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Text File | 1992-07-26 | 22KB | 480 lines

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ T O D A Y │ │ │ │ What Happened Today In History? │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ Version 3.5 │ │ │ │ July 12, 1992 │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ Copyright 1986,1992 Patrick Kincaid │ └──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S Welcome To TODAY............................................. 1 Installing TODAY............................................. 1 How TODAY Is Distributed................................... 1 The Files You Should Have.................................. 1 Where To Put Them.......................................... 2 Running TODAY................................................ 2 From The TODAY Directory................................... 2 From AUTOEXEC.BAT.......................................... 2 Using TODAY.BAT............................................ 2 Set The TODAY Environment Variable......................... 2 TODAY's Command Line Options................................. 3 The Configuration File....................................... 4 The TODAYCFG Program......................................... 4 Data File Format............................................. 4 Sample Data Records........................................ 5 The WHEN Program............................................. 6 Command Syntax............................................. 6 Where To Get TODAY........................................... 7 Legal Stuff.................................................. 7 Registration................................................. 7 Page 1 Welcome To TODAY TODAY will tell you what interesting events happened on this date (or any date of your choice) in history. The program comes with a large database of historical events plus you can add your own personal dates. TODAY also has a configuration program that will help you choose which options you wish to use. In addition, a companion program named WHEN will search the database for words you enter. This way you can search for events rather than searching for a date. It's the perfect complement to TODAY! TODAY is shareware. That means if you like it and use it, you are expected to contribute to its maintenance and support. Only people like you can make shareware a viable alternative to expensive commercial programs. TODAY is very inexpensive, so please register today! See the section on how to register at the end of this document. Installing TODAY How TODAY Is Distributed TODAY is distributed as a ZIP file. This means that the individual files that make up the system are compressed and stored in a single file named TODAYnn.ZIP where the nn is the version number. In order to use the program you must have PKUNZIP.EXE or a compatible program to extract the files so that you can use them. Some shareware distributors re-package the programs they sell. If you did not receive TODAY as a ZIP file, contact your supplier for instructions. The Files You Should Have Filename Description -------------- --------------------------------------------- POPD.EXE see Installation below PUSHDIR.DOC documentation on PUSHD and POPD PUSHD.EXE see Installation below README.1ST please do TODAYCFG.EXE the configuration program TODAY.BAT a sample BAT file to run TODAY TODAY.DOC this documentation file TODAY.EXE searches the database based on the date TODAY.mon where mon is JAN through DEC: the data files TODAY.OWN (optional) a file for your own special dates TODAY.WIT contains the thought for the day WHATS.NEW What's new in this version WHEN.EXE searches the database based on a keyword Page 2 Where To Put Them Make a directory off your root directory and name it TODAY ( MD \TODAY ). Copy the TODAYnn.ZIP file to it and type: PKUNZIP TODAYnn to extract all the files. The program is now installed if you will only run it from the \TODAY directory. However, there are better ways. Read on... Running TODAY TODAY can be run in a number of ways. While the data files always stay in the same place, you may want to access them from anywhere on your system. This part of the documentation explains how to do that. From The TODAY Directory If you are in the \TODAY directory, you need only type TODAY to run the program. This is because the programs and data files are in the current directory. You can easily run TODAY from anywhere in your system using the techniques described in the following two sections. From AUTOEXEC.BAT If you run TODAY from your AUTOEXEC.BAT, you can insert these three lines: CD \TODAY TODAY ONCE CD \ And the program will run each morning when you turn on your computer. If you want to run it interactively, here are two options you might like to try. Using TODAY.BAT Included with the TODAY package is TODAY.BAT and a couple of public domain programs (PUSHD.EXE and POPD.EXE) which will save your current directory, change to another directory, run one or more commands, and return you to your original directory. This BAT file and the two EXE files must be in your path and I recommend that TODAY.EXE and WHEN.EXE be also. Since TODAYCFG is used so rarely, it can remain in the \TODAY directory. Set The TODAY Environment Variable DOS has system variables known as environment variables that can be used to supply information to programs. You can do this with TODAY to tell the program where to find the data files. It's easy. Here's how: SET TODAY=path ( eg SET TODAY=C:\TODAY ) When the program runs, it looks for this variable, and if it finds it, goes to that directory to find the data files. Put it in your AUTOEXEC.BAT. Page 3 TODAY's Command Line Options TODAY has a number of options which can be entered on the command line after TODAY. They control different aspects of how TODAY will run. ADD filename TODAY has twelve data files named TODAY and with an extension of JAN through DEC. This option specifies an additional set of data files to be scanned after the TODAY.mon files. For example, the option ADD MUSIC would scan MUSIC.JAN through MUSIC.DEC after TODAY.JAN through TODAY.DEC. ALT filename would look for monthly files with the name specified by this option instead of the TODAY files. ANSI when used with the DISK option will add the ANSI escape sequences to display TODAY's information in the same colors as the screen. It is most useful to bulletin board operators who ANSI displays for their users. DIR path tells TODAY where to look for the data files containing all that interesting information. DISK will cause TODAY's output to be written to TODAY.PRN or you can supply a filename in parenthesis right after the word disk like this: DISK(BULLETIN.TXT). This example will create a file named BULLETIN.TXT instead of TODAY.PRN. HELP or ? will display a help screen showing TODAY's options. MMDD is the month and day, each as two digits to be scanned for interesting events. If there is only a single digit ( 6 ), it must be preceded with a zero ( 06 ). This gives TODAY a date to use other than that in the system clock. NOPAUSE will stop TODAY from pausing after the display. It is primarily for use with the DISK option. ONCE causes TODAY to display its information on the first time the computer is booted each day. When the program runs, it changes the Last Access date of TODAY.EXE to today's date. During future executions, if ONCE is specified and the Last Access date is today, the program will quietly stop. You must be in the \TODAY directory for this to work ( CD \TODAY first ). Page 4 NOTIME some people only want to see the date, not the time of day. This one's for you. The Configuration File Instead of entering these options on the command line each time TODAY is run, you can create a file TODAY.CFG which will be read by the program and any options contained in it will be applied as though you had typed them in. While you can use an editor to create this file, there is a program which makes things much easier. The TODAYCFG Program This program will create and modify the TODAY.CFG file for you. If there is no file, it will create it. If TODAY.CFG exists, the program will read in the existing settings first, and then you can change them. TODAYCFG is particularly useful for changing colors. A small sample screen is displayed so that you can see the changes as you make them. The top half of the screen displays help for what you are doing, the bottom half shows the current configuration. Play with it a bit, it's easy. Data File Format TODAY reads its files from files with a name of TODAY and an extension of JAN through DEC corresponding to the months of the year. There is also a TODAY.OWN which can contain your personal dates and a TODAY.WIT which contains the Thought For The Day. If you look at these files, you will see that they are ordinary ASCII files which you can change and add to. However, you must use an editor which writes plain ASCII files. Word processors ususally imbed formatting characters which will ruin the file. If this doesn't make sense to you - don't mess with the files. If it makes sense, here is the file format. Remember, just line up with the line above or below. Column 1: This is a record type which tells TODAY what type of message follows. The valid record types are: B a Birthday C a Countdown. (not implemented) F a Fortune Cookie or Thought For The Day R a Reminder. S a date of Special historical interest * an asterisk makes the line a comment. Any other character in column 1 is ignored. Cols 2-5: Month and day as MMDD with leading zeros. Zeros for either month or day cause ALL months or days to match when being scanned. For example, 0001 would match the first of every month while 0400 would match every day of April. The number 0000 is invalid. Page 5 Cols 6-9: The full year of the event as four digits. Blanks are always okay or, for Reminders only, you may enter another MMDD for a range of dates on which the reminder will display. See the Section Special Reminder Format below for details. A year in this part of a Reminder (not Birthday or Special) record will cause an invalid date error message. The Thought For The Day does not require, and will ignore anything in this field. Column 10: A single character that describes any special processing that is required for this line. The acceptable values are: BLANK for no special processing. C to continue a message from the previous line. Note, that you must repeat the date fields for the continuation line. DAY-OF-WEEK DIGIT where 1=Sunday ... 7=Saturday. This will cause the message to display only if the date falls on this day of the week. See the example for Labor Day below. Cols 11-75: The message to display for this date. Anything after column 75 will not display. Nor will it hurt anything, it is just ignored. Sample Data Records Columns ---------- 1234567890 B09011875 Edgar Rice Burroughs, novelist, Ah-ee-ah-ee-ah! B09021838 Queen Liliuokalani (last queen of Hawaii). B09021952 Jimmy Connors, tennis brat S09011939 Germany invades Poland, starts World War II. S09011952 Sutro Baths purchased by George Whitney. S0901 2Labor Day, a legal holiday S09021620 The Mayflower sets sail from Plymouth with S09021620C102 Pilgrims. R0001 Pay the mortgage! R0401 Taxes due in two weeks. R0415 Last day to pay taxes! F0130 Early to bed and early to rise F0130 CMake a man healthy, wealthy and wise. Note that Labor day must be on a Monday and the Mayflower gets two lines of coverage befitting that momentous event. Page 6 This format applies to TODAY.OWN also. You can put in birthdays, anniversaries, holidays etc. Messages in your personal file will tend to be Birthdays and Reminders. Also, try putting in reminders using the new range of dates format. This way if you miss the reminder one day, you will hopefully see it again the next day. The WHEN Program WHEN is a companion program to TODAY. Where TODAY tells you what happened on a particular date, WHEN searches all the TODAY date files for a key word or phrase that you supply and tells you when that particular person or event caused something of note in history. The program is particularly easy to use: you simply enter the word WHEN followed by the word(s) you wish to search for. If you want to know when Mozart was born you enter: WHEN MOZART. Upper/lower case does not matter. If you want to search on a phrase, meaning words separated by spaces, you must enclose it in double quotes( "San Francisco"). You do not need to enter an entire word when searching. It is often better to enter only the root portion of a word where it might have different endings. For example, "treat" would match on "treat", "treaty", "treaties", even "retreat". This partial word technique you will often get surprising results. Command Syntax WHEN searchstring { ALTFN filename / DIR directory / MONO } As stated earlier the search string can be in upper or lower case in must be enclosed in double quotes(") for multiple words. ALTFN is followed by an alternate database filename such as MUSIC and will then search that database instead of the TODAY files. Note, when searching the TODAY files, TODAY.OWN is also searched. If you put in everyone's birthdays, anniversaries etc., you can quickly look them up by entering WHEN and a name. DIR followed by a directory path tells WHEN where to look for the files to search. By default, WHEN looks in the current directory and in the directory pointed to by the TODAY environment variable. (See TODAY.DOC). MONO forces WHEN to display in monochrome in case the program thinks you have a color monitor but it's really monochrome. Here are some examples with descriptions: When mozart This will search for every occurrence of the word Mozart in the database. Remember, upper/lower case doesn't matter. When San Will find every San Francisco, San Miguel, Santa and Aleksander. In the last example, the middle of the word matched. When "San Fran" Now you're cooking! This will find San Francisco. Note the quotes because of the blank between the words. Page 7 When Matti mono Note there are no quotes, so Matti is the search word and mono is the monochrome option. Well, that's it for WHEN. It's actually a fascinating program to use. Also, since it lets you cross reference things, it could be a research tool were it not for the quality of the data. But then, that's the story of history ( and send in any mistakes you find ). Where To Get TODAY I upload the latest version of TODAY to the Golden Gate Computer Society Bulletin Board in Corte Madera, California. Others upload Today related files there too. The Society is kind enough to support a TODAY Conference on the BBS that is devoted to support for the program. Give it a try. Golden Gate Computer Society BBS (415) 927-1216 2400-9600 bps 8 data bits, no parity bit, one stop bit (8N1) This BBS uses PCBOARD software. Legal Stuff I try to insure that there are no bugs in TODAY but occasionally one creeps in. I then try to fix it as soon as possible. However, I am not responsible for any problems caused by your use of the program nor for the accuracy (or lack of it) in the data. Your use of the program is totally at your own risk. Nuf said. Registration If you use TODAY, please register it. Some people ask a lot of money for their programs. I ask a small amount and hope that more people will pay it. Won't you be one of those who help keep shareware in general and TODAY in particular alive? Here's the reckoning: Amount Will Get You ------ ----------------------------------------------- $10 Registration for the copy you have $15 Current Version and docs on 5.25" 360K diskette $16 Current Version and docs on 3.5" 720K diskette $20 Either diskette (specify) with printed docs Please make your check payable to Patrick Kincaid and mail it to: Patrick Kincaid 618 Douglas Drive Mill Valley, CA 94941 Page 8 This is also the address to write to me if you don't use Email on the Bulletin Board mentioned earlier. The BBS is the best way to reach me because it is a lot more efficient than paper mail. In either case it may take a bit for me to respond as I travel a lot these days. I always respond though so a little patience will serve you well. Finally, thanks to all the people who have contributed to TODAY. You are responsible for the program being what it is today. I intended it to be a project to learn a new compiler, not a shareware product. Your support is what changed all that. Just remember - We call it software because we cannot keep it up.