D A T E M I N D E R (C) 1993 Dillo Software DATEMINDER is a simple reminder program designed to remind you of upcoming events as you boot up your computer. It is copyrighted material and released as SHAREWARE... If you find it useful after 14 days and intend to continue using it, I urge you to register the program with me at: Ray Fortner 924 Glade Forest Ct. Cedar Hill, TX, 75104 The registration fee is $7 and entitles you to product support, notice of upgrades, and bug fixes (hopefully none are needed!). Please use the form below to register. I also solicit your comments and opinions on the utility of Dateminder, and how I can improve it. Thank you for supporting Shareware. =================================================================== D A T E M I N D E R Version 1.1 Product Registration I am enclosing the $7 registration fee for: Name ___________________________________________ Address ___________________________________________ City ___________________________________________ State/Prov. ________________ Zip/Postal __________ _ Check diskette type: 5.25" |_| _ 3.5 " |_| Remit to: Ray Fortner 924 Glade Forest Ct. Cedar Hill, TX 75104 ------------------------------------------------------------------- Comments: ________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ =========================Clip=here================================ DESCRIPTION: Dateminder is designed as an unobtrusive, simple, small reminder program to help keep you from overlooking those pesky little dates, birthdays, anniversarys and other items that are important for you to remember. It is NOT a full-blown Personal Information Manager, and doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles. It is written entirely in assembly language for speed and compactness - the actual code uses less than 12K bytes, with the rest of the file size being used for data. I do plan some enhancements, depending on user support and inputs for further development. INSTALLATION: I developed Dateminder to be called from the AUTOEXEC.BAT file at boot-up, so that you will be reminded of upcoming events when your computer is started. The best way to do his is to place the files DATEMIND.COM and DATEMIND.DAT in the root directory of your boot drive (normally Drive C:). To do so, at the DOS prompt, copy those two files to the C:\ directory. If you choose to place them in another directory, that's fine also, subject to a slight restriction, explained momentarily. Now open your AUTOEXEC.BAT file with a text editor and add the line: C:\DATEMIND somewhere in the file. I suggest the last line before executing the DOSSHELL or WIN command. If Dateminder is not in the root directory, you will have to make its' directory current before running, so that it can find the data file. To do this, enter these lines in AUTOEXEC instead of the above (assume you put Dateminder in the \DOS directory): CD \DOS C:\DOS\DATEMIND CD \ Finally, if you don't want the Dateminder window to pop up if there is nothing in it (i. e. there are no current reminders), add the /N switch to the DATEMIND command: C:\DATEMIND /N ------------------------------------------------------------------- COMMAND SYNTAX: The command syntax for Dateminder is very simple: DATEMIND [/M] [/W] [/N] The switches (in brackets) are optional and have the following effects: /M - Causes Dateminder to start in Monthly display mode. This is the default and is normally unnecessary. /W - Causes Dateminder to start in Weekly display mode. /N - Tells Dateminder not to open display unless there are current reminders to show. The switches are not case-sensitive and can be entered in upper or lower case, in any order. USING DATEMINDER: When called, Dateminder pops up a window in the center of the screen (don't worry, the data underneath is saved!). The window is divided into 3 sections. The top section is for program I.D. The center section, or pane, is for data display, entry, and editing, and the bottom pane is for the command menu bar. Initially, the program is in Upcoming Events mode, with the cursor in the data display pane next to the first reminder. Of course, the 1st time you start Dateminder, there are no reminders. The bottom pane tells you to press Escape to exit, F2 for the menu, and F3 to toggle the "look-ahead" mode between monthly and weekly. The mode is shown highlighted. A note at the bottom of the data display pane reminds you that to acknowledge an item, type an 'x' beside it. More on acknowledging items later - first you have to enter some. Following are the menu commands: New events: To enter new reminders, press F2 to get to the menu. From the menu bar in the bottom pane, press N to bring up the New Item entry form in the data pane. Data entry in this form is straight- forward - type in the numeric date in Month-Day-Year form. You can use wildcard dates for recurring events - wildcards are explained later. The cursor advances to the Event field for you to enter the event you wish to be reminded of. Use the key to move from field to field. The next two fields are optional. The first, "Remind __ days in advance", allows you to specify how soon in advance of the date a non-erasable reminder is displayed. The default is 2 days. The second, "Remind after acknowledged (Y/N)", if answered with a Y, causes the reminder to be shown continuously, even after user acknowledgment. The default is N. When ready to store the event, press Enter to return to the menu screen, and the new reminder is displayed (if within the date scope, monthly or weekly). Edit events: To edit existing events, press E from the menu bar. This will display a list of all events in the data file, in chronological order, with the cursor next to the first one. Use the arrow keys to move the cursor next to the event to be edited, and press enter. If there are more than six events in the file, use PgDn and PgUp to page through the file to get to the event you want. After selecting the event, it is displayed in the entry form for you to change as necessary. Press Enter when through and it will be stored in its new form. Press Escape to return to the menu bar. Delete events: To delete an event, press D from the menu bar. This will bring up the same list as Edit, except that it will be titled "Delete item". Choose the event to delete the same way you did in Edit, and press Enter. The event will turn red, and you will be asked to confirm the deletion with a 'Y'. Any other key will abort the delete. Again, press Escape to return to the menu bar. A note: one-time events are automatically deleted after they are past - unless you didn't acknowledge them. Print events: To print a listing of currently due events, press P from the menu bar. You will be prompted to check your printer and press Y to print the list. Pressing the N key will abort the print command. Calendar: Pressing C at the menu bar brings up a calendar display in the data pane. This can be used for planning ahead, or reference. Pressing the left or right arrow keys changes the month backward or forward, while pressing the up or down arrow keys advances or decreases the year. The date range is from Jan, 1980 to Dec, 2099. WHAT IS DISPLAYED, AND WHEN: After your events have been entered, you will spend most of your time in the data display mode (the cursor in the data pane). As noted, this is the start-up mode of Dateminder. When called, Dateminder looks ahead either one month or one week, depending on your command, and finds all unacknowledged events, plus all events that are within the number of days specified in the "Remind in advance" field, and displays them in chronological order. If there are more than six events due, you can display them by using PgDn and PgUp to page through the list. An unacknowledged item is identified by a blank next to its' date. To acknowledge it, move the cursor to the blank and press 'x'. The next time the program is started, this event will not appear - unless or until it is within the number of days you set for advance reminding. As an example, let's track an event all the way through its life cycle. On October 1st, you enter the event: "11/07/93 10:30 Meeting with Bob", and set the "Remind days in advance" to 5. After pressing Enter to store this date, it does not appear on the list just yet, as it is over a month away. On October 7th, when Dateminder is called, this event pops up in the data display, with a blank next to the date. To make it go away, move the cursor to the blank and press 'x'. The event won't go away during this session, but the next time Dateminder is started, it will not appear. The next time it does show up will be on November 2nd, 5 days in advance of the meeting. Now it will appear every time Dateminder is started. On Nov. 7th, the date will read "Today" and you should acknowledge it again. If you do, on Nov. 8th, the event will be deleted from the file automatically. If you don't acknowledge it again, it will show up subsequently in red until you either acknowledge it, or delete it yourself. WILDCARD DATES: To save time and typing entering many events, particularly those that recur with regularity, such as birthdays, anniversaries, monthly bills, weekly meetings, etc., you can enter wildcards for dates. This way you only have to enter Aunt Nelly's birthday once and it will come around again every year until Aunt Nelly cashes in. A wildcard is a '**' entered in the month or year fields, or a weekday abbreviation in the day field. There are seven combinations of wildcards, shown in the examples below: MM/DD/YY Meaning ========= ====== **/12/93 The 12th of every month in 1993 12/25/** December 25th of every year **/15/** The 15th of every month, every year 02/TU/94 The second Tuesday of every month of 1994 (Note: the 02 does NOT refer to February) **/WE/93 Every Wednesday in 1993 01/SA/** The first Saturday of every month, every year **/MO/** Every Monday, every year Valid weekday abbreviations are SU, MO, TU, WE, TH, FR, and SA. You may enter them in upper or lower case. A wildcard date, after past due and acknowledged, will reset itself to the next occurence and appear at the proper times. ERRATA: Following are a couple of idiosyncracies in v1.0 of Dateminder, and how to avoid them: 1) After entering new events, DON'T acknowledge them immediately. This can cause a system lock-up if you are using a disk cache. Just leave the new items un-acknowledged until the next time Dateminder is started and there will be no problem. 2) If you enter an invalid date, such as one that has already past, Dateminder will beep and request a valid date. It may continue to do so even after you type over the incorrect date with a correct one. If this happens, press Escape to return to the menu bar, then press N to reenter the New Item mode and start over. Dateminder is particular about the date being entered in the correct format: Month/Day/Year. --------------------------------------------------------------------