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README.TXT
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1996-04-07
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Personal Stock Monitor v1.0
Copyright (C)1996 Anatoly Ivasyuk
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******************************************************************
Please note that I will be on vacation until April 21st,
which means that I will not be able to answer email or
process registrations until that time.
******************************************************************
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DISCLAIMER AND LICENSE AGREEMENT
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Personal Stock Monitor (the "Software") is a "shareware program" and is
provided by Anatoly Ivasyuk (the "Author") for a free 30-day evaluation
all users. If you continue to use the software after the evaluation
period, you must register it.
Users of Personal Stock Monitor must accept this disclaimer of warranty:
"The Software is supplied as is. The Author disclaims all warranties,
expressed or implied, including, without limitation, the warranties of
merchantability and of fitness for any purpose. The Author assumes no
liability for damages, direct or consequential, which may result from
the use of the Software."
You may give the UNREGISTERED version of the Software to your friends,
but you may not charge for it and must distribute the archive file in
whole and without alteration. Organizations who wish to include this
program in "freeware" or "shareware" distributions for remuneration
must contact me for explicit authorization. Once the Software has
been REGISTERED, it is no longer considered shareware and may not
be freely distributed.
All content accessed through the Software is the property of the
applicable content owner and may be protected by applicable copyright
law. This License gives you no rights to such content.
Title, ownership rights, and intellectual property rights in and to
the Software shall remain with the Author. You agree to abide by the
copyright law and all other applicable laws of the United States
including, but not limited to, export control laws. You acknowledge
that the Software in source code form remains a confidential trade
secret of the Author therefore you agree not to modify the Software
or attempt to decipher, decompile, disassemble or reverse engineer the
Software, except to the extent applicable laws specifically prohibit
such restriction.
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WELCOME
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This a shareware version of Personal Stock Monitor (PSM). By using PSM,
you will be bound by the License agreement. If you do not accept the
terms contained in that that License agreement, please delete this copy
of the Software from your computer.
PSM is known to run on the following operating systems:
Windows 95
Windows NT 3.51 and 4.0 beta
Windows 3.1x with Win32s 1.30 or later
PLEASE NOTE THAT ALL STOCK PRICES DISPLAYED BY THE SOFTWARE ARE DELAYED
BY AT LEAST 15 MINUTES DUE TO REGULATIONS IMPOSED BY THE EXCHANGES ON
THE QUOTE SERVERS. THE SOFTWARE DOES NOT SUPPORT RETRIEVING DATA FROM
THE FEE-BASED SERVERS.
Please note that I wrote Personal Stock Monitor in my spare time, and my
employer has absolutely nothing to do with this software. Please also
note that although I have limited time to support this program, I will do
the best I can and I will try to answer all email. Saying that, you can
contact me via email at aivasyuk@telogy.com, and there is a PSM Home Page
at
http://www.telogy.com/~aivasyuk/psm.html
where you can find information about the latest version of PSM.
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ADDITIONAL FEATURES IN THE UNREGISTERED SHAREWARE VERSION
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I don't like crippleware, so PSM is nagware. This means that the
unregistered shareware version has the following additional "features":
- Nag screen on startup and shutdown.
- UNREGISTERED SHAREWARE message on all pages of printouts.
In order to remove these "features", you must register the application.
Registration information is contained in the on-line help. Just press
F1 after PSM shows you the "About" dialog.
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HOW TO INSTALL PSM
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Personal Stock Monitor is distributed as a ZIP file, which contains the
following individual files:
- readme.txt (this file)
- psm.exe
- psm.hlp
- psm.cnt
- sample.stk
- file_id.diz
Run psm.exe to start the application. Select Help Topics from the Help
menu or press F1 from within PSM to get more information.
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HOW TO GET ME TO ADD MORE QUOTE SERVERS
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I'm always looking for reliable free quote servers. If you email me the
full URL, I will take a look at it and see if I can add support. The only
requirement for quote servers is that they display the same fields for
both stocks and mutual funds.
In order to improve performance, I'm currently looking at supporting quote
servers which can return multiple quotes at once, ie. CNNfn, but this is
farther down the road.
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KNOWN PROBLEMS/ISSUES
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- None.
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RELEASE NOTES FOR v1.0
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- Because of the extra data added to the symbols, the file format has
changed again. PSM will still load all older file formats, but older
versions of PSM will not be able to load files saved with this version.
- A symbol can now be in an "unknown" state, which is indicated by a
blue question mark. A symbol which is unknown is skipped during the
regular update cycle.
A symbol goes into an unknown state if the quote server reports that
the symbol is not known, or if PSM can not get the value of the symbol
in five consecutive attempts. In order to get out of the unknown state,
you must either switch to a different quote server, or you select the
symbol and do a manual update. If PSM receives valid data for the
symbol during the manual update, the symbol will be added back to the
regular update cycle.
- Printing seems to work according to all reports so far. I have now
made printing be more "spreadsheet-like" in that if you have too many
columns to fit one page, it will print extra pages for those columns.
Also, the document name and page number is now printed at the top of all
pages.
- The Split command is experimental, and is not yet complete. Splitting
the screen is kind of neat, but has the following caveats:
- If you change the column configuration in one of the views, that
configuration will be saved as the default for the next time you
start PSM.
- Vertical scrolling is not synchronized in the views. The reason
I put in the split command in the first place is so that you could
keep the list of symbols on the screen while scrolling through the
columns in the second view. Unfortunately, this only works if you
scroll horizontally. If you scroll vertically, the views will no
longer be aligned properly.
By the way, you can "un-split" or "join" the views by dragging the
splitter bar out of the window.
- Another experimental feature: support for proxy servers which require
authentication. If PSM recognizes that authentication is required,
a dialog will pop up so that you can fill in the required information.
This feature is tested insofar as I know it sends the username and
password in the correct format, but I do not have a proxy server to
test it with. If you have a proxy server which requires authentication,
please test this feature and let me know if it works. Also, username
and password are currently not saved between sessions, so you will have
to type them in each time you restart PSM.
- One feature in particular that did not make it into this release is
the ability to save historical data. I know I promised this to a few
people, but I ran out of time. This is still a high priority for me,
and I will try to put it in as soon as I can.
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RELEASE NOTES FOR v0.9
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- The printing code has only been tested in Print Preview mode, and
with my employer's HP 4SiMX/PS network printer. Please test it with
your printer and let me know if it doesn't work.
- It seems CNNfn changed their output format enough to break earlier
versions of PSM. This version uses a slightly more flexible parsing
algorithm to deal with these minor changes.
- The server entry for DBC has been modified to use a different location
at DBC which provides more data. This should not cause any problems,
but you never know.
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RELEASE NOTES FOR v0.8
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- I changed the way sorting is done slightly, (in order to simplify the
code) so the first time you load a file created with v0.7, the sort
order will be wrong.
- PSM now registers its file types with the shell the first time it runs,
so that you can specify a default .stk file on the command line, and
also you can double click on an .stk file in the Explorer and the shell
will automatically run PSM.
- You can now configure which columns are visible in the list view. Select
the View->Properties menu, which will bring up a property sheet with the
available columns. Columns with a check mark next to them will be
visible when you press Apply or Ok.
- A lock icon has been added to indicate when the symbol is being updated.
- I changed the locking algorithm so that you can still do operations such
as update and delete on symbols which are not locked. You can also
do "Update All" while symbols are being updated, which will just add
make sure that all symbols are either being updated or queued for update.
There is a chance that if you try to delete a symbol, the symbol may get
locked by an automatic update while the "Are you sure..." message box is
being displayed. If this happens, you will get an "Can not perform
operation..." error, and the symbol will not be deleted.
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RELEASE NOTES FOR v0.7
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- Since I had to change the name of the Software, you will have to reset
all of your Preferences because the Registry key changed.
- The version number of the document and stock information records used
by PSM has changed because some additional information is now stored
in those records. PSM v0.7 will read and automatically convert .stk
files generated by v0.6, but can only write files compatible with
v0.7 or later.
- Although there are now "52 Week High" and "52 Week Low" columns in
the list view, not all quote servers support these fields. For those
servers, the 52 week values will be shown as zero. If you previously
used a server which reported these values, they will be kept as last
reported.
- There are now icons to the left of the symbol name in the list view.
These icons indicate which way the stock is going and whether an alert
has been generated for the stock. Alerts are indicated by a yellow
triangle with an exclamation point inside.
- You can now enter high and low target prices on a per-symbol basis.
When PSM gets new information from the quote server and determines
that the stock has hit a target price, an alert will be generated. You
can set the alert type and frequency in File->Preferences->Alerts.
- No alerts - Does not generate any alerts.
- Flash window - If the PSM window is not in focus or is
minimized, the title bar will flash once per second.
- Bring window to top - If the PSM window is not in focus or
is covered by another window, it will pop itself to the top.
- Beep - Generates a system beep or sound, depending on control
panel settings. Allows you to set how often the alert is generated.
- Play .WAV file - Lets you select a .WAV file to play as an alert
sound. Allows you to set how often the alert is generated.
When an alert is generated, you may clear it by selecting Clear Alert
from the menu or using the accelerator key associated with that menu
function. While there is at least one active alert, the "Flash window",
"Beep", and "Play .WAV file" alert types will keep repeating at the
interval you specified.
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CHANGE LOG
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Apr 7, 1996 - Add P/E Ratio, EPS, Dividend, and Yield columns.
Finish up password scrambling code.
v1.0 released.
Apr 6, 1996 - Fix status bar pane width.
Double-clicking in symbol list brings up Properties dialog.
Allow entering fractions in Purchase dialog.
Add "unknown" state for symbol, indicated by a blue '?'.
Recognize when symbol is unknown by server, if possible.
Make symbol unknown if can not get data after 5 tries.
Printouts can now span multiple pages horizontally.
Started work on shareware "features".
Apr 5, 1996 - Make auto re-sort the standard, get rid of option.
Move auto-update option to network configuration.
Remove default status bar.
Create status bar pane to display update information.
Add full-line selection option to View Properties.
Add +/- tick indicators.
Provide default file name and extension.
Apr 2, 1996 - Add auto re-sort option.
Add splitter window to main application frame window.
Add Split command under the View menu.
Fix minor bugs related to having multiple views.
Force all symbols to be uppercase.
Apr 1, 1996 - Collapsed portfolio view into stock view because
having two views was just too confusing.
- "borrowed" some Microsoft sample code to do full-line
selection in list view.
- Fixed minor bug with export.
- Upgraded development environment to VC++ 4.1.
- Prevent divide by zero when calculating average basis.
Mar 28, 1996 - Added option to change displayed precision of decimals.
Mar 26, 1996 - Created BaseListView for PortfolioView and StockListView.
Added Portfolio view, and all associated code.
Moved column sorting info into view section in Registry.
Mar 19, 1996 - Fixed alert bug: obey "Once" option.
Added ability to rearrange column order in View Properties.
Toolbar: set title when floating, save and restore state.
Mar 17, 1996 - Added option to display numbers as fractions.
Mar 14, 1996 - Fixed: changing name in sym properties didn't update view.
v0.9 released.
Mar 12, 1996 - Added option to color the arrow icons green/red for up/down.
Improved parsing code to better deal with server changes.
Mar 9, 1996 - Added Name field to column view.
Fixed printer pagination code.
Mar 5, 1996 - Added Bid, Ask fields.
Added Open Interest field (used for tracking futures).
Automatically pull symbol name from PC Quote, DBC, CNNfn.
Mar 3, 1996 - Added % Change, Open, and Prev. Close fields.
Enabled help functions. Created initial help file.
Enabled basic printing functionality.
Added symbol name to Symbol Properties sheet.
Automatically pull symbol name from Security APL server.
Fix bug: doc change flag never set in symbol properties.
Feb 29, 1996 - Added sample stock file (sample.stk) to distribution.
v0.8 released.
Feb 27, 1996 - Implement cut, copy, paste.
Add "Always on top" toggle to View menu.
Fix sorting bug when adding/deleting columns from view.
Fix GPF when filename on command line has no extension.
Feb 26, 1996 - Register shell association when first run.
Fix bug when reading columns from registry for first time.
Add PSM home page URL to About dialog.
Feb 23, 1996 - Improved symbol locking algorithm.
Added lock icon to indicate when symbol is being updated.
Fix memory leak when deleting symbol.
Feb 20, 1996 - Win32s 1.30 support confirmed working.
Feb 19, 1996 - Added code for configurable columns.
Added property sheet to configure columns in view.
Save column widths and visibility to registry.
Feb 15, 1996 - v0.7 released.
Feb 14, 1996 - Changed the name of the Software to Personal Stock Monitor.
Feb 13, 1996 - Added icons to indicate alert and direction.
Added "Clear alert" menu item.
Save sort column and sort order in document.
Bump document version number to 2.
Save 52 week high/low and price targets with stock info.
Bump stock info version number to 2.
Feb 11, 1996 - Support for more flexible quote server definitions.
Added quote server CNNfn; query only one symbol at a time.
Minor code reorganization. (Improve "object-oriented"ness)
Added "52 Week High" and "52 Week Low" fields.
Implemented "Apply" functionality in all property sheets.
Feb 8, 1996 - Added Price Alert page to Preferences.
Reorganized Preferences fields.
Added code to support price alerts.
Added symbol property page.
Feb 6, 1996 - Fixed window flicker on startup.
Support for prices with commas in them.
Added quote server USA Today (DBC).
HTTP proxy support confirmed working for at least two users.
Feb 4, 1996 - v0.6 released.
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ENJOY!
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