New Stuff in Cal 6.3 -------------------- The database format has changed in this version. To copy over your old events, run Cal 6.3 and select the File button, then the Load From File button, then select your old copy of Cal (any version 5.x or 6.x). The events will be loaded and converted automatically. Remember to save your events in the new file after you've converted them! Main Cal changes (in no particular order): ------------------------------------------ * You can select more than one weekday when defining a positional event. * You can perform a 'date calculation' in an event's message. In the message text, include a control-A (looks like an up-arrow) followed by a year of exactly four decimal digits. The message displayed for the event will replace these five characters with the number of years between the year you entered and the current year. (You'd use this for birthdays, for example... for someone born in 1980, make the text read something like "Joe's birthday (^1980 years old)" and the display will show "Joe's birthday (12 years old)". * There's a new 'Help' button on the cyclic event edit screen. Use this button to find an ending date by adding a number of days to the start date. * Add, delete, and replace event verification alerts now display some of the text of the message to be acted upon. Helps avoid errors. * In the Edit screen, the Enter and Return keys will move the cursor to the next editable field. In old versions Enter either exited the screen or had no effect at all. * An event can now be marked as a 'Holiday' or 'Skip on holidays' event. If a Holiday event falls on a day, any Skip-Holidays events will _not_ be shown on that day. A new Prefs setting allows you to override this action and display even 'skipped' events. * You may double-click the Prev or Next buttons in the Scan dialog to move to the first or last selected event. * The statistics shown on the credits screen (Help at main calendar) now include the number of unused bytes remaining in the message area. * The Expired Events dialog now has a clickable Exit button, instead of requiring you to press Undo to exit before checking all expired events. * The Edit dialog now includes a Prev button to move you to the previous selected event (next to the existing Next Event button). * Instead of a single 'switch to next edit mode' button, the Edit dialog now has three buttons that allow you to select an edit mode directly. The next selected event of the desired type will be displayed if one is present; if there are none, a blank template will be shown. * The Edit dialog behaves in a MUCH more reasonable fashion. The Next and Prev buttons will cycle through all selected events in order no matter what type they are. (Previously, if the first event Edit showed was a Date event, for example, all Positional events were deselected.) But note, if a cyclic event is displayed you will still need to select the ^Date or ^Pos button to exit cyclic edit mode. * There is a new Prefs button to default new date events to one-time events if you wish. * When creating a new Cal data file for saving events, the file name is displayed in the do-you-want-to-do-this alert. * Key equivalents have been added or changed for new or changed buttons. Main Calshow changes (also in no particular order): --------------------------------------------------- * Calshow 6.3 supports the Cal 6.3 database format (not older formats). * Preferences have been moved to a separate dialog to make room for new features. * You may select, for each importance level, VDI text attributes (bold, underlined, italics, outlined, grayed-out) for the display of events of that importance. Obviously these attributes will only work when you view a GEM coming-events listing. * The days-until, date, and alarm display in a GEM listing are in normal text now. If an event is defined as a holiday, the values will be shown in boldface. If the event is a skip-on-holidays event, AND a holiday event falls on the same day, AND you've selected the show-skipped-events button, the values will be grayed out (even if the holiday event is not displayed due to an importance level filter). * The old 'Week' quick-view button is now a 'nn-Days' button. There is a Prefs setting to set the number of days for this button. (The value is also editable from the main screen, but you will need to cursor down to the field (or hit Alt-D) to edit the value... if you click the button, you'll get the display instead of just moving the cursor.) * Calshow supports the new date-calculation feature in event messages. * On a GEM display, you may now use the mouse to page through or pause the display. One click means continue, 2 clicks means wait (like pressing Help), 3 clicks (if you can click that fast!) means exit now (like pressing Undo). The keys may still be used. * The Quickview buttons (nn-Days and Today) will now honor the Start Date if one is entered on the main display. * Calshow should now print to an Atari laser printer if the LaserBrain (and possibly the Diablo) driver is used. To do so, select the 'print anyway' button when Calshow says the parallel printer is not ready. (Too bad the SLM drivers don't intercept GEMDOS printer status calls. :-) * For the alerts that choose file or printed reports, formfeed yes or no, and recheck printer or print anyway, you may hold down the Alt key when you click your answer. When you do so, Calshow registers the button you click as the new default button, so in the future you'll be able to select it by just hitting the Return key. (Make sure you save your Calshow preferences after choosing a new default button!) * Key equivalents have been added or changed for new or changed buttons. * Calshow will now accept commands passed on the command line. All commands passed MUST begin with the dash character ('-'). All characters passed are uppercased and blanks are removed when parsing the command line. If any command errors are detected, an informative message and the actual command line used (upper case, no blanks) are displayed, followed by a help display. Extra characters following a command or argument, or non-numeric chars when digits are expected, will be ignored. Unless the -G (GEM mode) command is included, Calshow will exit after the output is written or displayed. The preferences saved in the Calshow file will be used unless overridden by switches on the command line. Enter a question mark as the first non-blank character to view the Help display (or include the -? switch anywhere on the command line). Use '-I' with no arguments to select all importance levels. If the '-O' switch is used with no arguments, the output will be written to a file named EVENTS.TXT in the current directory. File output will always overwrite an existing file with no warnings. Valid Calshow Command Line Parameters ------------------------------------- One of these switches required: -? show this help (or '?' as first character) -V coming events list -B datebook output (-O or -P required) -M master list (-O or -P required) Optional switches as desired: -Ofilespec output filespec (not with -P) -P output to printer (not with -O) -F formfeed after (ignored except with -P) -Smmddyyyy start date -Emmddyyyy end date (ignored with -D) -Dnn show next nn days (-V only; ignores -E) -Cfilespec Cal location -Innnnnnnnnn show only these importance levels -#nnn show nnn events max (ignored with -E) -Wnnn wait nnn seconds after display -K toggle show-skipped-events setting -U toggle European dates setting (ddmmyyyy) -G GEM mode (-V only; returns to dialog) Example command lines: Show the normal Coming Events listing, just as if you pressed the 'Go' button in the Calshow dialog. -v-g Show the coming-events listing for the next two weeks, in GEM mode. Return to the Calshow dialog afterward. Pause for 30 seconds on each screen. -v-g-d14-w30 Save datebook-style output in a file named P:\DATEBOOK.PRT. The output should start on September 1, 1992, and should show 31 days. Cal is located in a subfolder named CAL on the D: drive. -b-op:\datebook.prt-s09011992-d31-cd:\cal\cal63.acc