The calendar and notebook functions are accessed by clicking the mouse buttons inside date portion of the command window.
Like xcalendar, daily events are stored in set of files, one for each day. The file is created by entering a simple text editor (the standard text widget) which is started by pressing the right hand side of the appropriate day line in the strip. If the file exists its data is displayed as the label in the command button. This allows the user to use the first few lines of the file in an intelligent manner since X11R4 allows multiple lines of text to appear in a command button. The strip width is sized by the length of the header, and users who wish to display a wider strip to show more of the stored information should widen the strip using the minStripWidth resource (see below).
Data files are stored in a directory usually called Calendar under the user's home directory. Each file is stored in a subdirectory containing all the data for a particular year. This is incompatible with xcalendar, the user may specify that compatibility should be maintained.
Alarms are supported by xcal. When a line in the data file starts with a digit it is assumed to be a time specification and a candidate for an alarm. The line contains a string giving the alarm time, and a text string displayed in a dialogue alarm box. When the time is reached, or at some user specified time before that, a dialogue box will be popped up onto the screen. The dialogue box will automatically go away after two minutes, unless the `Stick' button is pressed glueing the box onto the screen. The box can be made to go away at any time by hitting the `Unpin' button.
Xcal
tries to be liberal about the times that it understands.
Time specifications are: h, hh, hhmm, hmm, hh:mm, h:mm, hh.mm, h.mm;
all of these may be optionally followed by an am/pm indicator - one
of: A, a, AM, am, Am, aM, P, p, PM, pm, Pm, pM.
Times must always be followed by at least one space or tab.
Some legal examples are:
12:00 Lunch - Meet Joe at Burger King
14.30 Meeting in the cafeteria
2:30p Ring Mark
7pm Pizza
Xcal
also supports timed command execution from the data file.
To trigger a command, the data part of the line starts
with an exclamation mark, eg:
4.30pm !xmessage -message 'ring home'
It is also possible to make xcal execute a command whenever an alarm is triggered, see the cmd resource below.
The Memo function of Xcal is accessed by pressing the non-date portion of the command window. Currently this shows a bitmap diagram of three mouse buttons. Clicking the left mouse button in this area brings up a complex panel, clicking on the button again will pop is back down again. The top half of the panel displays the information held in the diary for today; you cannot edit the data from here - and must open the diary strip to change the data. The next section of the panel displays the information held in the weekly files. Again you cannot directly change the text in this area, you must press on the Edit button to bring up a strip enabling you to change things. The bottom portion of the panel is an edit window displaying the contents of a file usually called `memo' in the Calendar directory. The idea of this panel is to allow you to access your current information in one button click.
It is obviously possible to change Xcal's data files without using the inbuilt text widget editor. In general, Xcal will not notice this. Editing random day files with a standard text editor will not change the contents of any displayed strips until the strips are popped down and up again. Xcal knows what days have been altered when the text widget is used to edit the day files, and will reflect any change immediately into the displayed strips.
You can make Xcal take notice of today's date file and the current memo file. The `Update' resource sets a polling time in seconds. When the clock fires and today's file has been altered, the alarm list is rebuilt from the current date file and the memo panel is updated. The bottom part of the memo panel is also updated if the `memo' file has been altered on the clock tick.
The -alarmscan switch prints debugging information about the alarm system on standard output.
Xcal makes extensive use of the resource manager. The user needs to know the names of the various panels and widgets which comprise the application.
XCal Toplevel application
form Form containing two buttons
today Memo Command button
date Strip Command button
Then we have various popups. The Calendar Strip is:
"Mon Year" the popup shell
Month panel containing the strip
header label containing month and year
action form containing < quit > buttons
back command containing < - last month
quit command containing exit button
next command containing > - next month
help command generating help
"dd DDD" form containing day button (lots of these)
label label containing dd DDD, day of the month
and day of the week
info command containing the file data
The weekly popup strip is:
weekly the popup shell
weekly panel containing the strip
header label containing the title
action form containing quit and help
quit command containing exit button
help command generating help
shortday form containing days
label label containing day of the week
info command containing the file data
The Edit Window is:
edit the popup shell
panel the panel inside the shell
title the form containing the first line
quit the exit button
The Help Window is:
help the popup shell
helpPanel the panel inside the shell
helpForm the form containing the title line
quit the exit button
helpText the text widget showing the information
The Alarm Window is:
alarm the popup shell
alarmPanel the panel inside the shell
alarmForm form for top line
alarmQuit the exit button
alarmHold the hold button
alarmTitle the title on the alarm window
alarmText the text widget for displaying
The Memo Window is:
memo the popup shell
memoPanel the panel inside the shell
title Top line form widget
quit the exit button
help the help button
date display today's date
display text from today's date file
weeklyMemo form for the Memo title line
weeklyEdit Edit button
weeklyTitle Title area
2 display text from today's weekly file
memoMiddle Middle line form widget
save Save button
memoTitle text title of middle line
memoText Text widget showing memo file
The Middle button date selection popup is:
question the popup shell
newdate the dialog widget
ok the OK button
cancel the cancel button
The Right button exit selection popup is:
question the popup shell
exit the dialog widget
yes the yes button
no the no button
An error is shown when a multiple attempts are made to edit the same day file.
question the popup shell
noedit the dialog widget
ok the OK button
A dialog box is popped up when an attempt is made to exit from an editing box without saving the file.
check the dialog widget
yes the yes button
no the no button
$HOME/Calendar/*
The standard resource database can be found in /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Xcal. Assuming that this is where the system admin installed it.
It would be nice to be able to cut from the date box on the screen.
Setting an alarm 1 minute in the future may not work.
Countdown does not work in the early hours of the morning, if you have a ten minute countdown and an alarm set at 0005 - then you will not get warning at 2325.
Alarms set at 0000 probably won't work.
Copyright 1989,1990 by Peter Collinson, Hillside Systems All rights reserved. Placed into the public domain.
Much of the xcalendar program was plundered to create xcal ; author is: Roman J. Budzianowski, MIT Project Athena
Thanks to Ed Gould, Mt Xinu for the support for the calendar(1) program. Thanks to Mark Majhor, Sequent for the basis of the alarm code. Thanks to Rod Whitby, Austek Microsystems Pty. Ltd., Australia for the ideas of the Stick/Unpin code for alarms and for prompting me to add the memo code.