*----------------------------------------------------------------------* * Fri Apr 5 22:02:55 1991 * *----------------------------------------------------------------------* * DateDiary Appointment Diary. DIARYCHECK & DateDiary Editor * *----------------------------------------------------------------------* * Installation and Instructions * *----------------------------------------------------------------------* * By Edmund Dumbill (C) Amiga Computing 1991 * *----------------------------------------------------------------------* Datediary is a program to keep track of your appointments, and warn you when they are due. In comes in two parts: DIARYCHECK and the DateDiary Editor. DIARYCHECK is the part of the program that warns you of imminent appointments, and the Editor enables you to add/delete/edit appointments. The program enables you to input the following things about your appointment: DETAILS LOCATION DATE PRIORITY The priority is a special number from 0 to 9, that determines the warning period and the nature of the warning. See later for a breakdown of the priority numbers. HOW TO INSTALL DATEDIARY ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ For DateDiary to work best, you need to include a call to DIARYCHECK in the startup-sequence of your boot-disk. This means you need to copy DIARYCHECK and DATEDIARY (the Editor) on to your boot-disk (this could be a Workbench disk, for example). Make a new directory to copy these files to. DateDiary assumes you have ASSIGNed the name dd: to your program directory. You will need to put this into your startup-sequence. The necessary modifications to the startup-sequence, which you should put just before the ENDCLI command, are: ASSIGN dd: DIARYCHECK This will ensure that each time you boot from that disk, your appointments are checked. DateDiary creates a file called Appointments.dd in the dd: directory. If you make a mess of your appointments, just delete this file and start again. DIARYCHECK - the reminder program ================================= DIARYCHECK is simply called by the command DIARYCHECK. It will look for the appointments file in the dd: directory. If there are any appointments needing attention, DIARYCHECK will open up a requester or alert box displaying the name of the appointment. You will then be given the option of entering the Editor. Whether an alert box or requester is displayed depends on the priorities of the appointments. Here is an explanation of the priority numbers: +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ |WARNING PERIOD | REQUEST PRIORITY | ALERT PRIORITY| +---------------------------------+------------------+---------------+ |On day of appointment | 0 | 5 | |On week of appoinment | 1 | 6 | |During fortnight of appointment | 2 | 7 | |Within 3 weeks of appointment | 3 | 8 | |During month of appointment | 4 | 9 | +---------------------------------+------------------+---------------+ Note: DateDiary can only display up to 16 appointments needing attention. Because of this limit, you are advised to use the long warning period priority numbers only in important cases, otherwise you may miss other appointments (if you are a busy person!). When an appointment has passed, DateDiary still keeps it in the data file, but does not display it when DIARYCHECK is run. It is up to you to delete appointments from the data file when you have finished with them. DateDiary can hold as many appointments as you have free memory for. DO I NEED A REAL TIME CLOCK TO RUN DATEDIARY & DIARYCHECK ? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A battery backed clock is preferable, although it is not necessary. If you don't have a real time clock, add this to your startup-sequence just before the ASSIGN dd: line; DATE ? Remember the question mark. Then whenever you boot up you will have to type in the date in DD-MMM-YY format. An example of a date would be 05-Apr-91. But a battery backed clock makes things much easier. *----------------------------------------------------------------------* * Mon Apr 1 12:40:19 1991 * *----------------------------------------------------------------------* * DateDiary Appointment Editor * *----------------------------------------------------------------------* * Instructions * *----------------------------------------------------------------------* * By Edmund Dumbill (C) Amiga Computing 1991 * *----------------------------------------------------------------------* The purpose of the Editor program is to allow you to update your appointments diary. When loaded, the program will put up its own screen, and load in the data. The data file it looks for is called "dd:Appointments.dd". So before running the Editor you must ASSIGN dd: to the path name where you would like to keep your data. This is a handy thing to put in a startup-sequence. If the program cannot find the data, it will say so, and will then assume you are starting from scratch. If you forget to ASSIGN dd: or insert your data disk, rectify this and select 'Reload data' from the FILE menu. There are 2 basic operations you can do to maintain your appointments diary, these are 'Add an appointment' and 'Edit/delete appointments'. These two options are to be found on the APPOINTMENTS menu. Adding an appointment ===================== To do this, first select 'Add an appointment' from the APPOINTMENTS menu. You will then be presented with a window where you can enter the details of your appointment. You can click and type in the top 2 boxes - these are to hold the details of the appointment, and its location or other notes. You can then use the sliders to change the data of the appointment. Finally you must decide on a priority for the appointment. Priority -------- This can be a number from 0-9. A number from 0-4 means the program will use a requester to attract your attention when it is imminent, and a number from 5-9 will cause an alert to be used instead. Obviously it pays to be conservative with your priorities, if you overuse an alert, its significance will be lessened. When you have finished entering the details of your appointment, select the OKAY! gadget to keep it, or CANCEL to make the system ignore it. Your appointment will be inserted into the appointment list at the appopriate place. Editing/Deleting an appointment =============================== This option will also allow you to browse through your appointments. To start editing/deleting/browsing select the Edit/Delete option from the Appointments menu. You will see a Control Panel window appear, and also the details of the first appointment. The Control Panel is the key to moving through your appointments. It has several gadgets which perform functions, and looks roughly like this: ------- /\ |FIRST| / \ -------- -------- -------- ------- ---- | | | | | | | GOTO | | EDIT | | KILL | ------- ---- | | | | | | |LAST | \ / -------- -------- -------- ------- \/ FIRST & LAST allow you to move to the First and Last appointments in the diary. The up and down arrows enable you to move record by record through the diary. GOTO allows you to type in a date, and then any appointments on that date will be jumped to. EDIT allows you to edit the appointment currently shown in the display box at the bottom of the screen. KILL allows you to delete the currently shown appointment. To quit Edit/Delete mode, select the close gadget on the corner of the Control Panel. The appointments are held in memory in date order, soonest first. They are then sorted within that, so top-priority appointments appear first. Other functions =============== On the FILE menu, Save Appointments and Reload appointments can be found. These are pretty self explanatory. It should be noted however that the Editor will automatically save the data file when you quit the program, to ensure it is fully up to date. On the SPECIAL menu, you can get some on-screen instructions by using the Instructions option, and you have the option to turn the copper bar background on or off. You can quit DateDiary by using the Quit option on the PROGRAM menu. A bit about the program ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ DateDiary was written in C on an A500 with 1 Meg of RAM, but it will run on an unexpanded machine. It took about a fortnight of evenings to write and debug. If you want to contact the author, please write to: Edmund Dumbill, Church Farm, Church Street, FOSTON, Nr. Grantham, LINCS. NG32 2LG. England Bug reports and suggestions for improvements will be gratefully received. If you want a reply please could you include an SAE or postage. If you would like a copy of the source code, send along a 3.5" disk and I will oblige, and also include a few other programs/utilities written by me. Edmund Dumbill 1991.