. My MS-DOS computer is a Tandy 1000HX. Tandy markets its 1000 series computers as "home computers" and they come bundled with software that is supposed to make life more organized and easier at home. All this software runs under Tandy's DESKMATE graphical interface. Besides word processing, a common "home" application is an appointment calendar. Ideally, you should be able to turn on your computer, quickly get to the calendar program, move to a specific date, and write notes about what is happening when on that date. Once a day you can then turn on your computer to view and optionally print the notes for that particular day. This is made easier by the fact that most MS-DOS computers, including my Tandy, have a battery backed clock calendar that automatically sets the calendar software to the current date and time. The key to practical use of such appointment calendar programs is SPEED and EASE OF USE. The usual home alternatives with which the computer has to compete are writing notes on a pad of paper or sticking notes on the refrigerator with magnets, both of which can be done quickly and easily. The advantage of using a computer to keep daily messages and appointments is that you always know where the information is located and the computer can organize and sort this information. Refrigerator notes and notes written on tablets of paper can get lost and disorganized. You always know where the computer is; it doesn't move around much. If creating and viewing computer messages can be done QUICKLY and EASILY enough, a computer can usefully be used as a message center. Tandy's DESKMATE has two very similar appointment calendar applications called CALENDAR and INFORMATION CENTER. From a cold start it takes me between 65 and 75 seconds to get to the calendar display of the current date, even though my Tandy boots from a hard disk and has a battery clock calendar. When I turn my Tandy on it first it does a system and memory check to find the hard disk, then it loads its BIOS from ROM. After that drive A grinds away for awhile as the computer checks to see if a "bootable" disk with MS-DOS on the disk is in that drive. If none is found the computer then boots MS-DOS followed by DESKMATE from the hard disk. This is all done automatically. I then have to move the cursor to the box labeled CALENDAR or INFO CENTER on the DESKMATE screen display and press . The appointment calendar program I have selected then boots from the hard disk and the current date is displayed. OVER ONE MUNUTE!! It seems like an eternity, just to see what is supposed to be scheduled for today. Now my Tandy isn't the fastest MS-DOS computer around, but its 8.75MhZ clock speed is alot faster than the 99/4A's 3.3 MhZ speed. Furthermore, because of high cost, I don't have a battery clock calendar on my TI. You can purchase a clock calendar for most MS-DOS computers for under $35, whereas used CorComp clocks for the TI cost at least $75 these days. In spite of my TI's slower clock speed and lack of a battery clock calendar, it takes me only 15-20 seconds to power up my 99/4A and automatically boot from my horizon ramdisk a Funnelweb central menu, then load from this menu the TI world's best appointment calendar program and bring up a display of the appointments and notes for the current date. That appointment calendar program is John Johnson's REMIND ME! Most TI appointment calendar programs I know about are written in extended basic, and they all suffer from a bad case of the "slows". One of the reasons REMIND ME is so fast is that it is 100% assembly. It comes as one 33 sector EA5 PROGRAM file named REMIND. When you boot REMIND ME you are prompted for the month and year you want displayed and the actuve drive number where the data for that particular month and year are stored. REMIND ME then searches the active drive for the monthly data file. Whether or not the data file is found (if the month is new there may not yet be a data file for that month), REMIND ME quickly displays on screen a calendar of the month. If a data file is found for that month, each day that has data is indicated with a dot on the calendar display. You move the cursor to the day of interest, press and read the data for that day (meeting reminders, birthday reminders, etc). When the data window for a particular day is displayed you are given the opportunity to add and/or change the data for that day. Whenever you add or change data, you press S, and the entire month's data is saved to disk or ramdisk without disturbing REMIND ME's screen display. You can at any time print to your printer the data for a single day, a group of consecutive days, or the entire month. Monthly data files created by pressing "S" are in DV80 format, so they can be read and/or manipulated with TI Writer or the Funnelweb text editor. Each month has a different data file, automatically named 09/91, 10/91, 11/91, etc. by REMIND ME. The key to the ease of use of REMIND ME is that usually when you boot the program you can accept the displayed defaults for the day, month, and active drive. All you need to do is press three times in quick succession to get the calendar display of the current month. The very first time you use REMIND ME you do need to specify the desired month, year, and active drive. You can then select C(onfigure) and write this information back into the REMIND ME program. The next time you boot REMIND ME, your C(onfigure)d date and active drive will appear as defaults and all you have to do is press three quick times. Configuring is quick and easy. To keep REMIND ME current, you only have to configure once a month, and usually the only item you have to change in the configuration is the month number. Virtually every other appointment calendar program I have seen for the TI (and for MS-DOS computers) requires that you have a battery computer clock or that you enter the month and year EVERY TIME you boot the program. NOT SO WITH REMIND ME! REMIND ME usually knows the current month and year even if you don't have a computer clock. Of course if you have a computer clock for the TI this is supported by REMIND ME. If a CorComp MBP or "Clulow" clock is part of your system, or if you are using a Geneve, REMIND ME will detect the computer clock and display the current time. Also the current month and year will appear as defaults when you boot REMIND ME. You are not limited to the configured default month, year, and data drive. Upon first booting REMIND ME, or at any time later in a REMIND ME session, you can look at a different month (optionally from a different data drive) without altering the default month year and drive settings. You can check out next month or last month very quickly. How about viewing the month of your birth? Just type in the month, year, and a non existent drive number (such as "6"). REMIND ME will not waste time looking for the nonexistent data file for that month if you specify a non existant drive number, and will quickly put your birth month up on the screen. Mine is June 1946. Here is another example of REMIND ME doing something that can't be done with most MS-DOS appointment calendar programs. The DATE command of MS-DOS does not recognize dates prior to January 1980, and neither do most MS-DOS calendar programs. Two nice features of REMIND ME are the message window, and the ability to pickup and drop a line of text. The message window is the same size as the data window for a particular date. Anything you type in the message window (accessed by pressing the space bar) stays in memory for the entire session, even if you view data for several different months. Messages are not saved to monthly data files and are lost when you exit REMIND ME. One way to use this window is to open it and type CHRISTMAS VACATION. Then press FCTN/5 to "pick up" this text into memory. Close the message window, then display December and one at a time open the data window of each day of the vacation and press FCTN/6. The text CHRISTMAS VACATION is "dropped" from memory into a date's data window each time FCTN/6 is pressed, saving a lot of typing. You can also do a string search of all the data for a particular month. Upper and lower case are treated identically in a string search. If you search the December display described in the previous paragraph for the word "vacation", a check mark will appear in the calendar screen display next to each date that contains the word "vacation" in its data. I like REMIND ME better than either of the two DESKMATE appointment calendar programs. It boots faster and is easier to use. I use it frequently to help me organize my daily activities. REMIND ME was formally a commercial program but is now in the public domain. The author states in the docs that fairware donations are not required, but will be accepted. Its on disk 258A of the Lima UG software library. ---------- SPECIAL NOTES ON USING REMIND ME WITH FUNNELWEB: To configure REMIND ME into one of Funnelweb's central menus it is necessary to remane the file from REMIND to a two character name such as RE. However, when REMIND ME is configured, the entire file is resaved back to disk or ramdisk under the name REMIND. The configuration data is contained within the resaved file, so it isn't necessary for REMIND ME to boot a small configuration data file at the start of each REMIND ME session. The problem when using REMIND ME from a Funnelweb central menu is, "How do I get REMIND ME to resave itself under the name RE instead of REMIND?" Use a sector editor capable of string searches, such as Funnelweb's Disk Review or Birdwell's DSKU. Search the REMIND file in ASCII for the string DSK6.REMIND. The number 6 may be some other number, but 6 is the number in REMIND as found in the Lima UG's library. Use the space bar to blank out the MIND part of DSK6.REMIND. Then move the cursor back to the space just in front of the "D" in what now looks like DSK6.RE and press CTRL/H to switch the display to Hex. There you will find "0B". Change this to "07", since the text string is now 7 characters in length. Alternatively, search REMIND for the Hex string 0B44534B. Change this, starting at the "0B", to 0744534B362E524520202020. Save the altered file using the file name RE to the Funnelweb boot disk, or better still to a ramdisk containing Funnelweb. Use Funnelweb's configure utility to put RE on a central menu. If you are using a ramdisk, you too can have 15 second cold boot access to this great appointment calendar program. .PL 1