Occasions describe events in your life and are the heart of this package. They specify when the event occurs and how it should appear in event lists. You enter, view or change the definition of an occasion with the Occasion window described in detail below.
Entering a New Occasion
The simplest way to begin creating an occasion is to select menu: Occasion • New which opens a new, empty Occasion window. Fill in the description, set the date fields for when it occurs, optionally set other attributes such as the Type and starting time, then select menu: File • Save Occasion or press the enter key to save it in an occasion file. Use menu: File • Close Window to close the window. To create another new occasion without opening a new Occasion window, just change the fields that are different then select menu: File • Save as New Occasion to save the changes as a new occasion instead of replacing the one previously saved.
Double click on a calendar day number or on a date title in the event list to open a new Occasion window pre-set for that date.
Select menu: Occasion • New 'To Do' to open an Occasion window with today's date and with the Persistent checkbox turned on. Enter a description then save and the item will appear every day under today's date until you delete it or mark it as completed. This is a very basic "to do" style item.
The new occasion's File and Type fields are pre-filled based on choices in the Occasion Files and Occasion Types dialog windows. You are free to change any or all of the window's fields. The pre-set values are for convenience and not mandatory.
Changing an Existing Occasion
To open an Occasion window for an existing occasion, click on its description in an event list or Browse window (see: Occasion Files) to select it, then choose menu: Occasion • Edit. It opens a separate window for every selected occasion. You can also simply double click on a description.
Searching
Select menu: Occasion • Find, enter text to match in the description (What box) and in any of the date fields of an occasion (When box) then click <Find> to open a window for the first matching occasion in the active file list. Select menu: Occasion • Find Next to open a window for the next match, etc.
You can also search for occasions with a specific Type by entering its name in the When box, and persistent occasions by entering "persistent" there. Only occasions matching all the given fields and key description words are displayed.
You can abbreviate the names of weekdays, months and types but be sure to provide enough to uniquely specify them.
the Occasion Window
 
The window title gives the status of the occasion:
New Occasion -- has never been saved
Occasion -- an existing occasion
Edited Occasion -- an existing occasion with unsaved changes
(1) Occasion File pop-up menu
Click to select which occasion file should contain this definition. It is pre-set to the last file you accessed or you can specify a default file (see: Occasion Files). For existing occasions, selecting a new file will create a new occasion when you save your changes. It does not alter the original. You cannot add an occasion to a locked file.
(2) Occasion Type pop-up menu
Click to select the category for this occasion (see: Occasion Types). Hold down the OPTION key to view the definition of the selected Type.
(3) What [required]
Enter a 1 to 255 character description of the occasion. RETURNs are permitted. Press TAB to highlight the current description and the next key pressed will replace it. Accepts the standard Edit menu commands.
(4) When (the date pattern)
These five pop-up menus determine the dates for this occasion. If a field is blank, such as the Day and Year above, it is ignored when matching dates. Each has an "any" entry at the top of its menu to make it blank (see: Date Patterns below).
(5) Start and Alert Times [optional]
Enter a starting time for the occasion by clicking on the pop-up time menu. Click on the left side to set the hour or the right to set the minute. The start time appears with the description in event lists. Press command left/right arrow keys to adjust the start time in small increments (pref: Occasion Window • time increment).
You can also specify an Alert time if you want to be notified shortly before the occasion starts. It is relative to the start time and may be up to 24 hours before. An alert time later than the Start time is underlined and is interpreted as being on the day before (see: Pop-up Alerts). The Alert time can be automatically set with the Start time (pref: Occasion Window).
(6) Message Box
Displays the next date for this occasion, or the previous date if it is persisting and not yet Marked Completed. A problem description appears here if there is something wrong with the occasion definition.
(7) Persistent checkbox
Turn on this checkbox to have the occasion function as an automatic "to do", continuing to appear until you Mark it as Completed.
Date Patterns
The date or dates for an occasion are determined by the date pattern you select in (4) above. To understand how this works, let's first talk about calendar dates in general.
If I ask "What is today's date?" you will probably answer with something like "today is Thursday, March 27, 1997." You just gave four pieces of information to uniquely identify the date: the day of week, month, day of month and year. "Remember?" uses the same four attributes to decide the dates for an occasion.
There is one other less common but very useful piece of information about a date: the number of times the day of the week has occurred in the month. It is used by some U.S. holidays such as Mother's Day (the 2nd Sunday in May, every year) or the end of Daylight Savings time (the Last Sunday in October.) It is also commonly used for monthly meetings. For want of a better term, this part of a date is called "Which" (as in "which weekday of the month") in the Occasion window.
Matching Dates to the (When) Date Pattern
An occasion matches a given date if and only if the non-blank parts of its date pattern are the same as those of the date. Blank fields are ignored and you can mentally substitute "any" for them if it helps you to understand the matching process.
One-time Occasions
If the date pattern is a year, month and a day of month, the occasion occurs exactly once on that date.
Occasions that Repeat Annually, Monthly, Weekly or Daily
For birthdays or anniversaries, select the Month and Day and blank out the other fields.
For monthly meetings on a specific day of the month, just set the Day field. For other monthly meetings, set Which and Weekday, eg. "First Monday", and set the other fields to "any".
For weekly events, select the Weekday.
For items that occur every day, leave all five fields blank.
Feel free to use other more obscure combinations of fields as well. Some examples: "month: June, year: 1996" matches the entire month of June for the year 1996; "weekday: Friday, day: 13" matches every friday that is also the 13th of the month; or even simply "which: First" for the first week of each month.
Occasions that Repeat Every 'N' Days
Use this special form to handle events that repeat after a specific number of days, such as every other week (every 14 days.)
Step 1 - pick a starting date
We need a starting point that we know belongs to the pattern of repeating dates. The exact date doesn't matter except no dates before it can appear in your schedule. Enter it into the Month, Year and Day fields.
Step 2 - select the "Repeat" occasion format
In the "Which" menu select "Repeat", "Weekday" changes to "Interval".
Step 3 - select the repeat interval
In the "Interval" menu, select the number of days from 1 to 255 between occurrences of this event.
Menu Commands
File • Revert to Saved
Discard changes to an existing occasion.
Edit • Cut, Copy, Paste, Clear, Select All
The standard edit commands work on the description text.
Occasion • Delete
Delete the occasion and close the window.
Occasion • Mark Completed
Skip over the next occurrence of this occasion, treating it as having already happened.
Occasion • Forget Completed
Restore future dates previously marked completed.
Mouse-less Occasion Entry
Entering an occasion while talking on the phone can be difficult with the mouse. Instead, type the entire definition into the What box, then select menu: Edit • Convert What to When to pick out the date fields and occasion type and set them appropriately. Anything that isn't a date field goes back into the description box. Use quotes to enclose the description or for multi-word occasion type names. Abbreviations are permitted, just be sure to enter enough to be unambiguous. Case is ignored.
You may enter:
- month names (as defined by system software)
- weekdays (as defined by system software)
- which day of week (first .. fifth, last)
- day of the month (1 .. 31)
- year (1956 .. 2018 or 56 .. 18)
- a repeat interval (1/1/95 repeat every X days)
- short date (5/10, 11/1/95)
- time (11:00am, 5pm)
- special date names (yesterday, today, tomorrow)
- occasion type names (Trivia, Birthday, Meeting)
- "persistent" (to set the Persistent checkbox)
The first time found is assumed to be the Start time and the second the Alert time.
A few examples:
- july 4 "U.S. Independence Day"
- 7/9/91 repeat every 14 days Trash collection
- meet Fred tomorrow 5pm 4:45pm
- persistent payment today "Don't forget the lobotomy surgeon's check!"
- feb 19 birthday Kimberlee
You can enter an entire list of occasions by typing them up in this format, one per line, copying the text to the Clipboard, then Pasting it into a Browse window (see also: Occasion Files • Importing).
Here is a fast way to enter a new occasion when "Remember?" is not open. (see: Pop-Up Alerts for a description of the "hot key").
1. Press your alert hot key (let's say it is command-option-something), the pop-up alert window appears.
2. Press command-option-N to launch "Remember?" to create a new occasion *
3. Type the complete definition into the What box, then press command = (equal sign) to convert it to an occasion.
4. Press command-W to close the window.
That's it! "Remember?" will automatically quit when you close the Occasion window unless you turn off that preference.
* In step 2, you must use the same "modifier" keys (command, shift, option, control) as is used by the hot key.
