SimpleDate is a small, fast calendar application that can be invoked and dismissed with a minumum of fuss. Its primary feature is the ability to display multiple calendars for any month from the years 1904 to 2039 (Mac gurus and gurus-in-training will grasp the reason behind this year range). It can display multiple months (one window per month) at a time, and its month displays can be resized to taste.
Well, there is one frill in SimpleDate — you can choose between four different calendar “styles.” In addition, you can copy the current month onto the clipboard either as tab-delimited text or as a picture. The latter feature is particularly useful if you want to paste “pretty” calendars into your other documents. It can also be used to print any calendar month, as SimpleDate itself does not have any built-in printing capabilities.
SimpleDate comes as a fat binary, so it should run native either on 680x0 or PowerPC Macintoshes without any additional intervention from you.
Version History
I would like to thank everyone who has responded to SimpleDate so far. Subsequent versions are largely the results of your many suggestions and comments.
Changes in Version 1.2:
• modified the highlighting scheme in the Standard style to a more consistent color
• modified the Copy as Picture command to include a month and year heading in the copied picture
• made a few balloon help additions
• attempted to fix a bug that caused SimpleDate to fail to update its windows on some machines
• attempted to fix a bug that caused crashes on PowerBook 100s
The last two bug fixes are listed as “attempted” because they were reported by other users but could not be replicated by this developer. Problem areas were located in the code and preliminary versions were seeded to the users who had problems. They reported that the bugs were gone on their specific machines; however, at this point, I hesitate to make a blanket statement that these bugs have been fixed for everyone. So please, if you encounter these problems in SimpleDate 1.2, please tell me!
Changes in Version 1.1:
• the current day may be highlighted on the calendar
• calendars can start their weeks on a Sunday or a Monday
• defaults such as window position and previous calendar style are now saved
• these new features can be chosen from a new Preferences dialog box
Other features were requested, but, unfortunately, I have chosen to reserve them for future versions of SimpleDate due to time constraints and the trade-off between having compactness and functionality. These include the ability to add notes to the calendar, and the ability to show holidays. I will try to get around to these sometime, but not for version 1.2.
System Requirements
SimpleDate requires a Macintosh with System 7 or greater. It has been explicitly and successfully tested on the following systems: Macintosh SE/30 w/ System 7.1, Macintosh IIci w/ System 7.0, Quadra 660av w/ System 7.1, Performa 636 w/ System 7.5, PowerBook Duo 280c w/ System 7.5.1, Power Macintosh 7100/80 with System 7.5.1, Power Macintosh 7200/90 with System 7.5.2, and Power Macintosh 8500/120 with System 7.5.2.
User Guide
SimpleDate is capable of opening multiple calendar windows, each set to any month ranging from January 1904 to December 2039. The following paragraphs summarize the various controls, commands, and options in SimpleDate. SimpleDate also has extensive balloon help (in System 7 or greater), so you can get most of the information below by choosing “Show Balloons” from the Help menu.
Window Controls
A calendar window in SimpleDate has the following controls and functions:
Close box: Dismisses the calendar window. When the last calendar window is closed, SimpleDate quits (this is done to mimic the behavior of a desk accessory).
Zoom box: Toggles between the standard calendar size and the user-defined size, as set by the Resize box.
Resize box: Drag the mouse here to resize the calendar window.
Scroll bar: Moves the calendar across months. The arrows move one month at a time, while the gray regions move one year at a time.
This Month button: Jumps the calendar immediately to the current month.
Go to… button: Opens a dialog box for immediate access to any month from 1904 to 2039. Choose the desired month from the pop-up menu and enter the year into the text field.
Keyboard Shortcuts
The following keyboard shortcuts can be used within a calendar window:
move to the previous month up arrow, delete key
move to the next month down arrow, space bar
move back one year page up, option-up arrow
move forward one year page down, option-down arrow
move to January 1904 home, cmd-up arrow
move to December 2039 end, cmd-down arrow
Menu Commands
The following functions are available via menu commands:
File Menu
New: Opens a new calendar window.
Close: Closes the frontmost calendar window. Closing the last calendar window will quit the program.
Page Setup…, Print…: Disabled, because SimpleDate does not have any printing features. Use the Copy and Copy as Picture commands instead.
Quit: Quits from SimpleDate.
Edit Menu
Undo, Cut, Paste, Clear, Select All: Disabled, because these operations are not applicable to a calendar window. However, Cut and Paste are usable for editing text in the Go To… dialog box.
Copy: Copies the current content of the frontmost calendar window onto the clipboard. This command copies both text and picture representations of the current month onto the clipboard; use this to paste a tab-separated text representation of the current month into a word processor. This technique can be used to generate a printout of the current month — simply paste that month into a print-capable application, and print it from there.
Copy as Picture: Copies the current content of the frontmost calendar window onto the clipboard, solely as a picture or graphic. This command copies only a pictorial representation of the calendar onto the clipboard; use this to paste (and print) calendar months with the exact visual appearance that they have in SimpleDate. This feature permits you to print out SimpleDate months using the aesthetic calendar style of your choice.
Preferences: Opens a dialog box that permits the user to set certain SimpleDate defaults. These defaults are explained below.
Default Style
The Default Style setting determines the style that will be assigned to new calendar windows, including the calendar window opened when SimpleDate starts up. The styles shown are the same as those available in the menu bar, except for one: Previous Window’s Style will set the style of new calendar windows to the style of the most recent active calendar window.
Highlight Today’s Date on Calendar
SimpleDate can now highlight today’s date on the calendar. This check box determines whether or not this feature should be enabled. When off, SimpleDate does not indicate which day represents today on the calendar.
First Day of Week
In some countries, the convention for a monthly calendar displays Monday as the first day of the week. Use this option to set your preferred first day accordingly.
In addition to these options, the dialog box has a Defaults button which resets the preferences to the standard set that SimpleDate uses when it is run for the first time.
Calendar
This Month: Moves the frontmost window’s calendar to the current month. This is the same as clicking on that window’s This Month button.
Go to…: Opens a dialog box that permits the user to jump to any date between 1904 and 2049. This is the same as clicking on the Go to… button of that window.
Style
Standard, Black & White, Chiseled, High Tech: Changes the visual appearance of the frontmost calendar window to the corresponding style. Hope you like them!
Known Problems
SimpleDate currently does not handle low-memory conditions very well. Fortunately, such a situation only arises when a large number of calendar windows is open; in my testing, you do not hit a potential low memory situation until you have more than 12 windows open at a time. If you do want to have a lot of calendar windows open at one time, increase SimpleDate’s Preferred Size memory requirement from its Get Info window in the Finder.
Credits
Many thanks to my beta testers (in alphabetical order): Herman Atienza, Christine Chih, Christina Chu, Chris Larson, the Lombos brothers, Rolly Maiquez, Dr. Ricky Taira, and Anissa Vicente.
Thanks also to those who have taken the time to report bugs and problems to me: Sister Gilberte Baril, David Bishop, William Chesney, and Pete Resnick.
En grande thanks go to Chris Larson for much technical and religious guidance. You can add “Jedi master” to your “Amateur Macintosh Geek” title now…
Legal & Contact Information
SimpleDate is volunteerware — that is, you are free to provide any kind of positive reinforcement to the programmer (grin) if you like his software. But seriously, at the very least, I would very much appreciate a short e-mail message if you like SimpleDate and have decided to use it for yourself. This at least gives me an idea of how it is being received out there.
I give my permission to include SimpleDate in any freeware or shareware CD. However, please inform me if your intention, so that I can keep track of which CDs contain my software.
Please direct all correspondence concerning SimpleDate to: dondi@cs.ucla.edu. Enjoy!
