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BOOK.3
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1995-08-29
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Advanced Concepts
@Introduction
~Introduction
This Microbook discusses some topics which are likely to
be of interest only to those who wish to fine tune the
Organiser for their own needs.
Topics discussed in this book are:
How to use more than one Organiser without
installing two copies of the software
Fixing corrupted diary files
Customising Icon Bar icons
Adding new Thoughts for the day
Availability of Neil Gorin for
freelance programming
Some of the information within assumes a moderate
knowledge of the PC and DOS operating system. It is
assumed that you are using DOS version 5 or later.
@
@Multiple Organisers
~How to use more than one Organiser
As of v1.5, Organiser was able to use multiple Organisers
through the GORG environment variable. Through more
efficient coding, it is no longer necessary to set this.
Gorin's Organiser always creates Diary, Notepad, To Do and
Address Book* files in the currently active directory. To
use more than one Organiser, it is therefore a simple matter
of creating the necessary directories, changing into them
and running the ORGANISE program. To make this easier you
can either create a batch file to do this for you, or place
the C:\ORGANISE directory in your path.
On my PC, I have a batch file called ORGNEIL.BAT to start my
Organiser. The contents of this file are as follows:
Echo Off
D:
CD \ORGANISE\NEIL
\ORGANISE\ORGANISE /TODAY
CD \
The /TODAY switch displays the current day's appointments
before the Organiser starts, giving the option to Continue
(return to DOS) or Start the Organiser.
* The Address Book always loads the book pointed at by the
GORINDESKTOP environment variable, if present. If you
require one Address Book to be shared with the Desktop,
and one to not be shared, your batch file for the latter
should read (for example)
SET GORINDESKTOP=
CD \ORGANISE\NEIL
\ORGANISE\ORGANISE
SET GORINDESKTOP=C:\DESKTOP\
Icons and other resources are stored within the ORGANISE
directory, and are therefore available to all "Organisers".
@Fixing Corrupt files
~Fixing Corrupted Diary Files
If the Organiser announces that a diary file has become
corrupted, note down the filename given. You may find that
no major corruption has occurred, in which case simply
editing an appointment and re-saving will correct the
problem. However, more commonly you will find that
appointment slots are full of X's which may exceed the
available space on screen. If this simply occurs for a few
days at the end of a month, delete the corrupted
appointments and reschedule them.
However, often the problem is more deep rooted and cannot
be solved in this way (or reoccurs).
In the vast majority of these cases the problem has been
traced to the SMARTDRV disk cache, where the cache has not
flushed completely before the computer is switched off.
At the DOS prompt type CHKDSK /F. You may be asked if
you'd like to "Convert Lost Chains to Files" - if you
do not know what this means, select No. You may be told
that the file 1994.FEB (or whatever the corrupted diary
file was called) is crosslinked/has been shortened/has
been corrected. When the DOS prompt re-appears, delete the
corrupt file (e.g. 1994.FEB) and run CHKDSK again.
Now restart the Organiser and attempt to view the missing
month. You will be told that the Organiser is creating a
new year - actually, the only file being replaced is the
corrupted one, all others will be left alone. Once this is
done, you will have to re-schedule any lost appointments.
@Customising Icon bar
~Customising Icon Bar icons
The icons displayed on the icon bar are stored on disk as
standard ICU files, named SYSx.VGA where x is a number. To
edit these icons:
1: Copy (do not rename) SYSx.VGA to SYSx.ICU
2: Run the Organiser and edit the icon using the
icon editor. Save the icon.
3: Exit the Organiser.
4: Copy SYSx.ICU to SYSx.VGA.
Future versions of Organiser may change the icons displayed
on this bar. If you have designed a replacement icon which
is better than those currently displayed, please send it in
and it may be used in later versions.
NOTE: Other files ending with a VGA extension are NOT icon
files and must not be modified in this manner.
Specifically, .VGA files generally change both format and
size between releases and odd results may occur if you use
(for example) v1.5 VGA files with v2.0 of the Organiser.
@New Thoughts
~Adding new entries to "Thought for the day"
The thoughts are stored in the plain ASCII file TAGS.DAT.
Each line of this file (up to 700 lines) should contain a
separate "thought". Thoughts should be at most 70
characters long.
TAGS.DAT is the same format as similar files supplied with
The Gorin Desktop and Organiser for Windows (Registered
Editions).
@Freelance
~Availability of Neil Gorin for programming projects
Through the development of the Gorin series of applications,
I have gained significant experience in programming both
the DOS and Windows environments.
I am available for freelance programming and design work
in the following areas:
DOS GUI based products using the NGS GUI
and Microbook
Windows based products
Windows Resource design (E.G. Dialog layout)
Windows Help File generation
For development of DOS GUI products, it is possible to
customise the NGS GUI in whichever way is most convenient
for your company. All coding is currently undertaken using
the latest releases of the Borland Pascal compilers, which
ensure fast, accurate code and small executable files.
Under Windows, the following interfaces can be constructed:
Standard Windows 3.1 (White)
Microsoft 3D look (As planned for Windows 95)
Borland Custom (Grey, with bitmap/icon buttons)
Highly competitive rates are offered. For a free estimate,
contact me at 4 Rookwood Drive, Stevenage, Herts. SG2 8PJ.
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