APCAL 2.03 ALARM 1.02 Contents -------- Page Requirements ........................................ 1 Installation ........................................ 1 Loading the programs ................................ 2 ALARM ............................................... 4 APCAL ............................................... 5 keys ............................................. 5 printing ......................................... 7 color configuration .............................. 8 holidays ......................................... 9 file maintenance / description ................... 10 appointment screen customization ................. 10 problem resolution ............................... 11 Note on TSR's ....................................... 12 Note on Clocks ...................................... 12 1 Requirements ------------ - DOS 2.0 or later. - Screen mode is assumed to be 80 columns and 25 lines (greater line modes can be set but only the first 25 lines will be used). - IBM PC, XT, AT, PS/2 or compatible. - A hard disk and an AT or PS/2 compatible computer is required for the alarm feature. The alarm uses the ROM BIOS real time clock interrupts implemented in the PC/AT and PS/2's. Installation ------------ To install on a hard disk system make a directory for the files on your hard disk with the "md" command (see DOS manual). e.g. type "md c:\apcal" and press Enter. Then copy the files from the floppy disk to the hard disk. e.g. type "copy a:\*.* c:\apcal" and press Enter. This assumes that your floppy drive is a: and your hard disk is c:. Change these parameters as appropriate. No installation needed for a floppy disk system. 2 Loading ------- ALARM This is a memory resident program (TSR). Change to the drive and directory containing alarm.com and type: "ALARM c:\dir" and press Enter. The command line parameter "c:\dir" specifies the drive and directory where the appointment files created by the APCAL program can be found. See APCAL below. The drive specified must be a permanently mounted drive (e.g. a hard disk). If no command line parameter is specified the syntax of the command is displayed and the program is not loaded. This parameter must be specified and must include a drive specification. A back- slash is appended to the directory. If no appointment file is found in the path specified then a message is displayed. "No appointment file found in c:\dir" The path searched is displayed. This may not be an error, it may just be that no appointment file has been created for this date. One could be created later. The version number and copyright are displayed next. If the program has already been loaded then no output is produced. These commands should be put in your "autoexec.bat" file so that they are automatically loaded. For example, a line similar to the following should be placed in your autoexec.bat. c:\apcal\alarm c:\apcal The directories should be changed according to where the programs were loaded. This will insure that alarms set on future days will be displayed. 3 Loading ------- APCAL Change to the drive and directory containing the APCAL files and type: "APCAL" and press Enter. A screen containing nine monthly calendars should then appear. The middle calendar should be the current month as long as the DOS date is set correctly. A batch file could be created for executing this program and placed in a directory in your path. For example: cd c:\apcal apcal An alternate method for executing the program is to set the environment variable APCAL to the directory containing the APCAL files. This can be done with the following DOS command: set apcal=c:\apcal This could be placed in you AUTOEXEC.BAT file. Then APCAL can be executed from any directory. The DOS time and date must be correct for these programs to work properly. 4 ALARM is invoked when the DOS real time clock alarm interrupt (4Ah) is called. The alarm time is set when ALARM is loaded or by the APCAL program when an appointment file is saved. The ALARM program searches the path specified during installation for a file of the form: APPmm-dd.yy where mm-dd.yy is the month, day and year set in DOS. This file must be available when the alarm time is reached. When ALARM is invoked the proper message from the file is displayed. When the user presses TAB or 50 seconds elapse the next alarm (if any) is set. The program will only set alarms for the current day. In other words the program must be reloaded (by re-booting or some utility) if the date has changed since it was loaded. Or the appointment file for the new date could be saved in APCAL to set the first alarm. 5 APCAL is run from the DOS command prompt. Main Calendar Screen -------------------- The following keys may be used: TAB to highlight the next monthly calendar. SHIFT TAB to highlight the previous monthly calendar. ARROW keys can also be used to highlight another month. F1 for help. ESC is used to exit the program. PAGE DOWN is used to pull up the full screen monthly calendar for the currently highlighted month. Full Screen Monthly Calendar ---------------------------- The following keys may be used: TAB to highlight the next day in the calendar. SHIFT TAB to highlight the previous day in the calendar. ARROW keys are used to move around within a day block. Characters may be typed into the day blocks. F1 for help. F3 is used to save the calendar to disk. It is saved in a file with the name 'CALmm-dd.yy'. Where mm-dd.yy is the month, day and year, respectively. It is placed in the current directory. If the calendar is not saved then any changes are lost when you exit. F4 to create print files. F5 to change the color selection. ESC is used to go back to the main calendar screen. PAGE UP is the same as ESC. PAGE DOWN is used to pull up the appointment file for the currently highlighted day. The file is assumed to be in the current directory and has a name of the form 'APPmm-dd.yy'. Where mm-dd.yy is the month, day and year, respectively. If no appointment file is found then the blank appointment file is read ('MODEL.APT'). CTRL RIGHT arrow is used to pull up the next months calendar. CTRL LEFT arrow is used to pull up the previous months calendar. 6 APCAL Appointment Screen ------------------ The following keys may be used: ARROW keys are used to move around the screen. TIME is entered in a 12 hour format (not 24 hour). A leading space is placed before single digit hours. Single digit minutes are entered with a leading '0'. Lower case 'a' or 'p' must be entered for am or pm. E.G. 12:01 am, 1:35 pm These requirements only apply if you want to set an alarm for the appointment. ALARMS are set by putting a 'y' for a quiet alarm or a 'Y' for a loud alarm. If anything else is placed in this field no alarm will sound. The text in the appointment field is displayed when the alarm sounds. NOTE: the alarms MUST be in chronological order. F1 for help. F3 is used to save the appointment file to disk. It is saved in a file with the name 'APPmm-dd.yy'. Where mm-dd.yy is the month, day and year, respectively. It is placed in the current directory. If the appointments are not saved then they are lost when you exit. F4 to create print files. ESC is used to exit without saving the calendar. PAGE UP is the same as ESC. 7 APCAL Print Menu ---------- Selecting F4 while in a full screen monthly calendar or an appointment file will bring up the print menu. Two kinds of print files can be created. One that contains the graphics line drawing characters (as in the display) and one without. Print File Options With graphics characters No graphics characters Use the up and down arrow keys to highlight the desired selection press ENTER to select it. With Graphic Characters: If your printer can emulate an IBM Proprinter then it can probably print the graphics characters. See your printer manual for proper commands or dip switch settings. The basic programs LINESFX.BAS and LINESRX.BAS can be used to set EPSON FX 80 and RX 80 printers, respectively, into the proper mode. Execute them by typing: BASIC LINESFX or BASIC LINESRX The DOS BASIC command must be in your path and you must be in the directory containing the Basic programs. Without Graphic Characters: Any printer should be able to print this format. Once one of the above options has been selected from the print menu then a file containing the current calendar or appointment schedule is created. The file name created to hold it is displayed and you must press a key to continue. The file is created in the APCAL directory. You can then exit the APCAL program and send it to the printer using the DOS PRINT command. For example: PRINT CAL4-90.PRN or PRINT APP4-17.PRN 8 APCAL Color Configuration ------------------- Selecting F5 while in a full screen monthly calendar will bring up the color configuration menu. Configuration Normal Text Highlighted Text Pop-up Normal Pop-up Highlighted Save Restore Defaults Quit Use the up and down arrow keys to highlight the desired selection press ENTER to select it. The foreground and background colors can be selected for normal, highlighted, pop-up normal and pop-up highlighted text. Selecting one of these options brings up the color configuration bar. Use the right and left arrow to move from one color to the next. Use the up and down arrow keys to switch from configuring the foreground color to the background color and vice versa. A sample text string is displayed in the upper left corner. Press Enter when the desired color is found. Selecting Save will write the current color configuration to the disk file APCAL.CFG in the APCAL directory. If this is done then the next time the program is run it will appear with the selected colors. Otherwise the colors remain in effect only during the current session. Selecting Restore Defaults will read the values from the configuration file, replacing any changes made. Select Quit or press ESC to exit. 9 APCAL Holidays -------- The file SPEC.DAY stores holiday information. It can be modified to contain your own messages if desired. For example birthdays, anniversaries and the like could be placed in this file and they would automatically appear in the appropriate monthly calendar(s). The format of the file is as follows. YEAR MONTH DAY DAY-OF-WEEK NUMBER MESSAGE YEAR is the year minus 1900 (e.g. 90 for 1990). A 0 indicates any year. MONTH is the month minus 1 (e.g. 0 for January). This must be a value between 0 and 11. DAY is the day of the month (1 through the number of days in the month). A 0 indicates it does not fall on a specific day. DAY-OF-WEEK is the day of the week (e.g. 0 = Sunday). NUMBER is the number of the DAY-OF-WEEK, above, in the month. A -1 indicates the last one. MESSAGE is any message you want to display on the given date. It can contain up to 20 characters and is separated into two lines of 10 when placed in the calendar. The values must be separated by spaces and a different line must be used for each date. All fields must be specified even if they are 0. Only the following combinations are valid: YEAR MONTH DAY 0 0 message - this would display only in one monthly calendar on the given date. For example: 80 3 6 0 0 Easter would display on April 6, 1980. 0 MONTH DAY 0 0 message - this would display in the given monthly calendar for all years. For example: 0 11 25 0 0 Christmas would display on December 25 every year. 0 MONTH 0 DAY-OF-WEEK NUMBER MESSAGE - this would display in the given monthly calendar on the NUMBERth day of the week. For example: 0 8 0 1 1 Labor Day would display on the first Monday in September every year. *** NOTE - make a backup copy of the file before making any changes. 10 APCAL File Maintenance / Description ------------------------------ The following files are created by the program and out dated ones should be deleted from time to time to conserve disk space. See the DOS DELETE command. CALmm.yy is used to save a calendar for display. CALmm-yy.prn is used to store a calendar for printing. APPmm-dd.yy is used to store an appointment schedule for display. APPmm-dd.prn is used to store an appointment schedule for printing. Where mm is the month, dd the day and yy the year. The following files should not be deleted or modified. APCAL.EXE main program. ALARM.COM memory resident alarm handler. APCAL.CFG APCAL configuration parameters. MODEL.APT model appointment file. Used if no APPmm-dd.yy file for the currently selected day is found. This file can be modified with caution. INVOICE.DOC invoice for registering program. LINESFX.BAS Basic program for setting up an EPSON FX 80 printer to print line characters. LINESRX.BAS Basic program for setting up an EPSON RX 80 printer to print line characters. SPEC.DAY Special days to display on calendars. This file can be modified with caution. Appointment Customization ------------------------- The appointment screen can be customized by editing the model.apt file. The best method for doing this is to go into the APCAL program and edit an appointment file the way you want it and then save it to disk. Then make a backup copy of model.apt and copy the file you just saved over model.apt. This will then be your new default appointment screen. For example you could go into the APCAL appointment screen and type in half hour appointment times from 8 am to 5 pm, leaving the appointments blank. Then save it to disk. The file will be in your APCAL directory under a name of the form: "appmm-dd.yy". Then exit the program and type the following commands: COPY MODEL.APT MODEL.BAK COPY APPmm-dd.yy MODEL.APT The characters "mm-dd.yy" must be replaced with the proper date. 11 APCAL Problem Resolution ------------------ ALARMS WILL NOT DISPLAY/SOUND 1. Make sure the ALARM program is being loaded and the correct path is passed to it on the command line. See the "Loading" section. 2. Make sure it loaded correctly. The error "Real Time Clock Not Operating" means the alarm feature will not work on this system as it is currently running. The error "No appointment file found ..." may mean the path command line argument is incorrect or it may simply mean no appointment file for the current day has been created yet. 3. Alarm time not entered in correct format (see appointment screen help). 4. No 'y' or 'Y' entered in the alarm field. 5. Alarms not in chronological order. 6. Alarm was entered but not saved. 7. The real time clock is not in synch with the DOS clock. See "Note on Clocks". 8. The system does not have a real time clock or the ROM BIOS routines that service it are not PC/AT or PS/2 compatible. If the time and date are not remembered when the computer is turned off and then back on then no real time clock is present. The system must have a real time clock for the alarm to work. SAVED APPOINTMENT/CALENDAR FILES DISPLAYED INCORRECTLY COLOR CONFIGURATION INCORRECT HOLIDAYS DISPLAYED INCORRECTLY APPOINTMENT DISPLAY IS INCORRECT 1. Make sure you are executing APCAL from the same directory every time or setting the APCAL environment variable. 2. Make sure the associated files have not been deleted or corrupted (APPmm-dd.yy, CALmm.yy, APCAL.CFG, SPEC.DAY, MODEL.APT). GRAPHICS LINE CHARACTERS PRINT INCORRECTLY 1. Make sure your printer is in IBM Proprinter mode or the appropriate Basic program is run. 2. If one of the Basic programs is run the printer must be connected, powered on and on-line when it is run. The DOS Basic command must also be in your path and the proper Basic program in your current directory. 12 NOTE ON TSR'S TSR (terminate and stay resident) programs are tricky business and can sometimes conflict with each other. If your machine "hangs" or "locks up" at certain times then it may be due to such a conflict. Re-arranging the order the TSR's are loaded in your autoexec.bat can sometimes eliminate the problem. NOTE ON CLOCKS There are two clocks present in most PC systems. The DOS clock and the real time clock. The real time clock has its own power source (i.e. a battery) so that it can keep track of the time even when there is no power to the PC. This clock was implemented in the PC AT and PS/2 systems. In these computers the DOS clock is set from the real time clock at boot up time. The ALARM.COM program is activated by the real time clock. This means that if your real time clock is not in synch with your DOS clock the alarms may not go off as expected. The DOS "TIME" command may or may not reset the real time clock on your system. See your manual for how to set the real time clock.