While each window type has its own unique form and function, they do share a few common characteristics. You should already be familiar with the standard close, resize and zoom icons in the window corners. What you may not have seen is the pop-up menu at the lower left of some of the window types:
The strange little triangle symbol is an indicator that a pop-up menu is accessible by clicking in the region. (The cursor will change to a similar symbol over most pop-up items.) Each type of window has its own menu. Some items, such as “Calendar” above, indicate the state of an option. A checkmark means that the option is turned on; no checkmark and the option is off. Selecting the item toggles the state.
The pop-up box will show the last item you have chosen; the next click in the box will start from that item so you can easily repeat an operation. Release the mouse button while outside of the menu to cancel the menu selection. The menu is always available, even if the item displayed in the pop-up box has been dimmed, since other items may still be allowed.
The “Calendar Only” Window
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Nothing too tricky here. Created with the Calendar Only menu item. Displays a full month with a dotted box around “today” if it happens to appear on the display. (Guess when this section of the manual was written.) Displays the current month when first opened. Note that occasions are not indicated; that is done only in the “What’s Happening” window. The font size used depends on the size of the window.
Those funny looking little half-gray squares at the upper corners are “dog ears”; the left one fiddles with the month and the right one the year. Clicking in the gray portion moves backward by one month/year, and the white moves forward. For the impatient among us, you can click directly on the month and year names to get pop-up menus for quick access.
Command-Right arrow key advances to the next month. Command-Left arrow backs up to the previous.
Clicking once on a day number will highlight that day (not too exciting). Double-clicking will create a new occasion for that day, or simply beep if there are no occasion files.
The Edit menu Cut or Copy puts an occasion for the highlighted year, month and day into the clipboard. Paste sets the month and year and highlights the day for the first occasion in the clipboard.
The “What’s Happening” Window
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Created with the “What’s Happening” menu item. Here is where you find out about all the important and insignificant events that have occurred, will have occurred, or are occurring (see Douglas Adams’ Restaurant at the End of the Universe, chapter 15, for alternative tenses).
••• What’s Happening Window Parts
The “Date Line” Describes the range of days that are currently being shown in the window. Click here to pop up the “What’s Happening” sub-menu to change the range of dates shown.
The “Calendar Box” Is optional and shows the range of days displayed in calendar form. It works just like the “Calendar” window except that the left “dog ear” moves in increments of the current range (for example, by single days for “Tomorrow” or “Today” and by seven days for “This Week”). Click on a day number to scroll the “Occasion List” and highlight the occasions for that day; double click to create a new occasion. Days that have occasions are shown in bold (or color if supported).
The “Occasion List” Descriptions of occasions occurring in the current range of days. Each day has a heading with its date followed by the text of the occasions on that day. Click on a heading to highlight all occasions for that day; double click to create a new occasion for that date. Click on an individual occasion to highlight it; double click to view the occasion’s definition.
Click and drag the double line separating the “Calendar Box” and “Occasion List” to change how much of the window is allotted to each.
••• “What’s Happening” Window Pop-up menu choices:
• Show Calendar
Controls the display of the calendar box. The box appears only if this option has a checkmark.
• Print…
Prints the complete contents of the list. A standard print dialog is presented to select print options.
• Completed
Marks this occurrence of the selected Occasion as completed. It will disappear from the list if the occurrence is for today or a future date.
• Edit
Opens an Occasion window to either edit an existing occasion, or create a new one if an entire day is selected.
• Delete
Deletes all occurrences of the selected Occasion. Hold down the Option key to skip the confirmation dialog.
Edit menu Cut or Copy commands place a copy of the selected text in the clipboard. The entire list will be copied if nothing is selected. Paste and Clear commands are currently ignored.
The arrow keys, up, down, left and right, move the current selection by days or individual occasions.
Command-Right arrow advances the date range; Command-Left arrow moves to previous dates.
The “Browse Occasion File” Window
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Opened through the “Occasion Files…” dialog’s Browse button. Lists the occasions defined in an occasion file. The “What” column shows the descriptions of the occasions; the “When” column is the occasion template (i.e.: “when” it occurs). The “Type” column is the name of the occasion’s type.
You can change the horizontal order and location of the columns by clicking and dragging the column titles. The column placement, as well as the size and location of the “Browse” window, are saved in the occasion file.
You can change the column used to sort the occasions by clicking on the column titles without dragging. This will also be saved.
Click on an occasion in the list to select it; double click to edit the occasion’s definition. Shift-click to select a range of occasions or Command-click to select several individual occasions.
••• Browse Window pop-up menu choices:
• New Occasion
Opens an edit occasion window for the creation of new occasions in the file. Unavailable if the file is locked.
• Edit Occasion
Opens an Occasion window for all selected occasions, the same as double clicking on an occasion. Unavailable if nothing is selected.
• Delete Occasion
Deletes ALL selected occasions. You will be prompted as to whether you really want to delete them before anything irreversible is done (unless you hold down the Option key). Unavailable if nothing is selected or the file is locked.
• Print Occasions
Prints the currently selected occasions, or all if nothing is selected.
• Set Type To
Changes the Type for all selected occasions to the choice you make from the sub-menu. Unavailable if nothing is selected or the file is locked.
Edit menu Copy command copies the definitions of the selected occasions to the clipboard. Cut does the same but also DELETES the occasions from the file. Clear simply DELETES the selected occasions. Paste adds internal or text occasions in the clipboard to the file.
Ok, close your eyes and take a deep breath. Hold it a few seconds. Now slowly let it out. Do this a few more times while humming the mantra of your choice (I recommend “Mac-a-doo, Mac-a-doo, Mac-a-doo-doo-doo.”) You should be feeling relaxed and slightly light-headed. Just the right mental state to handle the next section.
The “Occasion” Window
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An Occasion window is used to create and change an occasion. Contained within its borders is all the information needed to fully specify a single occasion. Before we get into the mechanics, let’s chat a bit about what exactly is an occasion.
••• How To Define an Occasion! •••
You need four pieces of information to define an occasion: its file, occasion type, description and template. Though occasions can be placed temporarily in the clipboard, they do nothing useful until placed in an occasion file. Occasion Types have already been discussed and control many aspects of how the occasion is treated by the parts of the package.
The occasion’s description is simply a string of up to 255 characters that conveys enough to remind you of what the occasion is all about, like “Mom’s Birthday,” or “Carole starts yet another new job.” Option characters may be entered, but you cannot enter a “Return” to force a new line.
The template is the most interesting part of an occasion. It determines the days on which the occasion occurs in years past and to come. You can specify occasions that happen only once (one-time occasions) and also those that repeat on a yearly, monthly, weekly, daily or other basis. It is very important to understand how this is done to get the most out of this package. Relax, take a sip of coffee, Jolt™ or whatever gets you through the day, and wrap your mind around the following.
Any given day can be specified by five items of information: the year, month and day of the month on which it occurs, the day of the week it falls on, and how many times that particular day of the week has happened in the month. As an example, the day on which I am writing this is “June 24, 1990, the Fourth Sunday in the month.” You really need only the first three pieces of information, but providing the other two gives you more flexibility in the kinds of occasions you can specify. For example, the occurrence of Mother’s Day in the U.S. is defined as “the Second Sunday in May.” You can’t give a specific day of the month since it changes from year to year.
An occasion template specifies values for some or all of the above five items. An occasion occurs on a given day if the values specified in the occasion template match those for the day. The unspecified values in the template are ignored, and you can substitute the word “any” for them if it makes things any clearer. Probably pretty confused, eh? Don’t worry; it is really pretty simple. Let’s try a few examples.
The template “Monday, June” can be read as “any year, month of June, any day of the month, day of the week of Monday, any occurrence of that day of the week.” It will occur on any Monday in June of any year. The template “June 25, 1990” occurs once, the same day as “Fourth Monday, June, 1990” since the 25th is also the fourth Monday. The next one is a little tougher. The template “First, 1990” translates to “year of 1990, any month, any day of the month, the First occurrence of any day of the week.” It occurs exactly seven times every month in the year 1990, once for the first occurrence of each day of the week in that month.
Bad templates specify occasions that can never occur. An easy one is “Tuesday, June 25, 1990,” which is wrong since that day is a Monday. A more obscure example is “First Monday, June 10.” Since the 10th day of the month is preceded by more than a full week, it can never be the first occurrence of a Monday. Most of the bad occasions are detected and flagged by the “Occasion” window, but not all. Think about the template you have specified and convince yourself that it can actually occur.
Got all that? Has the fog lifted? Well, here’s just a little more mist. In addition to the simple “first, second, third, etc.” occurrences of days of the week, there are two other choices that add a lot of flexibility to the type of occasions you can specify.
The item “Last” selects the last occurrence of a day of the week in a month. The “Last Friday in June, 1990” is June 29, 1990. “Last Sunday” occurs on the last Sunday of every month. "Last" without a specific day of the week selects the last occurrence of all seven days of the week. Peachy.
The last possibility is occasions that repeat in a fixed number of days. If your trash collection is every other week, it repeats every 14 days. If it is your turn to de-louse the wombat every other day, that repeats every 2 days. You may choose any interval from 1 to 255 days in “Remember?”’s Repeat occasion format. We need one other piece of information, a starting date from which the repeated events are measured. You specify a Month, Day of month and Year which is assumed to be the first occurrence of the occasions. Other occurrences follow in the interval you have selected. You cannot save a repeat occasion unless all of this information is present.
OK, now you are an Occasion expert. Let’s see how to create them.
Using the “Occasion” Window
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••• Edit Occasion Window Parts:
• File:
Shows the occasion file that is home to this occasion. Clicking on the file name gives a pop-up menu of all files. Changing files will not delete the original occasion, simply add a new one to the target file. You cannot move occasions into locked files; they are dimmed in the menu.
• Type:
Gives the occasion’s type. You can change the type by clicking on the type name and selecting a new one from the pop-up menu. Hold down the Option key to change the type and open the Occasion Types dialog for the type.
• When it Occurs
This block of items allows you to define the parts of the occasion template. Click on an item to get a pop-up menu of choices for that item. Items with a checkmark will be part of the template. Others which are blank (except for the triangle) are currently unspecified and can be read as “any”.
• Starts at:
Click on the left side of this item to set a starting hour for this occasion. Click on the right side to set the minute. This time appears before the description text in What’s Happening windows. You will not get a pop-up alert at this time unless the Alert at time is specified.
• Alert at:
Set the same way as the Starts at time. You will get a pop-up alert (window and/or sound) at this time. Note that alert times occurring after the Starts at time will actually alert you the day before the occasion occurs and will appear underlined in the Alert at box. The alert time is unavailable if the occasion’s Type does not allow pop-up windows or sounds. The alert time is specified relative to the starting time.
• Description
This box is where you enter the text to describe what the occasion is all about. Press the TAB key to select the entire contents of the box; the next key you type will delete the old description. This is handy if you are using the same window to enter several occasions.
• Comments
The area below the description box displays information about this occasion. It normally shows the date of next occurrence, but may contain a description of a problem if there is something wrong with the occasion. It may also show a “Persists since” date if the occasion is Persistent, occurred previously, and you have not yet marked it as Completed.
• Persistent
Turning on this box makes the occasion an automatic “to do” item. Instead of quietly disappearing the day after it occurs, it will “stick” to Today and continue to appear until you select it and choose the “Completed” menu item in either the Occasion or What’s Happening windows. The “Add To Do item” menu command adds a Persistent occasion for Today’s date.
A note about pop-up alerts. You will normally get two alerts for an occasion, one at the Alert at time, and another at the Starts at time. There is a Preference item to eliminate the second pop-up alert.
••• Edit Occasion Window Pop-up menu choices:
• Replace Occasion
Available if you have made changes to an existing occasion, and the file is not locked. It replaces the old occasion with the changed version.
• New Occasion
Saves the current occasion as a brand-new occasion in the occasion file. It is available only if the occasion has no problems and the file is not locked.
• Revert
Allows you to undo changes made to an existing occasion if you haven’t saved them with “Replace or “New.”
• Delete
Removes an existing occasion from its file and closes the edit window.
• Find
• Find Next
These items allow you to search through the open occasion files for occasions containing the current enabled fields. For example, turn off all fields but the month and set it to "October." Now if you select the “Find” menu item, an occasion occurring in October will appear in the window. Select “Find Next” to search for another October occasion. You will hear a beep when no more occasions match the given fields. Any text you type into the description box will match if it is contained anywhere in the descriptions of existing occasions. You cannot search based on the occasion Type or Persistent items.
• Completed
Skips to the next occurrence of this occasion. If the occasion persists from a previous date, it will stop doing so. Otherwise, you skip over the next future occurrence. You can skip as far into the future as desired.
• Undo Completed
Returns the occasion back to the present. Any uses of Completed that skipped future occurrences are nullified.
• Desc >> When it Occurs
Converts the text contents of Description into an occasion definition. This is described in more detail below as Entering Occasion Definitions from the Keyboard. (Available only with System 6.0.3 or later.)
Edit menu Cut, Copy and Paste items are supported. Hold down the Option key while closing the window to save the changes without asking. The occasion cannot be saved if it has an unresolved problem.
Entering Occasion Definitions from the Keyboard
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This is a quick way to enter an occasion definition into an Occasion window. Just type a text description of the occasion into the description box and select Desc >> When it Occurs from the window menu (or press Command =). The contents of the description box will be picked apart and the When it Occurs area set appropriately.
The definition should be a list of some of the following: month name (January…December); day of week name (Monday,…Sunday); the occurrence of a day of the week (first…last, repeat every ? days); the name of an occasion Type (Birthday, Meeting, etc.); a day of the month (1…31); a year (1956…2018, or 56…99); a short date (7/4/91, 8/1); starting and alert times (3:30, 10pm, 22:00uhr, etc.); the special dates "Today," "Tomorrow," and "Yesterday"; the description of the occasion enclosed in single or double quotes ("Billy's birthday," “Joe’s neutering party”) or the word “Persistent.”
Note that the first “time of day” you enter will be used as the Starts at time; the second specifies the Alert at time. Only the fields you specify are changed. The description may follow the other items without quotes if you precede it with a TAB character. (Copy/Paste use this format.)
Upper/lower case doesn't matter, and you can abbreviate all of the names (jan = January, tod = Today, meet = Meeting, etc.). Be careful to include enough to insure that you get the item you expect. Commas and other punctuation are ignored, as are a few filler words such as "at" and "on." Here are a few examples:
July 4 “Independence Day”
May 10, 1956 “somebody's birthday”
7/9/91 repeat every 14 days “Trash collection day.”
meeting 3pm 2:30pm tomorrow “Billy's social problems. (will alert at 2:30pm)”
birth feb 19 “Kimberlee's birthday.”
today persistent payment “Don’t forget to pay the tree surgeon.”
You can type an entire list of occasions in this format into a Browse window using your favorite word processor as described below. (You can enter only one occasion into an Occasion window.)
••• Import/Export of Occasion Definitions •••
To EXPORT occasion definitions in text:
(1) Open a Browse window for the occasion file to export.
(2) Select all of the occasion to export.
(3) Select "Copy" from the Edit menu.
(4) Switch to TeachText or a word processor and choose Paste to insert the occasions as text.
To IMPORT text occasion definitions:
(1) Open the text file with TeachText or some word processor.
(2) Select the lines containing the occasion definitions.
(3) "Copy" them to the scrap.
(4) Open the “Remember? DA” and a Browse window for the file to receive the definitions. and choose “Paste.”
Continue on to the last section "Part 5, Credits."
