Occasions

to Create a New Occasion
For a specific date:
- double click on the date in a calendar
- double click on the date's title in an occasion list
- select Add "To Do" item in the Remember? menu

The last method uses today's date and sets the Persistent checkbox. It is useful for quick reminders about things you need to do as time permits rather than by some specific date. They appear every day until you Mark them as Completed.

For other occasions:
Select Add New Occasion in the Remember? menu to create a new, blank Occasion window.

The only difference between these methods are the pre-set fields. You get the same result by manually entering the information into a blank Occasion window.

to Change an Existing Occasion
Double click on the description in a What's Happening occasion list or a Browse window to view or change an occasion's definition.

You can view but not change occasions in locked files.

the Occasion Window

The window title tells you the status of the occasion:
- New Occasion : has never been saved
- Occasion : an existing occasion
- Edited Occasion : an existing occasion with unsaved changes

(1) Occasion File pop-up menu
Click to select an unlocked occasion file for this definition. Pre-set to the last file you accessed, or you can select a default file (see Managing Occasion Files.)

For existing occasions, selecting a new file will create a new occasion when you save your changes. It does not alter the original.

(2) Occasion Type pop-up menu
Click to select the category for this occasion (see Managing Occasion Types  to learn about the default Type.) Hold down the OPTION key to view the definition of the Type.

(3) Description
Enter a 1 to 255 character description of the occasion. RETURNs are not permitted. Press TAB to highlight the current description, the next key pressed will replace it. Accepts the standard Edit menu commands.

You must enter a description.

(4) When (the date pattern)
These five pop-up menus determine the dates for this occasion. If a field is blank, such as Day and Year above, it is ignored when matching dates. Each field has an "any" entry at the top of its menu to make it blank. (See Date Patterns  below.)

(5) Optional Start and Alert Times
Enter the starting time for the occasion by clicking on the pop-up time menu, click on the left side to set the hour or the right to set the minute. The start time appears with the description in occasion lists. Press COMMAND-LEFT/RIGHT ARROW keys to adjust the start time in 5 minute increments (configurable in Preferences.)

You can also specify an Alert time if you want to be notified shortly before the occasion starts. It is relative to the 'Starts at' time and can be up to 24 hours before. An Alert time later than the Start time is interpreted as being on the day before and is underlined (see the Pop-up Alerts  chapter.)

Using Preferences, you can automatically set the Alert time when the Start time is selected.

(6) the Message Box
Displays the next date for this occasion, or the previous date if it is persisting and not yet Marked as Completed. If there is something wrong with the occasion definition, a description of the problem appears here.

(7) Persistent checkbox
Turn on this checkbox if you want the occasion to nag you until you Mark it as Completed.

(8) Pop-up Window Menu
Click here for window specific menu commands.

Date Patterns
The date or dates for an occasion are determined by the date pattern you select in (4). To understand how this works, let's first talk about calendar dates in general.

If ask "What is today's date?", you will probably answer with something like "today is Wednesday, November 1, 1995." You just gave four pieces of information to uniquely identify the date: the day of week, month, day of month and year. "Remember?" uses the same four attributes to match dates to occasions.

As it turns out, there is one more less common but very useful piece of information about a date: the number of times the day of the week has occurred in the month. It is used by some U.S. holidays such as Mother's Day (the 2nd Sunday in May, every year) or the end of Daylight Savings time (the Last Sunday in October.) It is also commonly used for monthly meetings. For want of a better term, this part of a date is called "Which" (as in "which weekday of the month") in the Occasion window.

Matching Dates to the (When) Date Pattern
An occasion matches a given date if and only if the non-blank parts of its date pattern are the same as the corresponding parts of the date. Blank fields are ignored. You can mentally substitute "any" for them if it helps you to understand the matching process.

One-time Occasions
If the date pattern is a year, month and a day of month, the occasion occurs exactly once on that date.

Occasions that Repeat Annually, Monthly, Weekly or Daily
For birthdays or anniversaries, select the Month and Day and blank out the other fields.

For monthly meetings on a specific day of the month, set just the Day field. For other monthly meetings, set Which and Weekday, eg. "First Monday", and set the other fields to "any".

For weekly events, select the appropriate Weekday.

For items that occur every day, leave all five fields blank.

Feel free to use other more obscure combinations of fields as well. Some examples: "month: June, year: 1996" matches the entire month of June for the year 1996; "weekday: Friday, day: 13" matches every friday that is also the 13th of the month; or even simply "which: First" for the first week of each month.

Occasions that Repeat Every 'N' Days
Use this special form to handle events that repeat after a specific number of days, such as every other week (every 14 days.)

Step 1 - pick a starting date
We need a starting point that we know belongs to the pattern of repeating dates. The exact date doesn't matter, but no dates before it will appear in your schedule. Enter it into the Month, Year and Day fields.

Step 2 - select the "Repeat" occasion format
In the "Which" menu select "Repeat", "Weekday" changes to "Interval".

Step 3 - select the repeat interval
In the "Interval" menu, select the number of days from 1 to 255 between occurrences of this event.

Saving the Occasion
When you are finished entering or changing the occasion, save it from the Pop-up Window Menu (8). Lazy folks can just press the ENTER key to replace an existing or save a new occasion as appropriate. The first four menu items deal with saving your changes:

- Save Changes
Replace the occasion with your changes. Only available when you have made changes to an existing occasion.

- Save New Occasion
Save as a new occasion, even if you started with an existing one.

- Revert to Saved
Discard changes to an existing occasion.

- Delete
Delete an existing occasion. Also closes the window.

If you try to close a window that has unsaved changes, you are prompted to save or discard them or cancel the close (hold down the OPTION key while closing to save without asking.)

Shared Occasion File Quirk
The current implementation can get confused if someone else on the network modifies an occasion file while you are changing an existing occasion from it. When you save the occasion you are warned that "The file has been changed by another user, Save as a new Occasion?" If you proceed, a new, possibly duplicate occasion is saved. You should delete the original.

Searching
You can search the active occasion files by description and date pattern using Find an Occasion in the Remember? menu. The "Find an Occasion" window is a special form of Occasion window.

Use the When, Starts at, Alert at and Description fields to specify what you want to find. At present, you can't search on the File, Type or Persistent fields. The search finds occasions that contain the text typed into Description and exactly match the other fields.

When you are ready to search, press ENTER or select Find in the pop-up window menu (8) to see the first match. You hear a beep if none were found. Press ENTER again for select Find Next in the pop-up window menu (8) to search for the next matching occasion.

Skipping Occurrences
Select Mark Completed in the pop-up window menu (8) to skip over the next occurrence of this occasion, or to catch up on a Persistent occasion nagging you about a previous date. Repeat to skip further into the future.

Use Undo all Completed if you skip too far ahead. It restores the future occurrences you skipped with Mark Completed.

Mouse-less Occasion Entry
Using the mouse can be difficult when you are trying to enter an occasion while talking on the phone.

Instead, type the entire definition into the Description box, then select Description >> When in the pop-up window menu. It picks out the date fields and occasion type and set them appropriately. Anything that isn't a date field goes back into the descripton box. Use quotes to enclose the description or for multi-word occasion type names. Abbreviations are permitted, just be sure to enter enough to be unambiguous. Case (UPPER or lower) is ignored.

You may enter:
- month names (january .. december or localized names)
- weekdays (sunday .. saturday or localized names)
- which day of week (first .. fifth, last)
- day of the month (1 .. 31)
- year (1956 .. 2018 or 00 .. 99)
- a repeat interval (1/1/95 repeat every X days)
- short date (eg: 5/10, 11/1/95)
- time (11:00am, 5pm, 22:00uhr)
- special date names (yesterday, today, tomorrow)
- Occasion Type names (Trivia, Birthday, Meeting)
- "persistent" (to set the Persistent checkbox)

The first time encountered is used as the Start time and the second is the Alert time.

Here are a few examples:
- july 4 "U.S. Independence Day"
- 7/9/91 repeat every 14 days Trash collection
- meet Fred tomorrow 5pm
- persistent payment today "Don't forget the lobotomy surgeon's check!"
- feb 19 birthday Kimberlee

You can enter an entire list of occasions by typing them up in this format, one per line, copy them to the Clipboard, then Paste the whole thing into a Browse window. Alternatively, use the Occasion Files Import button to convert an entire text file.

A Quick Way to Enter a New occasion
Here is the fastest procedure to enter a new occasion when "Remember?" is not open. (It uses the Hot Key described in the Pop-up Alerts  chapter.)

Step 1 - Press your Alert Hot Key (let's say it is COMMAND-OPTION-something), the pop-up alert window appears.
Step 2 - Press COMMAND-OPTION-N to launch "Remember?" to create a new occasion.
Step 3 - Type the complete definition into the Description window, then press COMMAND = (equal sign, the shortcut for Description >> When) to convert it to an occasion.
Step 4 - Press COMMAND-OPTION-W to close and save the Occasion window.

That's it! "Remember?" will automatically exit when you close the Occasion window. In step 2, you must use the same "modifier" keys (COMMAND, SHIFT, OPTION, CONTROL) as used by your Hot Key.