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Text File | 1991-10-10 | 14.7 KB | 411 lines

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ CAL.EXE -- Version 2.0 -- (C) 1991 New Day Software (NDS) │ └──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ All Rights Reserved. Use of this program in a manner not granted by New Day Software is a violation of applicable copyright laws. CAL is a best friend to those of us who have more things to do than we have fingers to tie string around. Placed in your AUTOEXEC file, he will remind you of appointments, birthdays, tax time (ugh!) and other important dates. You can have Cal give you your schedule at any time by simply typing CAL at the DOS prompt. FILE FORMAT: The file CAL.DAT is a free-format schedule file. Each line makes up one entry. An active entry is a line containing a sequence of characters that Cal recognizes as a date. The format of these entrys follow. They may be placed anywhere on the line, but the position may affect the way the line is treated. Please note that Cal only recognizes CAPITAL letters. mm/dd/yy{+|-##} This format allows the user to set a range of dates for the entry to appear on. The range is calculated from the base mm/dd/yy and is RR days in length. If the '+' option is used, the range will begin on mm/dd/yy and will continue for ## days following. If the '-' option is used, then the range will begin ## days prior to mm/dd/yy and will continue until that date. Each field must have exactly two digits, (except for the range ## which may be any number of digits), and may not contain spaces. 10/31/90+61 Halloween, 1990 until New Years Day, 1991 01/01/91-61 This is the same as the above entry. 12/09/?? This will show up on Dec 9 of every year 02/16/68-5 My Birthday! Send money. 1/2/89 + 100 Invalid Entry. EACH The keyword EACH in all caps will cause the line to be displayed EACH time the program is executed. If the word occupies positions 1-4 of the line, the keyword will not be displayed. This line will appear EACH day. This line won't appear because 'each' is in lower case mmm dd Using the three letter abbreviation of any month, in all caps, followed by the date will cause the entry to appear each year on that date. The space is necessary, but a one digit date field is sufficient. NOV 23 This entry will show up on November 23 MAR 1 This entry will show up on March 1 APR14 This entry will not show up because there is no space between APR and 14 www n The three letter abbreviation of any weekday immediately followed by a number from 1 to 5 causes that line to appear on the n'th weekday. WED 3 This will show up the 3rd Wed of each month FRI 5 This will show up the 5th Fri of each month FRI ? This will show up on every Friday DAY nn The keyword DAY followed by a number from 1..31 will cause the line to appear on the nn'th day of the month. DAY 29 Run End-of-month backups. DAY 1 Pay computer payment. BEFORE and AFTER These keywords modify other date keywords. Using BEFORE on a line causes that line to show up every day until the date on that line. Similarly, AFTER will wait until the date on the line, and then will display the line until it is deleted from the file. BEFORE APRIL 15 Buy Mom's birthday present. AFTER JAN 1 Get Tax stuff together RUN When CAL encounters the keyword RUN on a line with a valid date or keyword, the remainder of the line is passed to COMMAND.COM for execution. For instance, this command line allows you to run weekly backups: FRI ? RUN BACKUP C: /f /s /l The RUN command is affected by the setting of the PROMPT FOR RUN PARAMETERS switch on the configuration screen. (See CONFIGURING YOUR PROGRAM below for more information.) ! The '!' symbol, when included as one of the LAST TWO characters of a line, causes the line to be displayed in high video when the line is displayed on the screen. It has no effect on printer output when used with the PRINT command line option. This will display EACH day in High Video! $ The Dollar character, placed as one of the last two characters of a line marks the line as a 'Personal Item'. These lines will not show up on a normal execution of CAL. In order to view these entries, include your password, entered in the configuration session, on the command line like so: CAL MyPassword This would cause the following line to appear: EACH This is a personal entry. $ ? The '?' character functions as a wildcard character much the same way as it does in MS-DOS. It replaces the field with the current value for that field. For instance, if the date is 12 July 1991, then this date format will match: 12/07/?? Dawn's Birthday! COMMAND LINE OPTIONS: HELP Displays a quick reference Help Screen CONFIG Rebuilds the configuration file with new defaults EDIT Allows you to edit the datafile by having Cal invoke your favorite editor. The default editor is MS-DOS 5.0's EDIT command. LIST Displays the line number before each line for use with the HISTORY and DELETE commands. PRINT Sends the output to the printer ( PRN: ). DELETE Allows the deletion of lines from the datafile or DEL without using the editor. To use this option, get a display with line numbers. Use the LIST option if necessary. Then type: CAL DELETE n1 n2 n3 n4 ... nx Where n1 .. nx are the numbers shown beside the lines to be deleted. WARNING! If you use this option and then decide to delete more lines, get a NEW display of the line numbers. The DELETE command will re-sequence the datafile and the lines you wish to delete may now have a different location in the file, and therefore a different number. HISTORY This option works the same as the DELETE, but or HIST instead of deleting the lines, moves them to a file named CAL.HIS in the CAL directory. This file will be appended to each time the HISTORY command is used. The same syntax and warnings as the DELETE command apply. PAST n Shows all entries for today and for the past n or LAST days. Ranges will appear normally, but entries such as FRI, DAYnn, etc. will not appear unless they normally would. NEXT n Works like PAST, but shows the next n days. or FUTURE WITHIN Combines PAST and NEXT and shows all entries for or CIRCA the current date +/- n days. USE fn Sets the datafile to fn.CAL instead of the default CAL.DAT. This allows several people using the same computer to have their own personal datafiles. CONFIGURING YOUR PROGRAM: Several CAL settings may be changed by the command CAL CONFIG. These changes are stored directly in the .EXE file, so YOU SHOULD NEVER !EVER! RUN A COMPRESSION PROGRAM SUCH AS LZESHELL OR PKLITE ON CAL.EXE! At the DOS prompt, type CAL CONFIG to get to the configuration screens. The following options are available: A. NAME Enter your first name (10 chars. max). This will be displayed on CAL's status bar. B. LOCATION OF DATAFILES Enter the name of the directory where you wish to store your datafiles. Do NOT include the name CAL.DAT. C. EDITOR Enter the name of your text editor. This can be any editor that produces plain ASCII text and accepts a filename from the command line. If the editor is in a directory that is in the DOS PATH, then the name alone is sufficient. Otherwise, include the pathname and extension. D. CHANGE PASSWORD Changes the password used to display personal entries and to protect the EDIT and CONFIG modes of Cal. The password is not echoed to the screen, so you will be asked to enter the password twice for verification. E. DISPLAY LINE NUMBERS When this is set to OFF, Cal functions normally. If set to ON, the line numbers will appear in the left column of the screen by default and the LIST command will inhibit the display of line numbers. F. CALENDARS IN TITLES When this field is set to ON, the calendars for the last, current, and next months will appear in the title bar. Otherwise, the calendars are not displayed and only the small status bar appears. G. PROTECT EDIT MODE When this field is set to ON, the user must enter the password in order to enter edit mode. H. PROTECT CONFIG MODE When this field is set to ON, the user must enter the password in order to enter the configuration mode. I. SOUND When this field is set to ON, the warning beeps and screen announcements are enabled. Otherwise, Cal runs silently. J. DOUBLE SPACING When this field is set to ON, Cal will double space its output. Otherwise, Cal single spaces. K. COOKIE Cal has a database of almost 1000 one-liners, cliches, words of wisdom, and other B.S. When this field is set to ON, Cal will pick one of these at random to be displayed after the datafile is processed. L. PAUSE AFTER xx LINES This field determines how many lines Cal will print before pausing. If for some reason you do not want Cal to pause, simply enter a huge number here.M. DEFAULT PAST VALUE This field tells Cal how many days in the past to look by default. This may be overridden from the command line with the PAST command. N. DEFAULT NEXT VALUE This field tells Cal how many days in the future to look by default. This may be overridden from the command line with the NEXT command. O. PAUSE FOR RUN PARMS When this field is set to ON and a RUN command is encountered in the datafile, Cal will pause and ask you for parameters to pass to the program being called. Otherwise, Cal runs the program immediately. P. MULTI-LINE ENTRYS When this field is set to ON, entries may consist of more than one line. The following specifications apply: I. The keyword or date MUST be on the first line of the entry. II. The end of an entry is marked by a blank line. When this field is set to OFF, entries are only one line in length. If a Multi-line entry exists in the datafile, only the line with the date will appear. S. EXIT AND SAVE This command saves your changes in CAL.EXE and exits configuration mode. Q. EXIT AND ABORT CHANGES This command exits configuration mode without saving any changes. GETTING STARTED: Getting started with Cal is simple. Simply COPY CAL.EXE to a directory in your path. When you run Cal for the first time, use the CONFIG option to install your name, the path for your datafiles, and the name of your editor. Save the changes, and run Cal with the EDIT option. This should automatically create the datafile CAL.DAT in the directory you specified. Type in your appointments using the date formats shown above. Don't forget that Cal requires uppercase! Save the file, and exit. Cal will automatically run when you exit your editor. The appointments you entered that match today's date should be displayed. LEGAL STUFF CAL.EXE, the documentation, and example datafile are copyrighted materials. NO ONE except New Day software and it's representatives and programmers has the right to charge for Cal. Recognized User Groups and Computer Clubs have the right to recover an amount not to exceed $10.00 (U.S. Funds) for distribution disks. Copies may be freely distributed so long as the files CAL20.DOC, CAL.EXE, and the demonstration CAL.DAT file remain intact. ANY DISASSEMBLY OR OTHER FORMS OF REVERSE ENGINEERING PERFORMED ON THIS SOFTWARE IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED AND WILL BE CONSIDERED A VIOLATION OF THE RIGHTS OF NDS! DISCLAIMER Although NDS tries to present you with high quality, bug free and virus free software, NEW DAY SOFTWARE MAKES NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. ANY DAMAGES ARISING FROM THE USE OF, OR INABILITY TO USE THIS SOFTWARE IS THE SOLE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE USER. NDS PRESENTS THIS SOFTWARE ON AN "AS-IS" BASIS. USE THIS SOFTWARE AT YOUR OWN RISK! SO HOW MUCH IS IT ANYWAY?? This section is for all of us users that flinch at the prices of some of today's "Shareware" that is priced at a "reasonable" $99.95. Cal is yours for the low, low price of $0.00. That's right, true believers. Cal is marketed under the concept of FAIRWARE. You are not obligated to pay NDS a cent for Cal, so you don't have to worry about your conscience bothering you because you didn't register. However, if Cal makes your day easier, and saves you time, NDS would appreciate a contribution of whatever you feel that time is worth. (We think that's fair.) Contributions will greatly increase the chances of more FAIRWARE releases from NDS in the future. Those contributing $20.00 or more will be sent the next version of Cal. Those contributing $50.00 or more will be sent the Turbo Pascal source code for Cal, along with the COMPILED version of several supporting TP55 Units with full documentation. Those contributing $100.00 or more will be not be sent anything above this, but will have the eternal gratitude of NDS. ;-) New Day Software reserves the right to charge for this, or any subsequent version of this software. TECHNICAL NOTES: CAL VERSION 2.0 (C) 1991 New Day Software All Rights Reserved DEVELOPER: TERRY L. LEWIS LANGUAGES: BORLAND'S TURBO PASCAL VER. 5.5 TASM (TURBO ASSEMBLER VER. 1.01) TURBO PASCAL and TASM are Registered Trademarks of Borland International, INC.