
                         ---TODAY---

OVERVIEW
Have you ever thought it would be nice to know what interesting
things happened on a date in history?  When famous, or not so
famous, birthdays occurred?  TODAY will tell you.  When the program
is run, it looks at the system date, or a date you supply, then
tells you what things of interest happened on that date.  You can
even create a file of dates important to you and be reminded of them
right along with the Marquis de Sade's birthday or the first
commercial radio broadcast.  Just type: TODAY HELP

INSTALLATION
TODAY is distributed as an archive file(TODAY.ARC) and you must have
ARC V5.0 or later to extract the required files.  ARC is shareware
from System Enhancement Associates and is available on many computer
bulletin boards.  The files comprising the TODAY system are:

       TODAY.DOC - This file
       TODAY.EXE - The program
       TODAY.MON - where MON is JAN thru DEC.  These files contain
                   all the interesting trivia.
       TODAY.OWN - a sample personal TODAY message file

After printing this DOC file, you need not keep it on disk but you
will need the EXE and all the MON files.  They MUST all be in the
same directory on your disk.  Why not call it TODAY?
To install TODAY from the root directory, with ARC available, do:

     md \today
     cd \today
     arc e today *.*
     cd \

This will create a directory called today and un-archive the files
you need to use the system.

To run it from your AUTOEXEC.BAT you would insert these three lines:

     cd \today
     today once clear wait      (use your choice of options)
     cd \

This example would change directories to TODAY's directory, run the
program only once each day, clearing the screen at the beginning and
waiting for a key press at the end before continuing with your BAT
file.

HOW TO USE THE PROGRAM
You can just enter TODAY and get the scoop on the current date or
you can optionally enter a date as MMDD, with leading zeros, to see
what happened on a particular date.  There are several options:

        MMDD    a date, such as 0401, to use instead of
                the system date

        HELP    will display running instructions

        CLEAR   will clear the screen before displaying anything

        WAIT    will wait for a key press after the display

        ONCE    will only run TODAY once each day.  Without this
                option it will display msgs each time it is run.
                Used in an AUTOEXEC.BAT, it will only run TODAY
                when you turn on your system, not when you reboot.

Most of these options are useful when TODAY is run from an
AUTOEXEC.BAT when you turn on your machine.  They cause the program
to only run the first time you boot, not when you re-boot.  You can
clear the screen of previous stuff before today's little gems and
you can have a pause at the end so the messages aren't destroyed by
subsequent programs.  For example:  TODAY CLEAR 0628

CUSTOMIZATION
TODAY has one data file for each month of the year.  They are named
TODAY.JAN, .FEB, .MAR etc.  You can also have a personal file named
TODAY.OWN.  This is so all your important dates aren't scattered
among 12 files.  All files are plain vanilla ASCII in this format:

Column 1:        The record type which can be a B for birthdays,
                 S for special dates in history or R for a reminder.

Cols 2-5:        Month and day as MMDD with leading zeros.  Zeros
                 for either month or day cause ALL months or days
                 to match when being scanned.  For example  0001
                 would match the first of every month while 0400
                 would match every day of April.

Cols 6-9:        The full year of the event as four digits.
                 May be left blank, msg will move left.

Column 10:       A special processing flag.  Values may be:

                 BLANK for no special processing.

                 C to continue a message from the previous line.
                 Note, that you MUST repeat the date fields.

                 DAY-OF-WEEK DIGIT where 1=Sunday ... 7=Saturday
                 This will cause the message to display only if the
                 date falls on a certain day of the week.  Look in
                 the November file for voting day examples.

Cols 11-70       The message to display for this date.

                       --EXAMPLES--

*mmddyyyy Birthdays
*-------- ------------------------------------------------------------
B09011875 Edgar Rice Burroughs, novelist, Ah-ee-ah-ee-ah!
B09021838 Queen Liliuokalani (last queen of Hawaii).
B09021952 Jimmy Connors, tennis brat

*mmddyyyy Events
*-------- ------------------------------------------------------------
S09011939 Germany invades Poland, starts World War II.
S09011952 Sutro Baths purchased by George Whitney.
S0901    2Labor Day, a legal holiday
S09021620 The Mayflower sets sail from Plymouth with
S09021620C102 Pilgrims.

*mmddyyyy Reminders
*-------- ------------------------------------------------------------
R0001     Pay the mortgage!
R0401     Taxes due in two weeks.
R0415     Last day to pay taxes!

Leave the headings in or you may get a nasty surprise.  Note that
Labor day must be on a Monday and the Mayflower gets two lines of
coverage befitting that momentous event.

This format applies to TODAY.OWN also.  You can put in birthdays,
anniversaries, holidays etc.  Messages in your personal file will
tend to be only Birthdays and Reminders.  Also, try putting in
reminders a few days BEFORE the date in question to give youself
some warning.

HISTORY
TODAY/PC was written in Datalight C for IBM PC compatible systems by
Patrick Kincaid in July of 1986.  It was inspired by a program
originally written by Mike Butler in PL/1 on an IBM VM/CMS system.
He should be credited with the original concept and the bulk of the
wonderful data in the files.  You will notice a distinct San
Francisco flavor to the databases.  Who says programs can't have
class?

USER SUPPORT
Don't send money, send more dates!  I would like the program
distributed far and wide for free with this understanding: if you
like it send me more dates to put in the databases.  This way we can
create real shareware. Don't send the month files with your new
dates added, send the new stuff as listings, in standalone files on
PC diskettes or as electronic mail to me via the Marin-Sonoma PC User
Group BBS (415) 927-1216.  You can mail listings, bugs (features!) or
suggestions to:

                    Patrick Kincaid
                   618 Douglas Drive
                 Mill Valley, CA 94941

And remember...

                   We call it software
                        because
                    we cannot keep it
                           up.

