If the date that Birthdays and Such… displays is incorrect, then your Macintosh’s internal clock is off. You can fix it using a Control Panel. Under System 6, the date and time are set in the General control panel. Under System 7, the date and time are set in either the General Controls control panel or the Date & Time control panel. In either system, find the Control Panels by pulling down the Apple menu.
The warning-period for reminders are wrong
One user reported that a blank line at the beginning of the Reminders file had caused Birthdays and Such to see dates as closer than they were—that is, a date two days away was reported as being tomorrow! He said that removing the blank line corrected the problem. This may be model-specific; it was not reproducible on my Mac 7100.
Birthdays and Such… does not display a reminder you added or changed
Birthdays and Such… will not recognize changes made to the Reminders file while it is running. If Birthdays and Such… is running when you edit the Reminders file, you must save and close the file, and quit Birthdays and Such… and relaunch it.
You also need to make sure that there are no blank lines in the Reminders file—whether at the beginning or interspersed into one or more reminders.
Still not recognizing a change? Use the Finder’s Find menu command to search your hard disk for “Reminders” to be sure you don’t have two copies (and edited a version other than the one Birthdays and Such… is reading reminders from).
Birthdays and Such… launches, but quits right away!
If today is a date with no reminders, and the AutoQuit option is turned on (see the previous chapter), then Birthdays and Such… will launch and automatically quit. Unfortunately, the only way to disable the feature is to have Birthdays and Such… running, but it won’t run until there’s a reminder to display, and obviously there’s not one today! Catch 22.
You can solve this in one of two ways:
• Change the date in the General Controls or Date & Time control panel to a date for which there is a reminder (be sure to change the date back after unchecking the AutoQuit command under the Reminders menu).
• Add a reminder to the Reminders file that is applicable today.
You leave your Mac running, but Birthdays and Such… does not relaunch when a new reminder comes due
Birthdays and Such… does not know how to launch itself. It knows only how to update its window once it is running.
If you leave your Macintosh running for days at a time, then you should leave Birthdays and Such… running all the time. Its automatic update feature—re-evaluating the Reminders file at midnight every night—means that whenever you look at its window, the reminders will be correct.
(I specifically designed Birthdays and Such… to run all the time: it’s absolutely the smallest executable I could make it. In fact, it’s probably the smallest executable on your machine! It’s only 17K.)
Error messages
At some point, you may encounter an error while running Birthdays and Such… Here are some error dialogs with the messages they present, and what to do about them.
The Reminders file (which must have the name “Reminders”) must be located in one of two places:
• in the same folder as Birthdays and Such… , or
• in the System Folder
If you get this error, make sure “Reminders” is correctly named (even a space character before or after the name would prevent Birthdays and Such… from recognizing it as its Reminders file), and then make sure it’s located in one of the acceptable locations.
The Reminders file must be saved as a text file, not in the usual format used by your word processor. If you get this message, you’ll have to open the document in your word processor again, then save it as a text file using the method your word processor provides to save documents as text files. See Chapter 3: Setting Up the Reminders File for an explanation of how to save documents as text files from many common word processing programs.
When Birthdays and Such… reads in the Reminders file, it checks the date at the beginning of each reminder. If that date is invalid (such as Fev. 12 or 3/42), Birthdays and Such… will present you with this message. You’ll want to edit and re-save the file (remember to save it as a text file) or Birthdays and Such… will never remind you of these invalid-date reminders.
If you have an incredibly large number of reminders in your Reminders file, it is possible to overwhelm the memory partition reserved for Birthdays and Such… Should that happen, and you’re presented with this message, select the icon for Birthdays and Such… in the Finder, and choose the Get Info command from the File menu. Then type a slightly larger value than is already displayed into the Memory Size box(es).
Finally, it is possible that some error could occur that was not anticipated. If that occurs, and you get this message, fill out a copy of the error report form at the end of this manual and mail it to the author.
Chapter 6 : About the Author
Ron Lichty, 46 years old, lives in San Francisco, and is director of engineering for client applications for Charles Schwab and Company’s electronic brokerage technology.
Previously, Ron was director of engineering at mFactory (makers of mTropolis, an authoring environment for creating interactive multimedia), Fujitsu Cultural Technologies (makers of WorldsAway, a third-generation online animated virtual world—on CompuServe, Go “Away”; or visit its web page at http://WWW.WorldsAway.com/), and Berkeley Systems (makers of the After Dark line of screen savers). Before that, he spent six years at Apple Computer, where he was a Finder engineer, an Installer engineer, a manager of development tools product marketing and, from 1991-94, manager of the Macintosh Finder engineering team.
Before joining Apple, Ron worked for Softwest, a Sunnyvale software consulting company. There, he wrote compiler code generators, co-authored a spell-checking program for the Apple II and Macintosh computers, and was awarded several patents for work on card-access electronic hotel locking systems and on smart-card money-access terminal systems. Also at Softwest, he was contracted by Apple Computer to co-design and program the Apple IIGS Sales Demo Program; featuring digitized music and graphics, animation, dissolves, and speech, it was translated into five languages to debut the computer worldwide in 1986. In his spare time, Ron co-authored two assembly language programming books—one a reference, one a tutorial.
Prior to his 15 years in the software industry, Ron worked in nontechnical fields for 10 years as a writer and editor, and as a freelance graphic designer. Brochures he designed launched a wide variety of companies, services and products. His freelance articles from New York and California appeared widely in regional and national magazines. He started a small magazine in the Chicago area. He was a daily newspaper reporter/photographer in Wyoming. And he authored two successful nonfiction books, one a compleat guide to newspaper and magazine publishing, the other an inspirational/how-to guide called 132 Ways to Earn a Living without Working (for Someone Else).
After he became one of the first authors to buy a computer for word processing, in 1980, he teamed up with another early adopter to teach a course that, during the early 1980s, helped hundreds of Bay Area writers and authors select computers and word processing software. Ron also shared with other authors his experiences and research into publicizing and promoting books through classes at San Francisco State and San Jose State and UC Berkeley. Ron has also owned and run several mail order companies that sold books by mail.
Ron has a grandmother, two parents, two children, a wife, four brothers and sisters, lots of friends, and scads of nieces and nephews whose birthdays and anniversaries he dutifully remembers with the help of Birthdays and Such…
Ron welcomes comments, error reports and suggestions (not to mention registrations) at:
Ron Lichty
P.O. Box 27262
San Francisco, CA 94127
or electronically at:
America OnLine: RonLichty
Internet: RonLichty@aol.com
Chapter 7 : Birthdays and Such… is shareware
Birthdays and Such… is shareware. (No, there’s no shareware fee for my relatives and friends. Don’t be silly. I sent it to each of you as a gift. But if you’re not already one of my friends, relatives and acquaintances, Birthdays and Such… is shareware.) Birthdays and Such… is NOT a free or public domain program.
What is shareware?
1) If you keep using it, you must pay for it
As with most shareware, please try it for yourself for a day, a week, a month. Unlike most shareware, however, Birthdays and Such… is What’sItWorthWare—that is, I believe in user-determined pricing. You decide what Birthdays and Such… is worth. Then send a money order or check (or even cash) with your name and email address (for any updates) to:
Ron Lichty
P.O. Box 27262
San Francisco, CA 94127
(What’s it worth to save your marriage? What’s it worth to maintain a relationship with your parents? OK, maybe Birthdays and Such… won’t do that all by itself, but... :-)
(International: Your local check will cost more to cash in the U.S. than the amount you write it for. Instead, send U.S. dollars. Or better, visit your local friendly post office and inquire about the availability of international money orders in U.S. dollars.)
If you don’t like it, drag it to the Trash and you’ll owe me nothing. But if you do continue to use it, you do owe me a fee—it’s just that with What’sItWorthWare, you not only get to try the software before you pay for it, but you also get to decide its value. I don’t care whether the amount you send is a dollar or a hundred dollars, provided 1) that you send me something, and 2) that what you send me represents what you believe it’s worth.
2) If you like it, share it with your friends and relatives
The second aspect of shareware is that it gets distributed by people who like it and use it—sharing it with their friends. I urge you to share it. Your friends urge you to share it (OK, they would if they knew you had it, and how useful it is to you). Your friends deserve to know about the programs that keep your life together. Give them a disk with Birthdays and Such…, PopChar, The Tilery, TypeIt4Me, SCSIProbe, GunShy, Quoter, DOSWasher, and the other freeware and shareware programs you couldn’t do without.
When you do share Birthdays and Such…, please keep it together with the sample Reminders file (you may want to add your birthday, so your friends are reminded of the most important day of the year! :-), the manual, the quick-start guide, and any addendum or readme files, and pass them all on. You must keep the manuals with the program if you pass it on—that’s the second shareware requirement. (What was the first again? Oh, right, paying the author...)
The third restriction is that you cannot modify the program or manual in any way, sell it, or include it on a disk which is sold without my prior written consent (this also applies to freeware and shareware distribution outfits such as, but not limited to, Educorp et al.). With the exception that clubs and user groups may charge a nominal fee (not to exceed $10) for expenses while distributing Birthdays and Such…
Thank you in advance for keeping the What’sItWorthWare spirit alive!
Chapter 8 : Sharing the Spirit
So what do I recommend as essential in Macintosh shareware and freeware utilities (besides Birthdays and Such…, of course) and websites? Here’s the list I give my friends:
The Tilery (formerly called “Applicon.”). Freeware. The Tilery displays tiles, each of which represents an application, document, folder, control panel, etc. Clicking a tile opens its item: applications are launched or brought to the front, documents are opened, folders’ Finder windows are opened and displayed. On the edge of your screen you see the applications you have running. Essential.
WindowPicker. Freeware. Adds a Windows menu to the menu bar, providing a simple way to bring any window in any application immediately to the front.
Quoter. Freeware. Quoter DA is a DA whose main purpose is to convert text on the
Clipboard into quotes for email. All you have to do is select text you want to quote, copy it, open the Quoter DA, enter the quoter’s initials and hit OK, then paste. Quoter can also reformat text without adding initials and it can postmark replies with the original message date, time, sender name and recipient name.
DOSWasher. Shareware, $5. Simply drag any text document, Mac or DOS, onto the icon of this program. The documents will be converted to their “opposite”: a DOS file will be converted to the Macintosh format, and a Mac document will become a DOS file.
PopChar. Freeware. PopChar is a little control panel that enables you to generate every possible character that is available in the current font without having to remember keyboard combinations.
TypeIt4Me. Shareware, $30. Wherever you can enter text by typing it at the keyboard, TypeIt4Me can do it for you.
SCSIProbe. Freeware. Get the Mac to recognize any SCSI device easily.
Do you believe in Macintosh? Check out < http://www.evangelist.macaddict.com/ > to see how you can share your Macintosh fervor with your friends.
Join a user group. If you’re not a member of a user group, you’re missing an invaluable
experience. Visit http://www2.apple.com/documents/usergroups.html or call 1-800-538-9696, Ext. 500 to find a user group near you.
Appendix A: Thank Yous and Such
Legalities
Any names and/or information that are registered trademarks of any company, corporation or group are hereby respected and acknowledged.
To the best of my knowledge (derived in considerable part from years of use and testing), Birthdays and Such… is “harmless”. Nonetheless, Birthdays and Such… is offered “as is” and is not covered by any warranty of any kind, so use it at your own risk. If you do find a bug, I’d like to hear about it—I may not be able to fix it, but I’d at least like to know about it.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to:
• Apple Computer’s DTS group for the sample code from which I started
• Tim Swihart for moral and technical support beyond the call of friendship
• Then-DTS manager C.K. Haun for samples of handling lists inside dialogs
• Internationalization gurus Kerry Laidlaw and Norbert Lindenberg for helping me grok the Script Manager and for fielding my complaints about how it handles February 29
• 1.0 user Charles C. Cares, who determined to fix the 1.0 Birthdays and Such… small icon rather than put up with its distortions, learned more about ResEdit than he’d planned and, most pleased with his handiwork, offered it as his shareware contribution. Great job!
Programmer Talk
This program was written in MPW C v. 3.2, and debugged using Apple Computer’s Voodoo Monkey, an offshoot of SourceBug. I found Symantec’s Think Reference to be a very useful on-line substitute for Inside Mac. I found a set of freeware tools called Tags for MPW to be terrific. To get my icons to appear (without rebuilding my desktop dozens of times), I used Tim Swihart’s freeware tool BNDL Banger.
While developing this simple application, I found no sample code for making sure that, when it’s opened, a window’s location will be on the screen (a problem you might have seen with Birthdays and Such… only if you changed monitors; Excel users who are given spreadsheets with no visible window because they were created on their boss’ second monitor will know what I mean). As a good programming citizen (and a curious programmer), I determined that no user of mine would lose the Birthdays and Such… window into “outer space.” To do that, I discovered I had to calculate the window’s title bar height. And I found doing that to be a whole lot harder to do correctly than I’d expected (and for more than just me: I also uncovered a related bug in Inside Mac). All of that led me to update two of Apple Computer’s Toolbox Tech Notes (TB 14 and TB 575), and to write sample code for the above operations. I’d like to thank Dean Yu and Nick Kledzik for reviewing (and giving me lots of corrections to) both my writing and the sample code.
Appendix B: Improvements
v. 1.0.2, December 1996
Added Quick Start Guide to the package. No code changes.
v. 1.0.1, September 1996
Improved Finder icons. Updated dialogs and manual.
Error Report
If you encounter the “Unexpected error” dialog—or any behavior of Birthdays and Such… that you didn’t expect, please fill in a copy of this report, and mail it to:
America OnLine: RonLichty
Internet: RonLichty@aol.com
Postal: Ron Lichty
P.O. Box 27262
San Francisco, CA 94127
Your name and address:
Your email address:
Your phone number, with area code:
Which Macintosh model you are using:
Which System Software version you are using (in the Finder, choose “About…” from the Apple menu):
Additional comments on your hardware and/or software configuration:
In what folder is Birthdays and Such… located?
In what folder is Reminders located?
( ) You were presented with the “Unexpected error” dialog.
( ) Birthdays and Such… didn’t work the way you think it should.
( ) Other:
What happened:
Describe the sequence of events that led up to the dialog or aberrant behavior:
