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ALARM : Alarm Clock Program and Utilities Version 4.10, 15-Feb-1988 SMG Software (C) Copyright 1986-1988 by Steven Georgiades All Rights Reserved Table of Contents _________________ I. Overview ........................... Page 2 II. Program Installation and Usage ..... Page 3 III. The ALARM Configuration File ....... Page 5 IV. Revision History ................... Page 6 V. Additional Utilities ............... Page 7 VI. Program Restrictions ............... Page 7 VII. Program License .................... Page 8 VIII. Program Registration ............... Page 8 IX. Disclaimer ......................... Page 9 X. Reporting Problems ................. Page 9 1 ALARM, Version 4.10 Page 2 I. OVERVIEW The ALARM program provides a memory resident alarm clock with eight different alarms, each of which can be set to go off at a different time of day. This is useful to signal the user about a meeting, a lunch date, or an appointment. ALARM also has four reminders, which can be set to go off at different time intervals. These are useful for reminding the user to perform periodic tasks, such as doing saves while editing, or taking medication. Each of the eight alarms and four reminders may have a user-defined message associated with it, up to 32 characters in length. When the alarm time is reached (or when the reminder interval has expired), the computer's current activity will be suspended, and a window will appear in the middle of the screen indicating the alarm or reminder number, the current time, and the corresponding message. In addition, a musical tune will be played, as specified in the alarm configuration file. Using the supplied tune-files and configuration file (ALARM.CFG), these tunes will be as follows: Alarm #1 : Funeral March of the Marionettes Alarm #2 : Carnival Alarm #3 : Holiday Road Alarm #4 : When The Saints Go Marching In Alarm #5 : Fur Elise Alarm #6 : O' Solo Mio Alarm #7 : Turkey in the Straw Alarm #8 : Aura Lee Reminder #1 : Oh! Susanna Reminder #2 : London Bridge Reminder #3 : Mary had a Little Lamb Reminder #4 : Yankee Doodle Note that upon installation, the message associated with each alarm or reminder is set to the title of the corresponding tune. In all cases, a tune can be terminated before completion by pressing the Escape key. Once an alarm or reminder has sounded, the window will disappear immediately, unless it was set to persist. In this case the window will remain on the screen (persist) until the ESC key is pressed. If a second alarm time should be reached before the ESC key is pressed, that alarm will supersede the first, and the first one will be aborted. In addition to alarms and reminders, the ALARM program also has Westminster chimes which can be enabled to sound on the hour, half-hour or quarter-hour. The chimes can also be disabled. A facility is also included to disable the ALARM program completely. This is useful when executing programs which may be adversely affected by a pop-up window, such as FORMAT or disk optimizing software. ALARM, Version 4.10 Page 3 II. PROGRAM INSTALLATION AND USAGE In order for the ALARM program to work, it must first be installed as resident in memory. This is accomplished by one of the following commands: ALARM I or ALARM Ifilename.ext The first form will look for the default configuration file, ALARM.CFG, in the current directory. If not found, ALARM will use no configuration data and will install a very simple (and very boring) form of the program, with "beeps" instead of tunes. The second form will look for the specified configuration file. If not found, an error will be flagged. Note that the filename may optionally include a drive letter and/or a path specification. For more information on the ALARM configuration file, see section III, below. Once installed in memory, three sub-systems are available: Alarms, Reminders, and Chimes. The Alarms Sub-System consists of eight alarms, which may be set by issuing one of the following commands: ALARM An=hh:mm or ALARM An=hh:mm/"msg" ALARM An=*hh:mm or ALARM An=*hh:mm/"msg" where "n" is the alarm number (1 to 8), "hh:mm" is the alarm time, in 24-hour format (5:00 pm is 17:00), and "msg" is an optional alarm message which may be up to 32 characters in length. If "msg" is omitted, as in the left column above, then the alarm message remains unchanged. If an asterisk ("*") is specified with the alarm time, as in the bottom row above, then that alarm is set to persist. Individual alarms may be enabled, disabled, queried, and tested, respectively, by entering the following commands: ALARM An+ ALARM An- ALARM An? ALARM AnT Disabling an alarm will not change it's setting. When it is once again enabled, it will still be set to the same time as before it was disabled. Note that the act of setting an alarm enables it. The query option will list the alarm number, the current setting (or OFF if disabled), and the current message associated with that alarm. Testing an alarm will cause an alarm window to pop up and the tune to be played, just as if the alarm time had been reached. This will work regardless of whether the specified alarm is enabled. In addition to this, the entire Alarms Sub-System may be enabled, disabled, or queried, as follows: ALARM A+ ALARM A- ALARM A? Disabling the Alarms Sub-System will disable all eight alarms. This is different from disabling all eight alarms individually, since disabling and re-enabling the Alarms Sub-System will preserve the enable/disable status of each alarm. Querying the Alarms Sub-System is equivalent to querying each of the eight alarms individually. ALARM, Version 4.10 Page 4 II. PROGRAM INSTALLATION AND USAGE (Continued) The Reminders Sub-System behaves virtually the same as the Alarms Sub-System, the only major difference being that a Reminder Interval ("mm") must be specified, instead of an Alarm Time ("hh:mm"). The reminder interval may be from 1 to 255 minutes. Note that there are only 4 reminders, so "n" must be in the range 1 to 4. To set a reminder, use the following commands: ALARM Rn=mm or ALARM Rn=mm/"msg" ALARM Rn=*mm or ALARM Rn=*mm/"msg" To enable, disable, query or test individual reminders, use the following commands: ALARM Rn+ ALARM Rn- ALARM Rn? ALARM RnT To enable, disable or query the entire Reminders Sub-System, use the following commands: ALARM R+ ALARM R- ALARM R? The Chimes Sub-System enables the user to select Westminster Chimes to sound on the quarter hour, the half hour, or on the hour, as follows: ALARM C15 ALARM C30 ALARM C60 Note that only these three values are permitted for chime intervals. All other values will cause an error. The Chimes Sub-System may be enabled, disabled, or queried by the following commands: ALARM C+ ALARM C- ALARM C? In addition to all of the above, there are Global ALARM Program functions, which enable you to completely disable the ALARM program, re-enable ALARM, and query all ALARM parameters, as follows: ALARM - ALARM + ALARM ? The global disable will cease all ALARM functions until alarm is re- enabled. The global query will respond with the status of the ALARM program, as well as the complete status of all Sub-Systems. ALARM, Version 4.10 Page 5 III. THE ALARM CONFIGURATION FILE The ALARM program allows the user to customize the alarm tunes to his or her liking through use of a configuration file. The configuration file is a simple ASCII file which may be created using any standard text editor, or word processor with an ASCII save option. This file must contain at least twelve lines, the first eight of which must contain the eight alarm tune entries, and the remainder of which must contain the four reminder tune entries. Any additional lines found in the configuration file beyond these 12 are read in by ALARM and interpreted exactly as if they were found on the command line of the ALARM program. Each tune entry may be a file specification (with optional drive and/or path, i.e. [d:][path/]filename.ext), or one of a few special codes, explained below. If a file specification is given, ALARM will look for that file, and if not found, will flag an error. Note that if no drive is specified, the current default drive is assumed, and if no path is specified, the current default directory is used. The special codes that are permitted in a tune entry are a blank line (CR only, no spaces or tabs), a double quote character ("), or a pound sign (#) followed by a single digit, 1 to 9. A blank line indicates to ALARM that you wish for that tune to be set to the program's default tune, a simple series of tones. The quote character indicates that you wish for that tune entry to be identical to the preceding tune entry. Finally, the "#" character indicates that the current tune entry should be made identical to the tune entry corresponding to the following digit, i.e. "#2" in the 6th line would indicate that the tune for alarm #6 should be identical to the tune for alarm #2. Note that this form MUST point to a preceding tune: it cannot point forward, or an error will be flagged. Also note that only the first nine tunes can be repeated using this method, since only a single digit is recognized. Using the quote or "#" options will reduce the amount of memory that the ALARM program occupies, since a repeated tune will only appear once in memory. Twelve standard tune files are supplied with the ALARM program, and 19 additional tunes are available in the optional file, ALMTUNES.ARC. In addition, the user may create his own custom tunes, using the ATC utility, discussed in section VI, below, and in ATC.DOC. Additional optional tune sets may be released from time to time. ALARM, Version 4.10 Page 6 IV. REVISION HISTORY The development of the ALARM program has been evolutionary (though not necessarily REVolutionary). Since the first release, I have been getting a great deal of feedback from users, which has helped ALARM to become what it is today. Version 3.10 Initial Release. Version 3.11 The program was modified to permit poly-phonic music (chords). Version 3.12 The program was modified to allow for more accurate timekeeping, and the quarter-hour chimes were changed to hourly. Version 3.13 The program was modified to add the persist option, and to permit the user to interrupt an alarm tune in progress. (Thanks to Robert Warren of El Paso for these suggestions) Version 3.14 The program was modified to fix bugs in the persist option, and improve it's usefulness. The hourly chimes were also modified to disappear upon completion. Version 3.15 The program was modified to fix a bug that would cause the program to re-install if run above the 512K boundary. Version 3.20 The program was modified to allow alarm overlaps. Version 4.00 MAJOR REVISION. This new version increases the number of alarms from 5 to 8, enhances the chimes to allow for a user-specified chime interval of 15, 30 or 60 minutes, adds four reminders (NEW), adds the ability to disable the ALARM program completely, allows the user to create his own customized alarm tunes, adds configuration file support, and numerous other minor changes and improvements. Users of older versions should read the documentation thoroughly. Version 4.10 Improves the sound of tunes on AT's and machines with faster clock speeds. ALARM, Version 4.10 Page 7 V. ADDITIONAL UTILITIES Included with the ALARM program are three special utilities which make it a much more powerful program. Each of these utilities has it's own documentation file, but a brief description is given here. The first utility is DTCHK, the Date and Time Check Utility. This program allows you to test the current date, time, and/or day-of-week from within a batch file, and conditionally execute code. This is useful for setting alarms based on the date. For example, if you want to be reminded to attend a 10:00 status meeting every friday, but don't wish to have an alarm go off EVERY day at 10:00, you can use DTCHK within your AUTOEXEC.BAT to set that alarm ONLY on fridays. See DTCHK.DOC for more information. Another utility is ATC, the Alarm Tune Compiler. This is the program which allows you to create your own customized tunes. A music "source" file is created using a text editor or word processor, and this file is compiled by ATC into a tune file, suitable for use with ALARM. Tunes created with ATC may also be played using ATP. ATP is the Alarm Tune Play Utility. This is used to play tunes compiled with ATC, or the tunes supplied with the ALARM program. This program is supplied to allow the user to hear what tunes sound like without having to install them into ALARM (or just to play tunes for fun). See ATC.DOC for more information on both ATC and ATP. VI. PROGRAM RESTRICTIONS The ALARM program should work on any IBM PC, XT, AT or true compatible, running DOS Version 2.0 or later. In order for the program to run, there must be at least 20K bytes of free memory in the system. When installed, the resident portion will occupy between 4K and 10K bytes, depending upon the configuration. The sum of the lengths of all installed tunes files must not exceed 7503 bytes. ALARM, Version 4.10 Page 8 VII. PROGRAM LICENSE The ALARM program is copyrighted material, but is distributed as ShareWare. "ShareWare" means that you are granted free license to use, copy and distribute this software, within the following restrictions: 1). It must be distributed in its original, unmodified form, including program, documentation and all associated files. 2). No fee may be charged for use, copying or distribution (With the exception of nominal "per disk" copying charges, not to exceed $6.00 per disk). 3). The program may not be included with other goods or services supplied for a fee, unless written permission to do so is obtained in advance from the author. VIII. PROGRAM REGISTRATION Since ALARM is ShareWare, you have no legal obligation to register. But if you are using the program, and find it helpful, you are expected to register. Registration fees are as follows: Full Registration (w/full support) ........ $35.00 Basic Registration (w/basic support) ...... $20.00 Please make checks payable to Steven M. Georgiades. Note that you are not LEGALLY obligated to register, but if you use the software regularly, you are MORALLY obligated to do so. Aside from easing your conscience, basic registration will also get you a diskette containing the latest version of the software (unless you currently have the latest version, in which case I will send you the next major revision), and basic user support, which means that I will work with you to resolve problems, and will do minor customization. Full registration will get you everything that basic registration does, plus full user support, which includes telephone support and all major revisions of the software for a period of two (2) years from the date of registration. When you register, please specify the name of the program, and the version number. Fully registered users will also be eligible to receive custom tune creation, by sending me a copy of the sheet music. If you do not have the sheet music, send me the title and composer, or any other information you have to identify the tune, and I will do my best. Source code for ALARM and it's subsidiary programs is available to all registered users for a fee of $75.00. The source code for ALARM and ATP is Microsoft Macro Assembler, Version 5.0, and for ATC and DTCHK, is Microsoft C, Version 4.0. All source code is COPYRIGHTED material and is NOT shareware, and therefore may NOT be copied or distributed. Note that no support will be given to unregistered users EXCEPT in the case of MAJOR bugs which prevent the user from using the program. I will then do my best to resolve these problems so that the user may evaluate the software fully. ALARM, Version 4.10 Page 9 IX. DISCLAIMER This program is provided AS IS without any warranty, expressed or implied, including but not limited to fitfulness for a particular use or purpose. Neither the author nor SMG Software assume liability for any damages incurred through the use of the program. The ALARM, DTCHK, ATC and ATP programs are: (C) Copyright 1988 Steven Georgiades X. REPORTING PROBLEMS If you have any problem, or feel you have found a bug in these or any other SMG programs, please let me know. I also welcome any and all questions and comments. Address all correspondence (including registrations) to the following address: Steven Georgiades SMG Software 701-H South Hayward Street Anaheim, CA 92804 Or leave a message for me on the Circuit Board: The Circuit Board RBBS SysOp: Dave Kleinschmidt (714) 778-0948 1200/2400 Baud, No Fee All SMG Software is initially released to the public through the Circuit Board. The latest version of any SMG Software can always be found there. A diskette containing all of the latest SMG Software can be obtained by sending a check or money order for $6.00 to the above address. Make all checks payable to Steven M. Georgiades. Thank you.