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TODAY -- Version 3.3 What Happened Today in History? Copyright (c) 1986,88,90,91 by Patrick Kincaid All Rights Reserved Thank you for trying TODAY, a fun and interesting way to see what what happened each day in history. You can easily add your own personal dates and reminders so you will never forget anniversaries, birthdays or other important dates. TODAY and its documentation are copyrighted. Feel free to use the program, and if you like it, please see the registration instruc- tions at the end of the documentation. Please help support the concept of shareware by registering your copy of TODAY now while you are thinking of it. Thanks and enjoy! T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S Introduction .......................................... 1 Whats New? ............................................ 1 Where Did You Get TODAY? .............................. 2 TODAY Files ........................................... 2 Installation .......................................... 3 TODAYCFG .............................................. 3 TODAY in Color ........................................ 5 Running TODAY ......................................... 5 TODAY.BAT ............................................. 6 PUSHD.EXE .......................................... 6 POPD.EXE .......................................... 6 How TODAY finds its files ............................. 6 SET TODAY= ............................................ 7 Options ............................................... 7 ADD filename ....................................... 7 ALT filename ....................................... 8 ANSI ............................................... 8 DIR path ........................................... 8 DISK ............................................... 8 HELP or ? .......................................... 9 MMDD ............................................... 9 NOPAUSE ............................................ 9 ONCE ............................................... 9 TODAY.BAT ............................................. 10 Adding Data (TODAY's format) .......................... 10 Special Reminder Format ............................... 12 TODAY's History ....................................... 13 User Support .......................................... 14 Where to get TODAY Updates ............................ 15 Legal Stuff ........................................... 15 TODAY 3.3 Page 1 Introduction TODAY is a program that shows you what historical events have happened on this date in history. TODAY will provide you with little gems of information that will help brighten up your day. You can also create a file of your own personal dates and TODAY will remind you of birthdays, anniversaries or mortgage payments. What's New? This is version 3.3 of TODAY. It is a major new release of the program. Here are the new goodies: 1. Many new dates have been added to the default TODAY database. Most file sizes have tripled. Particular attention was payed to those days that had very little data to display. 2. A very handy option has been added to support multiple databases. It is called the ADD option and works like this: TODAY {other options} ADD other-dbname. For example, if you have both the TODAY.mon files and MUSIC.mon files, TODAY will read both the base file for this date and then read the added database file. If today is June 28 and you enter TODAY ADD MUSIC you will see the date information for June 28th from TODAY.JUN and MUSIC.JUN. Music is another TODAY database that can be found on the GGCS BBS listed at the end of this document. 3. After the TODAY data has displayed, you will now be asked to press ENTER to quit back to DOS, or you can now enter another date as MMDD. This will be particu- larly handy where TODAY is run as part of a closed system. 4. TODAY has another new companion program WHEN. Where TODAY tells you what happened on this date in history, WHEN lets you scan the TODAY database (all files) to find a keyword you enter. For example: WHEN MOZART will search all the monthly files for Mozart and dis- play what it finds. It's amazing how helpful I've already found WHEN for locating duplicates and the like. See WHEN.DOC for more details. TODAY 3.3 Page 2 5. The short lived ASK option has been removed. The automatic prompt at the end of the program makes it unneccessary. Where Did You Get TODAY? I put TODAY on the Golden Gate Computer Society Bulletin Board as a ZIP file. It must be un-zipped using the PKUNZIP program written by Phil Katz. My installation process is described below. Apparently, a number of businesses that sell shareware distribute TODAY in a different form than I do. I have no con- trol over what is done to my program after I put it on the bulle- tin board. If you are reading this file, it has already been removed from the ZIP archive file. Shareware resellers: do not change the TODAY archive. It causes endless headaches. TODAY Files I distribute this version of TODAY as TODAY30.ZIP which contains all the files listed below and TODAY30P.ZIP which contains only the programs and DOC file, no data files. If you're reading this DOC file, you probably do not need to unZIP anything. The files (in alphabetical order) that comprise TODAY are: POPD.EXE....... see below PUSHDIR.DOC.... documentation on PUSHD and POPD PUSHD.EXE...... see 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...... the main program TODAY.mon...... where mon is JAN through DEC: the data files TODAY.OWN...... a sample file for your own reminders TODAY.WIT...... contains the thought for the day WHEN.DOC....... how to use WHEN.EXE WHEN.EXE....... searches the database based on a keyword TODAY 3.3 Page 3 Installation First, I am assuming you got TODAY from a bulletin board. I distribute it as a ZIP file which contains all the TODAY files listed above. You must use PKUNZIP.EXE, also found on many bulletin boards, to extract the TODAY files from the ZIP archive. To install the program, do this: 1. Make a \TODAY directory (MD \TODAY), then CD \TODAY 2. Copy TODAY.ZIP to this directory. 3. Type: PKUNZIP TODAY 4. At this point, you can run the program by typing TODAY from within this directory. However... 5. You should copy TODAY.BAT, PUSHD.EXE and POPD.EXE to a directory that is in your path. This way you can run TODAY from anywhere in your system. Note the TODAY directory must be named \TODAY. 6. You may want to edit your AUTOEXEC.BAT to add these statements: CD \TODAY TODAY ONCE CD \ and TODAY will run each time you turn on your computer. This is the simplest way to use TODAY. If you are familiar with MS-DOS, you may install the program many different ways. If you did not get the program as TODAY.ZIP, contact whoever gave you the program to find out what changes they have made. TODAYCFG This is the TODAY Configuration Program. It lets you easily specify which options you want to use with TODAY and creates a file named TODAY.CFG to contain them. The options you can change are described later in this document under the heading Options. The TODAY.CFG file is a plain ASCII file which you can also change with your text editor providing it can edit in a plain ASCII mode. The most important feature of TODAYCFG is that it lets you set colors by seeing the effect on a tiny version of the TODAY screen. You don't have to type in color commands and you immedi- ately see the effect of your color choice. TODAY 3.3 Page 4 The TODAY program looks for TODAY.CFG whenever it runs. The current directory is examined first, then it looks for the TODAY environment variable to tell where the data files are and looks there. There is no problem if it finds no CFG file. To run the configuration program simply enter TODAYCFG and the configuration screen will appear. The main part of the screen displays context sensitive help on using the program. The lower left portion of the screen contains the options you may set and the lower right a small simulcrum of the TODAY screen. You simply press TAB to go from one option to the next and ENTER to change any option that does not require text input (such as a directory or alternate filename). When done, press ESC and the program will ask whether or not to save the changes and end. The TODAY.CFG file will be written to the current directory, replacing any existing one. Note that if there is a TODAY.CFG present when you run TODAYCFG, it will use the options in that file as the initial ones dis- played in the configuration screen. This way you don't have to re-enter everything each time when you are trying out different options. TODAY 3.3 Page 5 TODAY in Color You will probably only set TODAY's colors with TODAYCFG, but if you really want to do it manually, you can use your editor to put the commands into TODAY.CFG. The command to set the screen (and ANSI) colors is three words: COLOR WHAT COLORNAME. The values for the commands are as follows: COLOR WHAT COLORNAME ----- ---------- --------- COLOR BACKGROUND BLACK ......... GREETINGS BLUE . HEADINGS GREEN . YEAR CYAN . BACKGROUND can use TEXT RED . only these colors. MAGENTA . AMBER . WHITE ......... GRAY BRIGHTBLUE BRIGHTGREEN BRIGHTCYAN BRIGHTRED BRIGHTMAGENTA YELLOW BRIGHTWHITE A complete command might be: COLOR TEXT YELLOW. Notice there are two groups of colors. Only the first group can be used for background color. The other text types can use any color. Running TODAY To run the program, simply enter TODAY. If the data files are present or you have set the TODAY= environment variable, the program will display what happened on this date in history. If you get the TODAY07 error message, you are not in the directory where the TODAY data files are or you are not telling the program where to find the data files with the SET TODAY command or the DIR option on the TODAY command line. TODAY 3.3 Page 6 You can follow the command (TODAY) with a date in the form of MMDD where MM is the month as two digits and the DD is the day as two digits. For example, June 1st would be 0601. Note that you must use a leading zero if the month or day is only one digit. There are more options that you can put on the command line. They are described in the section titled "Options". TODAY.BAT This is a BAT file that will let you run TODAY from anywhere in your system without the \TODAY directory having to be in your path. It does this by means of two nice little public domain programs called PUSHD.EXE and POPD.EXE. The former saves your current directory before changing to the new one and the latter takes you back to where you started. The BAT file and the two EXE files must be in a directory in your path but the rest of the TODAY files do not. You may want to use these little programs with other applications on your system. How TODAY finds its files When you run TODAY, it first looks to see if you have used the DIR option on the command line. If so, it looks in that directo- ry for the TODAY data files. If not, it looks for the TODAY environment variable and looks there for the data files. If neither of these methods was used, TODAY looks in the current directory for the data files. If none of these conditions are true, the TODAY07 error message appears telling you that TODAY.mon could not be found. Use one of the methods above to correct the situation. TODAY 3.3 Page 7 SET TODAY= You can create an MSDOS environment variable that tells TODAY where to find the data files that contain the date information displayed by the program. If the data files are in a directory C:\TODAY, the command looks like this: SET TODAY=C:\TODAY This example says the directory is on the C: drive (or any other you wish) and looks to that disk no matter which disk you are logged onto. This is handy for systems with multiple hard drives. You should put this command in your AUTOEXEC.BAT. That way whenever you run TODAY, the location of the data files will always be known. You can override this directory specification by using the DIR option on the TODAY command line. Options TODAY has a number of options that control how the program works. The program runs just fine without any options at all, but people like to change things to suit themselves and the options provide a way to do that. These options can be entered on the command line (eg TODAY 0628) or they can be put into TODAY.CFG either with your text editor or with the TODAYCFG program. Each option must be separated with blanks. ADD filename You can now have additional date databases that ADD TO the base TODAY.mon files. That is, you can have multiple sets of date files with different filenames and search another set in addition to the TODAY files. For instance, let's say you also have a database of historical information on the world of music that is named MUSIC.JAN thru MUSIC.DEC (available on the GGCS Bulletin Board). You can now add the option ADD MUSIC to the command line and the items found for this date on the MUSIC database will be added to those found in the main database. Some examples of how this option might look on the command line are: TODAY ADD MUSIC TODAY 0628 ADD MUSIC TODAY ANSI DISK ADD MUSIC You should also read the next section on the ALT filename option which is a complement to the ADD option. TODAY 3.3 Page 8 ALT filename The default filename that TODAY looks for is TODAY. The filetype must be JAN, FEB, MAR, APR, MAY, JUN, JUL, AUG, SEP, OCT, NOV, DEC or OWN. As you can see, there is one file for each month plus a file for personal dates (OWN). You can create special databases and store them separately from the general purpose files. You do this by specifying an alternate filename. If you have a special database of important dates in the history of music you might want to have MUSIC.JAN through MUSIC.DEC. You would then use the command: TODAY ALT MUSIC to have TODAY read the music database instead of the general database. These files must be in the same format as the standard TODAY files as de- scribed later in this document. ANSI This option only works when used with the DISK option. When TODAY displays its historical facts, the colors used are set using the computer's display hardware. This type of color set- ting cannot be saved to disk along with the text. ANSI commands to do something similar can be put into the file along with the text. That is what this option does. Why? Primarily this is for computer bulletin board operators who want to be able to display TODAY's little gems on their systems. If they support ANSI color and graphics, this TODAY option lets the TODAY data appear in color too. If you have DEVICE=ANSI.SYS in your CONFIG.SYS file, you can use the DISK and ANSI options to save the program output. Then TYPE the file and it will appear in color. Save it without the ANSI option and it will display in your default CRT color. DIR path If you run TODAY from outside the directory where the data files reside, you must somehow tell the program where to find the data files. One method is the TODAY environment variable mentioned earlier. Here is another. Simply specify DIR followed by the complete path of the directory where the data files reside. For example: TODAY DIR C:\TODAY If you use this option, TODAY will use it instead of the TODAY environment variable. DISK This option tells TODAY to write the information it displays on your screen to a disk file named TODAY.PRN. This file can then be manipulated just as any other text file. TODAY 3.3 Page 9 HELP or ? This option will display a help screen showing the TODAY options and gives an example of how to use the program. MMDD This stands for a two digit month and a two digit day such as 0628 for June 28th. It allows you to display the historical data for a date other than the current one. If the month or day is only a single digit you must use a leading zero as in the example above. There must be a total of four digits. Try the date used in the example above, you will see why I used it. NOPAUSE I'm not sure anyone wants this option, but if you are only writ- ing the TODAY information to disk this will cause the program to create the disk file and terminate without any pause for you to read the screen. Better be a fast reader... ONCE If you run TODAY from your AUTOEXEC.BAT and you re-boot many times during the day, you may not want to see TODAY each time. If you use this option, the program will only run once on any given date. If you want to use this option, you must CD to the \TODAY direc- tory where the program and data files exist. To make ONCE work, TODAY alters the DOS Last Access Date of TODAY.EXE to the current date and time. If it is run again on the same date, it will terminate without displaying anything. If TODAY.EXE is not in the current directory, the program will run again. TODAY 3.3 Page 10 TODAY.BAT TODAY.BAT is a handy utility to let you move to the directory where all your TODAY files reside, run the program, and then return to whatever directory you started from. This is done with two small public domain programs PUSHD and POPD. If you used the DOS CD command, you would have to hardcode which directory to return to after running TODAY. This way you don't have to worry about it. It's all automatic. You can also use command line options when running from the BAT file. NOTE: As written, TODAY.BAT expects the TODAY files to be in a directory named \TODAY. If you used another name, you must change the BAT file. Adding Data (TODAY'S format) The data that TODAY reads each day is stored in plain ASCII files but in a specific fixed format. You can easily create new date files or add data to the TODAY files with your text editor. However, it must work with plain ASCII files. Most word proces- sors create very funny files indeed but they usually also have a plain ASCII mode. When you edit the file to add data, just enter your text so that it lines up with the data already there. If you get the date in the wrong column or if the date is nonsensical you will either get an error message or strange things may happen. It is no longer necessary to have column headings or to have the data in any particular order. I feel this will make it easer to intermix the various record types in order to keep all the mes- sages for a particular date together whether they be Special Days, Birthdays, Thought For Today or whatever. Even if the dates are not kept in order they will appear on the proper date and in the order in which they are found in the data file. I have added more detail to the description so that those of you creating your own data files can have a fuller understanding of the TODAY format. For those who have created files not strictly in the TODAY format as regards record types, flags and text length, I have tried to make TODAY handle them as forgivingly as possible. This means that unrecognized record types are treated as comments and text is truncated to fit properly on the screen. NOTE: If you get error TODAY06 when adding data of your own, you have put a date in the wrong column or entered an invalid date. Read the next section very carefully. TODAY 3.3 Page 11 ====================== TODAY DATA FILE FORMAT ====================== Column 1: This is a record type which tells TODAY what type of message follows. Valid 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 * - 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. 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 to be reminded. See the Section Special Re- minder Format below for details. A year in this part of a Reminder 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: An indicator telling how to process this line. Acceptable values are the following: BLANK for no special processing. C to continue a message from the previous line. Note, that you MUST REPEAT the date fields. DAY-OF-WEEK DIGIT where 1=Sunday ... 7=Satur- day. 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. TODAY 3.3 Page 12 --EXAMPLES-- *MMDDYYYY*Message *-------------------------------------------------------- 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. The headings are no longer mandatory. Note that Labor day must be on a Monday and the Mayflower gets two lines of coverage befitting that momentous event. 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 remind- ers 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. Special Reminder Format Reminders used to be a one shot deal. You could have them appear on any one date or on any one day every month. But reminders are most useful when you can get jogged for several days. After all, you might not even get on the computer every day. Here's the answer: the four columns immediately following the month and day are normally blank for reminders, but you can put another MMDDin columns 2-9 and the two dates will be taken as a range of dates during which you want to be reminded of something.This way you don't have to put in a separate reminder for every day. It saves a lot of typing! For example: R05010508 Daryl's Birthday on the NINTH... R0509 Daryl's Birthday TODAY reminds me not to forget Daryl's birthday each day from May 1 to May 8. Then on the 9th, there is the usual one shot reminder. TODAY 3.3 Page 13 Another nice feature is the monthly reminder. Just set the month portion of the date to zero and the reminder will appear every month on the days you specify. For example: R00050014 First mortgage due on the 15th. Every month from the fifth to the fourteenth, this reminder appears. But it gets even better! What if the date you need to be reminded of falls on the 5th of the month and you want to be reminded from the 27th of one month to the 4th of the following month? No problem! If TODAY sees that the day of the month for the second date is less than the day in the first date, it as- sumes that the second date is in the following month. Not bad eh? Here's how: R00270004 Second mortgage due on the 5th. From the 27th of one month thru the 4th of the following month, a daily reminder is displayed. I think this new reminder system is a vast improvement over the old one and will prove much more useful. If only it would pay mortgages too... TODAY's History This program was written by Patrick Kincaid first in 1986, then updated in 1988 and again in 1990. It was inspired by a program written by Michael Butler on an IBM VM/CMS system in the PL/1 language. Credit for the concept and original data should go to him. While the young TODAY had a very strong San Francisco flavor to it, time and many people have changed it to a more cosmopolitan appearance. Thanks to the many people who have contributed all those dates! TODAY 3.3 Page 14 User Support If you like TODAY, please help support it. I won't make a living this way but it does help offset the expenses of developing, distributing and supporting the program. There are three ways to do it: Amount Will Get You ------ --------------------------------------------- $10 Registration of the copy you now have $15 The program and documentation on a 5.25" 360K diskette. $16 The program and documentation on a 3.5" 720K diskette. $20 The diskette and a printed manual. Please make your checks payable to Patrick Kincaid and send them to the address below. Patrick Kincaid 618 Douglas Drive Mill Valley, CA 94941 USA You probably won't have nightmares and sleepless nights if you don't send anything. Nor will you get any questions answered about the program. If you register, I promise to respond to your questions in some reasonably timely manner. I know this will strike a note with some of you. I can't return phone calls so just call the bulletin board listed below and leave me an EMAIL message. This is the best way to contact me. Otherwise you can write to the address below. When asking questions, I have to know what version of the program you are using. It is the top line of the display when you run the program. For problems, I need a detailed description of what is or is not happening. "It doesn't work" isn't good enough. Often the best way to do this is to also include a screen print of the problem so I can see exactly what you mean. TODAY 3.3 Page 15 Here is the easiest place to reach me. It is where I (and oth- ers) leave TODAY related files. Golden Gate Computer Society Bulletin Board (415) 927-1216 (at least four phone lines) 300/1200/2400 baud 8 data bits, 1 stop bit, no parity Many file transfer protocols You can usually get the latest version of the program here. If you leave me a message, wait a week for an answer as I'm travel- ing a good deal of the time these days. Please mail inquiries, money, suggestions etc. to this address: Patrick Kincaid 618 Douglas Drive Mill Valley, CA 94941 USA Legal Stuff This program has been tested and will probably do what I say it will. Because of the variety of system configurations and hard- ware out there I can't make any promises of suitability, func- tionality, direct or consequential damages. This program may not be sold or marketed as part of a package without the express written consent of the author. That, thankfully, ends the legal stuff. I hope you enjoy TODAY and that it adds a little something to your life. Wait till you see what's coming in the future! And Remember... We call it software because we cannot keep it up.