The diary utility is designed to be a simple message writer which will remind the user upon bootup of important events that day. The user can enter the messages by using any text editor (Ed on the Workbench disk will do at a pinch). When the user boots up their system the Diary message writer program will be executed and the messages displayed in the current CLI/Shell window.
Requirements
* Battery backed up clock fitted to your Amiga.
* The system date and time in the ENV: directory.
* A directory called Messages on the boot disk.
* The T: temporary directory.
Using the Diary utility
The Diary program should be called up from the sys:s/startup-sequence. In order to call the Diary utility and run it successfully the following commands should be added to the sys:s/startup-sequence file before the endcli >NIL: line at the end of the script.
date >ENV:dt
assign messages: sys:messages
Diary
wait 10
The lines above work as follows:-
date >ENV:dt - The command gets the system date and stores it in the ENV: directory in a file called dt.
assign messages: sys:messages - This command tells the system where the messages: directory can be found. In this case it is on the boot up disk (SYS:).
Diary - This runs the Diary command to display the messages.
Wait 10 - Gives the user 10 seconds to read any messages.
Putting in the messages
You can use any text editor - I'll assume you are using Ed. Boot up Workbench, open a Shell or CLI and type:-
Ed Messages:dd-MMM-yy
dd stands for the day the message is to be displayed.
MMM stands for the month the message will be displayed.
YY stands for the year the message will be displayed.
It is worth noting that the format is the same as given by the Date command. When MMM is entered, the first letter should be a capital. Also note that the month must be three characters long, for example:-
ed Messages:24-Jun-92
The above would set up a message to be displayed on 24th June 1992.
Now that you have got the date right, you can enter your message. It can be any length you like. While doing this sort of thing, you may want to display a message every day - for example Wednesday. In that case, the message should consist of:-
external
Messages:Wednesday
The external command tells Diary that the next line is the name of a file to display, stored as usual in the Messages drawer.
When you have finished entering your message, press Esc, then X, then return. The message will be written do disk. If you were to boot up the machine on the 24th June, that message would be displayed, as well as another message called Wednesday.
The Diary utility tries to keep disk space free by deleting messages from the previous month.
This Diary program is Shareware which means you can give it to whoever you like so long as this Readme.doc file goes with it. However, if you use it regularly then please send a small donation to the following address:-
Christopher Marsden
East View
Greaves Lane
Ashford
Bakewell
Derbyshire DE4 1QH
England
IF enough support is received then an AMOS version will be developed and other improvements made.
No liability can be accepted for loss of information or damage caused by the use of this program.
