Monster Media 1996 #15

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Peter's Many Things v 4.0 for Windows c 1996 by Peter Neuendorffer "sweep away the clutter" Organizes scraps of information and a Calendar/scheduler Released June 5th, 1996. The consultant was John Cofsky. Print this manual at 66 lines/page, no border. See the file README.DOC for installation instructions. I. Introduction = About this software 1 II. The Things List Putting in Data = How to store information 2 Views = How to group information 4 Edit Functions = Group editing functions 6 Options = Customization 7 Files = Three files available 8 Small Window = Easy copy paste from Windows 8 Entire Documents = Inputing entire documents 9 Macros = Keyboard data entry shortcut 9 Short List = short list of data used often 9 Jot-it Memo = a place to make quick notes 10 III. The Calendar/Scheduler setting up the year 11 The Month screen = starting place in your calendar 11 The Day screen = where you enter and view calendar info 12 Rolling Data = copying recurring appointments 13 Introduction If you find yourself with scraps of paper all over your desk from phone calls, to do lists, ideas, whatever, you will find Peter's Many Things useful. It has many ways of viewing your information, including group copy, paste, delete, and print windows. You may use 800X600 large font or 640X480 screen resolutions. It will work somewhat in 768X1024 resolution. You can switch between three separate "files" of 800 items each. One-line pieces of information called here "Things" are arranged in a free form list that you shape according to your needs. You also get a calendar scheduler by choosing Windows/Calendar from the main menu. You format each year just once from the Window menu. The calendar is discussed towards the end of the manual. Paying for this Software If you like it, please pay for it, Send $20.00 to Peter Neuendorffer 1399 Commonwealth Ave #11, Allston, MA 02134. Email petern@channel1.com A registered disk will be sent upon receipt of your payment. The file is complete in the evaluation version, except for the nag screen which is removed from the Registered version. Note in this manual the word "item" and "thing" are interchangable. Quotation marks are only for emphasis, and don't have to be entered. Introduction continued. p 2. This software maintains a list. A "Thing" is a scrap of information that is one line (80 letters) long. In the bottom third of your main window, various Things are displayed, depending on the View Filter on your list. View Filters bring up selected items in the list. Thus, you can enter things in any order, and then see related items by words, topics, important or date. The list can be up to 800 itmes. You get up to three of these lists, choosing between them with File/Open. The second main feature is a calendar scheduler which ise discussed in page of this manual. Everything till then relates to the Thing list. You enter in items in the wide white bar at the top of the main screen. You can specify a topic by typing it in the small white box below, or by choosing from previous topics. Mark an item important by clicking on the "important" checkbox before saving (Add) or replacing an item (Replace.) You can reverse the order of the list (the actual list is not reverse, just your view of it) by clicking on the checkbox just above and to left of the list. This is useful, as often the most recent items entered will be seen first in reverse order. You can have the software start up in reverse mode -recommended- by checking off "Reverse list on startup" from the Options/data control menu. It is highly recommended that you keep your lists in reverse display, although you may switch back and forth between "Now Forward" and "Now reverse" at any time (click on left middle off the main list). If the list is in reverse - and this will stick between sessions- each time you add an item, it appears at the top of the list. To move to the top or end of the list as it is currently displayed (whether or not it is in reverse mode) click on one of the two large arrows at the right of the screen. The forward-reverse checkbox determines whether or not the list is in reverse order. The two large arrows on the right move to the top or bottom of the current view. There is an expert menu option [Options/Hide Task Bar checked.] You can opt to remove the clutter of buttons, by checking off Options/Hide Task Buttons (you can change back at any time). All task buttons for Searching are mirrored in "View" in the main menu, and also by right clicking the mouse on the main screen. The Edit box buttons are mirrored in the Main Menu "Edit". If you use the expert mode, you get a speedbutton menu at the right-hand part of the edit box. Click on "?" to see the functions. They correspond to the Views that will be discussed later. Hypertext searching of your things: When you double click on a word in the long white "Thing" data entry box, a word search View by that word is done. For example, if the current thing reads "Fred is coming next Tuesday", if you click on Fred in the edit bar (not the main list) then all items mentioning Fred will come up in the listbox. Because of this feature, you can esaily do a plain single word search by typing in the word in the edit bar, and double clicking on the word. Introduction continued. p 3. Similarily, if you double click on a topic name, all things with that topic will be brought up. Also, to repeat a view, you may click on the small graphic appearing above the list box, to repeat that type of filter. You assign a topic to an item by choosing a topic from the small white drop-down bar, or typing in a new bar. You do this before you save each item with "Add". If you double click on a thing in the listbox itself, you can choose from a word list to search for. Only those words that appear in other things in the complete list are shown, so you may move about the list from related topic words to related topic words. Just double click on a line in the list of things, and the word box appears. Then click the word to search for and a new view appears with that word. You can specify your own word to search by clicking on "Word" or the second button in the expert speedbutton menu. Sometimes when you enter a new thing in, it will not appear in the main list. This is because the new item does not meet the current view's Filter request. This can be disabled with Options/always show new. You may print the current list with File/Print. More on this and on copy/paste/group delete in the Edit/Options help section. A series of view filters may be applied to see different groups of Things. You may filter the list twice at any given time. More on this under Views. Thus you could filter your list by Word (search for word), Date (various date critereon), Topic (you set up your own topics), Important (items can be marked important. A second filter can be drawn from these choices, thus you could search for Word ("Bill") and 2nd search for Important, thus bringing up a list of all items containing the word "bill" and marked important. Second filter is available then the button "second filter" is lit in light blue, unless you are in expert mode. -----> You can get to a speed menu with Right Click on the Main Screen. Customize the colors with Options/Edit Color and Options/Background. Putting in Data Putting in Data involves filling in the"Thing" (the long white bar) and a Topic. You can use this to add a new topic name, by typing in the new topic. You can also add and maintain topics from Edit/Topic Maintenance. If the topic field stays on the last thing entered. Simply reset it to [none] or another topic to change it. example: type in the large white bar "my email address is petern@channel1.com" then type in the topic below "internet email" Then click the Add button. To edit this item later, click on it in the list (you can find it with a word search), and edit it in the large white bar. Then click the Replace button. If you want the item to be marked Important, click on the Important checkbox. If you wish it date-stamped, click on "stamp date". Stamping the date can be automatic by checking on Options/Auto Stamp date. If you manually enter a date in a Thing, make sure it is in slash format, with month,day,year numbers entered. p. 4 When you have filled in the new item, and topic (optional), and have the importance set, click on ADD to add the item to your list. You may have the date automatically stamped each time the "thing" white bar clears. Do this from Options/Data control. Editing functions include, (afer clicking an a thing in the list): Replace: work with Thing already in list. Click on a thing, no matter what the current view, then edit it in the white bar, and click Replace. Move: move the Thing to a new place in the list. Click on a thing, click Move, then click on the new place desired. The main view is changed to Forward /Complete. Combine: Choose an item from the current list, then "Combine". Note that the list is now in complete mode. Click on the second item to combine with your main item. and OK. You will be prompted if the combined item is too large. Remember when you add a new item, save it with "Add". When modifying a previous item from the list - and you can do this from any View of your list - click on the line in the listbox, modify the line and change the topic or mark important if you want then click on "REPLACE". Views View Filters: viewing the data These are the task bar buttons, or from the Main Menu, "View" or from the expert speedbutton bar: [complete word short list topic date] View Filters provide a way to look at your data in different ways. You may print any given view on your printer by selecting File/Print. You will then get a group box to select certain items to print, or choose Select All then Group Print to print all items. This list is your current view, not necessarily the Complete View. The use of this group function window is carried over in Paste and Copy. When a Filter button is clicked, the main list at the bottom of the screen will have different contents. The entire list is still there, you are just looking at different portions of it depending on the View Filter. With all views except "complete" you are given the option to move the search list to the end of you main list. This is useful when you select Reverse by clicking on the checkbox to the left and top of the list. When you check off that box, the items that are found are physically moved to the end of your main list. Next time you click Complete with [now Reverse] switch on, you will see the found items have been moved to the end of the complete list. Views continued. p 5. ------> When you have filtered your list, and then enter a new item, the new item will only appear in the current view list if it meets the condition of the current view. However the new item has in fact been added. You can change this so the new item always displays (check off "Options/screen/always display new item") Here are the View Filters: Complete: Your complete list. This list only changes if you add, replace, or delete an item. The order may change depending on other things you do. By Word: This is a search by word(s). You may also search for two things with AND, or either one or another thing with OR. You can do this in a single filter, or even in the 2nd filter. A drop down list shows your previous requests. Also, in a single filter (Plain) you may specify whole words, so for example "book" would be found but not "bookish" where your request is part of a larger word. Your last primary search causes a graphic to be updated corresponding to the icon for each type of search. This graphic is immediately above the list box of things. You can click this icon to repeat the same type of search as the last one. For your convenience, you can teleport to the Calendar Search from this screen. (see Calendar below) Important: Brings up a list of only the things marked important. An item is marked important by checking off the "important" box before saving with Add or Replace. A squiggle appears at the left of an item. --------> To unmark an item marked important, find it, click on it in the main list (whatever the view) and uncheck "mark important", then click on Replace. By Topic: You choose a topic name, and the list will now show those things having that topic. You can also add a topic (optional) when you enter the thing, or replace it. By Date: You have choices of all things on a certain date, those which were enter today, those on or before a given date, those on or since a certain date, and those between two dates (inclusive). An item has to be stamped with the date for it to be recognizedi in a date search. This is used to produce a view of your main list by date. This is separate from the Calendar option, which is separate from the main list. You may copy and paste lines in and out of the main list to the calendar, though. Edit functions p. 6 These are functions for editing large portions of your data. The Main Menu / Edit menu has several ways to handle your data. Single item copy/paste: You may select and copy text, or paste text into the "thing" edit bar. This is useful for copying or pasting single words. To Copy single edit bar, highlight text in the top wide white edit "thing" bar, and choose "Single Edit/Copy" from the main Window. Or to paste a word from the clipboard into the white edit "thing" bar, position the cursor in the box, and choose "Single Edit/Paste" Copy: Copy brings up a copy of your current Window, with the same filter of items. Click on those items you wish to copy, then click on Group Copy. Things are now in the Windows Clipboard. To copy all items, first click on Select All from the copy screen. Paste: Paste when clicked displays the current contents of the Windows Clipboard. You may have copied a paragraph of a story into the clipboard previously. Then click on those items you wish to Paste to the end of the main list. Then Click Group Paste. You can bypass this screen to automatically paste data by selecting (from the main menu) Options/Data Control/Automatic paste. Group Delete: Group Delete functions like Copy, except the selected items will be deleted from your list. The items are not copied to the Windows Clipboard. Complete list allows a listing like the Filter Complete - the complete list, but the list is much roomier, and the screen is not cluttered by controls. You have no editing functions in this complete list. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Edit/Topic Maintenance: Bear in mind that this section has a direct bearing on your data. You can add a new topic, delete an existing topic, rename a topic -including renaming a topic to another topic to consolidate; You can sort the main list by topic, or Sort the topic name list itself. From this screen you can also unmark important items. Edit/Topic Maintenance continued. p. 7 The Topic Maintenance screen from the main menu allows you to - sort the topic names - sort your main list alphabetically by topic this will group together all items with the same topic - delete a topic name (but not the data) - delete a topic name AND the data for that topic. The first delete just changes the topic name to [none] for the items in that topic. But the second delete removes the data as well. Be careful! - change a topic name to another name. This can be another topic name, to consolidate two topics together in one topic. Or you can rename a topic to a new name. - add a new topic. You get up to 50 topics. When deleting a topic, you have the option (a checkbox) to also remove the data assigned to that topic. You can assign a group of items to a given topic by selecting "Group Assign" Options There are several options to control how the program behaves. Starred items are recommended set to on. Screen: * Reverse list on Start: Always show the list in reverse when it is first loaded. by keeping the list is reverse, when you add items they will be added to the top of the listbox - where they are clearly visible. Arrange screen: You can put the list of things at the top or at the bottom of the screen. Edit bar color: You can customize the color of the main edit bar, and opt to have the main background screen remain black. Data control: * Auto Stamp Date:when checked, when the current data bar is cleared, the current date will be stamped. * Follow Highlighted Item: When checked, the software will track the highlighted item into the next View Filter you choose, if it is also present in the new View. * Always Show New: when clicked on, when you add or replace an item, it will temporarily appear in the main white list, even if it doesn't meet the current condition. For example, if you do a Filter by Word ("hello"); then if you add in a new thing, "this is goodbye", then the new thing will appear in the window. When Always Show New is not checked (off) then this new item would not be displayed in the filtered window, although it would still be added to the main list. Options continued. p. 8 Ask Shortlist Question: (recommended off) You will be asked every time you enter an item if you also want it on the Shortlist. Automatic Paste Screen: You may hide the intermediate Paste screen that appears when you press paste. Then, if you choose Paste, the clipboard will be put in the current List, with out asking you first which items you want. Reverse Paste will cause the items on the clipboard (or in your paste screen where you select items) to be pasted in reverse order to the list. -----> You may choose to hide many of the buttons with "Hide Task Buttons." This may be reversed later. The menus for View and Edit contain all of the commands that are no longer seen as buttons, making the screen less cluttered. When choosing "Hide Task Buttons," a speedbutton menu appears at the right of the edit bar for quick viewing functions. Also, you can right-click the mouse at any time on the main screen to get to editing and view functions. A speedbutton bar appears at the top right of the edit bar. Click on the "?" icon to see what each function does. --------------------------------------------------------------- Files You can switch between 3 separate files of 800 things each with File/Open. If you wish to move items including the topics for the items between files, use Edit/Move to File, and select those items from the current view which you wish to move. You can set the names for the files from File/Open as well. You needn't use file names, just the word you wish to describe the file. Files are color coded by the background of the main screen. File/Insure will write your changes to the current file to disk immediately. Small Window You can easily copy lines of information from other applications into this software. Click on "Small Window" on the main screen. A small window appears which will float on top of other applications. Open the application you wish to copy data from - such as Notepad, or a word processor. Highlight the text lines to copy, and choose Edit/Copy from the application. Then click on Paste in the Small Window, and you will get a large screen to choose the items to paste to Peter's Many Things. Choose "Select All" and Group Paste to paste them all, or click on the items to paste, then Group Paste. You will be brought back to your desktop as it was. To leave the Small Window click on "To Program." To Quit the Peter's Many Things program altogether (the new data will be saved) click on Quit. To skip the Paste screen, choose "Automatic Paste" from Options/Data Control in the main program. From the small window, you may expand the window with "Edit Bar" button to type in lines of information to your current list. Click on "Small Window" to return the Window to the smaller "paste" size if you wish. Inputing entire documents: p. 9 Remember, Peter's Many Things works best when each line of data stands alone. A straight text document may not be suitable for inputing into this program. The lines or "things" can quickly become dispersed in your list. But if the text file you input (or word-processor file) is organized line by line, inputing the document into Peter's Many Things makes sense. 1. make sure Options/Data Control/Reverse paste is to your choosing. Reverse paste on will have multiple lines appear in order when you are using Now Reverse type of display. 2. Choose Small Window from the main menu. 3. Display the document you wish to input in an editor such as Notepad, or even a word processor. 4. Select the lines (or select all) in the editor you wish to input. Click on "copy" in that application. 5. Press "Paste" on the "small window" toolbar. If Options/Data Control/Automatic Paste is off (default) then you must select the lines you wish to paste into Peter's Many Things (or select all) then click on "Group Paste". If Options/Data Control/Automatic Paste is on, the document will be inputed as it was copied in 4. Macros If you have frequently used words for entering in Things or Topics, you may set up keyboard macros from Options/Macros. Choose Options/ Macros. You will be assigning a word(s) of up to 20 characters to be associated with Alt-letter combinations. For example, you could choose C from the listbox, then type in Company. And OK. Then from the main data entry Window, on either the long "things" edit box, or the short "topic" editbox, if you type Cntrl-C (the control key held down and press C) the word "Company" will be automatically entered. There is one macro list for all files. Short List You may wish to maintain a short list of items you refer to often. When entering in a Thing, before choosing Add as usual to add the item, choose "put on short list" from the edit bar. Now the item is also added to the Short List. If this item is deleted from the main list later, the item will be removed from the short list. A replaced item on the main list, if also on the shortlist will automatically be replaced on the shortlist. Think of the shortlist as a small set of things also found on the main list. Editing the main list things is reflected on the Shortlist automatically. Short List continued p. 10 To call up the short list at any time, click on Short List from the View Filter options at the top of the main screen. There is a separate shortlist for each of your three files. From Options in the main menu, you may elect to have "shortlist question". When this is checked off, you will be prompted every time you enter a thing in the main window if you also wish it to be a shortlist item. It is recommended that you leave this item off. Also, you can add the currently highlighted item in the main screen to the short list by choosing Short List then the "Add" button. To recap, edit a new item, and click on "to short list," then click on Add. To modify an item, select and edit the item, click on "to short list" then Replace. Only items in the main list are kept on the short list. Deleting a short list item from the short list still leaves the item intact in the main list. Think of the shortlist items as copies of those on the main list. Additional Shortlist options ---------------------------- add: Before opening the short list, you can highlight an item on the main list. Then when opening the short list, you can add that item to the short list by clicking "Add." You can also add an item to the short list from the main screen by clicking on the red right-arrow speedbutton. This is if you have selected Options/Hide Task Buttons. reminder: From the Shortlist, you can make an item a large reminder message by clicking on an item in the list, then clicking "Make Reminder." follow: When leaving the shortlist, you can return to a specific item by clicking an item then clicking the "Follow..." button. Also, you may select the current Reminder in the shortlist by clicking on the Reminder message (if present.) updating an item on the shortlist: Now, it you edit and replace an item in the main list that is also on the shortlist, the shortlist item will be updated automatically. Thus, if you had "Tom's number: 555-1212" on both the main list and on the short list, if you replaced the thing with "Tom number: 555-1212 in Dayton", the shortlist item would be updated and kept as well. Jot-it: Off the main menu, you may click Jot-it to have a scratch pad for notes. This is no substitution for putting items in the list, but you may copy from jot-it to the clipboard then paste to the main list. Calendar and Scheduler. 11 Use the calendar for appointments and other notes that are tied to particular days of the year. 1. Setting up the year 2. The month screen 3. The day screen 4. Rolling ahead appointments 5. Some common tasks 1. Setting up the year: You only have to do this once a year. Select "format the year" from the main screen "Window" menu. Set the year to format and click on "Format Year." If the year already exists, such as if you tried to set up 1996 after you have already been using 1996, you will be prompted. Almost ALWAYS cancel this, as you will lose your current calendar data for that year. Now, check the "Window/Select Year" menu to make sure the year is selected to display. Whenever possible, the calendar will automatically select the real current year. To change years, you must go into "Window/Select Year." If when you go into calendar it says "Must format year" you have not set up the current year file yet. If when you go into Calendar it does not select the current year, it may be if you are in the start of a new year (real January 1st) and have not formatted the new year. You are now ready to proceed to Calendar. Each time you run the software, it will automatically select the current real year for "Calendar", IF YOU HAVE FORMATTED THE CURRENT YEAR ONCE. Do not re-format a year unless you are prepared to blank out the data for that year entirely. 2. The Main Calendar Month Screen: (assuming you have formatted the year once) Get to the calendar by choosing "Window/Calendar" or pressing the speedbutton picture of a sun in expert mode. You get the current real month on display. If it is "June" in your real world, then June will display. Switch months by clicking once on the month name from the month list to the right. To set the day to "today" at any time, click on the "Today" button. You can toggle off and on "Week At a Glance" which will change the way the single day screen will display. If week at a glance, then the day screen will display the complete week starting at the current (highlighted) day. If off, you may edit the data for a given day. You can change that from within the single day screen (described below) as well. To go to a single day, click on the number in the large month box. As you move from day to day withing the single day screen, the large month box will be automatically updated. -----> Word Search: From the month screen, you can search for a given word or words in the calendar data. Once you get the found list, you can click on any line to go automatically to that day. 3. Single Day Screen. p. 12 This has two modes "Day Edit" and "Week at a Glance" If in Day Edit a white box appears for the day. You may edit each day. If in Week at a Glance, a grey box appears for the week. You may not edit each day in Week at a Glance mode. Day Edit: Where you type in your appointments etc. for a day. Type in the data and edit it. THere is no need for a save. The data is automatically updated as you type. You may select text with the mouse, and Copy or Cut the data. You may paste data from the Windows clipboard. If the Windows clipboard is too large for the box - the box holds 800 characters or 8 full lines - you will be told. To return to the last day you set when entering the day screen from the "outside" calendar month screen, click on "Show Start Day" Week at Glance: This shows the current week from the start day. You may not edit this data without going to a "day edit" white box. However you can easily edit a day by clicking on any data for a given day. This returns you to the day edit screen for that day, where you can change data if you wish. Both Day Edit and Week at a Glance: You can move from day to day or week to week in several ways. Click on the Red arrows to move forward or backward a [Day][Month][Week]. You stay in the display mode (day or week) you are in until you click on "Show day" or the "Show Week" button. Clicking on that button toggles between Day Edit mode (white edit box) and the Week at Glance mode (gray box, read only.) You can also move to a given day by clicking the small calendar display box at the top left of the screen. 4. Rolling ahaead appointments is for when you want to copy an appointment to a given number of days or weeks later. If you only want to copy an appointment once or twice, you can highlight the appointment, hit the Copy button, and hit either the red right arrow week (or day) button, then hit Paste. The software will tell you if there is not enough room in the day. Rolling ahead continued. p. 13 For copying an appointment or line(s) of text to several or more days or weeks, here's what to do: - highlight the text to roll forward (copy to a later day.) You can highlight more than one line if you wish, but bear in mind it may not fit in the other days which have a maximum of 800 letters. - Click on the "Roll Data" button. You now have 3 options Copy by days (for example, copy the highlighted text to the next consecutive "number" days. - Select the number of days to copy to; not including the current day in your figure. - Click on "Roll Days" and the lines will be rolled ahead to the number of days you specified. Copy by weeks (for example, copy the highlighted text to the next consecutive "number" weeks, on the smae weekday - Sunday for example. - Select the number of days to copy to; not including the current day in your figure. - Click on "Roll Days" and the lines will be rolled ahead to the number of weeks you specified. Copy entire year: same as copy by weeks except it does it for the entire year by weeks. 5. Some common tasks (examples) Find Dr. Smith's appointment you forgot when - go to Word Search from the month screen - type "Smith" in the small white box. - Hit the search button - Choose from the items it finds in the day data for "Smith" and double click the line to go to that day - If you return to the search, your last search is displayed but bear in mind that it does not reflect changes in your appointments made since the search. Copy a "thing" from the main program into a date. - exit to the main program. Either use "single line copy" or "copy" to copy a line (lines) to the clipboard. - go back to the calendar, choose a date and hit the Paste button. Go from week at glance to a particular day. If the day is in the current week, scroll to the day you wish to jump to in the gray box, then click the mouse See a month's data of days at once. - Select the 1st of the month, - then click on "To week" button if the memo is white. when you finish reading each week, click on the red right-arrow by "week". --- Warning ----> You may erase the entire year of information and start fresh. Be careful with this one. Once you have reformatted a year, the previous appointments are GONE. From the main menu of the whole program, select Window/Format year and select the year you wish to re-do. Then click on Format. You will be reminded that your current data will be lost.