5 - Occasion Files

Remember? User's Guide

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An occasion file is a Mac document that contains up to 2000 individual occasion definitions. Occasions you create are stored in the file specified in the pop-up menu at the top of the Occasion window.

You must have at least one occasion file but you may create as many as you wish. Use one for family events such as birthdays, anniversaries and such and another for business meetings and deadlines, however you want to organize it. I recommend that you not add your own occasions to the sample holiday and birthday files provided with the package. If you accidentally replace them when you install an update your occasions will be lost. Create separate files for your stuff.

The Active Occasion File List

Remember? needs to know which occasion files it should use to create what's happening windows and pop-up alerts. It does this by maintaining an active occasion file list. Only the files on this list matter. You view and change the active list by selecting menu: File \ Occasion Files


The Occasion Files Dialog

1. Active Files

The list of occasion files used to build the contents of What's Happening Windows and pop-up alerts. The small icons on the right indicate the file's status as defined below. Click on a file name to select it and display its detailed settings in the File Status Area. Hold down the shift or command keys while clicking to select multiple files.

2. File Status Area

This serves as both a quick reference to the meaning of the icons displayed in the list and as a way to change some of them when a single file is selected in the list. In the latter case clicking a checkbox toggles that status setting.

3. File Path

When a single file is selected in the list its location on the hard drive is displayed here as the sequence of folders you must open to find it, starting with the name of the volume. In the above example the file 'Samples' is in the folder 'Occasions' on the disk named 'doc'.

4. List Buttons

The top three buttons add new files to the active list while the bottom three operate on the file or files selected in the list.

File Status Area items:

The default file for new occasions
Turn on this box for the occasion file that gets most of your new occasions. It will be selected by default in every new Occasion window.

Auto-Delete is Permitted
Turn on this box to delete expired one-time occasions when the application is opened. This is a handy way to purge old non-repeating events automatically. Turn this OFF if you want to keep old events long after they have passed for archival purposes. Look at the General preferences set for several options related to Auto-Delete.

Locked, contents can't be changed
This checkbox toggles the file's Lock status normally accessible via the Get Info window in the Finder. You cannot add to, delete from or in any other way change the contents of a locked file.

Resides on a Network
This icon is shown for occasion files that reside on a different computer accessed via a network connection of some kind.

Buttons:

<Add File...>

Add an existing occasion file to the active list. Select it using the standard 'open' dialog then click <Open> to add it. It is probably a good idea to keep all your occasion files in one folder to simplify backups. In System 8.5 and later you can add more than one file at a time by selecting them in the Navigation Services "open file" dialog while holding down the command key.

<New File...>

Create a new, empty occasion file and add it to the active list. Use the standard 'save' dialog to select a folder and enter the name of the new file, then click <Save> to create and add it to the list.

<Remove>

The selected files are removed from the active list.

<Browse>

Open a Browse window for each selected file and close the Occasion Files dialog. A Browse window lists all the occasions in a file similar to the way the Finder's folder windows list the files they contain.

<Save Changes in Preferences>

Changes to the active list, both additions and deletions, are not saved permanently until you press this button. If you don't save your changes you will be asked once more if you want them saved when you quit the application. The unsaved changes are discarded if you choose not to save them. This allows you to temporarily add a file to copy occasions from it without the need to explicitly remove it before you quit.

<Done>

Close the Occasion Files dialog.

Exporting Occasions

Select one or more files in the Occasion Files list then click the <Export...> button to create a SimpleText text file for each containing its occasion definitions. They can be read by any word processor.

The format for each occasion is:

<1>[TAB]<2>[TAB]<3>[TAB]<4>[TAB]<5>[TAB]<6>[RETURN]

where:

<1> is the occasion's date pattern

<2> is the Start time

<3> is the Alert time

<4> is Persistent or empty if the occasion is not persistent

<5> is the Occasion Type

<6> is the description

[TAB] is a tab character and [RETURN] is a return character to mark the end of the line.

Unused fields are left empty. Exported what's happening windows use the same format. The proverbial "expert" user can change the format using ResEdit on the appropriate STR# list item (if you don't know what that means, you don't want to fool with it.)

NOTE: Exported text file may not preserve the 'persists since' date and will not preserve future Completed dates.

Importing Occasions

Click the <Import...> button, select a text file, then click <Open> to convert it to a list of occasions. Reports the number of occasions found and prompts to save them as a new occasion file in the active list. Click the <Save> button to keep the new file in your active list. In System 8.5 and later you can import more than one file at a time by selecting them in the Navigation Services "open file" dialog while holding down the command key.

In addition to files exported by Remember?, you can also import text files created by other reminder packages or that you entered by hand. Each line of the file is examined for items that look like they could be an occasion definition, everything else is assumed to be the description. Lines with no apparent date information are ignored. You will definitely want to open a Browse window for the converted file so you can weed out nonsensical entries.

Opening Occasion Files from the Finder

Double click on an occasion file in a Finder folder window and Remember? displays its Browse window and adds it to the active list exactly as if you used the <Add File...> button in the Occasion Files dialog.

 

The Browse Window


Sample Browse Window

Browse windows are the equivalent of the Finder's folder windows. They display the contents of an occasion file which, oddly enough, are occasions.

Title Bar

The name of each column: When lists the date pattern and start times with repeating occasions first, then one-time occasions all sorted by date; What the descriptions; and Type the occasion types. Click and drag a title to the left or right to change the spacing between columns or rearrange the column order. Click on a title without dragging it to sort the list by the contents of that column. When lists repeating occasions first, then one-time occasions all sorted by date.

Occasion List

A line for each occasion in the file. Click on one to select it. Hold down shift while clicking to select more than one, or the command key to toggle a selection. Double click on a description to open an Occasion window for it. The total number of occasion in the file is shown at the bottom.

Occasion Count

The total number of occasions in the file.

The small icon to the left of the window title above is only present with System 8.5 or later. Command-click on the title to see the path to the file on your hard drive. (This trick also works in Finder folder windows.)

Relevant Menu Items

File \ Print Occasions

Print all or just the currently selected occasions. There is an entire Preference set devoted to the parameters for printing a browse window.

Edit \ Copy

Copy the selected occasions to the clipboard in both standard occasion and text format.

Edit \ Cut
Copy the selected occasions to the clipboard in both standard occasion and text format then delete the occasions from the file.

Edit \ Paste
Paste in a list of occasions copied or cut from a browse window. You can also paste in a block of text to import it as occasions.

Edit \ Select All
Select every occasion in the list.

Occasion \ Edit
Open an Occasion window for each selected occasion.

Occasion \ Delete or Edit \ Clear
Delete the selected occasions.

Occasion \ Change Type to
Change the type of all the selected occasions to the one chosen from this submenu.

Mass Movement of Occasions

I provide occasion files containing large collections of celebrity birthdays, special events and holidays on my web site. Rather than clutter up your lists with all of them, you can grab just those that you find interesting using this procedure:

  1. Select menu: File \ Occasion Files, click on the file to receive the occasions. Create a new file if you like, but be sure to click <Save Changes in Preferences> if you want it to stay in the active list after you quit. Click the <Browse> button to open a browse window for the destination file.
  2. Double click on the icon for the source occasion file and a browse window opens automatically. Wander through it command-clicking on each occasion you want. When you are done you should have a scattered list of selected occasions. Choose menu: Edit \ Copy to copy them to the clipboard. Close the browse window.
  3. Click on the destination browse window then select menu: Edit \ Paste. The occasions should appear in the list.

    Repeat steps 2 and 3 for each source file until you are done.

  4. Select menu: File \ Quit to exit the application. DO NOT SAVE THE CHANGES TO THE ACTIVE FILE LIST OR THE ORIGINAL SOURCE FILES WILL BE INSTALLED IN THE ACTIVE LIST. No big deal if you do this by accident, just select menu: File \ Occasion Files then remove the files you don't want on the list.

Misplaced Occasion Files

The location of each active file is saved in the Remember's Settings file. If you move an active file to a different folder or volume or rename it you will see the message 'Cannot find Occasion file "BLAH", do you know where it is?' the next time you access Remember?. Click <Yes> if you can show the new location of the file or <No> if you deleted it or know that it is no longer available.

But what if you didn't touch the occasion files, what happened? If you reinstall the system software or restore your hard drive from backups, you get the same result. Don't panic, just point out the location of each file as requested and everything will be back to normal.

Shared Occasion File Limitations

This package was written specifically for individual users, however it does allow limited sharing of occasion files across a network. But there are many limitations so you really have to be careful.

Some of the above issues will be addressed in the next release, but it will probably never work perfectly because of the extensive changes required. That is not really the focus of this package.

Copyright ©1988-99 by Dave Warker, all rights reserved worldwide.

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