On Disk Monthly 71/odm71.zip/CALENDAR.TXT

Text File | 1992-07-29 | 16KB | 361 lines

Appointment Calendar is a memory-resident program which is
available all the time, no matter what other text program you
are running.  A simple "hot-key" pops it up.  Additionally, it
will even beep at you to remind you of appointments.

This installation program will let you install Appointment
Calendar to your hard disk, and place it into your AUTOEXEC.BAT
file so that it runs every time you boot up.

Appointment Calendar will take up roughly 70 kilobytes of your
memory.  Once it is loaded, you may run any other program on
your PC (with the possible exception of programs that require so
much memory that they won't fit once you have loaded Appointment
Calendar).

NOTE: You may only use the ALT-C hotkey while in text mode
rather than graphics mode.  In graphics mode, nothing will
happen; the program will beep at you to tell you that it is
unable to pop up at this time.  This is because Appointment
Calendar writes text directly to the screen for the sake of
speed, and this works only in text mode.

To bring up the calendar, type ALT-C at any time, whether you
are at the DOS prompt or in the middle of another program.
(Below, you'll see how to re-define this "hot-key" if you'd
rather use a different key sequence.)


^C^IUsing Appointment Calendar

When you pop it up, Appointment Calendar will come up with a
calendar page for the current month, with the current day
highlighted.  Use the arrows to move around by days and weeks,
the PgUp and PgDn keys to move by month, and the Home and End
keys to move by year.  All years from 1900 to 2099 may be
displayed.

Press ENTER while a particular day is highlighted, and another
window will pop up showing that day's appointment list.
Here, the up and down arrows will move the highlight bar between
events.  To add an appointment now, press Ins.  You are then
asked for the time of the event, by an input cursor appearing in
the Time column.

Type in a time.  You can use a variety of formats:  AM/PM
(1:00p), 24-hour (13:00), and military (1300).  Leave the time
field blank (by pressing ENTER) for items that have no
particular time attached to them.  (Things to do, for instance.)
Alternatively, you may prioritize items with no attached time by
entering a number from 1 to 9999 preceded by a dash (-) or
number sign (#) in the time field; these will sort in order, and
be placed before all entries with regular times or blank time
fields.

Hence, if you enter events with time fields "3:30p", "10:30a",
"#1", "#6", "" (blank), "-5", "10am", "0800", and "17:24", they
will end up being displayed in the order: "#1", "-5", "#6", ""
(blank), "0800", "10am", "10:30a", "3:30p", and "17:24".  As you
can see, Appointment Calendar is quite flexible, so you can use
the timekeeping style to which you are accustomed.

"Noon" and "Mid" are accepted for noon and midnight,
respectively.  Note: Midnight is regarded as the BEGINNING of
the day, rather than the END, so you should enter a midnight
event for tonight in tomorrow's list.  Or, alternatively, use
"11:59p" in today's list.  Another note:  "2:00" is 2 AM; to
enter 2 PM, type "2:00p", "2p", or "14:00".

The cursor then moves to the "Description" column; you may type
in a brief line describing the event (for example, "Dentist
appointment").

To further describe an event, you may add a memo field.  Do this
by pressing F6 while a particular event is highlighted.
This puts you in a text editor to allow you to enter a note
describing the event.

Pressing F1 gives you a list of the function keys for the
editor.   Exit the note editor with ESC or F10, and the note
will be saved.  Events with notes attached show a letter "N" in
the event listing.

You can edit an event by pressing ENTER when the desired event
is highlighted, which allows you to edit, in turn, the time and
description.  Edit the attached note by pressing F6.  Delete an
event (and its associated note if any) by pressing Del.  (Be
careful you don't accidentally delete something you really
wanted to keep!  Del always deletes the currently highlighted
event.)  To mark an event as "done" (without deleting it; you
might want it around for historical purposes), press the Space
Bar, which adds a "check-mark" next to the event listing.  (Use
this to keep track of your progress towards completing those
"things to do."  This also affects the carry-over feature
described later.)  Pressing Space on an event already marked as
done toggles this status back off.  To print out a list of the
day's items, press F5 while the event list for the desired day
is showing.

Another feature you can enable for a given event is the alarm.
Press F8 to turn alarm status on and off for the current event;
this is shown by a musical note in the same column as the "done"
check marks.  (You cannot mark an event as "done" and enable
alarm status on the same event at once; pressing the F8 key
"undoes" the event's done indicator if any, and conversely,
pressing the Space Bar "undoes" any alarm set for the event.
This makes sense; if you've already done something, you needn't
be informed of it by an alarm.)  When an event has an alarm set,
then you will be informed by a beep and a pop-up screen box when
its time comes.

Upcoming alarm events are checked every few seconds while you
are not within the calendar program, and also at frequent
intervals while in the calendar page mode.  (Alarms will not pop
up while you are in the process of editing events or notes
within Appointment Calendar, as this could interfere with the
internal operation of the program.  You'll be "caught up" once
you exit back to the calendar page.)  If you are in graphic mode
when an alarm comes up, it will just beep, and not pop anything
up on the screen or wait for a keypress; you can just go on with
whatever you are doing, or exit to DOS and pop up the calendar
with the hotkey if you'd like to see what's going on.  If you're
in text mode, however, you will see a pop-up box telling you the
name of the event that came up, and asking for you to press the
space bar to remove the box, or ENTER to pop up the calendar.

Pressing F10 from the calendar page will remove the program from
memory.  This works only when it is the last thing you loaded;
if you've loaded other memory-resident programs, or are in the
middle of running an application, it won't be able to unload.
If so, remove all programs in the reverse order in which you
installed them.

ESC exits without removing the program.  This keeps Appointment
Calendar accessible by the "hot-key," as well as continuing to
check for "alarm" events.


^C^IAdditional Features

You will probably want to get in the habit of loading
Appointment Calendar every day.  When you begin doing so, you
may wish to use the carry-over feature.  (See full description
of how to enable these special features below).

With the carry-over feature enabled, when you have items from
the previous day (or earlier) that haven't been marked as "done"
or deleted, they will be carried over to the current day.  This
is handy for things-to-do lists; whatever you didn't manage to
finish one day can be automatically carried over to the next, to
keep nagging you until you finally do it.  Any times attached to
carried-over events will be removed, since yesterday's times
probably aren't relevant today.  However, "#" or "-" priority
number entries in the time column will be preserved.  Also, you
can force retaining of a particular time entry by suffixing a
greater-than symbol (>) at the end of the time, e.g., "12:00p>".
This lets you set up repeating alarms at particular times, such
as if you'd like to always be informed at noon that it is
lunchtime.

When you pop up today's event list, you can use the editing
features to put in the appropriate times if relevant, and to
delete all carried-over events that are no longer necessary.
All notes attached to events will carry over with the events
themselves.

Even when events are carried over, they will also remain in the
earlier days in which they were originally entered.  This gives
you a historical record of what you did each day.  However, this
also takes up disk space.  You may delete such old events "the
hard way" by going back and pressing Del repeatedly (doing this
on earlier days' events will not harm the copies of such events
that have already been "propagated" to later days), or you can
do a bulk purge the easy way, using the "day," "month," and
"year" purge command switches described below.  Past events
which have been carried over but not purged will display with a
right-pointing symbol (») in the column where the "Done" check-
mark usually appears.  Past events which you have declined to
carry over (by running Appointment Calendar without using the
Carry-Over option) are shown with a left-pointing symbol («),
and will not be carried over in future dates.

The daily carry-over and purge will take place every time you
load Appointment Calendar with the appropriate command switches,
and also, thereafter, whenever midnight is reached, thus setting
the system date to the next day.  Hence, whether you leave your
computer on permanently, or power it up anew every morning, your
dates will be carried over and/or purged daily in accordance
with your wishes.  If you load Appointment Calendar more than
once in a day, no harm will be done, as only events in past days
(not the current or future days) will be carried forward or
purged.  Thus, you'll only see an effect in a second or
subsequent run in the same day if you go back and enter events
in earlier dates, or if the system clock reaches midnight.


^C^ICommand Options

There are several options which may be enabled through the
command line you use to load Appointment Calendar.  This
installation program will ask you for your preferences regarding
the Carry-Over and Purge features and install Appointment
Calendar in the desired mode (if you say Yes to the question
about whether you want Appointment Calendar added to your
AUTOEXEC.BAT file).  Otherwise, you may enable them by using
appropriate command switches when you invoke Appointment
Calendar from the DOS prompt or from a batch file of your own
creation.

All these options should follow the name CALENDAR on the command
line, and should be separated from each other and the program's
name with spaces.  (Some examples will be given below.)

Each option (other than the path for saving data) begins with a
slash (/), followed by one or more letters.

^1/C: Carry Over

If this is used, undone events from prior days will be carried
over to the current day as described above.  If it is not used,
such undone events will be marked as "not carried over" to
prevent them from carrying over at a later time.

^1/PD, /PM, /PY: Purge switches (Day, Month, Year)

If one of these is used, then all events older than a particular
cutoff point will be deleted.  With -PD, all events earlier than
the current day are deleted.  With -PM, all events older than
one month ago are deleted.  With -PY, all events older than a
year ago are deleted.  These deletions take place after events
are carried forward as appropriate, so that all current undone
events remain even if they originated in a day that's now been
purged.  If you don't use any of these purge switches, no events
will ever be deleted unless you delete them individually using
the F7 key.  This may be the most desirable option if you'd like
a full past history of your activities, but be warned that it
will take up a growing amount of disk space. On the other hand,
if you don't care about the past, but are only using this
program to track your present and future appointments, then the
-PD option gets rid of all "deadwood" of past events.  The other
two switches provide middle-of-the-road options to keep your
past history for a limited time.

^1/KEY=: Re-define the hot-key

Use this, followed by the desired hot key, to change from the
default of ALT-C in case this conflicts with something else you
are running.  The format is /KEY= followed by A, C, L, or R
(representing the Alt, Ctrl, Left Shift, and Right Shift
respectively) then the letter, number, or function key you want
to use.  /KEY=AX selects Alt-X, while /KEY=CF5 selects Ctrl-F5.
/KEY=LSpace selects the combination of the left-hand shift key
and the space bar.

^1/N: Run in non-resident mode

This switch runs Appointment Calendar without keeping it
resident in memory.  It will pop up immediately with no hot-key
required, and then remove itself entirely from memory when you
leave with either ESC or F10.  This is handy for checking your
appointment schedule without keeping anything permanently in
memory.

^1/M: Monochrome Display

If you have a monochrome monitor and find the color scheme of
Appointment Calendar to be difficult to read, run it with the
command:

   CALENDAR /M

to bring it up in black-and-white mode.  You may combine the /M
switch with the other command line options, like:

   CALENDAR /M /KEY=CP C:\CALENDAR

NOTE:  If you ran On Disk Monthly by typing "GO /M" to put the
menu system into monochrome mode, this will be passed on to the
installation program, so that Pop-Up Notepad will be installed
in monochrome mode.

^1Path for saving:

Anything on the command line that does not begin with a slash
will be regarded as the path of the directory in which you would
like to save your appointment lists and the attached notes.  If
none is specified, the current directory at the time you loaded
Appointment Calendar will be used.  You'll probably want to
create a directory specifically for this program (e.g.,
"C:\CALENDAR") with the MD command in DOS, and use this every
time you run Appointment Calendar.  You must use the same
directory every time, or you won't be able to load appointment
lists you saved somewhere else.  This directory may (but
needn't) be the same directory in which you have placed the
program itself (CALENDAR.EXE).  Various files with ".DTE" and
".N??" (where the question marks represent two digits)
extensions will be created there, along with a file
"UNDONE.DAT".  The eight-character filenames of these files will
represent their dates, in the form YYYYMMDD, like 19900820 for
August 20, 1990.

^CExamples

Some examples of command lines invoking Appointment Calendar:

     CALENDAR

A "plain-jane" run, using no special options, and saving
calendar dates into whatever drive and path is current at the
time you type it.

     CALENDAR C:\CALENDAR

Saves data to the directory "CALENDAR" on your hard drive C.

     CALENDAR /C /PD C:\CALENDAR

Saves data to C:\CALENDAR; carries over and purges all
appointments from prior days.

     CALENDAR /KEY=A2 /PY C:\CALENDAR

Sets the hot-key to Alt-2 (note: this works only with the number
2 on the regular typewriter keyboard, not the numeric keypad),
purges all events over a year old, and uses C:\CALENDAR to save
events.  (Events are not carried over from prior days, since -C
is not used.)

     CALENDAR /N /C /PM C:\CALENDAR

Runs without staying resident, carrying over events from prior
days and purging events over a month old.


Note that if Appointment Calendar has already been loaded, it
will not let you load another copy; any attempts to run it
again, with any parameters, will produce only a message that it
is already loaded.  Terminate Appointment Calendar by popping it
up with the hot-key, then using the F10 command to exit, if you
wish to load it again with different parameters.


Final note: Since this program makes extensive use of the DOS
time and date settings, be sure you set these correctly before
running it!  If you let it default to "1-Jan-1980" (as many
people without a battery-powered clock do), or your clock is
running fast or slow, you may get some strange results.  Also,
if you or a program changes the setting of the time or date
while Appointment Calendar is active, you may have alarms pop up
at the wrong time, daily purges and carryovers be initiated
incorrectly, and other confusing stuff.



^C^ICredits

^C^1^V
^CProgrammed by Daniel Tobias

^CCopyright 1992 by Softdisk, Inc.