WorldFAQ(tm) 1.0b2 README
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Thank you for trying out our beta demo version of WorldFAQ for the PalmPilot(tm) connected organizer. This file contains installation instructions, brief documentation on the program and some caveats about using this software. We strongly recommend that you read this complete file before installing WorldFAQ.

*****Warning*****
Please note that this is BETA software. We have tested it quite extensively, and have submitted it to groups of outside testers twice, but that is no guarantee that it will run perfectly on your Pilot. We strongly recommend that you make a backup of your complete system before trying this demo. WE MAKE NO WARRANTIES, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, ABOUT THE QUALITY OF THIS SOFTWARE. YOU ARE USING ENTIRELY AT YOUR OWN RISK. If you are at all squeamish about this type of thing, we would prefer you not install WorldFAQ on your PalmPilot device. 

System Requirements
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WorldFAQ requires a PalmPilot Personal or Professional connected organizer running PalmOS version 2.0 or greater. It can also be used on Pilot 1000 and 5000 organizers that have been upgraded to use PalmOS 2.0.

WorldFAQ
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WorldFAQ (World Frequently Asked Questions) is a collection of information about places around the world, information such as time zones, daylight savings time dates and times, currency conversion rates, latitudes and longitudes, telephone dialing codes, airport names and codes, populations, and more. Using this information, you can calculate dates and times around the world (both absolute and relative), currency conversions, and distances. 

The WorldFAQ database has a hierarchy of five different types of locations: daylight savings regions, countries, time zones, islands, and cities.  Islands are bodies of land, such as Tahiti, that are part of a country (French Polynesia in this case). Islands such as Madagascar, that are self-contained countries, are categorized as countries. The full WorldFAQ database contains more than 200 countries, 54 time zones within those countries, 42 islands, 385 cities, and 3 daylight savings time regions: Europe, Greenwich Time, and Zulu Time.

The demo version of WorldFAQ contains an assortment of 130 entities initially assigned to these five categories. You can arbitrarily change each location's category, just as you can with any PalmPilot application. The program keeps track, however, of each type of location. If you change Paris' category to "My Fav Cities", for instance, if you tap on Paris to change some of its data, the Edit screen says "City Edit" at the top. WorldFAQ always knows what type of location it's working with. 

You can edit the data for each location so that, for instance, when the exchange rate for the Australian dollar changes, you can enter the new rate in the Australia edit screen so that your currency calculations for all Australian locations remain accurate. Because the world is a relatively stable place, however, you cannot change the relationships between locations. France will probably always be a country in the European daylight savings time region, Paris will probably always be in France, and Mountain Time will probably always be a time zone in the United States. 

When you change data, it is properly reflected in the World hierarchy stored in the WorldFAQ database. When you change the Australian exchange rate, if you do a currency conversion for a city in Tasmania, an island of Australia, that conversion uses the latest Australian rate. Likewise, if you change the daylight savings time start and stop dates for the United States, the daylight savings time start and stop dates for every US time zone and city that uses those dates changes. 

Installing WorldFAQ
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You install the WorldFAQ demo just like you install any other PalmPilot application, using the InstallApp program that is included with your PalmPilot desktop. You have to install two files: WorldFAQ.prc and WorldFAQ.pdb. You can install them in either order, at the same time or separately. You can also install WorldFAQ on a Pilot that has our World Time program on it. They should peacefully coexist.

If you find yourself reinstalling the WorldFAQ program or database at some point, make sure you first delete the program or database that are already on your PalmPilot organizer. You do this using the Memory application which is permanently installed on your Pilot. 

Getting Started
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When you first start WorldFAQ, a list of locations appears. They are categorized as cities, countries, islands, and times zones. To see the detailed data for a location, just tap its name. A second screen appears showing you that entity's data. Any information that you cannot edit is inherited from a different location in the World hierarchy. For instance, you cannot edit the telephone codes for dialing into and out of Alexandria, Egypt when looking at the Alexandria information, because they are inherited from Egypt. You can, however, edit the Alexandria area code.

To get the most out of WorldFAQ, you need to set a Home location. Tap on the location closest to your actual home, and select Menu/Locations/Set Home to set your home. WorldFAQ then uses that location to calculate time, distance, and currency exchanges (it starts you out with the Time view). You can set a second location, called your Current location, the same way. When you do this, WorldFAQ assumes you just moved there from your Home location, and resets your Pilot's clock accordingly (you can reset it back by selecting Menu/Options/Go Home from the main list). Once you have a home location, you use the View menu to calculate currency exchanges, distances, and relative times. 

You can move through the locations list by pressing the scroll keys (they move you one page at a time), the scroll arrows (they move you one line at a time), or by entering up to five Graffiti characters on the Graffiti keypad. If you enter "NEW" for instance, on the Graffiti input area, WorldFAQ will position "New South Wales" at the top of the scrolling list. When looking at the detailed data for a location, you can also move forwards and backwards in the list by pressing the scroll keys.

You can change what appears in the Main view by selecting a command from the View Menu. The choices are Time, Relative Time, Currency, and Distance. You can also select three of these views by tapping the Time, Relative Time, and Currency icons located at the bottom of the Main view. 

Adding Cities
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You can add as many cities as you like to WorldFAQ (you can only add a total of 10 to the demo version). First, tap a city, time zone, or country that is located closest to the city you want to add. Select Menu/New City from the Edit screen. WorldFAQ will create a new city with similar characteristics (country, time zone, currency, phone codes, and so on). All you need to do is enter a new name. For accurate distance calculations, you also need to enter the correct latitude and longitude. 

Miscellaneous
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Other than what's explained above, you should be able to figure out the remainder of WorldFAQ's functions by exploring, selecting menu commands, and just experimenting. Please note that exchange rates are a few months old, and that the telephone codes and population figures may not be totally correct. This demo version is designed to give you a feel for the program, not be 100 percent accurate. If you discover any errors in the data, we would appreciate it if you would let us know about them so we can make the final product as accurate as possible.

When you HotSync, the Pilot Desktop will make a backup copy of the WorldFAQ database. You can use the latest backup to restore intermediate changes to the WorldFAQ database, or reinstall the original database at any time. 

Known Bugs
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There is only one reported bug at this point, and we have not verified it. According to two testers, when WorldFAQ is launched on a PalmPilot device that has the program Abroad! loaded, the Pilot crashes. We are investigating this report.

Tell us What You Think
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We are making this beta demo version available for two reasons. First, perhaps you will find some bugs that we missed, although at this stage, we think it's pretty well tested. The first person to report a verifiable, reproducible bug (not a data inaccuracy) will receive a free copy of World Time, or a copy of WorldFAQ for the cost to upgrade from World Time to WorldFAQ. Registered World Time owners that report a bug will receive a free upgrade to WorldFAQ. For those of you that don't find any bugs, WorldFAQ will be priced at $39.95 when finished. Registered World Time users will be able to upgrade for $15, the difference between the old and new prices. We hope to ship WorldFAQ before the end of the year. 

Second, we want to find out if this program is useful to you. Almost all of the features in WorldFAQ were either suggested by World Time users. We think you'll find it useful, but in order to make it truly useful, we need your feedback. Please send us your suggestions for additional features and enhancements you would like us to include, use interface complaints, comments (even negative ones), or anything else you would like to tell us.

WorldFAQ is a work in progress--we want to make it as useful as possible. We won't make any radical changes between this beta version and the final 1.0 version, but we're already working on a list of enhancements for the next version of WorldFAQ. Your input is extremely valuable to us. We also plan on submitting it for PalmPilot compatibility testing as soon as possible. 

The WorldFAQ program file takes about 63K. The full database has about 700 locations in it. It takes about 35K. We are considering making both a large and small database available that you can install. If you like that idea, and the idea of 700 locations seems like just too many, we'd be interested in your suggestions on how to whittle that number down to something more manageable - major countries only? groups by continent? no islands? just capital cities (unless multiple time zones)? Let us know.
  
Again, thank you very much for taking the time to try this demo. We hope you like it. 

Creative Digital Publishing Inc.
293 Corbett Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94114
415.621.4252, 415.621.4922 (fax)
wfaq@cdpubs.com, www.cdpubs.com
