Night Owl 6/Night Owl's Shareware - PDSI-006 - Night Owl Corp (1990).iso/023a/cal_v17.zip/CALENDAR.DOC

Text File | 1991-01-13 | 11KB | 265 lines

                The Home and Business Calendar Version 1.5

    Written by Charles H. Crawford with special thanks to Eric Bohlmand

Documentation

    The use of calendars in day to day living is not only taken for
granted, but a necessity in the modern world. Most people can easily
relate to the familiar square image of Sunday through Saturday sitting
beneath a centered month with rows of numbers representing the days. The
home and business calendar software takes a different approach to the same
information with a view towards electronically duplicating the calendar
pad where information is presented on a day by day basis with the next day
sitting underneath the one you are reviewing. this allows for storage,
quick searches and event conflict avoidance capacity. Another important
advantage to this line oriented programming approach is to provide folks
who do not relate to the graphic square image with the ability to scan
through an alternative method. People who rely upon speech synthesis to
access computer information will especially appreciate this serial line
approach.

    No program is worth the disk space it is written within unless it
reasonably serves the interests of its users. Folks who have suggestions
on how the program might operate better should feel free and are
encouraged to send them along to me at the following address.

Charles Crawford
The Massachusetts Commission for the Blind
88 Kingston Street
Boston, Ma 02111.

    The MCB BBS is also available at area code 617 telephone [phone]
(8,n,1 best parameters) to leave your suggestions as a comment to the
sysop. I would encourage folks to call the board and download future
versions of the calendar program as well as other programs written with
the needs and concerns of visually impaired users in mind. Folks with
"Hayes series V 9600" BPS modems can call at that fast speed, while others
with lower speed modems of any make can also call at those lower speeds.

    Neither "Calendar" nor the other programs such as the talking
checkbook or the electronic address book are warrantee for any purpose and
are not to be sold as they are released to the public domain. Users use
the programs at their own risk and while I personally have had no problems
with mind, that is only my experience and any problems arising from the
use of the software are the sole responsibility of the user who agrees to
this through the use of the software.

    Now that we have gotten through all of that, let's get to the program
itself.

    The first thing that you will want to do with the calendar program is
either set colors to your liking or add an entry. Setting colors is easy










by typing menu option 3. Folks with visual problems who can see some color
sets better than others will appreciate the "set colors" feature.

    Adding an entry to the calendar is simply a matter of pressing option
1 and following the prompts. The software was written assuming that you
already have some dates in the database and when you go to enter a new
entry, it checks to see if your start time for your meeting or event
conflicts with a previous entry. Slashes are required for date entries (
December 25, 1990 would be 12/25/90 ). The starting and ending times
should be uniform in terms of the punctuation you use. You should use the
colon when entering starting and ending times and the program will ask you
later as to whether it is A.M. or P.M. This means that a meeting or event
starting at nine in the morning would be entered as 9:00 and later the
program will ask you whether it is before or after noon. The software has
been modified by Eric Bohlman to incorporate "Clipper" routines which both
arrange records in AM/PM mode as well as reporting them in proper time
sequence. the use of the colon in the starting and ending time entries is
important to keep the "Clipper" index correct. Also, the program looks to
see if your entry is in conflict with time already entered for the date in
question to ensure that you don't schedule to events for the same time
periods.

    The software will show a conflicting meeting if it detects one. You
will then have the display of your other meetings during the day to allow
you to determine what you want to do about conflicts or scheduling. One
thing you might want to do is to schedule meeting starting at the top of
an hour and ending them at one minute before the end of the hour. This
will let the software see no conflict between the ending time and the
starting time of different events. If you schedule 9:00 to 10:00 on a
given day and then go in to schedule another meeting starting at 10:00 and
ending at 11:00; then you'll see the program report a conflict, since
10:00 is the ending time for one meeting and 10:00 is the starting time
for another. The program sees you doing two things at one time and since
humans are so superior to the computer, it cannot recognize that you are
ending one thing and starting another at the same time. The way to handle
this is to simply tell the software that you are ending your meeting or
event at 10:59 and the computer and you can be one with the universe.

    If you decide that a previously entered conflicting record is not as
important as the one you are currently entering, then either choose to
delete, cancel or move it. Deleting means that you mark the record to be
taken out of the database completely once you leave the calendar program.
Cancelling does not delete the record and future versions will have
routines built in to search your cancelled meetings and not show them with
the active records. Moving a record simply marks the record for instant
search and editing for future versions. Currently a record marked for
moving behaves like any other record which you would have to edit to
change the date or time or whatever to actually move the meeting.

    Once you have been shown the conflicting meeting and other events of
the day and once you may have chosen to move forward, then you will be
asked a series of questions  which get the information necessary to
provide you with a comprehensive summary of the meetings you have
scheduled. As one who must mange time very closely, I can appreciate the
need for comprehensive information at your immediate disposal.

    Menu option 2 provides you with the opportunity to review your
records. If you want to see what is coming up for a two week period, then
simply tell the computer the dates between which you want to search and
you are all set.

    Menu option 4 is for folks like me who love adding information early,
but who then may have to edit it later. This is particularly useful for
those who may want to use the "notes" lines as a way of keeping a short
record of what decisions were made or other facts needing to be
remembered. If you have marked a record for deletion and then go to the
edit function, don't be surprised to see the record you had marked, since
it will show up until you've left the program to DOS. If you delete a
record and then go to the edit screen and find it coming up, then simply































































answer the question about this being the record you want to edit with a
"N" for no; this will cause the edit program to skip to the next record
for that date if there is any.

    Menu option 5 is a fast and simple way to check out the current day's
activity and should be a real time saver.

    Menu option 6 allows you to take a fast scan of what's coming up
within fixed starting and ending dates. Nice for the busy person looking
for a time to fit one more thing in.

    Menu option 7 allows you to get an ascii text file generated of
meetings with a particular person. This will help you to keep track of
meetings with your boss (hope they all went well) or others you want to
keep a record of. In addition, you can print the ascii text file using the
DOS print command "print filename" and show the listing to folks who might
want to know about meetings they have had with you.

    Menu option 8 is a handy way to keep track of birthdays,
anniversaries  and the like. It creates a new database called
"Special.dbf" and when you list the records, it also creates a text file
called "Special.txt". this allows you to enter information about special
dates you'll want to be reminded of, and generate a text file that looks
for records associated with a particular month you give it. If you enter
your dog's birthday as 09/05/91 and your anniversary as 09/18/88, then
when you list for the month of September or "09", then you'll get both
dates and information. Just remember to keep the "Special.dbf" file in the
same sub-directory as your "TC.dbf" and you'll be fine. Also remember that
each time you list special dates, the file "Special.txt" is written over.
You can use your DOS "type filename|more" to read it, or your favorite
text editor. You can also rename the text file before you use the special
dates option again and save the file to review another time.

    Folks interested in an office scheduling routine for more than one
user can do the following for the time being.
    1. create sub-directories or multiple floppies with the blank database
"tc.dbf) in them. Place your "Calendar.exe"file in your path that DOS
looks to as it operates. Most folks have "path = C:\DOS " in their
autoexec.bat file in their root directory in C. If in that case, you were
to put the "Calendar.exe" file in the c:\DOS sub-directory, then you could
change directories to the one corresponding to a particular person and
type "Calendar" and up should come the calendar program looking at the
right database. If I wanted my cat George to have a calendar outside of
mine, then I would create a sub-directory called "George" and put the
calendar program in my DOS path. If then, I went to c:\george and then
typed "Calendar", then the information appearing would be brought up from
the "George" sub-directory rather than than my own. The same would work
with any number of sub-directories set up for different office people.
Just be sure that "TC.dbf" is in the right sub-directory corresponding to
the person you are scheduling for and that "Calendar.exe" is in your DOS
pathway.

    Enjoy the program and use it in good health.

    Please note that my cat is not named George and he would be insulted
if I did not mention that. Also his day is so busy with things that keep
cats entertained, that he would need a whole disk to keep up.

Charles H. Crawford.