Simona Planner V6 32bit for Windows 95
written by Carlos Moya



CONTENTS
---Installation and required files
---Overview
---Registration and Support
---Bugs
---Changes since last version

**INSTALLATION AND REQUIRED FILES**

Required files:
VB40032.DLL & associated files - Microsoft Visual Basic runtime library
must be located in the WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory. The library can be
found at the Simona Planner Home Page at
http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Union/1904/simon.html
(No other DLL's or VBX's or OCX's required! All elements are handled internally
please see the end of this file for some words on this)

For installation instructions see the _INSTALL.TXT file

UPGRADERS:
DO NOT delete your current version of Simona Planner
before upgrading as this will destroy the registration
information. Simply follow the regular instructions
for installing Simona Planner. Make sure you specify
the same folder that your current version of Simona
Planner is in during Setup.


**OVERVIEW**

Simona Planner is a program for college students looking for a way
to organize the courses they have taken and the tests or papers
they have written into a concise visual form. Simona Planner uses a
folder/file cabinet metaphor to organize the data. There are two
file cabinets: The Current Semester File Cabinet, in which you
create folders that represent the courses that you are currently
taking, and the Past Semesters File Cabinet where the courses
you have taken are collected and organized for easy display. The
beauty of it all is that Simona Planner automatically calculates your
GPA and your accumulated credits. The program features a
hypothetical GPA calculator, where you can input mock grades, and
a progress graph of your GPA semester by semester. Simona Planner
also features a phone book to keep track of people and calendar to
keep track of appointments, and test or paper due dates.


**Registration and Support**

Visit the Simona Planner Home Page on the Word Wide Web at
http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Union/1904/simon.html

If you have questions regarding Simona Planner or if you wish to receive an
upgrade, I can be reached at the address listed below. If the first
address (mine) is out of order you may send your message to one
of the others.

be81756@binghamton.edu
         -or-
ndiaz@bucknell.edu
ec7986@cnsvax.albany.edu

If you wish to purchase the fully-working version of Simona Planner send
a check or money order for $25 to:

********************************
*  Carlos Moya                 *
*  RE: Simona Planner          *
*  535 West 51 Street #5G      *
*  New York, NY 10019          *
********************************

See the Order.txt file for more information on how to order Simona Planner-
in Simona Planner click the 'Order...' option in the Help menu.


**Known Bugs**

Most bugs that I know of have been eliminated.

Sometimes Simona Planner's wallpaper will not repaint properly. This
is especially true if your desktop's wallpaper is a complex 256-color
image. This is may be video card problem or just a problem with the
way VB handles 256-color images. One sure way to fix this problem is
to up your video mode to something higher than 256color mode (like
High Color Mode).

Sometimes the button outline will not disappear when moving the pointer
off a button. This is a problem with the way VB handles mouse moves.

Date and time manipulation is daunting. Although I have tried my best,
I have not *extensively* tested Simona Planner using foreign date and
time formats. Problems may arise if date/time formats specified in
Windows' Control Panel differ from those expected by Simona Planner.

"Not really a bug but a weakness":
The datafiles that Simona Planner uses to store your folders, tests,
grades and whatever can be EASILY corrupted. Simona Planner assumes
that the data in these files are in a particular order and if you
tamper with them you may upset that order! Do not tamper with the
files. Although now that I brought it to your attention you probably
will anyway.

The Help files are little sketchy. I'm not really good at writing
helpfiles and they're pretty hard to write. HOPEFULLY the program is
so INTUITIVE that you won't need much help. If you do and the help
files don't help then you can always E-Mail me with questions
(addresses listed above).


**Changes Since Last Major Version**

A complete, more object-oriented, redesign of the 'inner' workings
of the program have allowed me to institute several features which
should have been there from the start.

-Simona Planner now has a more aesthetically pleasing look inspired
by such programs as Microsoft Money® 95 and the World Wide
Web itself.

-Simona Planner's desktop (the area you see when neither the Calendar,
Current Semester Folders, or File Cabinet tabs are selected) can
now contain sticky notes identical to the notes in the Calendar.
This is useful when a note doesn't necessarily have to be attached
to a particular date. The sticky notes can be moved to and from the
Calendar and even to Win95's desktop!!!

-Virtually all items (Folders, Events etc.) can be moved around via drag
& drop. Folders can now be rearranged within a semester and even
semesters can be rearranged within the File Cabinet.

-For advanced users who have their display set to a resolution
of 800x600 or above there is now a feature that kicks in at these
higher resolutions that automatically displays the contents of
the selected folder in the File Cabinet and Current Semester Folder
or selected dates in the Calendar.

-Test/Paper entries in folders can now contain 'links' to the
actual files on the user's hard drive.

-Aside from the Notes, Test/Paper Reminders, and Appointments,
the Calendar now features holidays which can be customized by
the user.

-The user can also now enter "alarms" into the Calendar that will go
off on a set date and time or intervals when either Simona Planner or
the tiny QuickCalendar applet is running. The alarms can either play a
specified sound or launch a specified program (similar to the
System Agent utility included in the Microsoft Plus Pack for Windows 95).

-The GPA Calculator has received a few new improvements. The user
can now copy and paste ranges to and from the Windows clipboard
(useful for moving information to and from a spreadsheet programs
such as Microsoft Excel or Lotus 1-2-3). The File Cabinet's "Progress
Graph" can now be called from the GPA Calculator but instead
of the semesters in the File Cabinet being plotted, the contents
of the GPA Calculator are graphed!- (In order to support this
feature, cells in the GPA Calculator can now contain "Semester
Markers" to mark semesters to be plotted by the Progress
Graph).

-There is now a 'Find' utility that will allow you to search through
the Calendar, and Folders for any bit of information you specify
(for instance- you can use the Find utility to quickly find all
the courses in which you got an A or wrote a paper on Plato).

-Simona Planner now features a "Backup" option that allows the user to
automatically make backups of planners.

-FlashTrack now supports multiple phone books instead of just
one general phone book containing all the entries. The phone books
themselves will be files with the extension *.spb and can be invoked
from Explorer or via a the File|Open menu in FlashTrack.

-The tiny QuickCalendar applet (now available as an add-on) will
be included in the Simona Planner 6 package and will be more integrated
with the main Simona Planner program itself.

-Plus a wealth of other improvements and features that will make
Simona Planner the best computerized personal organizer for college
students.


****
All the features in Simona Planner are handled internally without the use of
external custom controls. They are either handled in code that I sweated over
or through calls to Windows' built-in API functions.

Functions accomplished in Simona Planner without the use of OCX's
* System Tray Notification- QuickCalendar plops itself quite nicely on the tray
without any help from an OCX
* Common Dialog Boxes. Windows provides access to these through API's- no OCX
required
* Tooltips- Handled quite nicely in code.
* Calendar Displays- boy I wouldn't mind using a nice OCX for these! if only
they didn't cost a couple of hundred dollars.
* Tabbed Dialogs- a little time consuming to program but handled well. VB should
have these built in anyway.
* and a bunch of other stuff.

¤