What's New in PAL Version 2.1?



               Here's what's new in PAL version 2.1:

               1.   The  major change  is  the ability  to  turn any  alarm
          created  with PAL  and PALARM  into an  invisible hand  that will
          cause  your computer to take some action even though you yourself
          are not  present.  We  refer to this  action as a  "timed event."
          You'll find details in Chapter 13 at page 65.


               2.   A new feature  has been  added to PALARM  to force  the
          snooze  time to  be cut  short.   If  you know  that an  alarm is
          snoozing,   you  can  hit  <AltP>  to  force  Palarm  to  Pop  up
          immediately. While  PALARM is  snoozing <AltP> will  always force
          the  alarm  to pop-up  and  will therefore  take  precedence over
          whatever function your then-running  application program may have
          assigned to <AltP>.


               3.   PAL now sports the ability to shell  to DOS at any time
          that the  program is waiting  for a keystroke.   <AltD>  gets you
          there. The shell  process parks all but about 6K  of PAL into EMS
          if available or onto disk  if EMS is not available.   Type "EXIT"
          to   get back into PAL.   Do not load any  TSR's while shelled to
          DOS.


               4.   PAL's REPORT MODE now has a new switch for "U"nattended
          mode.   This permits you to update alarms in a batch file without
          your having  to be present to  press a key when  the screen fills
          with appointments.  This  is useful for keeping your  alarm queue
          fresh when using timed events.


               5.   PALARM has a new  "F" switch for fast operation.  It is
          invoked when first loading PALARM by issuing the command

                    PALARM F

          The effect  of this switch  is that if  a Conditional Macro  in a
          timed event finds  that conditions are not appropriate  to launch
          the  macro, then PALARM will immediately cut short its popup time
          and return control  to the  computer.  This  feature is  valuable
          where you would like the minimum interference with the underlying
          application, such as a communications program.