OS/2 Shareware BBS: InfoMgt/InfoMgt.zip/nyts207.zip/NYTSII.DOC

Text File | 1997-07-30 | 28KB | 511 lines

The New York Telephone Scheduler Version 2.07 8/7/96 7/30/97
By Stu Mark. (read all the crap at the end if you want to find me now instead
of wading through this whole file.)

(Freeware: Free. Give it away, give it away, give it away, give it away now.)

(New with version 2.06: You can donate money if you like :)

I.    What the hell is this/do I really have to read more?

      NYTS II is a major revision of my old OS/2 PM scheduler called NYTS.
      It worked okay, but was limited in features and useability, so I
      fixed it up to make it more useable and efficient.
      NYTS II allows you to easily set up a schedule of programs to
      automatically get executed at a given time and interval. If you
      turn your machine off after using it for a particular application,
      this software is probably not very useful to you, but if you leave
      your machine up 24/7 and want a backup program run every day, NYTS II
      is perfect for the job.
      Even if you don't run a machine all the time, since it's so easy to
      set a schedule, I've found it's useful to add daily reminders.
      If lets say, you have a meeting in 20 minutes, click add, and the
      current time comes up, just increase the minutes by 20, and put
      "pmpop go to meeting" in the command line and hit okay. I find this
      very useful. Hope you do too.
      (pmpop is a 2 liner that puts a message box on the screen, if you
      don't have this program, let me know, I'll get it to you)

II.   "OS/2 comes with a scheduler."
      OS/2 V3.0 and later comes with a bonus pack which includes a scheduler.
      I've used it and it sucks, and it's a memory hog because it loads in
      half of IBM Works just to make it function. NYTS II is small simple,
      quick and clean. (toot toot)

III.  Installation:
      To install NYTS II, just make a directory somewhere, and unzip the
      contents of NYTSII.ZIP into that directory and run the NYTSII exe.
      It's also useful to put a shadow of the exe in your startup folder
      so that the scheduler runs automatically in the case of a power
      failure.

IV.   Usage.
      When you run NYTS II for the first time, it will inform you that there's
      no schedule file and that it will make one when you add a schedule.
      This is not entirely true. NYTS II stores a lot of shit in the schedule
      file (window position and such) and will probably create the file by
      the time you go to look for it. It's not that I'm too lazy to change
      the message (really, I mean that), I'm just trying to keep you on your
      toes.

      It's fairly obvious what it does and how it works. You click File and
      Add Schedule to add a new item to the schedule list.
      To delete or change a schedule, you must hilight the schedule item you
      wish to delete or change before selecting the menu option.

      The important things to remember is how the scheduler works. It's
      based on a day-at-a-time scheme. Each event is checked for it's
      validity at the time of the event for the current day. Yes, I'm trying
      to be confusing. I'll explain in a moment. Read on.
      You can schedule events down to the minute, or up to once a year.

      All settings are made from the Add/Change dialog box.
      To have a program run only during a specific month, choose the month
      in the Month listbox. If you want it to run every month, select "ALL."
      To have a program run on a specific day, choose the day from the
      Day listbox. You can choose day of the month, or day of the week. Again
      select "ALL" to have it run every day.

      The usage of Start hour and Start Minute should be obvious. For those
      who don't know: Midnight is 12:00AM and noon is 12:00PM.

      To have an event occur multiple times in one day, you select the
      Occurrences, Interval Hour and Interval Minute as follows.
      If you want something to run from noon 5PM every half hour,
      the start time would be 12:00PM, the interval would be 1:00, and
      the occurrences would be 11. So it runs 11 times, once every half hour,
      and the last one will be at 5. The table below shows this.
      Occurrence  Run time
      -------------------
            1     12:00PM
            2     12:30PM
            3      1:00PM
            4      1:30PM
            5      2:00PM
            6      2:30PM
            7      3:00PM
            8      3:30PM
            9      4:00PM
           10      4:30PM
           11      5:00PM

      Obviously, if there's no * next to the schedule (it's not active)
      it will not trigger.

      This is the confusing part.
      There are limits. If you schedule something to run on Mondays starting
      at 11PM every hour for 4 hours, the event will only run once. This
      is because at the second interval, it is no longer Monday. So even
      though you've told it to run 4 times, it will not. Similar problems
      arise over month boundaries.

      If you want to run something on Tuesday and Thursday, you have to set
      2 schedules.

      Also. Since the schedule info is stores in the raw data structure
      format, to easily get a text version of the current schedule, pick
      "Save Schedule to file" from the menu. It'll save the text version
      in a file called NYTSII.TXT in the directory the EXE is in.

V.    Programs that can be run.
      When NYTS II fires off a task, it actually executes cmd /C <command>
      where command is what you put in the schedule. The idea is that you
      can run CMD files, os/2, DOS and Windows (cough cough) executables.
      Oddities, for whatever reason, you have to do this: If it's an exe
      file and it's on your path, cmd will pick it up without having to
      specify a full path and filename, but if it's a .cmd file, you
      have to specify the path, even if you make that your current directory.
      (That might have been a bug which was fixed in version 2.04)

VI.   Saving. Anytime you touch anything, the .STU file is rewritten with
      the changes, so you don't have to worry about saving anything. As a
      side note, don't be dumb and run it off a floppy.

VII.  UnInstallation
      Here's something you don't see in most Freeware programs. Did I mention
      this was a Freeware program? Give it to everybody you know. Send me
      e-mail and say "Thanks" or "Neat program" if you like. My email address
      is at the bottom of this file. Remember email is free and easy.
      The most crap you'll get out of NYTS II is three files:
          NYTSII.EXE:  the program itself
          NYTSII.STU:  the schedule data file
          NYTSII.TXT:  the text copy of the schedule list
      Delete these files and no more NYTS II.

VIII. Legalooze.
      This piece of art is not published under the GNU licence because,
      while I stand for what they're doing, I'm personally not too thrilled
      with the way they do it. So let's call it Ford-ware or Stu-ware.
      I have the source, you don't. You have the executable, and this DOC
      file. It all comes in one nice neat zip, and it's simpler if you
      distribute it that way. I wrote it. It's mine. Say what you want, but
      the copyright belongs to the original creator, which is me: Stu Mark.

      Give it out freely, but give out the original zip.

      There is no warranty expressed or implied, and all that other crap.
      You use it at your own risk, I make no claims about what it will and
      won't do, but it's a scheduler. What the fuck could it possibly do?
      I suppose you could put it on somebody's machine and set it to
      deltree c:\ at 1am, but I didn't do that, you did. I just gave you
      the idea, and told you not to do it.

IX.   Future releases/bug fixes.
      Version 2.00 and later releases will be available on my BBS for sure,
      and probably the two other IGnet BBS systems. I'm going to try
      to get it on Hobbes. That would be neat, no?
      If you find bugs that I don't know about, let me know, I'll fix them.
      Kinda simple no?
      If you find bugs that I do know about, I KNOW. STOP BOTHERING ME.

X.    Known bugs.
      I tend to keep my scheduler minimized so chances are I'll
      fix this bug real soon, because it's so annoying. NYTS II remembers
      it's window position and size by storing it in the .STU data file.
      So when you restart it, it comes up where you last left it. What it
      doesn't do, is store the mode it was in. So if you minimize the window
      and quit the program, then run it again, it comes up restored, but
      really small, and you have to drag out the edges to see the schedule
      list. I will fix this. Soon.

      The next one isn't a bug. If it happens, it's because you're an idiot.
      You can (and need to) only run this program once. If you try and run
      a second copy, it'll beep, and you won't get a message display.
      This is because I make a timer with a specific name. The second time
      you run the program, the name's already in use and OS/2 won't make
      another timer with the same name. So it beeps, and won't display the
      clock or run anything. Grow up.

XI.   This is where I beg for money. *** New Section as of version 2.06 ***

      I do this on my own limited free time and love to share stuff with the
      world. I've gotten many compliments on my effort and I appreciate this.
      But, I need to eat too. I don't expect to make a living off my software
      (although that would be nice) but if you feel that this program is
      worth it's use in money, I'd be glad to accept donations to the cause.
      The cause being me spending more time writing/updating software keeping
      my hardware running so that you can download it. It's actually the
      start of my evil plan to destroy Microsoft. See, get this: If we all
      set our NYTS II schedulers to fire off a task, like, oh, say ping, web,
      ftp, gopher, portprobe (and any other TCP/IP service you can think of)
      all at microsoft.com, all at the same time, wouldn't that be fun?
      Of course it wouldn't have any negative effect, because do you really
      think Microsoft runs NT servers for the important stuff?
      But I digress.

      I took this next bit from the Murray documentation:

      If you're feeling generous, and think NYTS II is worth more than the
      initial cost (it's free, remember?), I will gladly accept monetary
      donations which will further entice me to continue development on this
      an other systems that I'm writing, and will also help offset the cost
      of running the Murray server. Why would you want to help support the
      Murray server when you're running my scheduler? Because my scheduler
      runs all sorts of tasks to keep the Murray server running. See? It's
      all related in one way or another.
      $5 would be nice. $10 would be even nicer. $50 will get you a thank
      you card in the mail. I think NYTS II worth $10, how about you?

      It was asked of my what currency I'd like (since the internet is a
      big place and spans many countries). Anything I can deposit at my
      good old fashioned american currency bank. You might know better than
      me what they'll take. But hey, beggars can't be choosers, so whatever
      currency you want to donate, is fine by me.
      Information as to where to send donations are at the end of this file.

XII.  Murray *** New Section as of version 2.06 ***

      By now you should be wondering, what the hell is Murray? Murray
      is my other latest and greatest development effort. Truly a one of
      a kind idea (well, nobody else does it as far as I know). In very
      short, it calls upon a server (that I run at my house) via the internet
      to deliver random new backgrounds, sounds, and quotes at set intervals
      so you don't have to change your system settings. Murray does it for
      you. Since the resources come off the server at random, you never know
      what you'll get. But for you paranoid mother[fucker]s out there, you
      can limit your selections to set categories which I try and moderate.
      Anyway, I can't begin to explain it all, so go visit my ftp site
      (ftp to nyti.spaghetti.com) and download it and read the documentation.
      I get more rave reviews about my documentation than my software. It's
      fun just to read they tell me.

      Anyway, this is the first release of NYTS II since I released Murray.
      I've spent a lot of time fighting with ISP's, my linux machine, all
      sorts of TCP/IP stacks and nameservers and finally got everything
      running to the point that I could work on this some more. So here
      it is. I don't go away, I just get distracted.

XII.  Update history.

      Version 2.01 8/19/96
      1) If a schedule command is too long, the scheduler will blow up
         just after it fires off the task. This has been fixed.

      2) Re: The paragraph above. If you make the window too small (I.E.
         minimize) it won't save it's new position and size. It was pissing
         me off.

      Version 2.02 8/20/96
      1) If you don't put a comment in, the command is assumes as the
         comment.

      2) Added a 'duplicate schedule' feature. This enables you to add a new
         schedule, but instead of defaulting to the current time and date,
         it defaults to the currently selected schedule. This allows for
         the ability to quickly add similar schedules.

      Version 2.03 10/28/96
         Sorry this one took so long, guys. I was in Israel asking my
         girlfriend to marry me. (She said yes.)
      1) Spelling misteak. Mailed in from Emil Kucera. Dude, I'd love to
         follow your advice and change "occurance" to "occurence" except
         that the word is actually spelled "occurrence." Thanks for the
         note though. I'm not being sarcastic when I say I appresheeateit.

      2) This one sent in by Olli Maksimainen. View settings. Some people
         use 24 hour clocks and dot separators. Now NYTS II reads os/2's
         country information from os2.ini for the time format, and separator.
         (Sorry, I'm from the U.S. and naturally assume that I am self
         centered.) It does not change the order of the date, because
         I don't really write out the date in a mm/dd/yy format anywhere.
         It's written as it's read. Ex: October 28th, 1996.

      3) Rudy Davis sent in a complaint that he couldn't see anything, but
         the program worked fine. I had been having color problems myself,
         so I futzed with it a little. Now it works for me, I hope I fixed
         your problem too, Rudy. Drop me a line when you get it.

      4) I've included pmpop in the distribution because numerous people
         have asked for it. PMPOP displays a PM message box containing
         whatever is passed to it on the command line. So you you want
         to be reminded of a meeting at 8 in the morning, (note the 12 hour
         clock reference :) you can enter a schedule with the command line
         reading "pmpop Go to meeting NOW!" and a little message box
         will appear to remind you.

      Version 2.04 11/13/96
         I haven't really looked through this file in a while, so some of
         the information may not be quite right. So these version update
         lists are the latest and greatest. Scanning back, though I see
         a reference to the user being an idiot. Guess I was in a mood then.
         Keep in mind, that the version number 2.04 bears no connection to
         the obviously misteaken version number of PKZIP. Think about it:
         Version 2.00 was released. Found that it didn't uncompress correctly
         in some odd circumstances. So there was a 2.01. Then more similar
         problems we found, so there was a 2.02, two more gets you 2.04.
         Then it became obvious that there were a lot more where that came
         from. So there was an a, b, c, d, e, f, and finally, g. That's 10
         versions of the same PKZIP program. Hopefully we won't have that
         much trouble seeing as this isn't nearly as complex a program.
         Speaking of version numbers. I try to make them meaningful. Version
         1 to version 2 was pretty much a complete rewrite, the .01, .02 and
         .03 were minor enhancements, and bug fixes. I try not to overinflate
         my program's ego by skipping whole version numbers just to keep up
         with other people in the same arena. If you haven't figure out
         that I'm trying to bash MS here, remember that there was no MS Word
         3, 4, or 5. Nor was there a Visual C++ version 3. And why is it that
         MS can buy companies, add their product to the package and make
         a new version of VB without actually changeing the program any?
         Enough of that. New feature of NYTS II with version 2.04:
      1) The maximum interval has been upped to 23 hours. This is so that
         you can schedule something for 6am and 8pm with only one entry.
         You have it trigger at 6am, with an interval of 14 hours with
         2 occurances. It was for my internet connection.
      2) Slight bug I found. When you set the current directory to run
         the event's session in, it would set the current directory
         of the drive you specified, but didn't make that the current drive.
         So if you ran the scheduler on drive C, and ran a program on drive D
         and set the directory to d:\work\path, the current directory of drive
         D would be \work\path, but the current drive would be C, and if
         the program looked for something in the current drive and path, it
         would get the current directory on drive C when you ran the
         scheduler.
         The way it works is, it looks for a ':' in the dir path, and takes
         the character before it as the drive letter. So if you just specify
         \work\path it will try and set that on drive C (in the above example)
      3) Alot of people asked for this one: Right click popup menu. Share and
         enjoy.
      4) Double clicking on an event causes it to pop up the change dialog
         for that event. Useful for quickly changing active or any other
         settings I suppose.
      5) Trigger now. Trips the event you selected when you click it. This
         is good for testing a new event to make sure you have the paths
         set up right without having to keep setting the schedule time.
      6) Somebody mentioned a problem with 'November' that it runs into
         the day. I don't have this problem, so my guess is you're not seeing
         the same font I am. I'm using Helv 8 point. My guess is you don't
         have that and it's picking a larger font by default. This will
         mess up the display a bit. Do you get columns of numbers, or don't
         the items line up well verticly?

      The reason I keep saying somebody, and not mentioning names is because
      the guy who holds my mail upgraded to a new version of AIX and wiped
      out all the mail of all the users on the system. So I don't know
      who asked for what. I do like to give credit where credit is due though.

      And for all of you following my personal life: I'm going to a
      wedding in florida for a week (I live in New York) so won't be
      here for a while, that's why I'm rushing this out. Hopefully I
      didn't make too many large mistakes. I tested it and it works okay
      here. Also, my future wife is doing okay in Israel, and I miss her
      a lot. Nobody appreciates email like I do. Also, I just got
      my BBS up on the internet. If you can telnet, try nyti.spaghetti.com
      I am not going to leave it up while I'm on my vacation (11/14/96 to
      11/22/96 I'll be away), but after then, it should be up from 5am
      to 6pm EST for reasons I'll explain if you call in. Wrote it myself,
      see if you like.

      If you have any problems with the new version or other ideas, do tell
      and send email. I just LOVE getting email.

      Version 2.05 12/18/96
      1) Request from Darryl Teichroeb, Roger Troostn and others: A start
         minimized option has been added.
         If you pass /n on the command line (or in the parameters box) NYTS II
         will start minimized.
      2) Also from Darryl. A weekday/weekend option. Sounds like a good enough
         idea. So be it. Oh yeah, about weekends. Having visited Belgium and
         Israel recently, I find different people have different definitions
         of 'weekday' and 'weekend'. Weekday is defined to NYTS II as Monday
         through Friday inclusive, weekend is Saturday and Sunday.

      More personal stuff. [e-mail] as a mail address has
      recently been deemed unreliable, if you'd like to write (and I'd like
      you to) use [e-mail] instead. Got back from florida. Damn I hate
      being happy. To be constantly innundated by insane happiness ALL THE
      TIME makes me sick. Non stop "It's a small world after all." and
      Mickey Mouse Bullshit aLL THE TIME. Unreal. I must say, the Tower of
      Terror at MGM was cool, and if you're ever there, look for a guy
      named "Nick." He's one of the Disney bus drivers. I had a better time
      riding the bus with him than just about anything else at Disney. In
      other news. I'm moving. All of the addresses will be the same, but
      the number for my BBS will be changing, for those of you who called.
      Also, moving into my new place, I will be running a 24/7 internet
      connection, so you can telnet to nyti.spaghetti.com any time.
      This will become a reality sometime in January 97. I will also
      be running an ftp server (best place to get the latest and greatest
      NYTS II) and eventually a web server. And my latest project. Murray.
      More to come. Keep the mail coming, I love it all.
      Let's see, what else. I broke the phone-bill-to-Israel record. AT&T is
      loving me. Last month they said I saved $600 in the past 3 months.
      Heh Heh. And my Fiancee is doing fine. Thanks for asking.
      And thank you for your support.

      Version 2.06 7/29/97

      Wow. NYTS II is almost a year old.

      1) The biggest change is the addition of a feature somebody suggested
         to me. Rather than have to type in the command line params and
         the starting directory, why not pop up a file box to select it.
         So I added it.
         When you go to add/edit an entry, there are two "..." buttons on
         the right side of the dialog box. Click it and you'll get the
         standard file open dialog. Cancel does nothing, Select will (now
         pay attention, this isn't that difficult, but if you're dumb, you're
         going to have a problem with it) INSERT the full path and filename
         of whatever file you select. It will be inserted at the last
         cursor position of the edit box it's associated with (Command or
         Directory).
         The only differences are, the "Command" filebox will add the path
         and filename where as the "Directory" filebox will only add the path.
         The reason it inserts instead of replacing. Shit I just thought of
         a better way to do it. Oh well. Guess that'll be in 2.07.
         It inserts instead of replacing so that you can use it to select
         the program to run, and if you have to pass it a filename, why
         not be able to select that too? Now for the directory box, this
         functionality is pointless, but if you're that dumb as to end up
         with a directory entry that looks like "C:\os2\mdosd:\tools" it's
         you're own damn fault.
         Here's the catch. Because of the way the file open dialog works,
         you can't use it for a directory selector only, so you have to
         select a file in the directory you want to use. NYTS II will ignore
         the file, and only keep the path. Da.

      2) Somebody sent me an email and made mention of how this was a
         great step for mankind in the arena of non-bloatware. I was proud
         to hear that somebody thought it was cool that this whole program
         was only 91K.
         Heh heh. So I compiled it without debugging info this time. Now
         it's just over 50K.
         Maybe I should go to Redmond and hold very expensive classes on how
         to write small efficient programs that don't require 4 megs of disk
         space just to install.

      3) I'm now happily accepting donations. :)

      That's actually all I did this version. I've been using it for almost
      a year now without any hitches or complaints. Hope you're all getting
      as much use out of it as I am. It reminds me to pay the rent every
      month.

      If you're following my personal life... I don't know if I keep that in
      here or in Murray, but basically, me and my fiancee/girlfriend decided
      to break up after the summer is over. She's going to go back to Israel
      and live a happy Stu-less life. Tis sad, things didn't work out.
      But look at it this way: I might busy myself writing programs more to
      keep me from being depressed.
      I also got a new job, which doesn't allow me as much free time to
      work on this stuff as my old job did (why did I quit you're wondering)
      Also, I have to run win95 at work, and can't even test my os/2 stuff
      there. Most of them have never even heard of it. It's so sad.

      Dunno if you keep up with this stuff, but I fixed most of my internet
      problems. You can web, ftp and telnet to nyti.spaghetti.com again.
      I use a dynamic ip addressing update the nameserver constantly sorta
      scheme, so my ip address changes, but 'nyti.spaghetti.com' should
      be correct to within 15 minutes. Come see my BBS via telnet.

      Oh yeah. I moved. Got my own place now, expensive, but quiet and
      all mine. Lined with computers and full time internet access.

      Anybody wanna go for a bike ride?

      Version 2.07 7/30/97

      Whoops.

      1) Why don't we just ignore that whole 2.06 thing. Let's call it a
         mistake and not use it. How's that?


                                     ***


Obviously I've left a lot of detail out of this piece of divine literature,
so screw around with it to see what it does. If I did my job well, then it
shouldn't blow up on you. And if I did a lousy job, then, let's just say
that you get what you pay for.

Feel free to get in touch with me. I'm human, just like you. And I like
to know the world needs me :)

-----------------------------=====================--------------------------
The New York TeleScheduler II V2.07 7/30/97 Copyright Stu Mark.
email: [e-mail]

or call my BBS: 914-267-0504
or telnet nyti.spaghetti.com (24 hours a day, 7 days a week)

Monetary donations (see section XI) can be made payable to:

Stu Mark    Attn: NYTSII
P.O. Box 77
Valley Cottage, NY 10989
U.S.A.
-----------------------------=====================--------------------------

Normally, I would have spent half the above document bashing Microsoft,
but I just couldn't work it in. This is an OS/2 program. Why ruin it by
mentioning MS. However, I always put in the following disclaimer.

(any nasty remarks sent in the general direction of window's capacity to
 function, [are fully intentional,] are not opinion, but state of fact. So
 don't try to slam me with some bullshit libel suit.)

I've also decided to start a campaign to make it a really loud notion to
compare The Microsoft marketing department to the Marketing department at
Sirius Cybernetics Corp. Anybody with me on this? If so, mail a message to
my BBS at [e-mail]