═══ 1. Credits ═══ ═══ 2. About the birthday notifier ═══ The birthday notifier Welcome to the birthday notifier program. In order not to forget those anniversaries ever again this program helps you to remember them in time. The program shows you today's and tomorrow's anniversaries of your friends and relatives. Why today and tomorrow? The today mode remembers you to give a call on the day itself. The tomorrow mode allows you to mail a postcard just in time. Supposed usage The birthday program is intended to be used in the start-up folder. This will give you an overview of all current birthday's on system start-up. Using the program Select one of the following options to learn more about how to use the program. o Starting the program / command line options o Exiting the program o Switching between Today/Tomorrow o Getting on-line help o Scrolling through the list of names o Starting the program displaying tomorrow o Writing a calendar data file o Limitations o Credits ═══ 3. Starting the program / command line options ═══ Starting the program You can start the program from a command line or from a program object. In order to get the on-line help, make sure that the file birthday.hlp is either in the current directory or in any directory specified by the 'HELP' variable in your 'config.sys' file. The program uses a calendar file to read the birthday information from. The default calendar file used is birthday.dat. This file must be in the current directory. To override this file you can specify one or more calendar files on the command line. Command syntax birthday [-t] [calendar_files...] -t start the program displaying tomorrow's birthday's calendar_files... one or more calendar files to read birthday information from. If no file is specified, the file birthday.dat from the current directory is read. Examples birthday birthday -t birthday f:\data\friends.dat See also o About the birthday notifier o Writing a calendar data file ═══ 4. Exiting the program ═══ Exiting the program To exit the program click on the "Ok" button. See also o About the birthday notifier ═══ Ok button ═══ Ok button Click on the "Ok" button to exit the program . See also o About the birthday notifier ═══ 5. Switching between Today/Tomorrow ═══ Switching between Today/Tomorrow To have the program display tomorrow's anniversaries when displaying today's anniversaries click on the "Tomorrow" button. To change the program (back) to displaying today's anniversaries click on the same button, which will say "Today" now. See also o About the birthday notifier ═══ Today/tomorrow button ═══ Today/tomorrow button This button changes between displaying today's and tomorrow's birthday's. Click on the 'Today' button to display today's anniversaries. Click on the 'Tomorrow' button to display tomorrow's anniversaries. See also o About the birthday notifier ═══ 6. Getting product information ═══ Getting product information To get product information click on the "About" button. See also o About the birthday notifier ═══ About button ═══ About button Click on the "About" button to get product information. See also o About the birthday notifier ═══ 7. Getting on-line help ═══ Getting on-line help To get general help about this program and its usage, click on the "Help" button. To get help about a specific button, press the F1 key when the button is highlighted. To highlight a button you can use the TAB key and the arrow keys. See also o About the birthday notifier ═══ Help button ═══ Help button Click on the "Help" button to get general help about this program and its usage. To get help about a specific button, press the F1 key when the button is highlighted. To highlight a button you can use the TAB key and the arrow keys. See also o About the birthday notifier ═══ 8. Scrolling names ═══ Scrolling names When there are more anniversaries on a day than will fit in the window, i.e. 5, scroll buttons appear to enable you to scroll through the names. To scroll down the list of names, click on the button with the downwards directed arrow. To scroll up the list again, click on the button with the upwards directed arrow. The names will be listed in the same order as encountered in the calendar data file(s). See also o About the birthday notifier ═══ Scroll up button ═══ Scroll up button Click on the scroll up button to scroll up the list of anniversaries. The scroll buttons only appear when there are more anniversaries to display than will fit in the window, i.e. 5. See also o About the birthday notifier ═══ Scroll down button ═══ Scroll down button Click on the scroll down button to scroll down the list of anniversaries. The scroll buttons only appear when there are more anniversaries to display than will fit in the window, i.e. 5. See also o About the birthday notifier ═══ 9. Product information ═══ Product information The product information window shows the copyright notices and credits to the programmer. To close the product information click on the "Ok" button. See also o About the birthday notifier ═══ 10. Starting the program displaying tomorrow ═══ Starting the program displaying tomorrow Normally when the program is started it begins displaying today's anniversaries. To let the program start with displaying tomorrow's anniversaries you must start the program with the command line option "-t" as follows. birthday -t See also o About the birthday notifier ═══ 11. Writing a calendar data file ═══ Writing a calendar data file The anniversaries that are displayed by the program are taken from a calendar data file. By default they are taken from the file birthday.dat. Calendar files are plain ASCII files. To add, change or remove names from a calendar file you must edit it using a normal text editor (e.g. e.exe). To add a new birthday to the calendar file you must place the information on a single line in the file. First type the day number then the month number and then the persons name (or any text you want). E.g. 6 12 Sint Nicolaas declares the birthday of Sint Nicolaas at the sixth of December (this was actually the day he died). Each birthday must be placed on a single line. It is not necessary to sort the birthday's by date. If there are more birthday's on a particular day the names will be listed in the same order as encountered in the calendar data file(s). Note: Names must be limited to 255 characters.[enote] See also o About the birthday notifier ═══ 12. Limitations ═══ Limitations The program has some limitations (read the programmer was to lazy to fix them). Finding the data file The program is not smart in finding the default calendar data file. It must be in the current working directory when starting the program. Otherwise the file must be specified as program argument. No errors are reported if any calendar data file can not be found or opened or is not in the appropriate format. Limited name length Names in calendar files must be limited to 255 characters. Note however that names of about 25 or 30 characters is the maximum that you will see printed on the screen. Program start-up There is no option to stop the program from starting if there are no birthday's to report.