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LE-NAG:
LeverEdge NAG is a program to remind you of events before you
miss them. Events can be scheduled to occur once or repeat
daily,weekly,monthly or yearly. You can be alerted of the
event in a number of ways from a screen flash to a message
requester.
** The reqtools.library is not required but is recommended. **
Shareware, binary only.
Author: Craig M. Lever
Disclaimer:
I will do my best to fix bugs as they appear and/or improve the
program but I won't be held responsible for what is outside my
control:
I make no warrantee to the usefulness of this program nor can I
be held responsible for any damage caused while using it.
Distribution:
LeverEdge NAG is copywrite 1992 by Craig Lever, All Right
Reserved. This program can be distributed free of charge
electronically or via disk collections.
This program is shareware so if you feel inclined, send a
contribution to the address below. I suggest $5 but feel free to
send me any amount. I'll accept US & Can currency money orders or
cheques drawn from a Canadian bank. I'm even interested in
collecting samples of foreign currency so if you don't want to go
through the hassle of getting a money order and don't mind the
risks of sending currency via mail then go for it. The postal
service may frown on you sending coins so I don't recommend that.
This shareware version has a couple of things added to encourage
contributions. First it has two internal events, one alerts you
with a requester which can be acknowledged immediately so it will
only come up once and another which flashes the screen with a
DisplayBeep every half hour. Also the AmigaDOS execute alert
will prompt you with a requester so you can confirm or abort the
command.
If you do send $5 Cdn. or more (and it is enough to cover the cost
of a disk and postage) I'll send you the latest version with the
shareware notices and the requester for the AmigaDOS execute alert
removed.
Reaching me:
I can be reached at the following mailing address:
Craig Lever
RR #1.
Airdrie, Alberta, Canada.
T4B 2A3
I can also be reached through some of the Fido Amiga echoes
or by Fido Netmail at:
Craig Lever @ 1:134/27.0 - The AMUC Express
or by UseNet Netmail at:
cmlever@wwshop.cuc.ab.ca - The Wizard's Workshop
Instructions:
A) Startup
The program can be started from the workbench by clicking on its
icon or from the CLI.
The format from the CLI is:
LE_NAG [-t #] [-l #] [-h #] [-w #] [-m #] [-s #] [-d #] [-q #]
-t sets the top edge of where the window opens
-l sets the left edge of where the window opens
-h sets the height of the window (0 = minimum)
-w sets the width of the window (0 = minimum)
-m sets the check minutes value (explained later)
-s turns on or off Day Schedule (0 = off, 1 = on)
-d display a quick summary of the events for a # of days
-q quit immediately (0 = no, 1 = yes)
nags once for the current time and closes down
where # is an integer
Therefore, the CLI input format allows you to configure the
program a little more. As well, it lets you set where its
console is located if you run it with a script executed by
NewShell or IconX (See your manuals for more info on this).
If you wish to put LE-Nag in your startup sequence I recommend
one of the following.
If you aren't planning on using alerts which print to the
console:
cd <LE-Nag directory>
run >nil: <nil: le-nag [arguements]
If you do want console output:
NewCLI con:280/10/360/60/LE-Nag s:Le-Nag.script
and s:Le-Nag.script would be:
cd <LE-Nag directory>
le-nag [arguements]
When the program runs it will open a window on the workbench
screen. For those of you without the benefit of WB 2.0's window
sizing gadgets you can use the right mouse button to minimize and
maximize the window.
B) Features
The window is divided into a couple of regions of related
gadgets described below.
- Calendar
The top left region is called the Calendar and includes gadgets
to change the displayed year, month, day, hour and minute. The
calendar is used to enter times for events as well as setting a
time used by other functions to test how events respond at a
given time, to view a given day's events or to move to events
scheduled for a given day.
- Day Schedule
To the right of this is the Day Schedule gadget. If this gadget
is selected it shows what times during the calendar day have
events scheduled as well as highlighting days on the calendar
where events with the Highlight Day alert occur. Turning it on
will slow down the response when changing the Calendar day, month
or year since the events list must be rescanned. For this reason,
it can be toggled on and off with a mouse click.
- Event Information Area
The bottom of the window is the Event Information area.
At the top of this area is the Event string gadget
where the event can be described with up to 80 characters.
Below this is the Execute type gadget and the Execute string
gadget. The Execute gadget cycles through the types of alerts
events can generate, they include:
Print: Outputs to the console window.
DisplayBeep: Flashes the screen with DisplayBeep().
AmigaDOS: Executes and AmigaDOS command in C: or
the current directory.
Since the AmigaDOS execute is very powerful
and potentially dangerous, the shareware
version requires the reqtools.library to
function and puts up a requester to verify
the AmigaDOS command.
Requester: Opens a requester on the Workbench.
The requester is more flexible than any
other method of alert since it gives you
three choices of response:
Acknowledge
Acknowledge and then Save Events file
Get Out of My Face
Where GOMF just gets rid of the requester,
Acknowledge adjusts the acknowledge time
which is discussed later. But basically an
acknowledged event won't come up again until
after the current eventtime passes.
(or never again if the event does not repeat)
** Requires the reqtools.library **
SPEAK: Talks using the AmigaDOS SPEAK: device which
has to be installed with MOUNT SPEAK:
SPEAK: requires the translator.library
and narrator.device in libs: and devs:
The AmigaDOS 2.0 & 1.3 manuals both describe
the options for changing the qualities of
the voice. (See speak-handler)
And example on how to use options would be:
" \nopt/p300/r\Hello.\nopt/s100/p100/n\nBye."
Which would say "hello" with a high pitch
robotic voice and then "bye" in a slower,
lower and less robotic (normal) voice.
Note: SPEAK: does not return an error
message if it can't open its sound channel.
If it can't the output will just disappears.
Play Sound: Plays up to 4 IFF sound file simultaneously.
If an voice is unavailable the sound
will not be played. Also only the first
128K (131072 bytes) will be played if the
sample is longer.
Highlight Day: This is a special event that changes the
color of the day on the calendar. It is
special in two ways. First, it is only in
effect if the Day Schedule gadget is
selected. And second, it is not affected by
the acknowledge time.
The Execute string (up to 80 characters long) is used to provide
information to be used in the alert, ie what is printed if Print
is the Execute type, what is executed if the Execute type is
AmigaDOS.
There are some escape sequences supported when this string is
expanded, these are:
\t - expanded to a tab
\n - expanded to a carriage return & line feed
\r - expanded to a carriage return
\\ - used to indicate a single \
\n and \r can be used to seperate commands for the AmigaDOS
alert and to seperate IFF sound files for the Play Sound alert.
In addition to the escape sequences there are some conversion
sequences which allow you to include information about the event
and the time when the alert occurred, these are:
%eX or %EX for info on the event time
%cX or %CX for info on the current time
%aX or %AX for info on the last acknowledge time
%lY or %LY for info on the length
%dY or %DY for info on the diff. between event & current time
%s or %S for the event text
%% used to indicate a single %
and X can be the folowing:
c - century integer ie 19
C - century text ie Nineteen
y - year integer ie 92
Y - year text ie NinetyTwo
m - month integer ie 2
M - month text ie February
w - weekday ie 4 (Sunday is 0)
W - weekday text ie Thursday
d - day integer ie 4
D - day text ie Fourth
h - 12 hour integer ie 5
H - 12 hour text ie Five
i - 24 hour integer ie 17
I - 24 hour text ie Seventeen
p or P - AM/PM phase ie PM
n - minutes integer ie 15
N - minutes text ie Fifteen
s or S - seconds ie 4030030303
and Y can be the folowing:
d - days integer ie 493
D - days text ie NintyThree
note: the text only shows two digits of the integer
h - hours integer ie 6
H - hours text ie Six
n - minutes integer ie 15
N - minutes text ie Fifteen
s or S - seconds ie 4030030303
If X or Y isn't in the list then the default is to print the
seconds count.
The % conversions can even use formatting information like
field sizing and left right justification which C programmers
are probably familiar with. For those unfamiliar with these,
here is the format:
%[flags][width][.precision]type
where:
type is the sequences described above
flags can be -,+,# or <space>. The most useful is
- which will left justified the number or text.
width is an integer specifying the minimum width
a leading zero causes numbers to be printed
with leading zeroes, ie 02
precision is an integer. For text it specifies
the maximum # of character to display.
For numbers it works the same as width with
a leading zero.
If the Execute string is empty then the Event string will be
used in its place.
Below the execute gadgets are a number of time gadgets which
are set by selecting the time gadget and moving the Calendar
gadgets to change its contents.
Once the value is correct the gadget can be clicked again to
unselect it or it is also unselected if another time gadget is
selected. The changes can also be cancelled with the Cancel
gadget if the time gadget is still selected.
There are two different types of time gadgets, some are absolute
time gadgets which are tied to a date and some are relative time
gadgets which measure an interval of time of some length.
Here is a description of what each time gadget means:
Event Time - start time of the event or start time of
the first event if it repeats. Absolute.
Length - length of the event. Relative, it is set
by moving the calendar to the end time of
the first event.
Advance Notice - period of time before the event occurs
when it will generate alerts. Relative.
Interval - controls how many times the alert will
occur between the advance notice and the
event time. It sets how many minutes
are between alerts. Relative.
Acknowledge - is the time this event was acknowledged.
If the next event time after the
acknowledge time is the same as the next
event time when the program is nagging
then no alert is generated. Absolute.
There is one more gadget in the area called Group. This is a 4
digit ASCII code you can assign to an event. This allows you to
link serval related events together. If one gadget is
acknowledged then all of the others will also have their
acknowledge time updated. For example perhaps you can watch the
same TV program at 2 different times, if you see it the first
time and acknowledge then you won't be alerted of the other time
it is on.
There is one exception, if group code is blank then these events
are treated as ungrouped and acknowledging them does not effect
all other gadgets that have a blank group.
To the right of the time gadgets are the flags used to determine
how the event will occur or repeat.
Yearly Monthly and Weekly are used with the Repeat gadget value
to determine when to event can occur if it repeats.
The repeat gadget indicates the interval of weeks, months or
years between events. If Weekly is set it is the number of
weeks, if Monthly is set (and Weekly isn't) then it is the number
of months, if Yearly is set (and neither Weekly or Monthly are)
then is is the number of years.
If Weekly is set then the Monthly and Yearly gadgets indicate
if the event can occur on a month or year not equal to that of
the original event time.
Similarly if Weekly isn't set and Monthly is then Yearly
indicates if the repeating event can occur in months outside the
year of the original event time.
This approach allows you to set up events which repeat but stop
when the month or year ends.
Below the Yearly gadget is a gadget called D= and one for each
day of the week. The D= stands for Day Equals and means the
event time must be one of the days set in the weekday gadgets.
The most obvious use of this is to produce an event for Friday
the 13th if your the superstitious type (or Tuesday the 12th if
your worried about Friday the 13th viri)
If the Day Equals gadget is not set and some of the weekday ones
are then the whole week after the event time is checked and any
days where the weekday gadget is set treated as events.
This has two uses for me, First to make events that repeat daily
by making events that repeat weekly and setting all the weekday
gadgets on. And also to make events that occur on a particular
day of the week in a particular week of every month, like my AMUC
User's group meeting on the 3rd Wed of every month. To set it up
I just picked a month for the event to start, select the 15th of
that month (the 3rd week can start no earlier than the 15th) and
set the repeat count to 1, and turned on Yearly, Monthly. Weekly
and Wednesday.
There are two other flag gadget used to automate some options
which can be performed after the alert occurs. The first is
Auto Ack or Auto Acknowledge and causes an acknowledge to occur
after the event is processed. It is useful if your not using the
Requester alert where you can manually acknowledge. What
acknowledging does is prevent the event from occurring again
until the time is past the event time which already generated
an alert. The other is AutoSave which saves the Events file
after the alert occurs. It is most useful when combined with
Auto Ack so the change in the Acknowledge time is stored.
Note the above description of acknowledging is a little week so
here is a little more correct (but confusing) description.
If the event does merit an alert the next thing that is done
is the Acknowledge time is checked to see if it is related
to the same event time as that which created the new alert and
if it is the alert does not occur.
- System Time
In the upper right of the window there is a gadget displaying the
current time. It can be set the same as any time gadget by
selecting it and changing the calendar and then unselecting it.
- Check Minutes
Below System Time is the Check Minutes gadget. This determines
how often the program checks to see if any events occur. Note
this is not quite like the interval time gadget as it effects all
events. With larger Check Minutes values there is also a bit
greater risk of events being missed if something happens to the
clock but it also reduces how often the program need the CPU.
- Control Panel
Below Check Minutes is a group of gadgets I call the Control Panel.
Next and Previous move from one event to the next.
Delete removes the currently displayed event.
Note: Currently deleted events are NOT recoverable.
The New gadget is for creating a new blank event.
Cancel has two functions, if a time gadget is selected it undoes
the changes you have made to that time gadget. Otherwise it swaps
the current event's information with an undo event. This undo
event is initially set to the information in the event when you
first moved to it with Next/Previous. If it is a new event then
it equals the contents of the current event just before you
create the new event. This is useful for making events which
contain much of the same information, just enter the similar
information and hit New then Cancel.
Next to Cancel is Save which saves the events to the file .Events
in the current directory. As an additional note .Event files can
be joined together with JOIN (or TYPE) as .Event files are just a
list of Events without any header or footer information.
The next gadget is the Edit Mode gadget which effects the
functions of Next/Previous and to a lesser extent, Delete and
New. It has three settings:
Edit All - Next and Previous simply move from the
current event to one immediately adjacent to it.
Edit Day - Next and Previous try to move to the
next/previous event which occurs on the day
shown in the Calendar area. Delete will also
try to move to an event occurring on the
Calendar day but if it can't it will move to an
adjacent event.
Edit Group - Next/Previous will only move to an event which
has the same group as the current event. Delete
will try the same but if one doesn't exist it
will go to an adjacent Event. New will also put
the Group of the current event into the new
event's Group.
The last gadget is Goto and it is used with time gadgets to move
the Calendar to the time values shown in them. First Goto is
selected and then a time gadget is selected. Goto is cancelled
if Goto,Cancel or something other than a time gadget is selected.
Selecting absolute time gadgets after Goto will move to the time
shown in them whereas relative time gadgets will move the Calendar
to a position relative to the event time. Interval, and Advance
Notice move to before the event time and Length moves to after the
event time, ie at the event end time.
Thanks you for taking the time to look at these rather long docs.
I hope it helps more than it hurts as you try to understand
LE-NAG.
This program has been tested with an 6M A3000 under 1.3 and 2.0,
a 1M A500 under 1.3 and a 256K A1000 under 1.3 (WB loaded).
Many Thanks go to:
Bryce McCormick, my alpha/beta/gamma tester, who directly and
indirectly inspired changes to the program and made it more
difficult for me to shelf for any great length of time.
Stephen Vermuelen, what can I say, if there is a Amiga
programming question that he doesn't know the answer to I haven't
had to ask it yet.
Bob Leivian who ported the calendar program found on Fish 34.
It served its purpose as this program was being written and was a
good model for this program.
Anders Bjerin who's Amiga C Manual continues to be the source of
the underlying interface monitoring code in anything I start.
Thanks also for the EasySound IFF 8SVX player.
Timm Martin who's timer device code cut down considerably the
time necessary to get this program functional even if I did have
to work the code over a bit.
Leo Schwab who's process spawning code made this program
multitask internally where it needed it most.
Nico Francois who's ReqTools library made nagging with good
looking requesters only a function call away.
And ofcourse Fred Fish for providing a reliable first source for
the PD programs and the source code of programmers like those
mentioned above.
ReqTools is Copyright (c) Nico Francois
