HANDY Version 2.01 Copyright 1982 by, Peter C. Hawxhurst DOCUMENTATION This documentation and the HANDY System programs may be freely distributed for noncommercial purposes provided that the copyright notice is retained. The HANDY System includes the following files in their crunched source (.BZS) and executable (.COM and .OVL) forms: HANDY201.DZC this documentation HANDYSYS.BZS (COM) the main program AGGENDAS.BZS (OVL) the nine modules DO-TODAY.BZS (OVL) \ REMINDER.BZS (OVL) \ PLANNING.BZS (OVL) \ CALENDAR.BZS (OVL) \ ACTIONPL.BZS (OVL) \ NOTEBOOK.BZS (OVL) \ FONEBOOK.BZS (OVL) \ DECISION.BZS (OVL) \ HANDYTRM.PRM the terminal parameter file The HANDY System programs provided in this version are revisions to the original CBASIC code. The system has been modified to run after compile and link by CB80 and LK80. No major logic changes have been made to these programs. Minor enhancements have been introduced to permit execution on most terminals (screen control characters), to clear the screen upon exit from each module, to situate both programs and data files on the same disk, and to eliminate CR from single character input responses. This version of the HANDY system is available in both source and object in separate libraries. Source code and documentation is available in HANDY21S.LBR; execution code and documentation is available in HANDY21X.LBR. The library files have been separated to facilitate data transfer by those interested in only source or object. CBASIC is a trademark of Compiler Systems. Osborne is a trademark of the Osborne Computer Corporation. CP/M, CB80 and LK80 are trademarks of Digital Research Corporation. DESCRIPTION HANDY is a personal time management system. It was written around my particular business needs, but no doubt will be of significant value to a wide variety of individuals. The system is menu driven. After initial sign-on a menu will be displayed and the user will be prompted to select a particular application. Upon exiting each application the menu will reappear for further application selection or return to the CP/M operating system. Each application in the HANDY System has a command selection menu and command input prompt on the lower portion of the application display. User input for a particular application is queried and prompted below the command line. Input provided by the user is then posted to the appropriate place on the application display. Applications included in the HANDY system are as follows: - A personal appointment calendar for the display and maintenance in one half hour increments of daily appointments. - A personal TO DO LIST for the display and maintenance of nonscheduled activities on a daily basis. - A reminder list of important dates/events to remember on a monthly basis. - A planning calendar for blocking out and displaying large portions of scheduled time. - A calendar program for displaying monthly calendars a quarter of a year at a time. - An action planning notebook for displaying and maintaining future activity records by categories. - A notebook or log for the maintaining and displaying of miscellaneous notes, records or whatever by category. - A quick reference phone number listing. - A decision support routine for rational decision making assistance. A typical application's command line would appear as follows: ---------------------------------------------------- (A)dd (C)ontinue (D)elete (E)xit (R)estart (S)can > Some will vary according to the application type. HANDY is intended to be an on line desk companion for the busy professional. It was designed to be extremely user friendly so I will not go to great lengths to describe the use of each application. I would rather spend time discussing how to get started and how to recover from operation errors, both of which are very uncomplicated. LIMITATIONS The HANDY System was written and designed for use on an Osborne 1 computer in a 52 column, 24 row format. The originally distributed version of the HANDY system required programs and data files to reside on separate disks. This version assumes both programs and data share the same disk. Certain entries in HANDY must be short for screen formatting purposes. Error messages will appear when input is too long. RETURN or ENTER (possibly CR or EXECUTE on other systems) must be pressed only after multiple character input. Single character input will execute immediately without the need for RETURN or ENTER. Dates must be entered in the form MM/DD/YYYY. This means that a date such as January 1, 1983 must be entered 01/01/1983. Only two applications permit print out of data: the Appointment Calendar and the To Do List. Data from dates prior to the date each time HANDY is started executed is eliminated from certain data files. However there is a programmed opportunity to print this data out. INSTALLATION & STARTUP HANDY installs itself by reading a file called HANDYTRM.PRM. Three examples of such files are included in the distribution library; Kaypro, Osborne and VT52. Look at these files and if you have a terminal different from these, create your own HANDYTRM.PRM file with any editor. Copy the .COM and .OVL files and your .PRM file to a single diskette and enter HANDYSYS at the system prompt. The system assumes data and programs reside on the same diskette. All files are created and maintained by the system, so no data set initialization is required. At system startup the copyright notice will appear, followed by a request to enter today's date. You will then be asked to verify that today is the day of the week and the date specified. If you answer yes (y) you will see your disk drive light go on and the HANDY SYSTEM PROGRAM MENU will appear and prompt you to select an application. That is all there is to it. HANDY will have already created two files on your data diskette: APPOINTS.DAT and DOTHINGS.DAT. Other files are created as you use particular applications. The amount of data that can be stored on the data diskette is only limited by the amount of data your diskette is capable of storing. I believe you will find this is quite a bit for the HANDY System applications you use. Keep in mind the following: - Back-up your data diskettes periodically! - Each time you execute the HANDY System you will be asked to enter today's date. This date is stored for use by the various HANDY applications. Data on file preceding this date is erased upon initialization of HANDY. The first time you enter HANDY each day you will be asked if you want to print out prior dates' data (for appointments and To Do Lists only). Pay close attention to the date you enter at initialization! RECOVERY FROM INPUT ERRORS Generally, HANDY will self-recover from most normal input errors such as input lines that are too long or erroneous dates. In most cases you will be informed in a nice way that an error has occurred and in some instances particulars about the error. However it is not possible to preprogram recovery for every possible type of error. For example, if you misspell a word, HANDY will not catch it. In case of other not so obvious situations observe the following: - The easiest (but not always best) way to get out of a sticky situation is to press CTRL and C simultaneously or press RESET to restart HANDY. If you find this necessary, before you restart HANDY check your data diskette to see if there is a file called TRANS. If so, delete this file before restarting. - If while using a particular application you enter a command and then decide that it is not the command you want to execute (except for (E)xit) try pressing ESC then RETURN. I have preprogramed this into HANDY in some areas for just such an instance. - If you find your back arrow does not move back and rubout bad data press CTRL and X simultaneously. This is a function of how your disk is set up. You may want to reset your disk for arrows to be in CP/M mode instead of another mode. It will not take much experience with HANDY to find there is a minimum possibility for unnatural errors. Every effort has been made to protect your data files, but no guarantees are made in this regard. Every effort has been made as well to keep your application screens free from errors and scrolling. I always like to recommend that users become familiar with their data file structures by looking at them with their word processor in the NON DOCUMENT mode, with the potential of modifying them on their own for particular needs. A typical line in a data file for HANDY might look as follows: "01/01/1982",26.2,"9:00","Peter/Meeting" Items contained in quotation marks are alphanumeric entries (words generally). Those that are not are numeric (numbers). Individual data items are separated by commas. Why would the date or the time in the above example be alphanumeric when it contains so many numbers, you ask. Because it contains other characters besides numbers. In HANDY almost every file entry is alphanumeric (enclosed in quotation marks), even pure numbers. This is a way of controlling input errors. Each number entered is checked to be sure it is a number. If you were otherwise asked to enter a number and instead entered a letter a system error would occur and your application screen would be compromised. This and many similar conditions should not occur in HANDY. If you cannot determine HANDY file structures on your own for your own applications programming I will make this information available on request. Every effort will be made to correct bugs found in the HANDY System and maintain it up to date in the public domain. Queries should be addressed as noted at the end of this documentation. PROGRAM NOTES General: Unlike some other time management systems, HANDY is designed to handle the activities of one individual, not several unless the user uses it in some other way. It is not a task force or team time management system unless applied in that way by the user. It may be applied in one of these ways by the maintenance of separate data diskettes for particular individuals. It is not necessary to use uppercase entries for any input, including yes (y) or no (n) entries unless the user of the HANDY System has a particular preference (like capitalizing the first letter of a name) in their own input. Also, it is only necessary to enter the first letter of a command which appears within parenthesis, and this too need not be capitalized. AGGENDAS This is the personal appointment calendar program. It is preformatted for appointments from 7:00 a.m. until 6:30 p.m. at half hour increments. This cannot be modified without changing the source code. Primary input is the time for an appointment and the name or nature of the appointment. The length of the appointment is not automatically displayed. Such can only be done manually and is left to the wants and needs of the user. I in most cases do not show appointment lengths for reasons of flexibility. Also entries are not automatically wrapped to the next line. Formatting of entries is totally left to the user. An error message will appear if any single line entry is too long. This application also allows for deleting entries, looking at the very next day's appointments by pressing the N command, looking well into the future using the F command and entering the future date and even searching for a particular entry using a key word. Note that searches for entries will not appear in chronological order but will be displayed in the order they entered. Time entries must be in the form 0:00 like 9:30. The appointment calendar may be printed to a printer if so desired by the user. The format for printed output is pretty much the same as the screen format and can be cut to size for insertion in a small notebook for log purposes if desired. DO-TODAY This is the To Do List application and allows entry of up to nine (9) non-scheduled activities one must try to perform in a day like making a particular phone call or writing a report. Future days may be planned in advance and entries may be deleted. Entries may also be sorted in order of importance. The To Do List may be printed to the printer if desired. REMINDER This is a simple application to quickly remind oneself of important dates and events coming up in the current month like birthdays and anniversaries. The user can scan ahead to future months one at a time and return to the current month if necessary. PLANNING This application allows blocking out of large segments of time over a month like traveling or vacation periods. Entries may be as small as one day but the size of verbiage is limited by the number of days selected and only one entry can be made for any given day. The format is that of a normal monthly calendar. The length of a particular entry is queried and is displayed on the calendar according to space left from the entry's length in words or letters. The user may move ahead month by month or far ahead by specifying a particular month and year using the future (F) command. I should point out that the future (F) command appearing in many of the HANDY applications also allows going back in time by specifying a previous date. Note though that in the case of AGGENDAS and DO-TODAY, no prior data is retained on file from the current date at start up. I should also point out that the current day or month depending on the HANDY application will be displayed when each application is selected and its screen appears. In the case of PLANNING, the month for the date entered at HANDY startup will appear initially when it is invoked. One final note about PLANNING, this routine does save prior month's data. If it is necessary to purge the data file for this program simply go to some prior month and delete an entry using the D command. This will rebuild the complete file deleting all entries prior to the current month. CALENDAR This is another very simple routine that displays months on a quarterly basis. Four monthly calendars are displayed on the screen; three in half intensity and one in full intensity. Initially the current month is displayed in full intensity at the upper right corner of the screen. In half intensity, the month prior to the current month is displayed in the upper left corner of the screen and the two months following the current month are displayed at the bottom of the screen in order from left to right. When advancing (or going back in time) the specified month or month beginning the next quarter takes the place of the current month. ACTIONPL If you're not familiar with the concept of action planning I suggest you take a seminar on it. It is a very power tool but I cannot go into a complete tutorial on it here. However this application is fairly straight forward. In ACTIONPL there are two applications screens. One displays action planning categories. These can be months, years, personal or other goals, shopping lists, projects, virtually whatever the user wants. Twenty-four (24) categories may be specified by the user. I had a difficult time using all twenty- four and for the last three used the coming three months. At least one category must be entered before action planning may commence. In order to begin action planning the user enters the scan (S) command then specifies the category to be scanned or planned. A second screen will appear displaying the action plans for the specified category and allow further action planning or deletion of completed activities. To return to the category screen the user enters the restart (R) command. Action plans are simply something one wants to do regarding a particular thing. NOTEBOOK This application is very similar to ACTIONPL. It is simply intended to be what its name implies, a notebook. It has a category screen like ACTIONPL that allows up to twenty-four categories to be entered and notation screens for each category. I use it as an important phone call log and a log of completed activities. FONEBOOK This application is intended as a quick reference phone number listing. The format is a series of pages with a double column list of names and phone numbers. Names are limited to eleven (11) characters and numbers to twelve (12) such as 800-555-1212. The user may move ahead one page at a time or all the way back to the beginning. The number of entries is limited only by disk space and the other HANDY files, but try to fill it up. I have only three pages or about 2K of storage so far. DECISION Again another very simple application to help users with prioritizing or decision making. The user enters up to nine (9) factors or considerations bearing on a situation and then is asked to compare each one against all the others in terms of the greater in importance. Once this is done the factors are displayed in highest to lowest order of priority for the user's evaluation. SUMMARY At this point there is not much more I can think of to tell you about HANDY. It has been very useful to me and I hope you will find it to be the same for you. And it is you who will help to improve it by letting me know your comments, suggestions, problems and experience with bugs. Please direct response to the HANDY System to: Peter C. Hawxhurst 705 Bayside Court Wheeling, Illinois 60090 (312) 398-6184 And... Please enjoy the HANDY System. P.C.H.