ProfitPress Mega CDROM2 Shareware Freeware (MSDOS)(1992)(Eng)

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ ProfitPress Mega CDROM2 …eeware (MSDOS)(1992)(Eng) / ProfitPress-MegaCDROM2.B6I / APPS / BUSINESS / CALMATE4.ZIP / CALMATE4.DOC < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1991-05-11 | 85.3 KB | 2,753 lines

Calendar Mate V4.0 (C) Copyright 1989-1991 Hawk Software All Rights Reserved Hawk Software P.O Box 3961 Regina, Saskatchewan S4P 3R9 Canada Compuserve ID: 75130,1650 Support Line: (306) 543-8899 _______ ____|__ | (Tm) -| | |------------------- | ____|__ | Association of | | |_| Shareware |__| o | Professionals -----| | |--------------------- |___|___| MEMBER "This program is produced by a member of the Association of Shareware Professionals (ASP). ASP wants to make sure that the shareware principle works for you. If you are unable to resolve a shareware-related problem with an ASP member by contacting the member directly, ASP may be able to help. The ASP Ombudsman can help you resolve a dispute or problem with an ASP member, but does not provide technical support for members' products. Please write to the ASP Ombudsman at P.O. Box 5786, Bellevue, WA 98006 or send a Compuserve message via easyplex to ASP Ombudsman 70007,3536" Getting Started 7 The Big Picture 7 The DOS Environment 7 Using different Events files 8 The Primary Menu 8 The Convenience Calendar 8 The Options Menu 10 Option 1. Events for Today 11 Printing this Calendar 11 Seeing other days 11 Entering Events 12 Deleting Events 12 Appointment Extend 13 Option 2. File Statistics 15 Option 3. Look at Events File 16 Important Keys 16 The Delete command 17 The Undelete command 17 The Change command 17 The Clone Command 17 The Expand Command 18 The Future Command 18 Deleting an Event 18 Rescheduling an Event 19 Undoing your changes 19 Sorting by date or event 19 Adding a Record 19 Option 4. Add a Record 20 Option 5. System Parameters 24 5.1.1 Set Default Drivers for Calendars 24 5.1.2 Prepare or edit your own 25 5.2 Set Program Parameters 27 5.3 Set Various Colours 30 5.4 Select Different Events File 31 Option 6. DOS Shell 32 Option 7. Print a Calendar 33 Monthly Calendar Overflow 34 Option 8. Browse Calendar 35 Option 9. Quit 36 Appendix A. Date/Time Formats 37 Appendix B. Data Record Formats 38 Appendix C. ASCII Character Set 39 Appendix D. Repeating Adjectives 40 Appendix E. Some commonly asked questions 42 Appendix F. Order Form 44 INDEX 46 Calendar Mate is designed to help you keep track of important events. Many homes have a central calendar with everything from dental appointments to birthdays to PTA meetings marked on them. With Calendar Mate, you can enter these events into the database and print off a calendar to put up on your wall. Calendar Mate's strength lies in its ability to handle repeating events. You can enter your father's birthday into the database, specify that it is to repeat on a yearly basis and Presto! Every year, your father's birthday will be shown on the calendar. What if you have to work in the church nursery on the 3rd Sunday of the month or if you have a reunion with a friend on the 2nd Wednesday in September? What if you have a darts game scheduled fortnightly? No problem! Calendar Mate can handle repeating events easily. Calendar Mate is extremely flexible. You can delete or reschedule a specific occurrence of a repeating event without affecting other dates that the event falls on. There are no cumbersome codes to learn. You can define events in plain English. You can specify the date format -- whether 05/12/90 means May 12, 1990 or December 5, 1990. Calendar Mate is being marketed as Shareware. If you find this program to be of use, please register your copy. This will entitle you to the current version of the program, unlimited technical support, notification of future upgrades and a good feeling, knowing that you are contributing to the success of the Shareware industry. For your convenience an order form is provided at the end of this document. What is Shareware? Shareware distribution gives users a chance to try software before buying it. If you try a Shareware program and continue using it, you are expected to register. Individual programs differ on details -- some request registration while others require it, some specify a maximum trial period. With registration, you get anything from the simple right to continue using the software to an updated program with printed manual. Introduction Page 3 Copyright laws apply to both Shareware and commercial software and the copyright holder retains all rights, with a few specific exceptions as stated below. Shareware authors are accomplished programmers, just like commercial authors, and the programs are of comparable quality. (In both cases, there are good programs and bad ones!) The main difference is in the method of distribution. The author specifically grants the right to copy and distribute the software, either to all and sundry or to a specific group. For example, some authors require written permission before a commercial disk vendor may copy their Shareware. Shareware is a distribution method, not a type of software. You should find software that suits your needs and pocketbook, whether it's commercial or Shareware. The Shareware system makes fitting your needs easier, because you can try before you buy. And because the overhead is low, prices are low also. Shareware has the ultimate money-back guarantee -- if you don't use the product, you don't pay for it. DISCLAIMER - AGREEMENT Users of Calendar Mate must accept this disclaimer of warranty: "CALENDAR MATE IS SUPPLIED AS IS. THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND OF FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. THE AUTHOR ASSUMES NO LIABILITY FOR DAMAGES, DIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL, WHICH MAY RESULT FROM THE USE OF CALENDAR MATE." Calendar Mate is a "shareware program" and is provided at no charge to the user for evaluation. Feel free to share it with your friends, but please do not give it away altered or as part of another system. The essence of "user-supported" software is to provide personal computer users with quality software without high prices, and yet to provide incentive for programmers to continue to develop new products. If you find this program useful and find that you are using Calendar Mate and continue to use Calendar Mate after a reasonable trial period, you must make a registration payment of $22.00 to Hawk Software. The $22.00 registration fee will license one copy for use on any one computer at any one time. You must treat this software just like a book. For example, although this software may be used by any number of people and may be freely moved from one computer location to another, there must be no possibility of it being used at more than one location at the same time it is being used at another. Calendar Mate 4.0 User Reference Guide Page 4 Commercial users of Calendar Mate must register and pay for their copies of Calendar Mate within 30 days of first use or their license is withdrawn. Site-License arrangements may be made by contacting Hawk Software. Anyone distributing Calendar Mate for any kind of remuneration must first contact Hawk Software at the address below for authorization. This authorization will be automatically granted to distributors recognized by the (ASP) as adhering to its guidelines for shareware distributors, and such distributors may begin offering Calendar Mate immediately (However Hawk Software must still be advised so that the distributor can be kept up-to- date with the latest version of Calendar Mate.). You are encouraged to pass a copy of Calendar Mate along to your friends for evaluation. Please encourage them to register their copy if they find that they can use it. All registered users will receive a copy of the latest version of the Calendar Mate system, unlimited phone support and notification of future releases of the program. Since one of the main goals of Hawk Software is to provide a quality product, your input is very valuable to us. Please feel free to send us your ideas for enhancements. We would especially appreciate hearing about any bugs you might come across. System Requirements This program runs on an IBM PC/XT/AT or compatible with at least 384K of RAM. The more memory, the bigger the database you can have. The program has been tested with DOS 3.0 and higher and works. Your monitor can be Monochrome, CGA, EGA or VGA. You can use a floppy or hard drive to store the data. In order to print calendars, you need a printer capable of printing graphics characters. Several print drivers are supplied with Calendar Mate and most printers are supported. If none of the print drivers work you may have to change some dip switch settings on your printer. Your printer manual will provide you with this information. Some of the keywords to look for include 'IBM Character Set II' on most printers, 'Epson Extended Character Set' on Epson printers, 'IBM Proprinter Mode' on Star printers. If you need help, call the support line listed on the front page of this manual. Please note that on-line help information is available to you. Press F1 from wherever you are in the program and an instructional window will appear. Introduction Page 5 Most Special Mentions Special thanks go to my unflappable beta testers, Peter Amos, John Notor, George Abbott, Jim Levin and especially Mike LeDuke, my documentation editor. However, the people who really made this program possible were my wife Laura and two Hawklings Juliana and Joshua whose patience during the development of this program kept me going. ...Rick Hawkes... Acknowledgements "IBM", "IBM PC" and "PC-DOS" are registered trademarks of International Business Machines Inc. MS-DOS is a U.S. registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation Calendar Mate 4.0 User Reference Guide Page 6 Getting Started After a nearly disastrous install program that came packaged with version 3 of Calendar Mate comes the light of day. Although Calendar Mate will run directly from the distribution diskette, there is a program called SETUP which will remind you that you can set the language of the calendars, the date format and the print drivers. All of these things can be setup in Calendar Mate as well but it's nice to get that sort of customization stuff out of the way early on. To run SETUP, make sure that you are in the subdirectory that contains all the Calendar Mate files and type in SETUP You will be asked a few questions that you can respond to. Most things that can go wrong with setup happen if you are running it from a different subdirectory that the one containing the Calendar Mate files. If you want to run Calendar Mate from a subdirectory on your hard drive. simply copy the files, using the DOS copy command. The Big Picture There are several files used by Calendar Mate during its operation. The help information, print drivers, customization information and your events all reside in different files and Calendar Mate needs to know where to find them. There are two ways that you can tell the Mate where his files are: either by running Calendar Mate from the subdirectory where all his files are or by setting a DOS Environment variable. The DOS Environment If you want to run Calendar Mate from anywhere, you can set a special flag so that the Mate can find out from DOS where his files are. The special variable is called CMATE4 and you have to type in SET CMATE4=C:\CALMATE4 assuming that C:\CALMATE4 is the directory where the data is to be found. If your files are in another subdirectory on a different drive, enter that information instead. Introduction Page 7 This command can be typed in from the command line before starting Calendar Mate or can be inserted in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. If entered from the command line, it will be effective until the next bootup of your system. Using different Events files Calendar Mate will allow you to use as many different events files as you like. These files are separate and cannot be merged or viewed together. If you have different calendars for work, home and school, you may enter the name of the events file at program startup like this: CALENDAR SCHOOL Calendar Mate will look for SCHOOL.CME CALENDAR FRED Calendar Mate will look for FRED.CME Simply entering CALENDAR without any filename will cause it to look for CALEVENT.CME. The Primary Menu When you get Calendar Mate started, after the title screen, you will see the Primary Menu. On the top line to the left of the title, the current day and date is displayed. On the top line to the right of the title is the current day in Julian format. The Julian date consists of the two last digits of the current year followed by the relative day in the year (i.e. January 3 is 3, February 1 is 32). To the extreme right of the title is a clock showing the current time (as accurately as DOS knows). The clock is updated every minute. The Convenience Calendar In the middle of the screen is this month's calendar. Calendar Mate takes its cue from DOS. If you haven't set the correct date and time, you will have an inaccurate calendar on your screen. No matter, you can change it. To set the date, exit the program and from the Dos prompt, type in DATE and press <ENTER> Dos will ask you to enter the current date and you reply in the format specified. You can also set the time by typing TIME at the Dos prompt and pressing <ENTER>. See your Dos manual for more details. Calendar Mate 4.0 User Reference Guide Page 8 There are a number of keys on your keyboard for manipulating the convenience calendar. These keys are Up Arrow Display the next year If the current calendar is May 1989, this key will display May 1990 Down Arrow Display the previous year If the current calendar is May 1989, this key will display May 1988 Left Arrow Display the previous month If the current calendar is May 1989, this key will display April 1989 Right Arrow Display the next month If the current calendar is May 1989, this key will display June 1989 Ins Add 100 to the year (next century) If the current calendar is May 1989, this key will display May 2089 Del Subtract 100 from the year If the current calendar is May 1989, this key will display May 1889 Home Back to today's calendar Hitting this key will reset the calendar to the system date PgDn Hilight the previous day PgUp Hilight the next day If you have a mouse installed, a few extra characters will appear on the bottom of the convenience calendar. They are meant to represent the arrows on your keyboard. If you position the mouse cursor on one of the characters and click the mouse button, it will behave the same way as the similar looking arrow key. The character that looks like a box with a hole in the middle is meant to represent the 'Home' key. You may also position the mouse cursor over a day on the calendar, click the mouse button, and that day will become the current day. This behaves much like the PgDn and PgUp keys but faster because you can target a specific day. Introduction Page 9 Hilighting the previous day or the next day are meaningful when you select option 1 from the options menu. This will be discussed in detail momentarily. Example Exercise Look at October 1582. 1) If your current month isn't October, press the left or right arrow keys until October is displayed in the center of the screen. 2) Now press the up or down arrow keys. Remember that this will change the year backward or forward one year. Keep pressing until you get to 1982. 3) Now press the 'Delete' key a few times until you come to 1582. Remember that the delete key moves the date in the convenience calendar one century backward. Interestingly enough, October 1582 was a pivotal month in the history of the calendar. The pope at the time, Gregory, was advised that because of an anomaly in the calendars so far, Easter was in danger of becoming a summer event. So Gregory deleted 10 days from the calendar that month to correct this. This was the start of what we call the Gregorian calendar. 4) To come back to today, press the 'Home' key. The Options Menu At the bottom of the main screen is the options menu. You may select a function either by number or by the hilighted letter in the description. If you have a mouse installed, to select an option position the mouse cursor beside that option and click the mouse button. Calendar Mate 4.0 User Reference Guide Page 10 Option 1. Events for Today Introduction This screen will display two things, events that have been scheduled for today's date and any future events for which you have scheduled an early warning that are coming up soon. In the system parameters file (option 5 on the main menu) you can specify the hours to be displayed on this screen and the number of intervals in the hour. If you have scheduled an event whose time exactly matches a time period on this screen, the event will be displayed there. Otherwise, the event will be displayed in the blank area below the time periods listed on the screen. Printing this Calendar To print this calendar, press the F8 key. To dump it to a disk file, press F9. When you print this calendar, early warnings will show in the bottom right section of the printout. When printing a daily calendar (but not viewing on the screen), you may want to see events far in advance of their actual date. The early warning that you specify when you define the event can be overridden by a parameter in option 5.2. See that section for further details. Seeing other days There are several ways to have a look at another day's events from this screen. 1) PgDn = next day 2) PgUp = previous day 3) Enter the date to skip to. See appendix A for a list of valid date formats. Introduction Page 11 4) If you want to see the events scheduled for next Wednesday, on the input line, type nw and press <Enter>. The letter 'n' is interpreted by Calendar Mate as meaning 'next'. Similarly, the letter 'l' is interpreted as meaning 'last'. For the day, use the following table. Day Code Sunday s Monday m Tuesday t Wednesday w Thursday th Friday f Saturday sa Entering Events To enter events into the database directly from this screen, press F10. The input line will move to the first time period. Use the tab keys or the up and down arrow keys to move the input area to the desired time period. If you have a mouse, place the cursor beside a time and click the button. Enter your event in the input area displayed. When you have entered your appointment/event, press the enter key to save it. When you have finished, press the ESC key to return to the main menu. Deleting Events To delete an appointment from your daily calendar, enter the command D xxxx where xxxx represents the time the appointment is scheduled. You may use any supported format when specifying the time. This command only works for events that occur between the start and end hours that you specify in 'System Parameters'. Any appointments that are scheduled outside those hours must be deleted using option 3 from the main menu. Calendar Mate 4.0 User Reference Guide Page 12 Appointment Extend If your event will span more than one time slot, use the Appointment Extend feature. In input mode press the F6 key and then use the arrow and tab keys to move to different time periods. The text of your event will travel with the input area. The Appointment Extend feature will move whatever text was on the input line before the F6 key is hit. You can use this to extend an appointment that has already been made and save yourself some keystrokes. See example 3 below. The restriction of Appointment Extend is that it can only be used for consecutive time slots. Example 1 Suppose you want to schedule a short meeting with Frank at 10:00 a.m. 1) Press F10 2) Use the down arrow key to move the input area to 10:00 3) Type 'Meeting with Frank' 4) Press the Enter (or return) key to register the event. Example 2 You must give a lecture on baseball strategy from 9:30 to 11:00 1) Press F10 2) Press F6 for Appointment Extend 3) Use the down arrow key to move the input area to 9:30 4) Type 'Strategy Lecture' 5) Use the down arrow key to move to 11:00 6) Press the Enter (or return) key to register the event. 7) Press ESC to return to the main menu. Option 1: Events for Today Page 13 Example 3 You've scheduled a meeting with a salesman at 9:00 but he's called and told you that he'll need 1 hour instead of 30 minutes to make his presentation. To mark that on your calendar, 1) Press F10. 2) Use the down arrow key to move the input area to 9:00 3) Press F6 for Appointment Extend 4) Press the down arrow key to extend the appointment. 5) Press Enter (or return) to register the event. Calendar Mate 4.0 User Reference Guide Page 14 Option 2. File Statistics This option shows the number of records in the current database, the number of deleted records and the 'number of memory slots left'. When the program starts, it determines how much memory it needs to load the database and then adds some to allow for the addition of more records. If your additional records exceed this allocated memory, Calendar Mate will save the data file and allocate more memory. A record will be flagged as deletable when a non-repeating event's date has passed or you explicitly deleted an event in option 3. When a record is flagged as deletable, it will remain in the database until you save the database (using the autosave option) or quit the program. Until one of these events occurs, you can recover a deleted event in option 3. Option 1: Events for Today Page 15 Option 3. Look at Events File This command will display a window showing the events database. There are two main types of event records -- repeating and non- repeating -- and these are displayed separately, non-repeating followed by repeating. These records will be sorted in ascending date order and optionally by time as well (See section 5.2 for information on how to sort the database by time). A repeating event will be identified with an asterisk to the right of the date. Important Keys on this Screen F1 Help Information F8 Sort file by date or event F9 Skip to top of file F10 Skip to end of file PgDn Scroll forward a screen PgUp Scroll backward a screen Up arrow Move up 1 event Down arrow Move down 1 event Esc Close the window There are 6 one letter commands that you can use on this screen. C Change the record F Show Future occurrences of a repeating event L Clone an existing record D Delete the record U Undelete the record X Expand the record to see more data Enter any of these commands in the input area beside a record. Calendar Mate 4.0 User Reference Guide Page 16 With a mouse you may execute any of the above mentioned commands by positioning the mouse cursor on the command and clicking the button. As well, instead of using the arrow keys to move the input area beside a record, you may position the mouse cursor beside a record and click a button to select that record. The Delete command Use this command to delete a record from the database. When you do this, the record will be deleted the next time the database is sorted and saved to disk. Until then, if you change your mind about deleting the record, you may undelete it. The Undelete command This command undeletes a record from the database. It will undo the action of the D (delete) command. The Change command This command is used to change the event record - date, time, early warning, description, etc. When you enter the 'C' command beside the record, you will see an input window not unlike the 'Add a Record' screen. The fields will be filled with the data that you had specified before. You may now make any desired changes. When you have changed a field, press the Enter (or return) key. Then press F5 to save your changes. The Clone Command The purpose of this command is to make a copy of an existing record and allow you to change some of the fields within it. For example if you're putting your team's softball schedule into Calendar Mate, this command can save a lot of typing. What you do is create a record (using option 4 from the main menu) and save it. Then, from the main menu, choose option 3 to get back here and clone the record by putting an 'L' beside the event. You'll see a menu that looks just like the 'change a record' menu. The difference is that you're creating a whole new record, using an existing one as a template. Now change any fields you need to and hit F5 to save it. Option 3: Look at Events File Page 17 The Expand Command This command will help you to remember some of the fields in the record that aren't shown on the menu. Enter an X beside the record and the program will display the entire record and make a best guess at interpreting the repeat field. Please note that if you have specified weekly or fortnightly, the program may interpret the repeat field as '7 days' or '14 days' respectively. The Future Command This powerful command will show the future occurrences of a repeating event. When you select this option you will be presented with another menu showing you the next 10 occurrences of the event. From this menu, you may scroll forward and backward using the PgUp and PgDn commands. As well, there are three commands you may enter from here R Reschedule an Event D Delete this occurrence of the event U Undo the effects of the above two commands Note: These commands deal with repeating events only. When you delete or reschedule an event from this part of the program, you are deleting or rescheduling one occurrence only. Deleting an Event Suppose you have a Rotary Club meeting on the 2nd Tuesday of the month except for the summer months. You have defined the event as a repeater but do not want it to appear on your calendar for July and August. By putting a 'D' beside the dates you want to cancel, you will not have to see that event on your calendars. As a reminder, the program will put the word 'Deleted' to the right of the date you cancelled. The way the program accomplishes this is to create another record in the database. If, for any reason, you delete the 'master event' (the repeater that this is associated with) any of these special records will be deleted as well. Unlike the normal records in the database that can sometimes be recovered with the 'undelete' command, these records are lost forever if deleted. Calendar Mate 4.0 User Reference Guide Page 18 Rescheduling an Event This is similar to deleting an event except that you want to see it some other time. For example, you have a squash game scheduled every Tuesday after work but you cannot play next Tuesday and would rather reschedule the game to Wednesday. If this is the case, put an 'R' beside the date. A menu like the 'change' and 'clone' menus will be displayed. Fill in the new date or time of the event. Press F5 to save it. Calendar Mate will display the new date of the event with the word 'Rescheduled' shown to remind you. When you print a monthly calendar or display a daily calendar, the event will appear in its new time period. When you reschedule an occurrence of a repeating event, the program will create a non-repeating event at the new time or date. Although it looks like a normal non-repeating event, it cannot be deleted from the events file the way you normally delete events. Undoing your changes If you have to 'undelete' or 'un-reschedule' an event, type a 'U' beside the date that has been deleted or rescheduled. This will restore the event to its previous state. If you have rescheduled the event (and the program has created a non-repeating record) the non-repeating record will be deleted. Sorting by date or event You may display the file sorted by date or by event. The default sorting is by date. If you press the F8 key, the file will be sorted differently from how you see it. If it's sorted by date and you press F8, it will be sorted by event and vice versa. Adding a Record To add a record from this screen, press the Ctrl and 'A' keys simultaneously. This will present you with the menu from option 4 which is the subject of the next chapter. Option 3: Look at Events File Page 19 Option 4. Add a Record When you choose this option you will be presented with an input window like this Enter Date : Enter Time : 0000 Description : Daily Cal : Repeat : Early Warn : Note that once you have entered all the appropriate data, you should press F5 to save the record. If, while defining the record, you decide that you want to start over, press ESC to close the window and discard the record. Enter Date The input area will be positioned beside the 'Enter Date' field. Specify the date of the event (for non-repeating events) or the starting date of the event (for repeaters). You will be reminded of the correct format for the date. See appendix A for a full listing of the acceptable date formats. If you want to use today's date, enter an asterisk '*'. The date that is shown is taken from the convenience calendar. Enter Time The 'Enter Time' field is the time the event is scheduled to take place. This is optional because you might not care what time an event is to occur. For example, you wouldn't specify a time for an event such as Labour Day. If you don't need to specify a time, press enter here. The default, 0000, tells the program to ignore this field. There are many time formats the program understands. See Appendix A for a full list of the acceptable formats. Description The 'Description' field allows you to describe the event. You may use up to 20 characters. This field must have something entered in it to allow you to fill in other fields. Calendar Mate 4.0 User Reference Guide Page 20 Daily Cal The 'Daily Cal' field gives you the option of having this event appear on the daily calendar and/or monthly calendar. The default is 'Y'. You may enter any of the following options... Y or B Print event on monthly and daily calendars N or M Print this on monthly calendar only D Print this on the daily calendar only Early Warn The early warning will display an advance warning of an upcoming event. The early warning will appear on the daily calendar a specified number of days in advance of the event. You may specify up to 99 days in advance. Warning: If you use too large a number here (greater than 7 days or so) the program will slow down quite substantially when displaying the daily events. Repeat The 'Repeat' field calls for a Y, N or S response. 1) If this is a one time event, reply N 2) If this event is to come up on a regular basis, reply Y. 3) If the event is a special repeater, reply S. There are two types of 'special repeating' events that Calendar Mate can handle. The first type is an event that recurs on a regular interval unless the date it falls on is a weekend. It will then be rescheduled to the previous workday or the next workday depending on your preference. An example of this type of special repeater is the way that many companies pay their employees - twice per month. The first payday falls on the 15th of the month unless that day falls on a weekend or holiday in which case the employees will be paid on the previous workday. The second type of special repeater is a specific date - February 29. If your birthday falls on that day, you will want to celebrate it on the 28th of February in non-leap years. Option 4: Add a Record Page 21 If you reply 'S' you will be prompted for the special processing instructions. If you reply Y and press enter, the program will show you two more lines so that the input screen will now look like... Enter Date : dd/mm/yy Enter Time : 0000 Description : Testing Event Daily Cal : Y Repeat : Y Early Warn : 00 Frequency : Annually End Date : Eternity Special Proc : (If you selected 'S') Frequency In the 'Frequency' field you tell the program how often an event recurs. The program will allow you to describe many types of repeating events. Some specific examples include: 3rd Workday of the month Every 4 days 1st Monday in September 2nd Sunday of the month Last workday Daily Every workday Mon, Wed, Fri Tues-Thur See appendix D for a complete list of repeating adjectives that the program understands. End date In this field tell the program to ignore a repeating event after a certain date. Use this field, for example, when describing your vacation to the program. If your vacation starts on 12Aug91 and ends two weeks later on 26Aug91, how would you arrange to have this event printed on your calendar for each day you are on vacation? Specify 'daily' for frequency and 27Aug91 for the end date. If the end date is less than the start date (which can happen around January before you get used to the new year) the program will warn you. Calendar Mate 4.0 User Reference Guide Page 22 Another way to specify the end date is to reply '+nnn' where nnn represents a number of days. In the above example, instead of specifying 27Aug91 as the end date, you could specify +15 as the end date. The program would then compute the proper end date. The date you specify as the end date isn't included in the span of the event. It's the first day after the event has completed. For example, if you have to attend a conference from October 12th to October 14th, specify October 15th as the ending date. The default for the end date is 'Eternity'. The program will keep this event repeating until you delete it manually. Special Processing If you have defined an event as a 'special repeater' you'll have to specify what to do if the event falls on a weekend. Your options are P to reschedule event to the previous workday N to reschedule event to the next workday D to delete this occurrence of the event Option 4: Add a Record Page 23 Option 5. System Parameters There are a number of user definable system parameters available. When you select option 5, you will be presented with this menu. 1) Set Printer Parms 2) Set Program Parms 3) Set Various Colours 4) Select new data file The following three sections will discuss each of those selections in detail. 5.1 Set Printer Parameters When it comes to setting up your printer, you may be able to use a print driver that comes with Calendar Mate or you may have to create your own. Read on to see what's involved! 5.1.1 Set Default Drivers for Calendars Calendar Mate currently can print three types of calendars: daily, monthly and yearly. You may specify a different print driver for each one if you wish. This is particularly useful if you like to print monthly calendars in landscape mode (since daily and yearly have to be in portrait mode). To select a print driver, first of all select which calendar you wish to talk about. You will then be presented with a list of all print drivers that Calendar Mate can find. Enter any non-blank character beside the appropriate driver and the change will be in effect the next time you print. Calendar Mate prints using special characters for the borders of the calendars and if your printer isn't set up properly, the borders will appear as italicized C's and D's instead of the box characters. The following illustration uses all the special characters. If it looks like italic characters, you're going to need a print driver. ┌──┬──┐ ├──┼──┤ └──┴──┘ Calendar Mate 4.0 User Reference Guide Page 24 There are several print drivers shipped with Calendar Mate which will send control codes to your printer. Of course, there are many kinds of printers out there but most of them will emulate one of a couple of main types. I have found that there are 5 main ones - Epson LQ series Epson FX, LX, RX series IBM Proprinter Hewlett Packard Laserjet Hewlett Packard Deskjet If you know that your printer emulates one of the above printers, select the one that's appropriate. Simply put a non-blank character (such as an X) beside the print driver you require and press Enter. Then try to print a calendar. If it looks nice, you've got the right one. If not, you may have to read the next section. 5.1.2 Prepare or edit your own Monthly calendar prints use three fonts -- normal, double width and compressed. If monthly calendars print nicely on your printer you won't have to go through the arduous process of looking up printer codes. If you do have to set up the printer codes, please note that the program expects normal print to be 10 characters per inch and double width to be 5 characters per inch. Compressed print may be either 16.67 or 17.1 characters per inch. You should be able to obtain the printer codes from your printer manual. To enter the codes into Calendar Mate, use the decimal representation of the codes. If there is more than one code, separate them with commas. For example, if your printer needs to receive the code "Esc+w+49" to turn on double width, enter 27,119,49 27 is Esc code, 119 is 'w' code or 27,w,49 Probably easier Option 5: System Parameters Page 25 If the printer code contains non-numeric characters (letters or other characters like $%&^) you may enter them as characters. Numbers must be entered as their ASCII value (as illustrated above). If you have to sort out the printer codes and are successful, I would be most grateful if you would communicate your findings to me so that others will benefit from your research. As an incentive, if you're the first person to send me the codes for your printer I will refund your registration fee. Appendix C contains a list of ASCII characters and their decimal representation. You may use this to help you set up your printer codes if necessary. If there is no way that you can get Calendar Mate to print nice looking calendars using the extended character set, you have one last chance. If you put a 'p' as the only character of Init String 2, the program will bypass the extended character set and print using the normal characters. Although this calendar is not nearly as nice as the other, it works. Creating a new Print Driver. If you need to save your printer codes in a separate print driver you may do it in the following manner: When you get to option 5.1.2, press F8 and enter the name of the new driver you are creating. When you press enter, you will be given an opportunity to give a brief description of the print driver so, in the future, you will know what the driver does. Why would you want to create another print driver? Maybe you would like to use italic or bold characters on your calendar but would like to create a new driver so the old one isn't destroyed. There are other valid reasons for creating your own drivers. Your imagination is the limit! Calendar Mate 4.0 User Reference Guide Page 26 5.2 Set Program Parameters When you select option 5.2 you will be presented with a menu that looks like this: Date Format : [dmy ] Date format on displays Auto Sort Data : yes Sort Database when updated? Immediate Purge : yes Auto purge obsolete events Julian Date : yes Put Julian date on monthly calendar Sort by time also : no Sort file by date and time Current Century : 1900 Century assumed with 2 digit years Start of workday : 8a Start hour of daily calendar End of Workday : 5p End hour of daily calendar Slots per hour : 2 Number of intervals on daily cal Print Language : Eng English, Francais, Espanol, Deutsch Disk 80 or 132 : 132 Number of columns for disk output Auto Save Number : 2 # of changes before saving Lunar Cycle : N Print full/new moon? (G/L/N) Compressed Print : Yes Compressed Event Printing? (Y/N) Override Ewarn : 99 Override early warning on daily prt Date Format This field will tell the program how to interpret a date that looks like 12/11/89. Your options are ... dmy day/month/year 12/11/89 is Nov. 12, 1989 mdy month/day/year 12/11/89 is Dec. 11, 1989 ymd year/month/day 89/12/11 is Dec. 11, 1989 A date set in a format like 12may89 will override the format set up here. Auto Sort Data This option tells the program whether or not to sort the data before it is written to disk. The default is 'Yes' and is highly recommended. Immediate purge This option tells the program whether or not to purge obsolete records automatically. An obsolete record is defined as any event -- repeating or not -- whose expiry date has passed. Option 5: System Parameters Page 27 Julian Date This option tells the program whether or not to display the Julian date on the monthly calendar. The Julian date is the number of the day relative to the start of the year. For example, the julian date for February 1st is 32, for December 31st is 365 (or 366 in a leap year). Sort by time also This option tells the program whether you want to sort the data file by time as well as by date. This will cause the sort to take longer but unless you have a very large data file (over 500 events), the time factor will not be important. Current Century This option tells the program what century a two digit year represents. I.E. if you enter 10/15/89, the program needs to know if you are talking about 1989, 2089, 1889 etc. Start of Workday This option sets the starting time for the daily calendar. End of Workday This option sets the ending time for the daily calendar. Slots per Hour This option tells the program whether you want the daily calendar to have a time slot every 15 or 30 minutes. For 15 minute time slots, enter 4 and for 30 minute time slots, enter 2. Print Language Although Calendar Mate's messages, prompts and commands are all in English, you may print calendars in different languages. Currently, English, Spanish, German and French are supported. If you would like to see another language supported, send a letter to the author with the names of the days of the week and months of the year and if the language uses characters that DOS can display, it will come out in the next version. Since Calendar Mate doesn't use graphics, Arabic, Chinese, Sanscrit, Cerillic and other such alphabets would be impossible to implement. Calendar Mate 4.0 User Reference Guide Page 28 Disk Width This option is similar to the previous one except that it is for output directed to disk. This option might differ from the previous one if you have some software that will take a disk file and print it sideways on your 80 column printer. Auto save number This option specifies the number of changes to the database that must be done before the program saves the file to disk. Set this to any integer value that your nerve will allow. Lunar Cycle Calendar Mate will compute when the full moon and new moon occur each month. If you would like this printed out on your monthly calendar, specify it here. If your printer can print the 'happy face' characters - hex codes 01 and 02 - you should specify 'G' (graphics character) here. Laser printers tend to print these characters nicely. A full moon will be represented by the character 01 (a white happy face) and a new moon by the character 02 (a black happy face). If your printer (like mine) cannot print those characters, you can specify L (for letter). If you select this option, a new moon will be represented by the letter 'N' and a full moon by the letter 'F'. If you do not care when the new moon and full moon happen, specify 'N'. Compressed Print Normally, monthly calendars can show two events in each box. When compressed print is used, the calendar can show three events in each box. If you want the events to print using a condensed font, specify Yes, otherwise, specify No. Compressed print brings some restrictions with it. You cannot browse a calendar that has been created with compressed print and sent to disk. Also, compressed print is supported only for calendars that are 80 or 99 characters wide. If this restriction poses a problem, contact Hawk Software and more support will be added. Option 5: System Parameters Page 29 On the author's printer, an EPSON FX compatible, the calendars look cleaner if friction feed is used, as opposed to tractor feed. If tractor feed is used, there are tiny gaps between the characters that make up the vertical lines. Override Ewarn When you define an event with an early warning, it will appear on the daily calendar, starting that number of days before the event actually takes place. I have found that when I print a daily calendar it doesn't look as cluttered as the on-line version when there are lots of early warnings. For this reason, you can use this field to override the early warning value you specified when you defined the event. If the event has a non-zero early warning value, this figure will override it on the daily printed calendar only. You may specify any value from 0 to 99. 5.3 Set Various Colours This option allows you to change several window colours. There is another technique, described in the last paragraph of this section, which will allow you to change the colour of an individual window. When you select this option you will be presented with a menu. The choices are: Main Screen Colour: This is the background on the main screen where the options window and convenience calendar are located. General Info Line: This is the line at the top of the main screen which has the date, time, Julian date and Calendar Mate version. Options Window: This window is on the main screen and displays the functions available to you. General Info Windows: These windows are displayed periodically in order to let you know that some work is in progress - the database is being sorted, a calendar being generated etc. Warning Windows: These windows are similar to the General Info windows except that they warn you of a possible error. A yellow/amber background may be appropriate here. Calendar Mate 4.0 User Reference Guide Page 30 Error Windows: These windows indicate a problem that must be resolved before the program can continue, such as a printer not being ready when you asked the program to print a calendar. Another technique to change window colours is to simultaneously press the CNTL and E keys. A little prompting window will appear telling you what to do next. Press the left and right arrows to change the background colour and the up and down arrow keys to change the foreground colour. When you are satisfied, press F5 and the window colour you selected will be saved for future use. 5.4 Select Different Events Files Calendar Mate will allow you to specify the name of the events file you want it to process. As was mentioned at the beginning of the documentation, you can specify the events file name on the command line when you start Calendar. If you want to change which file Calendar Mate processes, select this option. You will be presented with a list of Events files that Calendar Mate can locate. These are the files with a second name of CME (i.e. CALEVENT.CME). Move the input area beside the events file you wish to process, enter any non-blank character and press Enter. The file you are working on will be saved and the new file opened for processing. Option 5: System Parameters Page 31 Option 6. DOS Shell This command will temporarily suspend execution of Calendar Mate and put you into DOS. To get back to the program, type EXIT and press <ENTER>. The way this works is simple. Calendar Mate calls a program called COMMAND.COM which is a DOS program. For this to work, the program has to be able to find COMMAND.COM so either have it on the floppy disk from which you are running Calendar Mate or have it available in the DOS PATH search chain. Calendar Mate 4.0 User Reference Guide Page 32 Option 7. Print a Calendar This option allows you to generate a monthly calendar that you may either print or load to disk and then browse using option 8. When you select option 7, you will be prompted to enter the month and year of the calendar you want to print; whether you want to print it, browse it on the screen or file it to disk. If you decide to print it on your printer, you will be asked whether you want the small calendars or not. If you reply 'Y', small calendars will print after the main calendar, two months before and two months after. These small calendars will only print if there is room on the page. If there are six weeks in the month, the small calendars will not be generated. Printing a Range of Months If you want to generate more than one month, enter a date in the format aa-bb/cc Where aa represents the starting month, bb represents the ending month and cc represents the year. For example to print September - December 1990, specify 9-12/90. Please note that the program must find a dash (-) and a slash (/) to realize that you want to print a range of months. Also, note that you may only specify a range of months in the same year. For example you cannot print October 1900 - February 1991 at the same time. Printing a Yearly Calendar As well as printing monthly calendars, you may print a whole year on one page. To do this, specify the month as an asterisk. For example, to print the 1991 calendar, specify *91 as the month and year. Option 6: Dos Shell Page 33 Interrupting Calendar Generation If you want to interrupt the program while it's generating a calendar, simply hit any key. A window will be displayed asking you if you really want to interrupt the process. If you do, hit the ESC key. If the program is sending a file to disk it will stop and erase the partially created file. If sending a calendar to the printer it will stop executing immediately and the printer will keep printing until its buffer empties. This could take a while depending on the size of the print buffer. The program expects a printer to be in the 1st parallel port. If you do not have a printer there or if it is not ready to print, an error window will be displayed asking you to ready the printer and to press any key to proceed or to press the ESC key to cancel the task. Monthly Calendar Overflow Sometimes there are more events jammed into a day than can print in each box of the monthly calendar. If you have compressed print set on, you can print up to three events per day; without compressed print: two events. When this happens, you will be presented with a list of events that are eligible to go in the box and you will be permitted to choose which events are the important ones. Simply put any non- blank character beside your choice and it will be hilighted. You will not be permitted to choose more events than will fit. If you highlight an event and then change your mind, just enter any non-blank character (like you did to hilight the event) and it will become "unchosen". Calendar Mate 4.0 User Reference Guide Page 34 Option 8. Browse Calendar This option will allow you to look at a calendar that you have stored on disk. This will allow you to preview the calendar prior to printing it. The browse routine is not complicated. To move around the calendar, use the arrow keys. The up and down keys will advance the calendar one week. The right and left arrow keys will advance the calendar one weekday at a time (if the calendar greater than 80 columns wide). If you are looking at the last week of the month and press the down arrow key, the display will move back to the first week (wrap around). Similarly, if you are looking at the first week of the month and press the up arrow key, the display will wrap around to the last week of the month. You may notice some odd characters flanking the name of the month. These are printer control characters. When you send your file to the printer, they will disappear. If you generated several months and sent the file to disk you can browse one month at a time. To view the next month, press the plus (+) key. To view the previous month, press the minus (-) key. The display will wrap around if you pressed the minus key while viewing the first month or if you pressed the plus key while viewing the last month you generated. Option 7: Print a Calendar Page 35 Option 9. Quit This option closes down the program normally. It is highly recommended that you end the program normally so that the data file can be saved. There is an auto-save feature in the program that will save your data periodically but if you have not reached the autosave threshold, your data may be lost during an abnormal termination of the program. Calendar Mate 4.0 User Reference Guide Page 36 Appendix A. Date/Time Formats The author has attempted to make it as convenient as possible to enter dates and times in a format that is convenient for you. Here is a list of supported formats: Date Formats * Today's date. dd/mm/yy Eg. 15/10/89 Oct 15, 1989 see note 1 mm/dd/yy Eg. 10/15/89 Oct 15, 1989 see note 2 yy/mm/dd Eg. 89/10/15 Oct 15, 1989 see note 3 ddmmmyy Eg. 15Oct89 Oct 15, 1989 ddmmyy Eg. 151089 Oct 15, 1989 see note 1 mmddyy Eg. 101589 Oct 15, 1989 see note 2 yymmdd Eg. 891015 Oct 15, 1989 see note 3 Time Formats 730 7:30 a.m. 7:30 7:30 a.m. 730a 7:30 a.m. 1930 7:30 p.m. 19:30 7:30 p.m. 730p 7:30 p.m. Note 1: You have to specify dmy in the system parameters (opt 5.2) Note 2: You have to specify mdy in the system parameters (opt 5.2) Note 3: You have to specify ymd in the system parameters (opt 5.2) Option 9: Quit Page 37 Appendix B. Data Record Formats The format of the Calendar Mate data records are as follows. Column(s) Description 1 Indicator Byte x'01' for non-repeating event x'03' for repeating event x'06' for deleted event 2-9 date 8 bytes 10-13 time 4 bytes 14-33 descr 20 bytes 34 repeat type 1 byte (daily, weekly, monthly etc) 35 repeat type b 1 byte (like previous byte) 36-38 nn days 3 bytes (like every 3 weeks) 39-41 nth day 3 bytes (like 3rd Sunday of the month) 42-49 end repeat 8 bytes 50-51 early warning 2 bytes (Advance notice in days) 52 cal indicator 1 byte (m, d or b) Calendar Mate 4.0 User Reference Guide Page 38 Appendix C. ASCII Character Set This is a list of ASCII characters from 32 to 126. It is being provided to possibly help you if you have to define printer control characters. The characters less than 32 and greater than 127 are of no use to this discussion. 032 <sp> 033 ! 034 " 035 # 036 $ 037 % 038 & 039 ' 040 ( 041 ) 042 * 043 + 044 , 045 - 046 . 047 / 048 0 049 1 050 2 051 3 052 4 053 5 054 6 055 7 056 8 057 9 058 : 059 ; 060 < 061 = 062 > 063 ? 064 @ 065 A 066 B 067 C 068 D 069 E 070 F 071 G 072 H 073 I 074 J 075 K 076 L 077 M 078 N 079 O 080 P 081 Q 082 R 083 S 084 T 085 U 086 V 087 W 088 X 089 Y 090 Z 091 [ 092 \ 093 ] 094 ^ 095 _ 096 ` 097 a 098 b 099 c 100 d 101 e 102 f 103 g 104 h 105 i 106 j 107 k 108 l 109 m 110 n 111 o 112 p 113 q 114 r 115 s 116 t 117 u 118 v 119 w 120 x 121 y 122 z 123 { 124 | 125 } 126 ~ 127 <del> Appendix B: Data Record Formats Page 39 Appendix D. Repeating Adjectives This is a complete list of keywords accepted by the program for describing repeating events. You rarely have to enter the complete word -- the program understands certain abbreviations. The minimum number of characters required to identify the word is supplied as well. Keyword Minimum Example Keyword Minimum Example _______ _______ _______ Daily 2 da Weekly 3 wee Monthly 4 mont Yearly 4 year Annually 3 ann Fortnightly 4 fort Day 2 da Workday 4 work Last 4 last First 5 1st Second 6 2nd Third 5 3rd Fourth 6 4th Monday 4 mond Tuesday 3 tue Wednesday 3 wed Thursday 3 thu Friday 3 fri Saturday 3 sat Sunday 3 sun January 3 jan February 3 feb March 3 mar April 3 apr May 3 may June 3 jun July 3 jul August 3 aug September 3 sep October 3 oct November 3 nov December 3 dec Easter 3 eas Calendar Mate 4.0 User Reference Guide Page 40 Prefixes: Keyword Example Meaning bi biweekly every 2 weeks tri triweekly every 3 weeks Cosmetic Words: the, of, in, every Appendix D: Repeating Adjectives Page 41 Appendix E. Some commonly asked questions Q: Why isn't the calendar printing the proper month? I'm getting December 1900! A: You probably specified a date in a format that Calendar Mate misunderstood. The most common error is putting a space between the month and year (eg. Dec 90 instead of Dec90). Have a look in appendix A for a list of acceptable formats. Q: I am trying to print in compressed mode and the events are printing on different lines than the box characters. The calendar takes up one and a half pages instead of one. What's the matter? A: In compressed mode, Calendar Mate prints the outline for the box, does a carriage return and then prints the events. This works for most printers. Some printers, however, do an automatic line feed in tandem with a carriage return. This can usually be disabled by setting a dip switch. In the author's printer manual, the terminology is "Auto Feed XT". Q: When I print a calendar I get italic Cs and Ds instead of lines around the borders. Does Calendar Mate support my printer? A: Calendars printed with Calendar Mate should look like you would expect a calendar to look -- with nice clean lines. If your printer isn't printing properly, try using a different print driver, selectable in option 5.1.1. Alternatively, run the SETUP program on the Calendar Mate distribution disk. If all else fails, you can try using 'Plain' characters. See the discussion in section 5.1.2 above. Q: What settings should I use to print a calendar in landscape mode on my LaserJet printer? A: Load the print driver called HPLJIIPL (using option 5.1.1) and set the printer width to 99. Calendar Mate 4.0 User Reference Guide Page 42 Q: When I start up Calendar Mate, there is no help information and it cannot find my events file! A: All of Calendar Mate's files have to reside in the same subdirectory as the program and you have to be in that subdirectory when you start Calendar Mate. For example, if Calendar Mate resides in C:\CALENDAR and you're in C:\QEDIT when you start up calendar, it won't be able to find the help file, parm file and events file. The exception to this rule is if you have the Environment Variable set. This procedure is described in the section entitled 'The DOS Environment' Appendix E: Common Questions Page 43 Appendix F. Order Form Order Form For Calendar Mate Version 4.0 Name: __________________________________________ Address: __________________________________________ City: __________________________________________ Province/State:__________________________________________ Postal Code/Zip:_________________________________________ Country: __________________________________________ Registration Fee: $22.00 Shipping & Handling $ 3.00 Saskatchewan Residents Add: $ 1.75 (7% Sales Tax) Canadian Residents Add: $ 1.75 (7% GST) ====== Total: ______ Diskette Size ____ 5.25" ____ 3.5" Please return this form to: Hawk Software PO Box 3961 Regina, Saskatchewan S4P 3R9 Canada How did you find out about Calendar Mate? [ ] Friend [ ] Compuserve [xx] SDN [ ] Bulletin Board ______________________ (which one?) [ ] Shareware Library _______________ (which one?) Does your PC have a Hard Drive? [ ]Yes [ ]No Calendar Mate 4.0 User Reference Guide Page 44 What kind of printer do you use? ___________________________ Which Calendar Mate print driver works?_____________________ Is mouse support useful? [ ]Yes [ ]No [ ] I don't have a mouse Please feel free to add your comments and suggestions on how Calendar Mate can be improved to better meet your needs... __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ Order Form Page 45 Appointment Extend 13 Calendar browsing printed 35 convenience 8 daily 21, 28 improper date printed 42 monthly,printing 25, 33 printer requirements 5 printing tiny 33 Colour 30, 31 changing 24 changing - ^E key 31 changing - option 5.3 30 Compressed print restrictions 29 Convenience Calendar 8 Daily Calendar Printing 11 Data missing files 43 Date 8 changing 11 changing event's 17 event's end 22 formats 20, 27 Julian 8, 28, 30 setting DOS 8 specifying 42 Date/Time Formats 37 DOS Environment 7 Environment Variable 7 Event 11, 15 changing 17 database 16 deleting 15, 27 description 20 early warning 21 end date 22 entering 12 file 38 printing 21 repeating 21 special repeater 21 Events special repeaters 21 Events File changing - option 5.4 31 Calendar Mate 4.0 User Reference Guide Page 46 Files missing 43 Graphics characters 29 Help Info 5 Monthly Calendar Overflow 34 Options Menu 10 Order Form 44 Primary Menu 8 Printer problems 42 Printer Parameters 24 Program Parameters 27 Auto save number 29 Auto Sort Data 27 Compressed Print 29 Current Century 28 Date Format 27 Disk Width 29 End of Workday 28 Immediate purge 27 Julian Date 28 Lunar Cycle 29 Override Ewarn 30 Print Language 28 Slots per Hour 28 Sort by time 28 Start of Workday 28 Repeating events adding 20, 21 describing 22 end date 22 viewing 16 Shareware 3, 44 System Requirements 5 The Setup Program 7 Time appointment extend 13 changing event's 17 current 8, 30 entering event's 20 formats 37 setting DOS 8 slots 11, 12, 28 slots per hour 28 sorting records 16 Yearly Calendar Printing 33 Order Form Page 47