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************************************************************************** * STOCK PORTFOLIO RECORD MANAGER from Gellman Software * * History of Recent Versions * ************************************************************************** A Note to Users: This file documents the large number of changes made to the program over the last few years. Major changes add new features. Minor changes make the program easier to use or fix errors. The philosophy is to add useful features unobtrusively so that they can be easily ignored by those who don't like change. Your ideas are welcome. No suggestion for improvement is insignificant. If you can think of any feature that would be useful to you, please let me know. Every proposal will be seriously considered. VERSION 4.0 Major Revision (April 1994) -- NEW TRANSACTION! The program now recognizes a ninth transaction for dividend reinvestment. This is not really a separate transaction. It is actually just a convenient way of entering two transactions (BUY and CASH DIVIDEND). When the BUY transaction is complete, the relevant information is automatically entered on a new CASH DIVIDEND transaction screen. You can edit the CASH DIVIDEND transaction or just accept it with a few keystrokes. If you don't track cash dividends, then just enter a BUY transaction for the purchase. -- NEW REPORT! There is a new portfolio report that includes all the elements of the existing report plus cost yields and percentage profit/loss for each stock. This report is too wide for printing on a physical printer so it can only be printed to a file and read with the report viewer. -- If you hit ESCAPE from any spot on the main menu, the QUIT option will be highlighted. You then must hit ENTER to end the program. -- When entering a new transaction or changing an old one, the final prompt before acceptance now offers a new option. The transaction can be accepted (by hitting ENTER), aborted (by hitting ESCAPE), or re-edited (by hitting any other key). This allows you to catch a mistake at this late opportunity without having to abort and reenter all of the data. The message for an aborted entry or change has been moved and slightly modified. The same option now exists when entering a new stock as well. -- The stock selection screen has been revised. Previously, it included only the name and symbol. Now it includes some substantive information so that the selection screen serves as a mini-portfolio list. One consequence is that the screen list now includes only 16 stocks rather than 18 previously. You can, of course, still scroll up and down. Stock selection by entering a number also still works. For example, to select stock number 13, hit 1 then 3 then ENTER. Selection by number also now works for the log selection screen as well. If you have 97 log entries, you can now select number 56 by entering 56 (5 6 ENTER) rather than scrolling down through several screens. -- When entering a SELL or DISPOSE transaction, the number of shares currently owned is now displayed at the bottom of the screen. There is another change if you attempt to sell or dispose of more shares than you own. The program did not accept the entry of a number higher than the current holdings. Previously, however, the program erased your entry and asked you to try again. Now, your entry is retained in the input field so that it can be edited. -- The acceptance screen for new transactions has been slightly revised. In addition, when selling a stock, the acceptance message includes proceeds of sale instead of price. -- A printed portfolio list now includes a two line title showing the data fields. -- The second screen and the final screen have been revised, and several messages throughout the program have been reworded. The sequence of events as the program shuts down has been altered. The user will not be aware of this last change. -- When selecting a file for viewing, the first 24 report files (*.RPT) in the CURRENT directory are displayed in a box at the bottom of the screen. If there are no *.RPT files in the directory, the box now shows "<none>". -- This history file has been changed by omitting the details of the oldest revisions. -- Bugs fixed: ˛ When printing a transaction report, the subtitle was improperly printed in two lines. This has been fixed. VERSION 3.9 Minor Revision (October 1993) -- NEW STATISTIC! A new statistic now appears with the main display for each stock. Yield based on cost now appears along with the existing yield which is based on the current price. In order to add this information, the screen and print main stock displays have been adjusted. The dividend information on the top part of the screen display has been moved, and a new line has been added. On the printed version, the percentage of profit/loss no longer appears on a separate line. It is now included as a parenthetical on the profit/loss line. Other data elements have been moved to make room for the cost yield. -- The portfolio summary (screen version only) now includes a calculation of yield based on the cost of the portfolio in addition to the existing yield which is based on the current value of the portfolio. The summary also now shows the percentage of profit/loss in addition to the dollar amount of the profit/loss. -- When entering new transactions, the program now remembers the last date entered (during the same session) and allows you to repeat it by hitting the forward slash key. There is a screen prompt when this facility is available. -- When a new transaction is accepted, the acceptance message has been changed. The acceptance screen now shows selected main file information that reflects the effect (if any!) of the newly entered transaction on the holdings of the stock. -- There are several changes to the hypothetical transaction: ˛ For sales, the proceeds are now displayed, along with the percentage of profit/loss. Both appear when the data entry for the transaction is completed. ˛ When selling all shares, the basis shown for the transaction was not always exactly equal to the actual basis. This has been corrected. ˛ When a proposed transaction basis is displayed, it is accepted by hitting the ENTER key. Previously, if another key was struck, the proposed basis was erased. This has been changed to conform to the practice on the regular transaction screen. Now, the striking of a key other than the ENTER key does not erase the proposed basis. It remains on screen, available for further editing. -- There are several changes to the process of selecting a file for viewing or printing: ˛ When selecting a file for viewing, the first 24 files (*.RPT) in the CURRENT directory will be displayed in a box. If you print reports to other directories, this will be useless. ˛ Error messages on the select file for viewing and printing screens have been moved to the upper box. ˛ If an error occurs while selecting a file for viewing, you are returned to the file selection screen rather than dumped back to the main menu. The default file specification will once again be restored and prompted. ˛ Previously, if you tried to read a report file when you did not write to or select a file for printing during that session, there was no prompt for a file name on the view file screen. Now, if there is one .RPT file in the CURRENT directory, that name will be prompted provided that you have not written to or selected a file for printing in another directory. -- When viewing a report or the documentation, the first screen line now shows the current location by displaying a percentage of the file that has been read, and the layout of the first line information has been altered slightly. -- When printing complete files or history reports for all stocks, there is now a screen counter to show the progress of the print request. -- In previous versions, when displaying a complete log entry on screen, the entire display shifted to the left when the note field was long so that the entire note would appear on one line. Now, only the note field is shifted when necessary. -- The screen reminder of the current printer now blinks in part for emphasis. Similarly, the message that a change has been accepted is now highlighted. -- Bugs fixed: ˛ When selecting dates of your choice for transaction and other reports, the error message for a bad date appeared in the wrong place. This has been corrected. VERSION 3.8 Major Revision (March 1993) (Thank you Phil Welty and Herbert Greenberg. I didn't intend to release a new version so soon, but a problem needed immediate attention. The new dividend feature comes along for the ride.) -- MAJOR NEW CAPABILITY! Dividends may now be categorized as ordinary, long term capital gain, short term capital gain, and tax free. The new information is now available in several dividend reports and the printed stock file. There is no need to change any previous dividend transactions to conform. The default is for ordinary dividends, and any undesignated dividends will be categorized in this way. To change other dividends, use the CHANGE menu. All of this required a variety of small conforming changes throughout. -- The hypothetical transaction process has been changed in two ways. First, when entering a SELL transaction, hitting ENTER (or simply scrolling down) with a blank field is treated as the sale of all shares. This avoids the need to copy a number that the computer can supply for you. There is a screen prompt for this. Second, in earlier versions, the user could edit the profit/loss field. This seems pointless here and the ability has been eliminated. -- On the menu of stocks for selection, stocks have always been numbered. Prior to version 3.3, you could select a stock by number. The ability to select by number has now been restored at the request of a user. Hit the number keys and then ENTER. There is no screen reminder of this capability. -- Total basis displayed or printed previously had only two digits to the right of the decimal point. When transactions involved fractional shares or prices, this produced some apparent rounding errors. In order to minimize the appearance of these errors, total basis has now been uniformly changed to four digits to the right of the decimal. There may still be rounding errors in this data field, but they will be at the .0001 level. -- The file viewer has been adjusted so that scrolling right and left now shifts the viewing window by 20 spaces rather than 10. This makes it a bit easier to look around. -- Bugs Fixed: ˛ A major internal shortcoming was identified and fixed. The documentation promises an unlimited number of stocks and transactions. Due to unforseen limitations of programming tools, this promise was not completely fulfilled. The program could accept unlimited stocks and transactions, but it was unable to display more than 400 transactions (or stocks) using the one-line, scrollable display. In addition, the same display of transactions could result in an improper background color if there were a large number of transactions. All of this has been fixed by a complete revision of the display routines. The display screen is now constructed on the disk rather than in memory. The downside is that it takes longer to create the screen. A progress counter has been added to the "Task in Process" screen so you can watch while waiting for the transaction screen to appear. Sorry about this one. No one actually reported any substantive problem. One user reported the color problem which in turn pointed to the larger problem. ˛ When changing the symbol for a stock that had no logs, it was possible that the program would crash. This has been fixed. ˛ The previous version promised to print a zero in the price field for stock sales. This change was not well implemented, and it interfered with the display of some prices on the CHANGE LOG screen. Hopefully, this has been fixed correctly now. VERSION 3.7 Major Revision (January 1993) (Thanks as always to Phil Welty. Some program changes are the result of suggestions from David Hassell and Ron Bartlett.) -- NEW CAPABILITY AND REPORT! Sales may now be categorized as long term or short term, and a new capital gains report is available separating sales in these two categories. The new report can be found on the TRANSACTION REPORT menu. This has required small changes here and there in the program, but all has been accomplished without requiring reformatting of existing data files. When entering or changing sale transactions, you will now be prompted to indicate if the sale is long or short term. The field may be left blank. Sale transactions that have not been characterized as short or long term are listed separately in the report. To designate existing sale transactions, use the CHANGE menu. Programmer's Note: This report was requested by several users. It was not easy to decide how to do it. There were many different approaches. The one I selected makes the user do the designation. Automatic determinations of long or short term sales are VERY complicated at best and impossible at worst. Comments welcome. Further information can be found in the main documentation. -- NEW REPORT! The program now offers a report that shows the capital transaction history for a stock. This is a one line listing for each capital transaction (transaction numbers 1-6) showing the date, transaction type, price, number of shares, cumulative shares, basis, and cumulative basis. This was requested by an Australian user! You may find this report a useful and shorter alternative to a printed file listing. -- NEW FEATURE! You can now read the documentation (STOCK.DOC) from within the program. This is useful if you want to consult the documentation without exiting back to DOS. This new option is the fourth choice on the DISPLAY menu. You may specify a different drive and path if you keep STOCK.DOC in a directory other than the default directory. You can only read a file named STOCK.DOC. It's a big file, and it takes a few seconds for the program to digest it all. -- NEW FEATURE! You can now erase report files (*.RPT) from within the program. You no longer have to exit to DOS to erase an old report file. This new option is the fourth choice on the DELETE menu. You can specify a different drive and path if necessary. You may delete all .RPT files in a specified directory or you may make individual decisions. Note that the program will erase any file with a .RPT extension found in the designated directory, whether or not it was created by the program. -- The selection of dates for reports or multiple deletions now provides a fourth alternative. The new choice is January 1, 1900 to December 31, 1999. This includes all legal dates and offers reports or deletions that encompass all transactions in the files. The previous date alternatives remain available: year-to-date, last year, and user's choice. -- One consequence of the addition of short/long term designations for sales is a change in the existing transaction reports limited to stock sales. The old reports included a column for transaction type. For sales reports, this was always "SELL". This superfluous information has now been replaced with an indication of the short/long term holding period. -- The internal file viewer now reads and displays files about 30% faster than before. -- Minor screen changes have been made to accommodate the capital gains data field and for other purposes. Some windows have been modified, colors adjusted, and messages slightly revised. -- Bugs Fixed: ˛ When entering a new transaction, hitting ESCAPE to abort an entry usually brought up the main stock file display rather than the main menu as intended. This has been fixed. ˛ When entering a new transaction, the field that held the basis was not always highlighted properly. This has been fixed. ˛ When printing transactions, the program would not print a price of zero. This followed a practice of not printing meaningless fields. However, it is possible to have a sale price of zero to recognize the disposition of a stock that has become valueless. The program will now print a price of zero for sale transactions. ˛ The entry of certain log fields with tremendously large numbers could either crash the program or exceed the ability of the program to display accurate figures. Now the program monitors the entry of some fields and rejects numbers that too large for the program to process. This is not foolproof, and it may still be possible to corrupt data files or crash the program sometimes when large numbers are involved in a transaction or set of transactions for a stock. Don't even begin to worry about this unless you have more than $5 million worth of stock in one company or more than five million shares. The actual maximum number is considerably higher than 5 million. ˛ It was possible with earlier versions to crash the program by attempting to change or delete a log for a stock that had no logs. This will no longer happen. ˛ When changing an existing sale transaction, the program could get confused because the number of shares sold may be less than the number owned at the time the change was being made. This has been corrected. There is no error checking for the number of shares sold during a change. ˛ When entering or changing an illegal transaction date, the error message could overwrite part of the transaction type description under some circumstances. ˛ The expected dividend report did not properly reflect dividends received once a year in the month of December. VERSION 3.6 Major Revision (May 1992) -- MAJOR NEW FEATURE! A file viewer has been added so that reports printed to a file can be viewed without leaving the program. The file viewer can be found as the third item on the DISPLAY menu. Only files with an extension of .RPT can be viewed. Files wider than 80 columns can be viewed by using the left and right arrow keys to shift the display window. Only the first 16384 lines (a very large number!) in a file can be read. -- MAJOR NEW FEATURE! A new portfolio summary has been added (number 3 on the PORTFOLIO REPORT submenu). You may now request a portfolio summary based on file prices for any given date. The summary uses the price on or immediately after a specified date ($0.00 ignored). If there is no qualifying price (e.g., the date specified is before any existing file price), then the most recent file price is used. This summary has some limitations. It does NOT reflect any changes in the portfolio between the specified date and the current date. Thus, it is most suitable for use in portfolios that are stable. If you have sold a stock and bought another, the summary only includes the value of the current holdings. If you have added a stock, the addition is valued at the current file price in all earlier summaries. Please be careful not to misinterpret the results. -- When printing to a DOS file, the format of printouts has been revised. Each report that is longer than one page now streams from top to bottom without page breaks. The page breaks will appear when printing to a physical printer. Several users felt that the page breaks were inconsistent with printing to a DOS file. The end of each report is marked by a line across the screen. -- The portfolio comparison chart -- available when any type of portfolio summary is requested -- now proposes a description suitable for each of the three different types of summaries. The proposed description can be modified. -- Previously, when printing a list of main files only, the current date printed only once per page. It now prints as part of the title of each main file. -- The short screen display of transaction logs has been altered so that if the price, number of shares, or basis for any transaction is zero, nothing is displayed for that field. Previously, a 0.00 was displayed. The change makes the screen look less cluttered by eliminating unnecessary data. -- When entering or changing the basis for a transaction and a tentative basis is calculated by the program, hitting any key except ENTER allows the user to enter a different number. In previous versions, the proposed basis was erased. Now, the proposed basis remains in the field and can be edited or erased by the user. -- When ordering an expected dividend report, you are asked first about a leap year and then for a report title. Previously, there was a brief delay between these two requests. The delay has been eliminated. -- Several minor conforming screen and message changes have been made. -- Bugs Fixed: ˛ The previous version thought that February had 27 days and 28 days in a leap year. The program now recognizes the correct number of day for February. Since February 29, 1992 was a Saturday, no one noticed this error. ˛ When changing a transaction log, the basis displayed in previous versions showed four digits to the right of the decimal point. The display now contains only two decimals. You can enter numbers with greater precision if desired, but the display will be rounded to the proper two decimals for dollar figures. -- Documentation: ˛ The documentation (STOCK.DOC) has been completely revised and updated. VERSION 3.5 Major Revision (February 1992) (Thanks to Phil Welty, Mark Camp, and others for suggestions and assistance.) -- MAJOR CHANGE! In all previous versions, the default printer was the IBM Proprinter (dot matrix). The last version added the ability to print to a DOS file. After asking a few users, I found that most usually print to disk, not paper. As a result, the default printing device has been changed. Unless otherwise specified, printing is now done to a DOS file named REPORT.RPT in the current directory. In order to accommodate those who want to use paper as the default, there is a new command line switch (/IBM) that selects the IBM printer. The laser printer command line switch (/HP) remains operational. Printing devices can also be changed using the SELECT PRINTER option on the PRINT submenu. -- A corresponding change has been made in the SELECT PRINTER process and messages. When selecting a DOS file, REPORT.RPT is offered as the default. This can be changed, but the target file must have a .RPT extension. -- The second screen has been revised to reflect the new command line switch. The recommendation for a physical printer has been dropped, and a notice of the change in default printer has been added. -- The Printer Selection Screen now shows the current printer. A similar message now appears on the Report Title screen. -- When selecting a DOS file as a printer through the SELECT PRINTER submenu, entering an illegal path or file name now returns you to the submenu rather than to the main menu. This gives you another chance to enter a legal name without an extra keystroke. -- NEW REPORT: A new transaction report is now available. It lists stock sales that were profitable separately from sales that were not. This Profit/Loss report is the fourth selection on the TRANSACTION REPORT submenu. -- The second screen for the DELETE MAIN FILE routine has been revised to show the current holdings in the selected stock. This permits you to verify that you own no shares of the stock you are about to delete. -- Dividend and Transaction reports require that the entire data file be read and, sometimes, sorted. If there are many transactions, this can take a while. The "Task in Process" screen now shows whether the program is reading, sorting, and writing. -- Bug Fixed: ˛ A rounding error in calculating net losses of approximately $.01 on stock sales has been corrected. VERSION 3.4 Major Revision (October 1991) (Thanks to Phil Welty, RDS from CO, Bob Blacher, Wayne Hammerly, and others for suggestions and assistance.) -- NEW FEATURE! When a portfolio summary is displayed, you now have the option to save key information in a temporary portfolio comparison chart. The chart allows for a short, user-supplied description so that different summaries can be distinguished. The comparison chart can also be displayed directly from the PORTFOLIO REPORTS menu. The chart contains the eight most recent portfolio summaries. The chart is erased at the end of the current session. -- NEW FEATURE! It is now possible to print to a DOS file rather than to a printer. The printer selection screen has been revised accordingly. Every printed report can be sent to a DOS file except for the transaction summary screen. -- The selection of dates for reports or multiple deletions now provides three alternatives: year-to-date, last year, and user's choice. -- The DIVIDEND REPORT menu has been changed to conform to the TRANSACTION REPORT menu. The same options exist as before, but the choice between a printout by company and by date is now made at the date selection screen rather than at the menu. -- The sorting algorithm used for date sorts has been changed. While the earlier algorithm produced correct reports, it appeared to randomly order events that occurred on the same day. The new routine will order same-day events predictably. -- The message indicating that a deletion request has been aborted has been made more generic. -- The opening and closing screens have been speeded up. Other changes have been made to screen layouts, most notably the hypothetical transaction screen. -- Bugs Fixed: ˛ The main stock file print routine printed an extra blank line which caused a main-file-only listing to extend to the last physical line of the page. This has been corrected. ˛ When entering or changing a new stock file, the program skipped the date field if the number of dividends per year was zero. This could lead to a situation where it is impossible to change the date field. This has been fixed by deleting the intentional skipping of the field. VERSION 3.3 Major Revision (June 1991) (Thanks to Phil Welty, Mark Camp, and others for suggestions.) -- Selecting an individual log for display, change, or deletion is now done with a lightbar. Also, the previous main menu selection for a summary of logs has been eliminated. One consequence of the lightbar log selection is a slight delay in filling the selection screen if you have many transactions for a stock. The benefit is that you can bounce from one end of the list to the other instantaneously. -- NEW REPORT! There are two new printed dividend reports available. Both offer a list of expected dividends for a year, one by date and the other by company. See STOCK.DOC for more details. -- NEW FEATURE! The program now offers the ability to enter a hypothetical buy or sell transaction for an existing stock. This hypothetical transaction is available as the fourth selection on the ENTER portion of the main menu. These transactions do not become part of the permanent files. See STOCK.DOC for more information. -- When displaying a main stock file or a full log, hitting the + (plus) key will now result in the display of the next file. Hitting the - (minus) key will now result in the display of the previous file. In earlier versions, hitting the space bar produced a display of the next file. Now the space bar returns to the main menu. -- The lightbar selection for stock files has been modified. Previously, you could select a stock by entering its number. This is no longer supported. The HOME and END keys are now operational; they move the lightbar to the top and bottom of the list. The HOME and END keys are also operational on the log selection menu. -- Lightbar selection has been provided for the portfolio, transaction, and dividend report submenus. -- The position of the portfolio reports and the transaction reports on the main menu has been reversed. I found that portfolio reports were used more frequently than transaction reports. -- The position and content of the message that appears when an illegal date is entered has been modified. -- In earlier versions, dates were not checked for non-existent dates (e.g., February 31). The program now rejects these dates. February 29 is a valid transaction date, but it will not be accepted as a dividend date. The program does not check to see if a particular February 29 is in a valid leap year. -- Earlier versions would permit the sale or disposal of more shares than were owned. This type of transaction is no longer permitted. -- The display of decimal equivalents that appears at the bottom of the screen when entering a price has been expanded to include 32nds. The display is now partly in color. -- Minor revisions were made to many of the screen displays. -- The documentation (STOCK.DOC) has been revised to reflect changes to the program. Paragraphs that are new or significantly changed now have the "#" character at the beginning. This permits searching for new text using a text editor or word processor. -- Bugs Fixed: ˛ When two transactions for the same stock were entered with the same date but with different prices, the current price displayed in the main stock file was the price of the first transaction of the day. Now the current price is based on the price of the last transaction entered. ˛ The ability to enter a date with a year greater than 99 (e.g., 1/1/111) has been eliminated. ˛ On the change file screen, it had been impossible to eliminate a dividend date from a file. VERSION 3.2 Major revision (December 1990) (Thanks to Phil Welty, NJG, and others for suggestions.) -- NEW FEATURE! A new transaction for cash dividends received has been added. This permits users to track dividends and obtain reports. A number of conforming changes have been made throughout the program. The field for the amount of the dividend is highlighted on the data entry screen. It appears where the PROFIT/LOSS field is for other transactions. The documentation has been revised, and users may want to read the details of the new transaction and the new reports. -- The report menu has been modified. There are now only three main menu entries: PORTFOLIO REPORTS, TRANSACTION REPORTS, AND DIVIDEND REPORTS. Each category has a submenu. Dividend Reports are new, and there are four different reports: one screen summary and three different printed reports. No other reports have been added. Dividend transaction only appear in dividend reports and not in transaction reports. -- Titles for almost all printed reports can now be supplied by the user. Some reports that had titles that were 2-4 lines in length now have a one line user-supplied titles. The amount of data that will fit on a printed page has been adjusted accordingly. -- The printing of report titles has been shifted so that it occurs later in the report generating process. This avoids printing of a title in the event that printing is aborted early enough in the process. Previously, the title was printed well before any data. -- A new delete log function has been added. It is now possible to delete multiple dividend transactions and enter data transactions at once. This may be done for any period for a single stock or for all stocks. This permits outdated dividend transactions or prices to be removed easily in one operation. -- Log displays for ENTER DATA transactions have been revised so that fields not used are not displayed. DIVIDEND transactions follow a similar pattern. -- The short log display used to show the cost or basis to four decimal places. The display now shows the cost or basis to two decimal places. This avoids meaningless precision. -- After changing a main stock file, you are now left at the select stock file screen so that you may select another stock to change without going back to the main menu. This facilitates changing several main files at the same time. To return to the menu from the select stock file screen, just hit escape. -- A subtle error that permitted duplicate stock symbols in two extremely unlikely circumstances (not worth explaining here) has been identified and corrected. No user reported the problem. VERSION 3.1 Never released to the public VERSION 3.0 Major Revision (June 1990) First shareware version. Details of changes omitted. VERSION 2.4 Minor Revision (March 1990) Details of changes omitted. ***END***