* HOL - calculate holidays and write to agenda file HOL is a program for the Psion 3a, 3c and Siena that can be configured to calculate many holidays and write them to your agenda. The program reads a holiday definition file, calculates dates for holidays according to the file, and writes the holidays to an agenda file. The user interface allows you to select which configured holidays to actually use, which years to calculate for, and preview the calculated dates on the screen before writing them to the agenda file. Holidays can be defined relative to a fixed date (e.g. New Years Day), a fixed Hebrew date (e.g. Passover), a fixed Islamic date (e.g. the Islamic New Year's day), a specific weekday (e.g. Midsommardagen; 1st Saturday after June 20th), Easter, or selected among several dates depending on a condition. Style and year symbol can be specified generally and/or for each holiday. The holidays are written to the agenda file as untimed day entries in the default time slot or as anniversaries. Some holidays can be written as repeating entries. Holiday definition files for Sweden, USA, Holland, Argentina, Uruguay, Norway, Finland, Germany, the Church of Ireland, France, the Church in Wales, Denmark, UK and Hebrew holidays are included. Examples of Islamic holidays are also included. * If you are upgrading... If you already have version 1 of HOL installed you need to know this: o HOL has become an OPA that must be installed with Psion-I to be used. o The directory for HOL-files and HOL.RSC has been changed to \HOL\. * Quick quide ** Installation This assumes that you have PsiWin. 1) Unzip the archive with directories on the PC. (Use "PKUNZIP -d" or check "Use Directory Names" in WinZip.) 2) In PsiWin, drag the unzipped APP and HOL directories to the root directory ("\") on the Psion. (This will copy HOL.OPA and HOLEDIT.ALS to the APP directory and all holiday definitions files to \HOL\.) 3) Install HOL.OPA on the Psion system screen with Psion-I. ** Using the program 1) Exit the Agenda program if it has your agenda file open. 2) Select a file under the HOL icon with your country code and start the program. 3) Preview holidays with Psion-P or write to the agenda file with Psion-W. The default settings will write all holidays for the current year, using repeating entries if possible. ** Uninstallation 1) Remove HOL from the system screen with Psion-/ 2) Delete HOL.OPA and HOLEDIT.ALS from the \APP\ directory. 3) Delete the \HOL\ directory and all its contents. * Detailed usage instructions 1) Install the files: - Copy HOL.OPA to \APP\. Install it from the system screen with Psion-I. - Copy *.HOL files to \HOL\. - Optionally, copy HOL.RSC to \HOL\. This is the help text for HOL. - Optionally, copy HOLEDIT.ALS to \APP\. Install it from the system screen with Psion-I if you want to create or edit *.HOL files. 2) Examine the *.HOL files with a text editor, e.g. HOLEDIT, to see if one suits you. If not, you can modify or create one with guidance from EXAMPLE.HOL and the configuration section below. 3) Start the program and open the *.HOL file. All holidays that are defined in the file will be listed on the screen with the style and year-symbol specified in the file. The listing can be scrolled with PgUp, PgDn, Home, End and arrow keys. 4) Initially all holidays are selected to be written to the agenda file. This is shown with a '*' on each row. Select or deselect holidays with Psion-M, Psion-U, Psion-N, Psion-T or the SPACE-key. Psion-N selects all holidays that can't be written to the agenda as repeating entries. See "How to use repeating entries" below for a tip on how to use this. 5) Optionally, calculate and preview the dates with Psion-P. See below for information about the dialog box. The dates will be listed on the screen. Press ESC to cancel the listing or any other key to temporarily pause the listing. 6) Calculate and write the dates to an agenda file with Psion-W. Select an agenda file to write to. See below for more information about the dialog box. To be safe, accept the offer to make a backup copy of the agenda file. The dates will be listed on the screen as they are written to the file. Press any key to cancel. ** The "Preview/Write holidays" dialog box When you preview or write holidays a dialog box be shown where you: o Enter a year range to calculate dates for. o Select whether HOL should try to use repeating entries ("If possible") or not ("No"). See the next section for information about when it is possible to use repeating entries. o Select whether the Agenda program should show all occurrences of repeating entries or only the next outstanding occurrence. This corresponds to the "Show"-line in the "Repeat entry" dialog box in the Agenda program. If you selected not to use repeating entries this information will be ignored. o Select whether repeating entries should repeat forever or until the end of the year range. If you selected not to use repeating entries this information will be ignored. o Select an agenda file (only in the "Write holidays" dialog). ** How to use repeating entries. One of the many useful features of the Psion Agenda program is the ability to make an entry repeat at various intervals. An entry can for example be set to repeat on a specific date of the year or on the first, second, third, fourth or last occurrence of a weekday in a month. Many holidays or special dates that we want to enter into our agenda file can in fact be made into repeating entries, e.g. New Years Day and Mother's Day. HOL can be used to write these repeating entries under certain conditions. To be able to write a holiday as a repeating entry, the holiday must be specified in the holiday file with only one of these directives: o FIX(m,d) - Meaning a fixed day D of month M in a year. E.g. FIX(1,1) is January 1st (New Years Day). o FLOAT(m,wd,n) - Meaning the N'th weekday WD of month M, where N is 1,2,3,4 or -1. E.g. FLOAT(5,0,2) is the second Sunday of June (Mother's Day). (See the end of this file for more information about holiday files and directives.) When you preview or write holidays you can tell HOL to write repeating entries "If possible". This means that if a holiday is specified using FIX or FLOAT as shown above, HOL will write the holiday once and make it a repeating entry. The holiday will be written for the first year in the specified year range. The easiest way to use repeating entries is to accept the defaults in the "Write holidays" dialog box. This will give you repeating entries that are shown all years within the year range. If you prefer to have repeating entries repeat forever, I suggest you do the following when using HOL on an agenda file for the first time: 1) Mark all holidays with Psion-M 2) In the "Write holidays" dialog box, enter a year range. Accept the default to use repeating entries if possible. Holidays will now be written for the specified year range, with some holidays entered only on the first year in the range as repeating entries. The next time you use HOL on the same agenda file (when the first year range has passed) I suggest you: 1) Mark holidays that can't be made to repeat with Psion-N. (The others are already in the agenda file as repeating entries) 2) Specify a new year range in the dialog box. * License This program is free software under the terms of the GNU General Public License. See the file COPYING.TXT for details. HOL.OPL was written by Odd Gripenstam . Calendar and holiday routines are translated from lisp code found in GNU Emacs. Copyright (C) 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 Free Software Foundation, Inc. Copyright (C) 1996 Odd Gripenstam * Acknowledgements The help compiler and the code that accesses the help was written by Jezar at Psion. It is available as HELPKIT1.ZIP in the archives. Contact me if you can't find it. I would like to thank Patrick Wildenborg, Horacio Hirsch, Mikael Tham, Knut Utne Hollund, Erlend Leganger, Jokitulppo Vesa, Holger Pfaff, Brian Mayne, Denis Casanova, Ian Day, Ole Carsten Pedersen, Klaus Singvogel, Paul Everington, Edward Arnowitz, Awi Szotten, David M. Kurtz for contributing holiday definitions. * Feedback No registration is necessary, but I would appreciate if you send me a mail or postcard if you use the program. If you try the program and *don't* use it, please send me an e-mail and tell me why. If you write or modify a holiday file, please send it to me and I will include it in the distribution so more people can benefit from your effort. Before you start writing a file, I suggest you contact me to check that nobody else have already started writing the same file. You can reach me at: E-mail: gripenol@decus.se Snail-mail: Odd Gripenstam Skagersvagen 14 120 38 ARSTA SWEDEN The latest version of HOL can be found at: http://decus.se/~gripenol/hol.html * Files in the distribution This distribution should contain: \APP\HOL.OPA The program \APP\HOLEDIT.ALS Text editor alias for \HOL\*.HOL \HOL\EXAMPLE.HOL Example holiday file \HOL\AR.HOL Argentinian holidays \HOL\COFI.HOL Church of Ireland holidays \HOL\CIWC.HOL Church in Wales holidays, Welsh/Cymraeg \HOL\CIWE.HOL Church in Wales holidays, English \HOL\DE.HOL German holidays \HOL\DK.HOL Danish holidays \HOL\FI.HOL Finnish holidays \HOL\FR.HOL French holidays \HOL\NL.HOL Dutch holidays \HOL\NO.HOL Norwegian holidays \HOL\SE.HOL Swedish holidays \HOL\UK.HOL UK holidays \HOL\US.HOL US holidays \HOL\UY.HOL Uruguayan holidays \HOL\ARUY.HOL A mix of South American holidays \HOL\HEBREW.HOL Hebrew holidays \HOL\ISLAMIC.HOL Islamic holidays \HOL\HOL.RSC Compiled help text HOL.OPL Source code for the application HOL.HLP Help text source file HOL.TXT This file HOLAPP.PIC Icon for HOL.OPL HOLEDIT.PIC Icon for HOLEDIT.ALS HOLCHANG.TXT A history of changes to the files COPYING.TXT GNU General Public License * Translation Unfortunately, the source file HOL.OPL is too big to be translated on the Psion. You can translate the file on a PC with the MS-DOS translator S3ATRAN, or you can split the file in two parts before copying it to the Psion and add a LOADM command to first part. * Other resources Here are some other resources related to holidays and the Psion agenda. They are all available on the net. You can mail me if you have trouble finding a copy or if you know of a file that should be added to the list. JBWHOL.ZIP Calculates predetermined English and German holidays and adds them to the agenda. FEIER10.ZIP Calculates German holidays and adds them to the agenda. Probably configurable for other languages and holidays if you make a few educated guesses about its data file format. FTAG30.ZIP Calculates and adds holidays related to easter and whitsun to the agenda. Includes OPL source. EASTER_E.ZIP English translation of FTAG30.ZIP HOLI3A.ZIP An agenda file with US holidays 1992-1997. Some holidays are specified as repeating entries. LOTSOHOL.ZIP Agenda files with US holidays 1995-2000. Some holidays are specified as repeating entries. HOLI_UK.ZIP Agenda file with UK holidays 1994-2005. * Configuration Holidays are defined by writing a holiday definition file. A holiday file is a text file with the file type .HOL. It contains directives to the HOL program on what holidays to calculate and how to write them to an agenda file. The text in a holiday file consists of comments, keywords, punctuation characters and quoted strings. A comment is any text after an exclamation mark or the keyword REM up to the end of the current line. Keywords (e.g. STYLE) are not case sensitive. A quoted string is any text within double quotes (e.g. "H"). A quoted string can not span lines. The file EXAMPLE.HOL explains the syntax with commented examples. Here is a more formal looking definition: : : { } : : : YEAR_SYMBOL = " " ; : STYLE = ; :