The Business Master (3rd Edition)

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REMIND Release 4.6: The program that lets you "forget about forgetting" Copyright (C) 1988 Robert M. W. Tsou 28441 Cedarbluff Drive Rancho Palos Verdes, CA 90274 Registration and Licensing Agreement: _____________________________________ REMIND is a user supported software product. It is not in any way free software. You are granted the right to use REMIND for a limited evaluation period. If you find REMIND to be useful and would like to continue to use it, a contribution of $10 in U.S. funds sent to the address below would be greatly appreciated. Your registration will legally entitle you to continue using REMIND. Your support will help us make REMIND an even better product and make possible other low-cost, high-quality programs. When you register, you will receive a free disk through the mail containing the latest version of the program if what you have is not already the latest version. Please specify the type of disk that you use (either 5.25 inch or 3.5 inch disks.) You may give REMIND to others so that they may try it out as well; however, you may not modify or remove ANY of the program or documentation files in the package. No compensation may be received for distributing REMIND. To register as a licensed user, send your name, address, and any comment you may have regarding the program, along with $10 to the following address: Robert M. W. Tsou 28441 Cedarbluff Drive Rancho Palos Verdes, CA 90274 Thank you for using REMIND. _____________________________________________________________ REMIND, version 4.6 A Brief Summary Of Features The concept behind REMIND is very simple: you enter the important dates that you need to be reminded of, such as your anniversary, your mother's birthday, your doctor's appointment date, etc., into the program along with the numbers of days that you would like REMIND to start reminding you ahead of the event, the program will then store the information in a data file. When you run the program using your AUTOEXEC.BAT, each time you turn on your computer, the program will automatically execute to compare the current date obtained from your computer's internal clock/calendar to the entries in the data file. If a date matches, a window will pop out, giving you the important reminder. If no date matches, the program will simply end inconspicuously, allowing you to proceed with your daily work. You may have multiple entries for each date if desired and you may enter the dates to be reminded up to one year in advance of the current date. Of course, for the program to work correctly, your computer's internal clock/calendar must be set to the right current date. Please consult your DOS manual on how to do so if you do not already know how. The following is a list of features of REMIND 4.6: (1). Automatically remind you of important dates and things to do for the day as the date approaches or arrives. (2). User-determinable advanced reminding (however many days of advanced notice for a date/event.) (3). Recurrent (monthly) reminding for any day of the month. (4). Perpetually-accurate built-in reminders for most of our major holidays. (5). Simple view/editing capabilities built-in for the data file so one may easily delete out-dated entries. (6). Celebrate important holidays and birthdays with music. (7). Includes handy perpetual calendar (with accurate holidays) for quick referencing. (8). Interesting historical chronicle included with calendar. (9). Leap years taken into consideration by programming logic. (10). Colorful and intuitively simple to run. _____________________________________________________________ How To Use REMIND Installing REMIND; _________________ REMIND, version 4.6, is a package consisting of five files: ENTERDAY.EXE : for entering dates to be reiminded, viewing/editing the entries, and consulting the handy calendar. REMIND.EXE : for displaying the reminders. You should run this with your AUTOEXEC.BAT or any batch file that you use daily. REMIND.DOC : this documentation. REGISTER.FRM : registration form. WHATS.NEW : summarize the new features of the current version. After the program has been run for the first time, a data file, REMIND.DTA, will be created automatically to store the data. If you are already using a previous version of REMIND, it is advisable that you back up your existing REMIND.DTA before proceeding with the installation. REMIND is best run from a hard disk using your AUTOEXEC.BAT. This way, whenever you turn on your computer, the program will automatically execute to check if you have any reminders for the given day. One may also run the program with any other batch file that you use daily. The way I set up my program is as follows: first I create a new subdirectory on my hard disk called C:\REMIND. This can be done easily by typing "MD REMIND" and <enter> at the C:\> prompt. Then I copy all of the executable files into the new subdirectory. To run the program using your AUTOEXEC.BAT, I add the following lines to the end of my AUTOEXEC.BAT file: CD\REMIND REMIND CD\ This way, the program will automatically execute each time you turn on your computer. In addition to this, I also make out a batch file (say "R.BAT") to run the REMIND program. This way, while I am at the computer and I forgot what was in the reminder, I can run the program quickly without having to turn off and on the computer. R.BAT can be made simply by doing the following: At the DOS prompt, C:\>, type: Copy con R.BAT <enter> echo off <enter> cd\remind <enter> remind <enter> cd\ <enter> After this, you type ^Z by pressing the <CTRL> key and <Z> keys simultaneously. DOS will acknowledge by responding with "one file copied." Now you have R.BAT ready to run. Place R.BAT into your "BATCH" subdirectory and pass your DOS's path through it. This way you will be able to run R.BAT from any where within your system. (To understand DOS's PATH command, refer to your DOS manual.) Now that you have successfully installed REMIND into your computer, let's discuss the finer details of how to use the program: ____________________________________________________________ Running ENTERDAY.EXE: ____________________ As mentioned earlier, ENTERDAY.EXE is an executable file used to enter the dates to be reminded. You must run this program first before you can run REMIND.EXE. As you run ENTERDAY.EXE, it will create a data file called REMIND.DTA and store your data into it. One may enter the dates to be reminded of up to one year ahead of times. When you run ENTERDAY.EXE, you will see the main menu with several choices. Today's date will be displayed at the bottom for your reference. The choices are (A). Entering dates to remind, (B). view/edit entries, (C). consult calendar, and (Esc) to exit. One may use the up/down arrow keys to scroll the highlight bar to the desired selection and enter or simply press the corresponding keys to enter the selections. * * * * (A). entering dates to remind: When you have selected this, a window will pop out asking you for the month of the date that you need to be reminded. Simply type in the month in Roman numerals (for example, the month of May would be "5".) Then the program will ask you for the day of the date to be reminded, simply type in the date. After which, the program will ask you to press <B> if this represents a birthday or simply <enter> if this is not a birthday. Pressing <B> at this point will tell the program to sing "Happy Birthday To You" when the date arrives. This, of course, is an option entirely up to the user. After this, the program will ask you to fill out the reminder for the date entered, i.e. things to do for that day. One may enter up to about 3 lines of text within the given window. Just type away, the word will automatically wrap. If you make a mistake and want to start over, just press <Esc> to cancel. When you are finished with the reminder text, press <enter> to go to the next step. The program will at this point ask you to enter the numbers of days of advanced notice that you desire for the date entered. You may press any number. Pressing "5" ,for example, will tell the program to start reminding you 5 days prior to the arrival of the date entered. If you press "0" the reminder will only occur on the date of the given event. You probably want to start the reminding several days in advance of an important event (to allow time for mailing of cards or buying of gifts, for example.) Next, the program will ask you whether you would like the reminder to occur monthly on the same day (for paying of bills, for example.) Simply type in a Y/N answer. Of course, this option will not be given if the date entered is a birthday- birthdays happen yearly, never monthly. One word of caution when you use this feature: if the date that you entered is the 31st of each month, the reminder will NOT appear on the months of Feb., April, June, September, and November because, quite simply, there are no such days in these months. Similarly, the 30th of each month will not appear in February and 29th will not appear in the same month unless it is a leap year. The program will warn you of this if the date that you entered are the ones mentioned above. Before you exit the entering of dates section, the program will ask you whether you would like to enter more dates to remind. Entering "Y" will repeat the process, and "N" will take you back to the Main Menu. * * * * (B). View/Edit entries: Notice that if you have just finished entering dates to remind and getting back to the main menu, the highlight bar now rests on the view/edit selection. You see, the program knows that if you are just finished entering dates to remind, it is unlikely that you will go right back to it to enter more dates to remind. One may now view/edit the entries that one has made before and delete any out-dated entries if desired. By pressing the (B). View/edit entries selection, one will get into the editor mode and all of the entries contained in REMIND.DTA will now be displayed on screen. Depending on how long the list of dates are, one may press the <page down> or <page up> keys to view the entire file. If you see any entries that are out of date, you may delete that entry by first using the arrow keys to place the cursor under that entry and press <Alt-D>. The out-dated entry will disappear and the rest of data file will automatically scroll up one line to fill in the void. You may delete as many entries as needed to keep your data files clean and up-to-date. When you are done, pressing <F3> will save the changes and exit or pressing <Esc> will simply exit without saving the changes. A note will sound when you save changes to let you know that the file is now saved. It is best to keep your data file up-to-date from time to time (so they won't come back next year) although even if you have many entries in the data file, it will not appreciably affect the speed of program execution. For the birthday entries, it is best to simply leave them there so they will come back year after year. The editor does contain one known "bug" in that it will work only if you have no more than 400 entries in the REMIND.DTA file, more than adequate for most needs. If you do not use the editor, however, you may have as many entries as you have disk space for them. Since REMIND.DTA is written in ASCII format, one may also use any ASCII editor to edit the entries. (I will work on the "bug" as soon as I read some more of my Turbo Pascal reference book <grin>....) * * * * (C). Consulting Calendar: This is the part of the program that is most fun to run. It is not only a perpetually accurate calendar WITH holidays, it is also an accurate historical chronicle in a limited sense. When you enter the calendar, the current month will be displayed with the current date flashing. The major holidays for the current month will be displayed at the bottom in a box. The holidays are accurate even if they fall on different dates from year to year (such as Thanksgiving, Mother's Day, Memorial Day, Etc.) By pressing <page-up> one can view the months ahead and pressing <page-down> one can view the months past. Pressing the <up-arrow> key will advance the year by one and <arrow-down> key will subtract the year by one. Pressing the <+> key will advance the years by 10 and pressing the <-> key will subtract the year by 10. Pressing the <home> key at any time will take you back to the current month/year. If you forget the above instructions, pressing <F1> will always bring you help. Pressing <Esc> at any time will take you back to the main menu. Notice that I have also included the dates of Daylight Saving Time changes for each year (in April and October.) They are, of course, accurate perpetually (unless Congress changes the rules again.) If the calendar being displayed is within one year of the current date, pressing the <X> key will show the dates that are marked for reminding (little dark triangles next to the dates.) If you are not within one year of the current date, a beep will sound. Of course, you must enter some dates first before you can demonstrate this feature. Once the dates that are marked for reminding are displayed, the program will ask you whether you would like to view the content of any particular date shown. Pressing <Y> at this point means "yes," and pressing any other key means "no." If you press <Y>, the program will prompt you for the date that you would like to examine. Simply enter the date desired (numbers only) and the program will display the reminder for that particular date in the window at the bottom of the screen. This serves to give the user a "preview" of upcoming reminders. For your amusement, I have made the calendar also into a historical chronicle of sort. By "going back in time" using the <arrow-down> or <page-down> keys, any important world events that happened at that time in history will be displayed at the bottom. Try to find the dates for the sinking of the Titanic, or the bombing of Pearl Harbor, or the battle of Chancellorsville, for example, and relive the history. Although this feature has nothing to do with the main purpose of this program, it does add a historical perspective to the calendar and, perhaps, a smile to your face. Once you have finished running ENTERDAY.EXE, you may then press <Esc> to exit to DOS. A data file, REMIND.DTA, will be automatically created to store the data that you have just entered. Now you are ready to run REMIND.EXE... __________________________________________________________ Running REMIND.EXE: __________________ As mentioned earlier, this is the program that will actually display the reminders to you when you run it with your AUTOEXEC. BAT or any batch files that you use daily. When it is run, it will first access your computer's internal clock/calendar to obtain the current date. Then it will check the REMIND.DTA file for any matching dates. If a date matches, a window will pop out, giving you the important reminder, or else the program will simply end inconspicuously, allowing you to proceed with your work. REMIND.EXE has many built-in reminders that will automatically pop out when the dates are right. Virtually all of our major holidays are included (except Easter- the logic is too difficult to work out.) The holidays that are includes are: New Year's day, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, President's Day, Martin Luther King Jr 's Birthday, St. Patrick's Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Halloween, Election Day, Veteran's Day, etc. The holiday reminders will pop out on the day of the given holiday and they should be perpetually accurate even if the holidays fall on different dates from year to year. Try experimenting by changing your computer's internal clock/calendar and see these holiday reminders pop out. On Christmas and New Year's Day, the program will also play a nice little tune to help you celebrate. The program will also remind you automatically one day prior to St. Patrick's Day to remind you to wear green the next day (something that I always forget until I wrote the program!) Also, for Mother's Day, Father's Day, and Valentine's Day, the program will start reminding you a few days in advance so you will have time to buy gifts or mail cards. The program will even remind you to set your clock when it is time to switch to/from Daylight Saving Time. You will never arrive to work an hour late from now on! _______________________________________________________________ A Word About Registering I am not a computer programmer by trade and I do not expect to make a bundle by writing this program. Actually, I first laid my hands on a computer only a year ago when I bought my first IBM-clone at the urging of my brother. However, this program does represent literally hundreds of hours of work on my part, often late into nights and on weekends. Although It was a lot of work, it also gave me great pleasure in seeing the program come to life from a germinal idea a few months ago; besides, I learned a few things about computer programming during the process. In order to encourage people to register, I thought long and hard about a "registration reminder" that pops out randomly at, say, every 10th or so running of the program; however, I decided against it because it would be too cynical a thing to do. I hate programs with "copy protection" and "automatic delaying," or any other annoying features as much as you do and I certainly do not approve of "cripplewares" with some features missing until you register. The version you are getting here, therefore, is a fully-functioning version with nothing held back. The same as I have on my own hard disk. By registering, you will be letting me know that there are a few honest people out there who care about quality programming at low cost, who care about the shareware concept, and who appreciate my efforts in bringing this program to you. Unless, of course, if you are utterly destitute, then you may just send me a nice card. I hope you have as much fun using this program as I had writing it. Enjoy! Robert M. W. Tsou 28441 Cedarbluff Drive Rancho Palos Verdes, CA 90274 August 1, 1989 ____________________________________________________________ DISCLAIMER (Please Read) The author doe not give any warranty, either expressed or implied, to anyone using this program. In no event shall the author be liable for any damages, including loss of profits or anticipated profits, lost savings, or other incidental or consequential damages arising out of the use or the inability to use this program. The program comes "as is" and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether the program is suitable for his/her computer system. ***************************************************************