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Text File | 1986-12-11 | 14.5 KB | 326 lines

TICKLER DOCUMENTATION VERSION 5.0 December, 1986 (C) copyright by Lynn Canning 9107 Grandview Overland Park, Ks 66212 913-649-7334 Pgm-aide, Tickler, and Tickclk are distributed under a new concept called Postware. This means that although no fee is currently charged for the non-commercial use of these programs, the author requires that their usage be registered via postcard. Please send your name, address, where obtained, and comments to the author at the above address. Commercial users must contact the author to discuss a licensing agreement fee and must not use the programs except for short term evaluation purposes. NOTE: A number of commercially copyrighted routines are used in Pgm-aide, Tickler, and Tickclk versions 5.00. The copyright on these routines allows them to be included in distributed programs as long as the source code is not distributed. The Turbo Pascal source code is therefore no longer available for distribution. NEW for Version 5.0 - Tickler now works in conjunction with TickClk to automatically set up to ten alarms for a particular day. - Tickler now re-displays the daily schedule upon from the edit Add or Modify function. NOTE!! TICKLER.DAT IS STILL IN THE SAME FORMAT, SO DON'T OVERLAY YOUR OLD VERSION IF YOU HAVE ONE. TICKLER is an enhanced appointment calendar which includes the following functions: 1) Provides an on-screen list of your schedule. 2) Provides a printed listing of your schedule for the next nn days. 3) Allows messages to be tagged as recurring annually, quarterly, monthly, weekly or temporary. 4) Temporary messages are automatically purged when past the effective date and are saved for future reference. 5) Provides a printed listing of purged messages. 6) Provides support for color monitors, monochrome monitors and composite monochrome monitors. 7) Provides full on-screen edit capabilities. 8) Provides a memory resident add editor (contained in a memory resident program named PGM-AIDE obtained from P-AIDE50.ARC). This file should be available from the same source Tickler was obtained. 9) Provides up to ten alarms to be set for a particular day. TICKCLK is a memory resident program that works in conjunction with Tickler to provide the following functions: 1) Provides an on-screen clock display in the upper right corner of the screen. 2) Accepts up to ten Alarm settings passed from Tickler. PGM-AIDE is a memory resident program that provides the following functions: 1) Memory resident screen counter utility. 2) Memory resident printer setup for Epson and AT&T printers. 3) Memory resident add editor for Tickler. Pgm-Aide is not a requirement for running Tickler and Tickclk. RESTRICTIONS These programs have been tested on an IBM/PC using PC-DOS 3.1 and on an AT&T 6300 using MS-DOS 2.1. Tickler does not support monochrome monitors. Tickclk will probably hang up your machine if you attempt to run CrossTalk while it is installed. It does work fine with Relay Gold. Installing Tickclk before Pgm-aide will cause Enable to think it was already installed by a previous command processor, therefore install Pgm-aide first. Tickclk was written utilizing routines from Turbo Power Tools Plus from Blaise Computing. Some of these routines do not support certain IBM compatibles. INSTALLATION Tickler and Tickclk should be inserted into your AUTOEXEC.BAT file, so that Tickler will automatically show your schedule upon power up. Tickclk must be installed prior to running Tickler so that Tickler can pass any detected alarm settings. Tickler can also be run at anytime from the DOS prompt. NOTE: Tickler determines message and alarm status based on the system date. Make sure your system date and time are correct prior to running tickler or some temporary files may incorrectly be purged or the alarms may not get set. Copy the TICKLER.DAT file provided into the main directory of the default drive. This file must be present for the program to run. If TICKLER.DAT is not found in the main directory, you will be queried for the drive and directory path where it resides. COMMAND LINE PARAMETERS Tickler will automatically assume you are using a color monitor. If you are using a composite monochrome monitor such as is found on many portables, the screen colors can be changed to shades of black and white by setting command line parameter 1 to "C" when calling the program. Example: TICKLER C <cr>. Tickler will produce a printed schedule for the next nn days if command line parameter 1 or 2 is set to "S". Example: TICKLER C S <cr> or TICKLER S <cr> Upon entry, Tickler will ask for the schedule time span. Up to 99 days can be entered. DATA FILES TICKLER.DAT Current messages are added to and maintained in the file TICKLER.DAT. Tickler will look for this file in the main directory of the current drive. If not found, you will be asked for the drive and directory where TICKLER.DAT resides. This file must be present. TICKLER.OLD Temporary files older than the system date are automatically purged and saved for future reference in this file. This file is provided to allow you to review which meetings you have attended, etc. Print and delete options for this file are contained in the editor menu. Tickler assumes that TICKLER.OLD resides on the same drive and directory as TICKLER.DAT. Tickler will automatically create this file when it is needed. TICKLER.$$$ This is an work file which is erased at end of job. If for some reason Tickler abnormally terminates, this file may not be erased. TICKLER EDITOR Tickler's internal editor allows you to add, change, or delete messages. The data files are maintained in text format so that they can be listed or printed with standard utilities. Caution should be used with word processers, since some set end of line and end of file marks that make the file unreadable. Tickler determines message status by comparing the system julian day to the message julian day. This is not a true julian day because Tickler always assumes 366 days in a year. The editor utilizes the following keys: left arrow right arrow home end backspace The editor is always in insert mode. It requests you to supply input to a particular field and then press return. If you want to use the default value for a particular field, just press return. You can't go back to a previous field. After all fields are input, you are asked if you want to save the message. If a mistake has been made, just say no and re-enter the data. TICKLER ADD EDITOR & DATA FIELDS - Option "A" on the edit menu. Message Day edited for values 1-31. Message Month edited for values 1-12. Message Year four position year, defaults to current year. Message Time1 format (hh:mm), defaults to spaces. A leading zero must be entered if the hour is less than 10. Message Time2 enter AM or PM, defaults to spaces. This field is required if a time was entered. Message 50 characters, defaults to spaces. Message Timespan the number of days in advance you wish the message to appear. An entry of 00 causes the message to appear only on the message day. 99 days is the maximum entry. Default is 00. Message Status A = Annual - Message will show once a year on the day specified. Good for birthdays. Q = Quarterly - Message will show on the day specified on the first month of each quarter. Message month must contain the first month of one of the quarters. M = Monthly - Message will show every month on the day specified. Message month is ignored but must contain a valid value. W = Weekly - Message will show on the day of the week specified. Message day and month are ignored, but must contain a valid value. T = Temporary - Message will show on the day specified. Good for meetings. Day of Week Required for status of Weekly. Valid values are 1-7. 1=Sunday, 2=Monday, etc. NOTE: Message date on Quarterly, Monthly, and Weekly messages are recalculated each time Tickler is run. Only the first occurance of this message type will be shown on the printed schedule. TICKLER MODIFY EDITOR - Option "M" on the edit menu. When this option is selected, all messages in TICKLER.DAT are displayed on the screen. The currently selected message is high- TICKLER.DAT contains more than 17 messages. Use the up and down arrow keys to select the message to be changed or deleted. When the message is selected, press C to change or D to delete. CHANGE - This is just like the Add Editor except the current values are shown. If a particular field requires no change, press return and the current value is kept. DELETE - This causes the selected message to be deleted. The status is changed to "D", but the message is not actually deleted until end of job. If you accidently delete a message, you can undelete it by changing the status back to its previous value via the change option. Deleted messages are not written to TICKLER.OLD. PRINT PURGED MESSAGES - Option "P" on the edit menu. Selection of this option causes the printing of TICKLER.OLD which contains all purged temporary messages. This option can be toggled on and off. DELETE PURGED MESSAGES FILE - Option "O" on the edit menu. Selection of this option causes the deletion of TICKLER.OLD. This option can be toggled on and off. MEMORY RESIDENT ADD EDITOR A memory resident add editor is available in PGM-AIDE along with various other utility functions. The Add editor is identical to the one contained in Tickler. It allows you to add messages without exiting from a running program. It will not turn on any alarm settings. The alarm can only be set by running Tickler. SETTING THE ALARM At end-of-job, Tickler will check to see if the alarm should be set. If alarm settings are found and Tickclk is installed, you will be asked if you want to set the alarms. If Tickclk is not installed, Tickler will continue to end of job without setting any alarms. Tickler will only set alarms that are scheduled for the current day. Tickler will not set an alarm if the alarm setting is less than the system time plus one minute. One minute is added to allow time to pass the alarm settings to Tickclk. TICKCLK Tickclk displays the current time in the upper left corner of the screen. If you are using a screen saver, it may be necessary to use new parameter settings because Tickclk updates the screen each second. The color of the clock display defaults to magenta on black. This can be changed by inputting a number via the command line. The color chart is as follows: 0 - Black 8 - Dark Grey 1 - Blue 9 - LightBlue 2 - Green 10 - LightGreen 3 - Cyan 11 - LightCyan 4 - Red 12 - LightRed 5 - Magenta 13 - LightMagenta 6 - Brown 14 - Yellow 7 - LightGrey 15 - White The number to enter is determined by multiplying the desired background color by 16 and then adding the foregound color to the result. Examples: Magenta on Black 0 * 16 + 5 = 5 Red on Green 2 * 16 + 4 = 36 Yellow on Blue 14 * 16 + 1 = 225 Tickclk accepts up to 10 alarm settings passed from Tickler. Tickclk compares the lowest alarm setting against the Bios clock. When they are equal, the associated alarm message is displayed on line 1 of the screen and an audible alarm is sounded. The alarm will turn itself off in about 20 secs. There is no hot key to turn off the alarm because the Turbo Power Tools Plus routines used will lock up some machines if the keyboard interrupt is checked. It is suggested that you obtain the programs MAPMEM, MARK, and RELEASE. These programs are invaluable when working with and running memory resident programs. They allow you a painless method of removing memory resident programs. These programs were written and placed in the public domain by Turbo Power Software and are available on most BB's in a file named TSRCOMnn.ARC where nn stands for the version number. Since these programs work so well, removal from memory was not programmed into Tickclk. AT&T PC6300 USERS Upon system power-up, the PC6300 does not set the BIOS clock. Consequently, Tickclk must syncronize the clocks when it is installed. The BIOS clock ticks at a slightly faster rate than it should. Over the course of a day Tickclk may gain 20 or more minutes resulting in alarms being sounded earlier than expected. Once Tickclk is installed, it can no longer access the DOS interupts it used to initially set the BIOS clock. There are several programs available that will re-sync the clocks periodically. Check your local BB.