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1992-05-06
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
SHAREWARE SHAREWARE SHAREWARE SHAREWARE SHAREWARE SHAREWARE SHAREWARE
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Program: BADGER 03/28/90
Programmer: George Kerber
Written: 03/15/90 - 07/01/90
Application: MS-DOS & AmigaDOS
This program is released as SHAREWARE. This means that all users who find
this program useful and continue to use it are required to mail the author
(me) $15 to pay for the program and to register their copy. Failure to make
the required payment is THEFT. This program may be used for a period of 30
days (one 30 day trial period per user) without charge. Any user that
continues to use the program past the 30 day trial period should mail
payment to:
George Kerber
19757 E. Linvale Drive
Aurora, CO 80013
(303) 693-2890
As the author, I choose to make this program shareware and require a payment
of $15 for the use of the program. If anyone does not think the program is
worth $15 (which is anyone's choice to make), that doesn't justify not
making payment if you continue to use the program. If my price it too high,
then simply delete the program & documentation.
Your permission to use this version of BADGER expires 30 days after the
first time you execute the program. Forty five days after you first use
this program, BADGER will delete it's data files and become inoperative.
Whenever BADGER is executed, insure that your computer clock is set
correctly. The data files that are created by BADGER will only work with
the copy of BADGER they were created with. If a new copy of BADGER is
started, it will destroy the old data files. BADGER will not permit the
user to set their computer date years ahead to start the program in an
attempt to get more usage time. BADGER will detect this and become
inoperative.
All registered users will receive an unprotected copy of the latest version
of 'BADGER' that operates without any SHAREWARE message notices. The
shareware screen was intended to be annoying. Please send your registration
payment, and you will never have to see the screen again. Any attempt to
remove the SHAREWARE notice using some type of sector editor will make the
program inoperative. When ordering, please specify MS-DOS or AmigaDOS.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
SHAREWARE SHAREWARE SHAREWARE SHAREWARE SHAREWARE SHAREWARE SHAREWARE
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
PURPOSE: (MS-DOS or AmigaDOS)
--------
BADGER is a 'quick' reminder program. The user can enter important events
via prompts, along with the number of days to pre-notify. BADGER will
display any important events that fall within the pre-notify date from the
menu or using the '-s' option. The '-s' option will only display the
important events that are 'due'. This is useful for inclusion in your
autoexec.bat/startup-sequence file.
SYNTAX:
-------
BADGER
BADGER -s
BADGER -c (MS-DOS Only)
BADGER -l (MS-DOS Only)
BADGER -check
BADGER -h (MS-DOS only) or ? (MS-DOS & AmigaDOS)
With no option BADGER will display a menu to add, view or search
for current due events. BADGER is easy to use, most choices are
self-explanatory.
-s BADGER will display only the current due important events and
then exit. If no events are due, there will be no output.
Add 'BADGER -s' this to your autoexec.bat file.
-c Toggle color/black & white. See the section titled "COLOR"
for more information. (MS-DOS ONLY)
-l This option prevents BADGER from using any text attributes
in it's display. This is useful for LCD displays due to the
"reversed" nature of their output. See the section titled
"COLOR" for more information. (MS-DOS ONLY)
-check This option will display the status of this copy of BADGER,
along with the compile date. If this copy is a SHAREWARE
version, '-check' will also display to the user if this copy
of BADGER has ever been executed. See the 'STATUS' section
for more information about this option for SHAREWARE users.
-h A short help/information screen will be displayed.
or
? A short help/information screen will be displayed.
When choices appear between [] brackets, any choice that is capitalized is
the default and can be selected by simply pressing any key.
MENU OPERATION
---------------
All menu selections can be selected by the choice number or the highlighted
letter of the description.
(s) 1. Search For Important Events.
(a) 2. Add Events.
(v) 3. View Events.
(h) 4. Help/Information.
(P) Print Event List. (not shown on menu)
(q) 5. Quit. (default)
1. (s) Any important events that are "due" will be displayed. The user
will have six possible choices.
1. (s) Snooze: This is the default and will be selected by pressing
any key not used for the other menu choices. The event will
be kept and the user will be reminded again the next time the
program is executed.
2. (d) Delete: The event will be deleted from memory.
3. (q) Quit: Or press ESC to return to the main menu.
4. (w) Remind Again Next Week: The event will be moved ahead seven
days from the Important Event date.
5. (m) Remind Again Next Month: The event will be moved to the same
date in the next month if possible. If the new date is invalid,
the day will be moved to the last day in the new month.
Example: 05/31/90 will be changed to 06/30/90.
If you want to be reminded of an event at the end of every
month, enter the event for the 1st day of the next month to
notify you a few days before that. This will insure that you
will always be notified the same number of days before the end
of each month, no matter how many days are in the month.
6. (y) Remind Again Next Year: The event will be moved to the next
year in the list. Any dates of 2/29/LEAPYEAR will be moved to
2/28 of the next year.
2. (a) The user will be prompted for a date. The date must be entered as
m/d or m/d/y. If no year is entered, current year is assumed.
Leading zero's can be entered, but they are not required. Today
Today or later is all that will be accepted up until year 2030.
Enter the number of days you would like to be reminded of this event
ahead of time. The default is 10 days. You can enter 0 - 45 days.
Enter a description of the event. This is the message that will be
displayed to the user when the event is displayed.
3. (v) The user will be presented with a sequential display of all events
in the file. Events can be deleted with this choice.
4. (h) A short help/information screen will be displayed.
(P) Print Event List: An uppercase "P" must be used for this option.
Selecting this option will print your entire Event List on
stdprn(MS-DOS) or prt:(AmigaDOS). Insure that your printer is
turned on before selecting this option. If any changes were
made to the Event List, the user will be prompted to store
the changes before printing begins. It's usually a good idea
to store the changes at this point in case some printing error
develops.
MS-DOS users must be especially careful to insure that their printer
is turned on & is operational, since MS-DOS will exit the program if
any errors are encountered. Date loss could occur if your events
have not been saved and a printing error occurs.
NOTE: This option is not shown on the BADGER menu.
5. (q) If any changes were made to the event list, the user will be
prompted to save or ignore the changes.
THE FOLLOWING CHOICES ARE NOT SHOWN ON THE MAIN BADGER MENU.
(P) Print Event List: An uppercase "P" must be used for this option.
This option is only available if there are any events in the
Event List. Selecting this option will print your entire Event
List on stdprn(MS-DOS) or prt:(AmigaDOS). Insure that your printer
is turned on before selecting this option. If any changes were
made to the Event List, the user will be prompted to store
the changes before printing begins. It's usually a good idea
to store the changes at this point in case some printing error
developes.
MS-DOS users must be especially careful to insure that their printer
is turned on & is operational, since MS-DOS will exit the program if
any errors are encountered. Date loss could occur if your events
have not been saved and a printing error occurs.
(W) Write Event List: An uppercase "W" must be used for this option.
This option is only available if any changes have been made to
the Event List. Selecting an uppercase 'W' will write the Event
List to disk if any changes have been made. Use of this option
is normally not necessary, since the user will be prompted to
save any changes on exit from the program.
DATA FILE LOCATION:
-------------------
MS-DOS:
The BADGER program looks at the drive that it was executed from and assumes
that this is the drive that the user wants to store the data file on. So,
if you have BADGER.EXE on your c: drive, BADGER will use
c:\BADGER\BADGER.DAT for the data file. Or if you have BADGER.EXE on the a:
drive, BADGER will use A:\BADGER\BADGER.DAT instead. This allows the
program to be used by both hard drive and floppy disk users. If a current
file exists, then it will be renamed to 'BADGER.BAK' and the new information
will be written to 'BADGER.DAT'. This insures that the previous generation
file will always be available in the \BADGER directory. If the \BADGER
directory doesn't exist, BADGER.EXE will create it.
AmigaDOS:
BADGER stores the data file in your logically assigned s: directory. The
date file is named s:badger.data. Whenever BADGER writes new information,
badger.data (if it exists) is renamed to badger.bak and the new data is
written to badger.data. This insures that the previous generation file is
always available if needed.
AUTOEXEC.BAT (MS-DOS) / STARTUP-SEQUENCE (AmigaDOS) FILE
--------------------------------------------------------
Add the following line to your autoexec.bat/startup-sequence file after any
commands necessary to set your system clock.
BADGER -s
Each time you boot your computer, BADGER will check for any important events
that are 'due' and display them to the user. If there is nothing to
display, there will be no output. See the RETURN CODE section below. The
display will be identical to the "Search For Important Events" from the
BADGER menu, except that the user WILL NOT be prompted if any changes should
be saved.
AmigaDOS:
Since the Amiga is a multi-tasking machine, BADGER can be 'run' to allow
your startup-sequence to continue in the background while BADGER is running.
This allows BADGER to check and/or display events that are due while your
startup-sequence continues. If you desire to 'run' BADGER, add this line
to your startup-sequence instead of 'badger -s':
run >nil: badger -s
INSTALLATION:
-------------
MS-DOS:
Copy BADGER.EXE to any directory that is in your current path. Remember
that BADGER will use the drive that you executed BADGER.EXE from for the
location of the data file as described above.
BADGER will fail if a file named BADGER exists in the root directory of
the disk you are running BADGER from. This because BADGER will try and
make a directory called BADGER and will fail if a file named BADGER exists.
AmigaDOS:
Badger and badger.info can be copied to any location on your disk. If you
copy badger to a directory that is not in your current path, you will have
to give a fully qualified path when executing badger from your startup-
sequence. For example: If dh0:extra is not in your current path and you
have copied badger to this directory, you will need to enter
dh0:extra/badger -s
to your startup-sequence so your computer can find it.
FLOPPY DISK USERS
-----------------
This program will work from floppy disks, but may be annoying slow to run
each and every time your system is booted from every disk. I suggest that a
bootable (and writable) disk be created with the program run from the
autoexec.bat/startup-sequence as described above. Then simply boot from
your BADGER disk whenever you want to check your event list.
RETURN CODE
-----------
If an error occurs that terminates the program prematurely, a return code of
10 (ERROR) is passed to the DOS shell along with a message printed to the
screen informing the user.
When the program is executed using the -s option, a return code of 5 (WARN)
is returned to the DOS shell if there were important events to display. No
messages or errors are displayed. Adding 'BADGER -s' to your autoexec.bat/
startup-sequence file will produce no output unless an important event is
displayed.
The user can safely ignore the return code if desired.
AmigaDOS:
You can trap for a no-event condition by checking the return
code in the script you are executing 'badger -s' from.
....
badger -s
if NOT WARN
echo "No Important Events Today"
endif
....
If you want some type of message displayed if there were no important events
to display, add the above code to your startup-sequence. Otherwise badger
-s will execute quietly unless there is an important event to display.
Color: (MS-DOS users only, AmigaDOS always uses color)
------------------------------------------------------
Text and background color is difficult to control in MS-DOS due to the many
possible combinations of graphics cards and monitors. Many programs will
change the text or background colors for their use and not return them to
the original colors when the program ends. This is poor programming. BADGER
always attempts to return your display to the way it found it. BADGER
attempts to determine the type of video adapter and current textmode to
determine if the display should be in color or black & white. You can
override the automatic choices using one of the methods shown below:
Using the '-c' option will cause the display to change to the opposite of
the currently 'normal' display when executing BADGER with no option.
That is, if BADGER normally displays in color, using the '-c' option will
change the display to a black & white display, and vice-versa. Of course
you must have a color monitor and color video adapter to have a color
display.
The '-c' option can be set with an environmental variable if desired to avoid
having to specify the '-c' option every time BADGER is executed. Add the
following line (or enter it at the DOS prompt) to your autoexec.bat file.
set NOCOLOR=x (no spaces are allowed on either side
of the equals sign)
Using the '-l' option will cause the BADGER display to use no text attributes
in it's display. This can be useful when using an LCD display due to the
"reversed" nature of their displays.
set NOCOLOR=LCD (no spaces are allowed on either side
of the equals sign)
If the NOCOLOR environmental variable is set to LCD or the '-l' option is
used, the '-c' option will have no effect.
If you are not using a color monitor, experiment with the NOCOLOR variable
or the '-c' and '-l' options to get the best and most readable display.
Public domain programs UDATE (v1.21s+) and FORTUNE (v2.02s+) can also
can read the NOCOLOR environmental variable if it's set.
STATUS:
-------
This program is SHAREWARE. If you find this program useful, you are
required to mail the author $15 as payment for the program and to register
your copy.
If you have a registered version of BADGER, you MAY NOT FREELY DISTRIBUTE
your copy. Only unregistered 'usage' protected copies may be freely
distributed.
Usage protected SHAREWARE versions of this program can be freely distributed
as long as all files are included in the archive. The archive should
contain the following files:
MS-DOS: 1. badger.exe AmigaDOS: 1. badger
2. badger.doc 2. badger.doc
3. REGISTER 3. REGISTER
4. badger.info (icon)
If a SHAREWARE copy of BADGER is redistributed, it should be the exact copy
copy that was obtained from the archive. This is, the copy that is
distributed should not have been executed. You can determine if BADGER has
ever been executed by executing badger using '-check' as an option. If
If BADGER has been date-stamped, that copy should not be distributed, since
since it will become inoperative 45 days from the first time it was
executed, not 45 days from when the new user first executes it.
Please specify MS-DOS (3 1/2 or 5 1/4) or AmigaDOS. Failure to mail payment
is THEFT, no different than stealing a program from a shelf in a store. A
ordering form has been provided in the text file "REGISTER".
I am not responsible for any failure of this program, or any missed events
or any consequences of the missed event. (I hate responsibility)
George Kerber
19756 E. Linvale Drive
Aurora, Colorado 80013
303-692-2890
Compuserve 74010,2132