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Ample Notice Appointments calendar/alarm clock by Mark Harris Granny's Old-Fashioned Software (tm) Rt 4, Box 216 Boone, NC 28607 (704) 264-6906 July, 1988 Version 1.2 (c) Copyright 1988 by Mark Harris All Rights Reserved The unmodified Ample Notice distribution diskette, containing a copy of this manual, may be freely copied and shared, but printed copies of this document may not be copied. Table of Contents 1. Introduction 2. A quick tour 3. Installation 4. The NOTES file 5. The appointments screen 6. The editor 7. CONFIG.CAL 8. Command line options 9. Tips for effective use 10. About Shareware Introduction 1 1. Introduction. Ample Notice is a calendar and alarm clock package that can help organize your life. You enter appointments and notes into a standard text file in any of a variety of natural formats, and each day you view a calendar of commitments taken from this file. Appointments which include a time can automatically set a 'pop-up alarm clock' which notifies you at a given advance interval (regardless of what you are doing on your computer). Printouts can be obtained in various print styles so that you can keep track of your appointments away from your computer; the 'tiny' option lets you print very compressed listings for your wallet or purse. The appointments file can be edited from within Ample Notice, or by using any other text editor. By using a 'background' editor such as SideKick (tm), you can update this file in the middle of other computing tasks. Ample Notice is very easy to use but its flexibility ensures that you won't outgrow it as your use becomes more extensive. For example, you can add straightforward entries such as 3/5/88 9:00 Meet with Bill or Nov 3, 1988 Report due. But you can also enter cyclical appointments such as July 18 Elizabeth's birthday (once a year date) !Monday 3:00 Piano lesson (weekly appointment) !2Monday 7/20/87 1:00 ADR committee (every other Monday starting 7/20/87) !2Monday!3 7/20/87 1:00 ADR committee (every other Monday for 3 times) !Jun3Sun Fathers Day (third Sunday in June each year) !?3Mon Rotary Club (third Monday of every month) Another category of entries is 'notes'; starting a line with '*' will place that entry in an initial display of reminders that are not attached to a specific date (obligations that don't go away until you do them). To illustrate, suppose that the file (called NOTES by default) contains the lines * Present for John & Mary * Xmas pictures Wednesday 11:00 David's piano lesson 11/25 Bill's birthday 11/27/87 11:00 Dentist November 20, 1987 Fred Smith 2:00 A quick tour 2 11 Nov 1987 4:00 ADI meeting * Clean flue 12/26/87 Drive to Alabama and if your computer's system date is 11/19/87 then typing 'AN' will produce the following display: Notes: Present for John & Mary Xmas pictures Clean flue Appointments starting Thursday November 19, 1987 Friday November 20, 1987 Fred Smith 2:00 Wednesday November 25, 1987 Bill's birthday Thursday November 26, 1987 4:00 ADI meeting Friday November 27, 1987 11:00 Dentist Saturday December 26, 1987 Drive to Alabama Ample Notice has many additional features for maintaining the appointments file and for using the alarm clock. We recommend that you take the 'Quick Tour' of the program described in the next section before reading the hard-core reference sections which follow. Before you proceed here are a couple of important announcements: The Ample Notice package will be updated from time to time and a description of the changes will be maintained in a file called READ.ME. You should view this file as soon as possible, either by typing GO (to see the contents a page at a time on the screen) or by typing COPY READ.ME PRN (to copy the file to the printer). Ample Notice is shareware and you are vigorously encouraged to register; the registration cost is only $30 and carries appreciable benefits. Please read Section 10 for details. 2. A quick tour. Ample Notice is easier to use than to describe; in this section we'll take an on-line tour through the program's features. To get started, place a copy of the Ample Notice disk (you have backed up the original, haven't you?) in drive A. (Section 3 has instructions for use with a hard drive, but for now just use your floppy.) If your system date and time have not been set, set A quick tour 3 them now by using DOS's DATE and TIME commands. We'll begin with a brief look at the alarm clock. Type ALARM to load ALARM.COM as a resident program. (If you have a Color Graphics Adapter system which blinks when the screen scrolls type ALARM -Z to suppress video 'snow'.) Pressing <Alt> <Left Shift> at any time will bring up the ALARM control window; if this key combination is used by another resident program you can substitute another combination. Typing ALARM - ? will show a list of codes for the various pairs of shift keys; for example, ALARM -K 3 will make <Left Shift> <Right Shift> do the job. Bring up the control window; you should see something like this: / Space,UDRL,<Esc> \ | | | Now: 7:53 a.m. | | | (U,D,R,L represent the | Alarm: OFF | up, down, right and | | left arrow keys) | 12:00 p.m. | | | \------------------/ Six keys are recognized by ALARM: Space - toggles alarm off/on Up arrow - advances alarm time by one hour Down " - rolls back alarm time one hour Right " - advances alarm time by one minute Left " - rolls back alarm time by one minute <Esc> - closes window Change the alarm time to two minutes past the current (system) time indicated by 'Now' in the window, then press the space bar to turn on the alarm and press <Esc> to close the window. The alarm will go off at the appointed time regardless of other computer activities, but rest assured that no interference will occur. For example, you can be formatting a disk when the alarm sounds with no ill effects. While we're waiting for the alarm to happen let's continue our tour. Load the Ample Notice program AN.EXE by entering AN at the DOS prompt; the appointments file NOTES will be loaded by default. Your screen will show a block of text under the heading 'Notes', followed by a list of dates. The bottom of the screen shows which keys are meaningful to Ample Notice: <-, ->, Home, End, A)larm, C)al, E)dit, F)ind, H)elp, N)ext, P)rint, V)iew, <Esc> You can obtain help on any of these functions by pressing the 'H' or F1 key. Go ahead and try it. The cursor keys let you move through your appointments for a year. (This default interval can be changed). Take this opportunity to browse for a while. A quick tour 4 The P)rint option lets you print appointments for a range of dates. We won't do any printing now, but press 'P' to see the print menu. The first entry is the starting date, which defaults to the current date. Press <Enter> to accept this default. The next entry is the ending date, which defaults to three weeks from now; again accept the default. Next comes the 'Mode' field which indicates the print style to be used; pressing the space bar cycles through the options Normal, Compressed and Tiny. (These styles are originally set up for Epson-style printers but can be changed in the CONFIG.CAL file.) Change to Tiny and press <Enter>. The final option indicates whether Notes are to be included in the printout; the space bar toggles between 'Yes' and 'No'. DO NOT press <Enter> now (which would cause printing to begin); instead, press <Esc> to abort the print operation. The C)al option opens a window showing a monthly calendar: November, 1986 SUN MON TUE WED THU FRI SAT ----------------------------------- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 The up- and down-arrow keys are used to change the year, and the right- and left-arrow keys change the month. You can press 'P' to obtain a printout of a calendar for any range of months, and as with printing appointments you can select one of three print styles. When you are finished viewing the calendar press <Esc>. Now press 'E' to edit the appointments file. The editor has more features than we can examine in this tour, so we'll just experiment a little. You should see the first screen of your NOTES file with the cursor positioned at the top line, and available options are summarized at the bottom of the screen: Up-arrow, Down-arrow, PgUp, PgDn, Home, End, C)al, D)el, E)dit, F)ind, H)elp, I)ns, K)opy, L)oad, M)ove, N)ext, S)ort, U)ndel, W)rite, eX)it, <Esc> The cursor keys are used to move through the file, and editing is done by pressing 'E' to edit an existing line or 'I' to insert a new one. Move around the file until you get the hang of it, then insert two new lines. The first line will mark your birthday and the second will indicate a time for the alarm clock to take note of. (You can insert the line anywhere except just before a line starting with '&' which indicates a continuation from the previous line.) As an example suppose your birthday is July 17. Press 'I' to begin the insertion, then type Jul 17 My birthday. Installation 5 Press <Enter> to accept the new line, then insert a second line which starts with a time 15 minutes from now. For example assuming that it is now 3:00 p.m. on July 24, 1987, you could type 7/24/87 3:15 p.m. This is a test. Press <Enter> to accept the line, then press <Esc> to return to the appointments listing. To see how the alarm works with your appointments press 'A'. You will see a list of today's appoint- ments which start with a time; in this case there is only one such appointment. Next to each item is the advance warning to be used by the alarm; the default of 10 minutes can be changed with the right- and left-arrow keys or by putting a different default value in CONFIG.CAL. For now simply press <Enter> to accept the displayed interval. You have now set the alarm clock for 3:05 p.m. You can set up to 38 alarms at once, all in addition to the alarm which you set from ALARM's pop-up window. By placing the appropriate entry in CONFIG.CAL you can have the alarm set automatically each day without having to use the A)larm option. To see the effect of your new entry on the alarm clock, press <Alt> <Left Shift> (or whatever shift combination you substituted with the -K option) to bring up the alarm window. You will see a second window which includes the reminder 3:15 p.m. This is a test. All of today's appointments, including those with no times, will show in this window. Release the pop-up window with <Esc>. By now you should be back in Ample Notice's appointment display. Page through the appointments to find the day of the week of your next birthday. Finally, press <Esc> to exit the program. If the alarm clock has not yet 'rung' it soon will. In the default configuration the alarm will go off after five seconds; an alternative option (described in the following section) makes the alarm stay on until it is turned off. 3. Installation. Installing Ample Notice is simply a matter of putting a few files where the program can find them. These files are: AN.EXE (the program itself), the NOTES file, the ARCHIVE.CAL file, and CONFIG.CAL. In addition you will need to transfer ALARM.COM to a convenient disk or directory. The simplest way of handling this is to keep all these files on the root directory of the disk from which you boot (hard disk or floppy). ARCHIVE.CAL will not exist until you 'archive' your outdated appointments and CONFIG.CAL won't be needed unless you want to change Ample Notice's defaults (see Section 7), so you can get started by using the DOS COPY command to transfer the files AN.EXE, NOTES and ALARM.COM to the appropriate directory. If you want to keep your files in more exotic places than the root directory, Ample Notice is ready to cooperate. You can put Installation 6 AN.EXE anywhere you like with the usual constraints on executing it - the file must be in your default directory or in the DOS path list (see your DOS manual for a description of the PATH command) unless you give the path on the command line (DOS 3.0 and higher). AN.EXE searches the DOS path for CONFIG.CAL, so you can put this file anywhere DOS can find it. You can also reference an explicit configuration file in the AN command line; this is particularly useful when more than one person uses your computer. Section 8 gives details on command line options. You do not need a configuration file at all if AN's defaults are acceptable, but if your path list is long AN will waste some time hunting for a file which doesn't exist. If this delay is objectionable you may want to create CONFIG.CAL as an empty file in your root directory to 'head DOS off at the pass'. The name of the file used for archiving outdated appoint- ments is \ARCHIVE.CAL by default. If you want a different archive you can specify it in CONFIG.CAL (see Section 7) or give it explicitly when performing the M)ove command in Ample Notice's editor (see Section 6). To get the most use from Ample Notice you should view your appointments on a regular basis. By adding a couple of lines to your AUTOEXEC.BAT file you can have ALARM loaded, AN run and the ALARM set simply by turning on your computer. If you don't have another editor for creating or modifying standard text files you can use AN's editor, described in Section 6. We'll proceed on the assumption that you know about the AUTOEXEC.BAT file; if you don't, see your DOS manual for a description. It is important that your system's date and time be set correctly before Ample Notice is run. If your computer has a battery clock this is probably done for you, but if you lack this hardware you will need to include the lines DATE TIME in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. When DATE and TIME are executed you will be prompted to enter the date and time. There is a nice public domain utility called DDATE which can be used in place of DATE; it remembers the last date used and lets you change it (if necessary) with the cursor keys. The next addition to the batch file concerns ALARM.COM. You don't have to load this program, but without it AN.EXE will not set the alarm from the day's appointments. Use of ALARM once installed has been described in Section 1 but there are additional options which can be set when loading the program. The syntax is ALARM [-?] [-B n] [-K keycode] [-B n] [-L] [-V n1 n2 n3 n4] [-Z] Each option is described below: -? shows a help screen but does not install ALARM. -B sets the beep duration in seconds. For example, ALARM -B 10 sets a 10-second alarm. The NOTES file 7 -K sets keys to bring up window; 'keycode' is one of 3 - Right Shift + Left Shift 5 - Right Shift + Ctrl 6 - Left Shift + Ctrl 9 - Right Shift + Alt 10 - Left Shift + Alt (default) 12 - Ctrl + Alt -L - Alarm stays on until you press the same shift combination which brings up the alarm. After the first five seconds the alarm beeps once every 30 seconds until it is turned off. -V changes screen colors. The numbers n1 - n4 (separated by spaces) correspond to the colors used for the window, the alarm time, the labels and the actual time. Each number is a value 0 - 255 which describes the foreground and background colors, the intensity and whether the screen is to blink; see the 'H' option in Section 7 for a list of colors. -Z suppresses video 'snow' on older CGA systems. You can combine options in any order; for example ALARM -Z -K 3 will load ALARM, suppress snow and set the key combination to Right Shift + Left Shift. If you do choose to load ALARM.COM simply include the appropriate line in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. (You may also use ALARM independent of the calendar program; you can load it in AUTOEXEC or any time you are at the DOS prompt.) If you want your calendar to come up automatically the next line should be AN. (If more than one person uses the computer you will want to append an argument to the AN command; see Section 8.) You can also view your appointments any time you are at the DOS prompt by typing AN, but note that ALARM should only be loaded once; subsequent access to the alarm clock is accomplished by pressing the appropriate shift combination. 4. The NOTES file. The file in which you keep a list of reminders and appoint- ments is called \NOTES by default but the name can be changed permanently (see Section 7) or temporarily (on the AN command line or by using the Load command in AN's editor). The reason for the name NOTES is that this is also the default used by the popular SideKick (tm) program, so if you use this utility you can add a reminder by pressing <Ctrl> <Alt> regardless of what program you are running. If you use another 'desktop manager' program you can rename the appointments file accordingly. You can edit NOTES with any editor which can read and write standard ASCII files. As an example, WordStar (tm) in the nondocument mode is appropriate, as are SideKick and PC-Write (tm). Using Ample Notice's built-in editor is the preferred way to modify NOTES; the main incentive for using a different editor is if The NOTES file 8 you happen to be using another program when you want to add a reminder. We recommend that you edit a copy of the Ample Notice NOTES file when you begin using the package rather than starting with an empty file of your own. While you will want to delete many of the lines in our NOTES, you will find the standard dates (such as Thanksgiving and Fathers Day) and the comment section starting with ;00 Following are samples of some of the more complex entry options. worth keeping. The latter section will help you remember AN syntax and keep manual references to a minimum. Lines in the NOTES file should begin with a date or one of the characters '*', '!', '&' or '\'. Lines beginning with '*' represent notes - reminders which are not associated with a fixed date. For example if you need to trim your hedges, the date is not critical but the obligation won't go away until you get around to it. The text following '*' will be displayed in a special notes section which can be optionally printed with your appointments. One-time appointments begin with a date. If a time immedi- ately follows the date then the time will be used in sorting the file and for setting the alarm clock. Several date and time formats are recognized; e.g. 10/2/87 2 p.m. Call Bob October 2, 1987 2:00 Call Bob 2 October 87 1400 Call Bob If the a.m./p.m. indicator is omitted then the time is assumed to be a.m. if it is from 8:00 to 11:59, otherwise it is interpreted as p.m. If the year is omitted then the 'appointment' becomes an anniversary and is displayed or printed whenever the month and day are in the range specified. For example, May 25 David's birthday will show up every year. In any context in which a month is expected, the wild card '?' can be used to match any month. For example, ?/10 Mortgage payment due will show an appointment on the tenth day of each month. Ranges of dates can be entered with a minimum of fuss. 7/3/88+3 Atlanta conference will put the commitment 'Atlanta conference' with the date 7/3/88 and the three days which follow. 6/10/88-7 anniversary will put the reminder 'anniversary' under the date 6/10/88; in addition, the reminder will be placed in the notes category if the current date is one of the seven days preceding 6/10/88. This is a 'forward nag' appointment; backwards nagging is described below as one of the '\' options. It's best to keep your lines to 80 characters (the screen width) or less; longer lines will be split when read by AN. If you The NOTES file 9 run out of space on one line (regardless of category) you can continue to the next line by starting it with '&'. For example: 8/20/87 8:00 pm Party at Griffin's house & Take Rt 87 4 miles, turn left onto Rattlesnake & Gutter Road, third house on left When this appointment is listed, the '&' character will be removed and the remaining text will be indented beneath the first line. The '!' character is used to start lines describing appointments with cycles more complex than simple anniversaries. The first type of appointment indicated by '!' describes a commitment which repeats on a given day of the week at a stated interval. The syntax is illustrated by the following examples: !Wed 3:00 Piano lesson (Piano lesson every Wednesday at 3:00) !3Wed 7/22/87 ADR committee meeting (meeting every third Wednesday starting 7/22/87) !Wed!4 7/22/87 ADR meeting (meeting on four consecutive Wednesdays starting 7/22/87) !2Wed!4 7/22/87 ADR meeting (meeting every other Wednesday for four meetings starting 7/22/87) Another '!' is used for recording dates such as 'the third Thursday in March'. For example: !Jun3Sun Fathers' Day accurately describes the association of Fathers' Day with the third Sunday in June. (Several such dates are included in the NOTES file on the Ample Notice disk.) The number '5' has a special significance in this context - it indicates the last such day in a month. For example, the last Monday in May is Memorial Day; the entry !May5Mon Memorial Day expresses this. You can precede notes or appointments with a variety of options starting with the '\' character: \N - precedes a one-shot appointment to change it to 'notes' status after the date has passed. For example \N 2/1/88 Change oil will show as a regular appointment until after 2/1/88 - the \N prefix will have no effect. After this date, the effect is exactly the same as if the line was entered as * Change oil \I - If you precede a note or appointment with \I (the 'I' stands for important), the line will be highlighted when listed. You can prioritize highlighting using \1 (same meaning as \I), \2 and \3. For example, \I *This is an important note \2 *This is also important, but looks different The appointments screen 10 The associated video attributes can be changed in the CONFIG.CAL file; see Section 7 for details. \U - Notes beginning with \U (for 'unimportant') will be displayed only once a week. The default display day is Monday, but this can be changed (see Section 7). For example \u* This is an unimportant note. will cause the text following the '*' to be shown as a note once a week. This option helps you avoid cluttering the screen with notes which serve more to distract than to remind. If daily notes are compact - a third of the screen or so - they will be more effective. Lines which do not fit into the categories described above are ignored by Ample Notice when generating the appointments display (but are put in alphabetical order when the Sort option is used). You can record information to be viewed in the editor but not in the appointments display by preceding lines with a symbol such as ';' - see Section 9 for details. There is currently a 2000-line limitation on the number of lines that can be included in the NOTES file. If this causes any serious inconvenience please let us know - the number of lines can be raised with minor overhead in memory usage. 5. The appointments screen. The appointments screen is the default environment when you execute AN.EXE. The available options concern moving around the appointments list, setting alarms, viewing a monthly calendar, printing a range of appointments and editing the appointments list. Following is a description of each option: The cursor keys page through the appointments list or jump to the beginning or end. 'A' takes you to the Alarm screen if ALARM.COM is resident. Every appointment which begins with a time is listed, and to the left of each appointment the default warning interval (the number of minutes before the given time for the alarm clock to be set) is shown. The original (default) default is 10 minutes but can be changed in the CONFIG.CAL file. Use the up- and down-arrow keys to move to an appointment, then use the right- and left- arrow keys to change the advance warning time. At any time <Enter> can be used to accept the displayed times, or <Esc> can be used to abort setting the alarm. In the latter case the previously-set times are retained. Alarm times are not cumulative - when you press <Enter> to set the alarm any old settings are lost (except that made when popping up the ALARM window with <Left shift> <Alt>). The appointments screen 11 Pressing 'C' opens the monthly calendar window. A day-of- the-week display of the current month is shown with the current day highlighted. Use the right- and left-arrow keys to change the month and the up- and down-arrow keys to change the year. Press 'P' to print a range of months in the print style of your choice. The space bar is used to cycle through the styles Normal, Compressed and Tiny. For information on changing the control characters used with these choices (for different printer makes) and the default formatting dimensions see Section 7. At any time in Ample Notice pressing <Esc> will abort a printout. When you are finished viewing or printing a monthly calendar press <Esc> to return to the appointments screen. Note: the calendar window is also available from the edit screen. Press 'E' to switch to the edit screen. You may then modify the current appointments file or switch to a new file. Section 6 describes the editor in detail. Press 'F' to search for text in the appointments listing. You are prompted to enter a string and the search begins at the current page. Case sensitivity is not used - your entry will match upper or lower case. When a match is found all qualifying appointments or notes on the first appropriate page are highlighted. Pressing 'N' continues the search to the next match. Press 'H' (or F1) for help, here and elsewhere in Ample Notice. Press 'P' to print a range of appointments. The default range is a three-week interval beginning with the current date - press <Enter> to accept the dates shown, or enter new dates. The interval must fall within the range you can view, which defaults to the year following the current date but which can be reduced (not expanded) in CONFIG.CAL. You can change the starting date of the viewable appointments with the 'V' option. Again, the choice of print styles - Normal, Compressed and Tiny - and the corresponding formatting can be changed in CONFIG.CAL. Pressing 'V' brings up the 'View' menu which lets you change the starting date for the listing and lets you switch between short and long listings. In the short listing repeating appointments such as birthdays, third Wednesdays in August, etc. are suppressed; the short display is handy for obtaining concise (wallet-sized) printouts of appointments. Changing the starting date is useful for listing outdated appointments or appointments far in the future; for example, you can change the starting date to 1/1/89 and view your commitments for the year of 1989. The View menu looks like this: Start date: 10/17/87 Dates listing: Long The cursor starts in the date field, which you can modify or leave as-is (by pressing <Enter>). The 'Dates listing' indicator is then The editor 12 toggled between 'Long' and 'Short' with the space bar. Pressing <Enter> accepts the View parameters displayed; <Esc> exits without changing the old parameters. To exit Ample Notice, press <Esc>. You will be asked to confirm your intention just in case the key press was accidental. (This confirmation can be suppressed by an appropriate entry in the CONFIG.CAL file; see Section 7.) 6. The editor. Ample Notice's editor puts you in total charge of your appointments file. You can use the editor to create, modify and sort this file; you can also use it to move outdated appointments to a more appropriate place. Ample Notice can also be used in a stand-alone mode to edit other text files which have nothing to do with appointments. You can enter the editor in one of three ways: by pressing 'E' from the appointments screen, by including '-E' on the AN command line (see Section 8) or by including '%E' in CONFIG.CAL (see Section 7). Once you are in the editor, the bottom line(s) will describe the options available; following is a description of these options. The up- and down-arrow, Home, End, PgUp and PgDn keys move the cursor through the appointments file. Press 'E' to edit the line at the cursor position or press 'I' to insert a new line. Options when editing a line. The following editing functions are supported: Left arrow or <Ctrl S> - Cursor left <Ctrl A> - Cursor left one word Right arrow or <Ctrl D> - Cursor right <Ctrl F> - Cursor right one word F3 or <Ctrl R> - Restore original line, continue editing Home - Start of line End - End of line Ins or <Ctrl V> - Toggle insert/overwrite mode Default is overwrite mode. Insert mode is indicated by larger cursor. Del or <Ctrl G> - Delete character under cursor Backspace - Delete character left of cursor <Ctrl C> - Pop up calendar, point to and insert date <Ctrl T> - Delete word to right of cursor <Ctrl Y> - Delete line <Alt B> - Insert both current date and time <Alt D> - Insert current date <Alt T> - Insert current time <Esc> - Restore and accept original line <Enter> - Accept edited line <Shift Enter> - Accept line, insert and edit new line The editor 13 When editing the input line will be shown in inverse video. Pressing <Esc> or <Enter> returns you to the editor's menu. The <Ctrl C> option is convenient for entering dates. You are shown a calendar of the current month with the cursor on the current day. The right- and left-arrow keys move a day at a time and the up- and down-arrows change the date by a week. You can press <Shift> with the arrow keys to move by months (right and left) or by years (up or down). Pressing <Enter> puts the cursor's date into the edit line; pressing <Esc> aborts the operation. Other editor functions. From the main edit menu you can perform several other ac- tions besides editing a line. Pressing 'D' deletes the line at the cursor. Pressing 'U' restores ('undeletes') the line. You can use these two commands to move a line - delete, move the cursor, then undelete. Up to 25 deletions will be saved and restored in re- verse order. If more than 25 deletions are made the 'oldest' deletions are lost. Press 'K' to copy a line. F)ind and N)ext are similar to the same functions in the appointments screen. If you press 'F' you will be prompted to enter the text for a search (which is performed independent of case). The cursor advances to the first match following the original cursor position. Pressing 'N' then advances to the next such match. S)ort is a function which helps keep your file manageable. As soon as 'S' is pressed the file is sorted: first notes, then one- shot appointments (sorted by date and time), then annual appoint- ments (by date and time), then cyclical appointments starting with '!', and finally all remaining lines. Note that the sorted file is not automatically saved; you will have to use the W)rite command to make the changes permanent. There are three disk-related commands: M)ove, W)rite and L)oad. With all three you are prompted for a file name and shown a default; simply press <Enter> to accept the default name. If you give a wild card file specification or directory name instead, a display of corresponding files is shown and you are prompted again for a name. For example, if FOO is the name of a directory you could enter FOO, FOO\, FOO\*.* (these three are equivalent), FOO\*.CAL, etc. M)ove is used to move appointments to an archive file; the default archive is \ARCHIVE.CAL. You will be given an opportunity to specify a different archive file; if you want a new default you can modify CONFIG.CAL (see Section 7). 'Move' performs two functions: the appropriate lines are appended to the archive file and these lines are deleted from the current file. It's a good idea to archive your file every few weeks to keep it down to a convenient size. When you press 'M' you will see the following menu line: MOVE: H)elp, M)ark, O)utdated, <Esc> Pressing 'O' moves outdated one-shot appointments. If you press CONFIG.CAL 14 'M' instead, you are put in marking mode - you explicitly choose all lines of the file to be moved. Pressing '+' toggles the state (marked/unmarked) of the line at the cursor, and the cursor keys move you through the file as usual. Pressing <Enter> completes the move operation or <Esc> aborts the procedure. The archive file can be extremely useful for reviewing old activities. You can sort ARCHIVE.CAL (if necessary) by loading it as the appointments file in Ample Notice. While there is a 2000- line limitation in file size you can keep archives below this limit by periodically renaming ARCHIVE.CAL to an appropriate name. For example, at the end of 1987 type REN ARCHIVE.CAL ARCHIVE.87 The next time you archive your appointments a new ARCHIVE.CAL will be created automatically. W)rite is used to make a permanent copy of the file which you are editing. You can use the name under which the file was loaded (the default) or substitute another name instead. If you forget to save a modified file when editing, you will be prompted when exiting Ample Notice: Save modified file \NOTES? (Y,N) Pressing 'Y' will save the file using the same name with which it was loaded. Press 'L' to load a file. If you give the name of a file which does not exist you will be asked whether you wish to create a new file. H)elp or F1 opens a help screen as usual. C)al brings up the monthly calendar window just as it does in the appointments screen. <Esc> is used to return to the appointments screen; there will be a brief delay while Ample Notice interprets and categorizes dates and times. If you are editing a file which is not an appointments file you can press 'X' to exit directly to DOS. 7. CONFIG.CAL. When Ample Notice begins execution it looks first for a file called CONFIG.CAL (or other file explicitly given on the command line) which contains data describing your preference for screen colors, printer formats, file names, etc. If no such file is found then default values are used; for many users these defaults will be appropriate. If you wish to create a configuration file you may use any ASCII editor, including that in Ample Notice. To use the AN editor you can start with AN -E -C \CONFIG.CAL which will load AN and immediately start editing the file \CONFIG.CAL. The file will consist of lines of the form %letter parameters. For example %H 15 sets the 'highlight' video attribute to the value 15. Following is a list of CONFIG.CAL options. (Note: from time to time new options and syntax will be added. The READ.ME file will describe these additions.) CONFIG.CAL 15 A - archive file name. For example, '%A BILL.ARC' makes BILL.ARC the new default archive file instead of ARCHIVE.CAL. B - 'bell': set alarm automatically from default calendar. No parameters. The entry '%B' causes alarm times (using the default delay) to be set automatically if ALARM.COM is loaded. If %B is not included you can set alarms explicitly with Ample Notice's A)larm option. C - calendar file name. E.g., '%C \BILL.CAL' makes \BILL.CAL the new default appointments file instead of \NOTES. D - number of days. The default appointments interval is 365 days. '%D 30' changes this to 30 days. Any value less than 365 may be used. Lower values result in faster initial display of appointments screen. E - start in editor. No parameters. '%E' will skip the appointments screen when AN is first run and go directly to the editor. This is useful in the unlikely circumstance that your primary use of AN is for editing. G - delay for alarm. The default advance warning interval for the alarm clock is 10 minutes. '%G 15' changes this to 15 minutes. The default interval can be changed selectively by using the A)larm command. H - highlight attribute. The value given is used as the video attribute for highlighting text. The video attribute is a number from 0 to 255 which is computed as follows: find the sum BLINK*128 + BACKGROUND*16 + INTENSITY*8 + FOREGROUND where BLINK is 1 for blinking, otherwise 0, BACKGROUND and FOREGROUND are values from 0 to 7 meaning 0 - black 1 - blue 2 - green 3 - cyan 4 - red 5 - magenta 6 - brown 7 - white INTENSITY is 1 for high intensity, 0 for low intensity. For example, '%H 12' sets the highlight attribute to high intensity red against a black background. I - sets the video attribute used any time you would otherwise see an inverse bar (editing, searching, etc.); its use is similar to that of the %H option. For example, a '%I 20' line in CONFIG.CAL will set the editing attribute to red text on a blue background. L - 'lowlight' attribute. Sets the video attribute for normal text. See 'H' option. CONFIG.CAL 16 M - century base. In the date 8/15/87, the year is assumed to be 1987 because the 'century base' is 19 by default. If you happen to be using this program after the year 2000 you should include the line '%M 20' to change this default. N - Normal print. There are three print modes - Normal, Compressed and Tiny. Each mode has associated with it four pieces of information: page width, left margin, text lines per page and printer set-up codes. These parameters are given after '%N'. Page width indicates the total character width of the paper. Left margin is the number of leading spaces for each line. Text lines per page is the number of lines of text printed on a page before a form feed is sent to advance to a new page. The printer set-up codes form a sequence of up to 11 numbers which are sent to the printer at the start of each page. This control sequence is used to exploit a printer's modes or fonts. The default for Normal is %N 80,0,55 which indicates 80 columns, no left margin, 55 printed lines per page and no set-up sequence. As a sample alternative, %N 80,0,54,27,69 sets 54 lines per page and turns on emphasized printing on an Epson printer (27 = <Esc>, 69 = 'E'). P - The number following %P changes the default interval for printing appointments from three weeks to a new duration. For example %P 14 will change the interval to two weeks. You can still override the default by entering preferred starting and ending dates. Q - A '%Q n' in CONFIG.CAL changes the way AN exits. %Q 1 will prevent the screen from being erased on exit. %Q 2 will suppress the 'Exit? (Y,N)' message when you want to leave Ample Notice. If your appointments file has changed, you will still be asked if you want to save the modified file. %Q 3 will install both these changes. R - The codes following %R are used to reset the printer after printouts are obtained. For example, %R 27,64 will reset Epson- compatible printers to the power-up state. The reset sequence is sent after a calendar or appointment list is printed. S - small (Compressed) print. Sets the parameters for Compressed printing. The default is %S 132,26,55,15 which indicates 132 columns, a left margin of 26 columns, 55 lines per page, and a single set-up code of 15 (or <Ctrl O>) which turns on compressed printing on an Epson. T - Tiny print. Sets the parameters for Tiny printing. The default is %T 132,26,115,15,27,83,0,27,51,18 which indicates 132 columns, a left margin of 26 columns, 115 lines per page, and a set-up sequence for turning on compressed superscript with 18/216" line spacing on an Epson. U - Notes beginning with \U are displayed only once a week. The default display day is Monday, but this can be changed with a %U line in the CONFIG.CAL file. %U 0 will change the day to Sunday, %U 1 corresponds to Monday, ..., %U 6 changes the day to Saturday. Command line options 17 V - A %V in CONFIG.CAL will make insert mode (instead of overwrite) the default in any editing. You can still toggle between insert and overwrite modes with the <Ins> key. W - wait for form feeds. No parameters. Include '%W' in the configuration file if you print on single-sheet rather than continuous-feed paper. At the end of each page you will be prompted to insert a new sheet of paper before printing resumes. Z - suppress snow. No parameters. If you are using an IBM Color Graphics Adapter or similar video card and are bothered by 'snow' on the screen during window operations, include '%Z' in the configuration file. 1,2,3 - As described in Section 4, notes and appointments can be prioritized with different video attributes using the \1 (or \I), \2 and \3 prefixes. The default video attributes can be changed; for example %2 12 will set the attribute associated with '\2' to 12, which is high intensity red against a black background. (See the description of the H parameter.) The other two attributes are changed by %1 n and %3 n, where n is the attribute number. To handle multiple users (or different sets of preferences) more than one configuration file can be kept on the same system. To specify a file other than CONFIG.CAL use the -S option described in the following section. 8. Command line options. When you run AN you may specify parameters in the command line which override those in CONFIG.CAL (or the defaults). The syntax is AN [-A] [-B date] [-C fname] [-D #days] [-E] [-F fname] [-I] [-Q] [-S] [-W] (where the options can be given in any order or omitted). For example, AN -D 30 -B 9/1/87 will list appointments for 30 days starting on 9/1/87. Options and associated data must be separated by spaces. Following is a description of each option. A - will set the alarm clock (if loaded) automatically without showing the appointments screen. This can be used in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file to reduce the number of keystrokes you must enter to set the alarm clock. B - Specifies the starting date to be used for the appointments list instead of the current date. You can use this to obtain printouts of appointments for any time interval of up to 365 days. Since more than one starting date can be given on different runs of AN, multiple intervals can be concatenated to cover longer intervals. Tips for effective use 18 C - Specifies a configuration file other than CONFIG.CAL. Especially useful if more than one person uses your system. D - Gives the number of days to be listed. The value overrides the default of 365 days or the replacement default in CONFIG.CAL. E - Enter editor directly. AN -E will take you directly into the editor with \NOTES loaded, or AN -E -F MYFILE will load MYFILE instead. F - Specifies an appointments file other than \NOTES. For example, AN -F MYFILE -E will load the file MYFILE, and the -E option will take you directly to the editor. In this way AN can be used as an editor for any standard text file. I - Shows information screen at beginning. Use this option to view the AN version number or to see registration information. The information screen is otherwise shown automatically on the 1st and 15th of each month unless the -Q option is used. Q - 'Quick'. Suppresses the information screen which is otherwise shown twice a month. If you use AN in an AUTOEXEC.BAT file and get tired of these periodic credits just add the -Q option. S - Short listing of appointments. All repeating appointments (birthdays, weekly appointments, etc.) are skipped on the appointments screen and in printouts. This is useful for obtaining short printouts which show immediately appointments which are out of the ordinary. W - Wait at form feeds. This has the same effect as '%W' in CONFIG.CAL but doesn't make the end-of-page pause permanent. Again, there will almost certainly be additions to this list described in the READ.ME file. 9. Tips for effective use. Ample Notice is a flexible product and you will probably develop some applications not foreseen by Granny. Here are a few suggestions that will help you exploit the program. Since lines which don't start with '*', '&', '!' or a date are ignored in the appointments listing but maintained in the file you can include information which you don't want to be forced to stare at every day. For example you can start lines with ';' to record long-term reminders that you can view in the editor but which are not shown in the 'Notes' department. When you sort the file, lines which don't fall into the 'official' categories are alphabetized at the end. For example if you include the lines About Shareware 19 ;01 This is a reminder ;02 This is another reminder then their order will be maintained since ';01' will precede ';02' when sorted. Your archive file can be very helpful for business or tax purposes; you can recall exactly when you took a trip or filed a report. However, its best not to go overboard - delete frivolous items before performing the archive operation or you'll have a file full of dates of haircuts and such. If you sort your appointment file before archiving then your archive file will stay sorted, but if you happen to archive unsorted appointments remember that you can always load ARCHIVE.CAL and sort it directly. Until computers get small enough to carry around all the time, provision must be made for time away from the keyboard. By using the -S command line option (for suppressing repeating appointments) in conjunction with the 'Tiny' print style, you can obtain a listing of one-time appointments for an entire year which will fit neatly into a wallet or purse. This is often preferable to lugging around a bound appointments book, which is not apt to make it to the tennis court or the grocery checkout line. For Ample Notice to be most effective it must be used on a regular basis. Put ALARM and AN in an AUTOEXEC.BAT file - on your hard disk if you have one, or on a floppy which you will always use to boot your computer. If you see 'snow' on your screen be sure to load ALARM with the '-Z' option and to put a '%Z' in CONFIG.CAL. 10. About Shareware. 'Shareware' is a relatively new means of software distribution with several advantages to you the consumer. The complete package including this instruction manual is contained on a single diskette which may be freely copied and distributed. Word of mouth provides a more accurate and less expensive way of making a product known than magazine advertisements, and the savings keep Ample Notice's cost down. Shareware does not mean 'public domain'. Distribution is permitted only if the package stays intact; all files should be passed on in unmodified form. You can obtain the current Ample Notice disk from Granny's Old-Fashioned Software for $10 or a registered package for $30. Registration provides the following benefits: 1. A current version of the Ample Notice disk. 2. A printed manual. 3. A mail-in card for a future version of Ample Notice. 4. Telephone support for your technical questions. 5. A reasonable likelihood that features you request will be added to the package if such features are deemed practical and of sufficiently general interest. About Shareware 20 To register, phone (with MC or VISA) (704) 264-6906 or mail payment to: Granny's Old-Fashioned Software Rt 4, Box 216 Boone, NC 28607 North Carolina residents please add 4.5%, foreign orders add $3. Also available from Granny's is LQ, a program for the IBM PC and compatible computers which will allow you to produce high- quality text in a variety of fonts and modes on 9-pin dot matrix printers. LQ can be 'locked' into memory to function inconspicuously with your favorite word processor or other program. The program includes a print spooler which can be set to any length from 1 - 400K characters. The spooler has been customized to work with LQ's long graphics sequences very efficiently (using about 1/40 the space required by a conventional spooler); you can continue using your computer for other tasks while documents print in the background. LQ is available from Granny's Old-Fashioned Software at $35 for the registered package or $10 for the distribution disk. Again, North Carolina residents please add 4.5%, foreign orders $3.