NOTES on PACAL1(17 CPI) ( This file was orginally written for PA_CAL11 the only difference in PACAL117 is that the printout uses only EPSON Compressed mode not Compressed ELITE, some Epsons wouldn't do that mode so this version is released for more compatibility. If you have a Epson LX-80 as I do or your printer will mix Elite and Compressed to give 20 CPI then use PA_CAL11. PACAL117 uses 132 columns and PA_CAL11 uses 160 column printout. In PACAL117 the day blocks contain 11 lines of 15 characters each, in PA_CAL11 you get 11 lines of 19 characters for each day. ) --------------------------------------------------------------------- IN THE FUTURE: I plan on doing a version for a friend that has a STAR printer and I "may" work up a version PA_CAL20 that would work with any printer by having the user tell the program how many columns his printer will do then having the user input the escape codes to init his printer. All this info would be entered once and saved into a config file. Notice I just said "may". I like to work on different things and I get burnt out working on the same software over and over. Got a couple of games brewing in my head that want to get out, Galactic Messenger and The Triangle, may just combine the 2 ideas into one game. --------------------------------------------------------------------- PACking a tight schedule! Personal Appointment Calendar ( a.k.a. PAC ), is a project I took on as a request from my wife. It's hard to remember mailing Aunt Fanny that birthday card when you have all those other parental duties such as the after school discussion with the teacher. PAC will let you create a set of calendars that contain dates that never change such as birthdays, you just load them and add your months schedule to it and print it out. What you end up with is a full printed page of a regular looking calendar with your appointments and special reminders in the blocks for that particular day. PAC allows 11 lines of 19 characters in each day's block and will print out a calendar for a given month from 1989 thru 2015. You could use PAC to produce a calendar of events for a computer fest. PAC will run without a printer but the printouts are the main purpose of PAC, a Epson compatible printer is highly recommended. Upon running PAC from the desktop you will see a calendar for the month of the current system date, and year if it is in the range of 1989 thru 2015 otherwise the year will default to 1989. To change the year or month use the menu header CALENDAR. When you change the year or the month with this menu selection the memory that holds the text for the calendar is zeroed, so it is important to save a calendar using the SAVE function under the menu header FILES before you change the month or year if you have made changes. Under the menu header OPTIONS you will find the selections "Double Strike" and "Auto Date Set". Double Strike simply puts the printer in double strike mode, takes twice as long to print out a calendar. The Auto Date Set function is set to on as default at runtime, you will see it has a checkmark beside it. PAC generates filenames from the date you have selected when you SAVE or LOAD calendars. Auto Date Set will try to set the date to match the filename. For example SEP1989.PAC will be interpreted as September 1989. To generate calendars to remind you of birthdays and anniversaries click on a day displayed on the screen. A window will pop open with the day and date as the title. You can now type in whatever you like for that day. The editor works in replace mode. Use the arrows, backspace, delete, and insert keys to edit your text. You can only edit one day at a time. To exit out of the edit mode click on the close box or click the right mouse button. If the GEM menus will not drop down after editing click once on the menu header. When finished editing your reminder calendar SAVE it and alter the filename with GEM's file selector leaving the month abbreviation and the extender PAC intact, example JAN_BDAY.PAC . Next year just set the YEAR before you LOAD JAN_BDAY.PAC, have Auto Set Date on and it will load in your reminders, set the month to January and leave the year as you selected because it couldn't find a valid year in the file name. All that is left is to add your appointments and you have a reminder for the month to keep you punctual and thoughtful. When printing out a calendar position the printhead at the very top of the page since the calendar requires a whole sheet. About The Program PAC is written In HiSoft Basic. I designed it to run in high or medium resolution by checking the resolution and multipling the Y coordinates by the resolution, like so rez%=FNgetrez%, then I wrote the program as if I were in medium resolution and multiplyed all Y coordinates by rez%. I was actually using a monochrome monitor most of the time, but since rez% will be equal to 2 in high resolution and 1 in medium it'll look right. This is easy to do and will make your programs more useful to more people. I could ramble on and on about every detail of the program for several pages but that would be boring. The part of the program that was the hardest for me to write was the subroutine edit_day_cell. It allows full editing of lines while checking the mouse constantly as well. HiSoft Basic's standard input statements stop program execution until the user finishes his input. I needed to check the mouse to see if the user wanted to exit out of the edit routine. Needless to say I had to write my own editor based on INKEY$. Edit_day_cell will edit 11 lines of 19 characters each but it could be modified slightly for full screen editing on a line by line basis. If you need such a beast edit_day_cell will save you a lot of trouble. I use plenty of GOTOs, there is nothing like a GOTO when you want to control program flow with a iron hand. I hope you find PAC a useful program. About me I am a old time Atari user from way back, since October of '81. I still own two 8 bit systems. I program with Basic, Pascal, C, and Action! I am a Shipping Clerk for a local bakery here at Huntsville, Alabama ; "Rocket City", home of Marshall Space Flight Center and The Space and Rocket Center. The Space Center is where you may be if you ever go to Space Camp. There are no Atari dealers in this hi-tech town, pity. I program to exercise my mind, my job takes care of the old back. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * PACAL117 is Shareware send $3+ to: Larry Mears 11027 Crestfield Dr. Huntsville, Alabama 35803 Source code (HiSoft basic) can be had for $10 indicate which version.