You don't consider all the events in your life to be of equal importance. Your mom's birthday is probably more important to you than the fact that next week is President's Day. Occasion types allow you to create up to 32 different categories of occasions, each with its own unique appearance and importance.
Each type has a unique:
- number of days advance notification
- appearance in what's happening lists (font, color, prefix, etc.)
- sound to play at alert time or startup
Every occasion you create must be assigned one of the available types. As occasion will begin using the attributes of the new type when you save it.
Your type definitions are saved in a settings file in the system Preferences folder. This is important for users who share occasion files on a network because each of you is using a separate set of occasion types. This is good because it means each user controls how occasions of each type behave on their machine, but it can also be confusing. Each occasion contains an internal index into the available set of types rather than its name. If the guy across the network defined his types using the same names but in a different order, they will not match up exactly with yours. One of you will have to change to match the other if the exact names matter.
the Occasion Types dialog
You view or change the definitions of your types by selecting menu: Edit • Occasion Types:
 
(1) the Occasion Type list
The names of all 32 occasion Types. Click on one or use the up/down arrow keys to select a type. Click and drag a name up or down to rearrange the list order.
(2) Name
Enter the type's name in this box. The name in the list is updated when you select a different type or close the dialog.
(3) Default Occasion Type Checkboxes
Put a check in the (command) N box for the default type for new occasions. Set the (command) B box checkbox for the type of new occasions created by menu: Occasion • New 'to do'. The current N and B type(s) are bold in the type list.
(4) Advance Notification menu
Used by the startup checks and the Of Interest date range to determine how far in advance you should be notified for occasions of this type:
None -- No advance notification. Occasions of this type are not important and are ignored by Of Interest and the startup checks. "Trivia" is an example.
Standard -- Use the advance notification period set in pref: General • Standard Advance Notification.
Special -- Select a custom period for this type from 0 (same day) to 39 days in advance.
(5) Prefix and Text Style
The prefix string is drawn before the occasion's description in event lists and provides a distinctive marker for each type. It can be up to 8 character long, but you might want to stick with 1 or 2 characters because event lists are indented for the longest prefix. It is drawn in the text style selected for the type or you can select a special style such as a symbol font like Dingbats using pref: Appearance • Occasion type prefix.
Click <Style...> to change the font, size, style and color for this type. They are used in event lists and for the pop-up alert icon color.
The sample box gives a preview of the prefix and text style.
(6) Alert Sound
The sound to play at alert time or at startup when an important occasion is found. Use any of the sounds in your System file or select System Alert Sound to play the standard system beep.
(7) Action Checkboxes
The first two items let you select what happens at pop-up alert time. Turn off both if you never want alerts for occasions of this type. There are also master switches in Preferences to turn off these alert actions across the board.
Turn off the third checkbox if you don't want occasions of this type to appear in what's happening window event lists. For example, you can define a type for school related occasions and turn them off during the summer.
Click <OK> to end the dialog and save your changes, or <Cancel> to discard them.
Active Occasion Types
Only the types above the dotted line in the list will appear in the occasion type menu. Other types can't be selected but occasions already using them are unaffected. You can streamline the type menu by dragging unused types below the line or by dragging the dotted line itself.
Occasion Type Priorities
Types higher in the list have a higher "priority" than those below. The color and style of a what's happening window's calendar day is taken from its highest priority type. Also higher priority occasions are listed before lower with the same date and time. You can also choose to display each date's events sorted by type using pref: What's Happening • Sort the events.
the Pre-defined Occasion Types
A sample set of types are provided to give you an idea of what is possible. Feel free to change them any way you like but you should probably not remove the Trivia type because it is used by the sample occasions.
