Choose ‘About Biorhythms’ to reveal a gaudy and unnecessary ‘splash screen’ with tedious and annoying shareware information, plus my address. See above for more information. If you hold down the option key when choosing ‘About…’ you will see an empty window – I had thought of putting some of my famous poetry here, but on second thoughts this might not have been a very good idea. (;-|).Choosing ‘Biorhythms Help’ lets you scroll through the online help document. To leave room for other windows, Help can be resized by dragging in the bottom right-hand corner. The document can be saved as a TeachText/SimpleText file if you like. Macintosh Information opens a window which lets you keep track of the number of colours available (8 bits = 256 colours/greys, the recommended number) and the amount of memory left for 5.03c – the more memory that’s left, the more windows you can have open. The current system version is also shown.
File Menu
‘New…’ lets you create new charts. Enter a name in the box and choose a date with the arrows, click ‘Create’ and it will be drawn. When you’ve finished creating, choose ‘Done’. Clicking on the pop-up box text will pop up a menu that allows you to alter the date. See ‘Date Menu’ for more information.
‘Open: One chart…’ lets you open a Biorhythm chart. You should have a folder named ‘Charts’ – this contains the charts of dozen famous people with which you can experiment. ‘Open: Folder contents…’ opens a number of charts at a time. Simply click in the folder in which there are charts and all of them will be opened (don't choose too many!) ‘Open Favourite:’ shows the Favourite submenu and choosing a name will open a new chart for that person. ‘Open: Last chart’ will, not surprisingly, reopen the last chart you opened (even if it is already open). ‘Open: Some charts…’ is a bit like ‘Open: Folder contents…’ but allows you to add the charts you want opened to a list, using the ‘Add’ button, or ‘Add all’ to save time. Once you click ‘Done’ all the charts contained in the list at the bottom of the window will be opened.
See ‘Schedule window’ for more information about ‘Save Schedule…’. All of the other options are self-explanatory (I hope).
Edit Menu
Biorhythms 5.03c cannot undo your actions, so the ‘Undo’ option is dimmed. ‘Copy Picture’ simply places the image of the frontmost chart, providing one is open, into the clipboard. All of the other options in this method work just the same as in other Mac programs. ‘Chart note…’ allows you to edit and store a small piece of text with each chart. ‘Select All…’, selects all the text in the current Help page (if Help is open) so you can copy it to the clipboard. ‘Chart size…’, however, lets you set directly the size of a chart window – either the entire window or just the chart area inside it. ‘Condition colours…’ lets you alter the colours used for each combination of phases when Coloured Conditions are turned on.
In March 1995, I added the ‘Schemes menu…’ option to the Edit menu, allowing you to customise your eight personal colour schemes. Choose which one to edit from the window’s pop-up menu, change its name if you like, make it available or unavailable (for whatever reason), and change colours, patterns, textures, and line widths. Clicking ‘Use defaults’ fills in the standard colours: red, blue, and green; black pattern; 3 points thick; etc. • Clicking ‘Use current colours’ copies in the colours from the chart just behind this window, into the Editor window. So next time you see a chart with a really nice look, choose a scheme to edit, click ‘Use current colours’, then save it. Now that style is saved for safe keeping.
See the Windows section for information about the new ‘Preferences’ section.
Cycles Menu
This menu lets you alter the way in which the three cycles are drawn. Each of the three chart cycles has its own options, accessible through submenus – each can either be drawn or not drawn, by checking or unchecking its ‘x cycle’ option; each can have its own colour – there are 256 to choose from; each can have its own pattern – useful if you lack a colour monitor; and each can have a different line width – 3 or 4 point thickness is usually best.
• By default, on a colour monitor the program will load with the three cycles in red, blue, and green respectively. However, start in black’n’white or < 4 bits and the three cycles will be given different patterns rather than different colours.
By clicking ‘All three cycles ON’ or ‘All three cycles OFF’ you can get 5.03c to draw all three cycles or else draw none of them. The colour/pattern/size options at the end of the menu will apply to all three cycles.
Chart Menu
This menu gives you even more choice in the appearance of your biorhythm chart plots. Choosing a colour from the ‘Background:’ submenu will place that coloured background behind the cycle lines. Applying a coloured ‘Grid:’ is also straightforward – each grid rectangle represents one day in your life.
Textures work just like backgrounds in 5.0c – they are attractive coloured patterns which look really nice with cycle lines in front of them. If you choose to display a texture, it will always be drawn instead of any background you have chosen. To further customise your images, you can vary the so-called ‘Transfer modes’ which control the way your Mac draws. Using ‘Normal’ is usually to be recommended, as the others can produce some really weird effects, but ‘blend’ is nice and the ones below that go well with textures.
For information about the first three options in the ‘Differences:’ submenu see the entry on the the Chart window. The ‘Durations’ submenu lets you choose the number of days the current biorhythm chart will show – if you choose a very long duration the chart will shrink horizontally, and stretch for short durations. Normally a chart will show 30 days, but this can be customised three ways: by using the 'Duration:' submenu, or by clicking on the text or the up/down arrows on the toolbar. See the entry on the the Chart window for more information. There is an almost infinite number of combinations of colours/patterns/sizes to choose for each cycle – some of my favourites are available from the ‘Colour Scheme:’ submenu. Note that if you haven't placed the 'Biorhythms Textures' file in your Preferences folder, textures and some of the schemes will be unavailable. As well as the eight standard schemes, and the random one, you have eight of your own which you can edit at will using the option in the ‘Edit’ menu. These will be stored in the Preferences file.
Special Menu
The ‘Set current date’ submenu allows you to alter the current date shown in the current biorhythm chart. For information see ‘Date Menu’. Next on the menu is the Animation submenu. Turning this on will cause the biorhythm chart to continually increment its ‘current date’ by the amount selected in that menu. For example: if animation is on, ‘Plus: one day’ is checked and the current date is 29/8/1994, then this will change to 30/8 and redraw, then to 31/8 and so on with the result that that the image appears to be scrolling to the left. Experiment.
‘Coloured conditions’ is a very useful feature: any day shown in the chart which features three positive days will be given a dark blue background, red for three negatives, etc. In fact, you can choose the colours you want to use, by clicking the 'Coloured Conditions' button in the Preferences window. Remember that if Coloured conditions are turned on, neither backgrounds nor textures will be visible.
‘Mass comparison…’ is like ‘Compare charts…’ but lets you work out compatibility ratings for as many as 20 different people: first, select the charts you want to compare by adding them to the list, then click ‘Done’ when finished. Each chart will then be compared with all the others, so that if you chose 20 charts 190 comparisons would be needed (19+18+17+…+3+2+1). In the window that then appears, you can pick two peoples' charts for comparison using the popup menus. For each person information will be given as to who they are most, and least compatible with, and also the average compatibility between the person and all the others – if this is high it means this person would get on well with the other people who are involved in the mass comparison. The level of compatibility between the two selected charts is shown in the third box. The last section gives general information about the whole set of charts – for example, which two people are most compatible within a group, and what is the average level of compatibility of the group – on average, it would be 50%, so if it is more then the group of people generally gets on well, etc.
See the Windows section for help on the other items in this menu.
Images Menu (formerly ‘Hall of Fame’)
This menu allows you to edit the Biorhythms 5.03c picture list. This is basically a collection of chart images stored in the Preferences file, with a small text description. If you feel you would like to store the image of the frontmost chart, so you can access it later, choose ‘Add this chart’ from the menu. To see the list of pictures, choose ‘View list…’. The first image will be shown in the window, scaled to fit if necessary. To scroll through all the images, click on the buttons. If you’re sure you want to erase the list, you can do so.
Favourites Menu
This program can store the details of different people in the Preferences file, and show their names and dates of birth (optional) in this menu. Simply choose a person from this menu, and a new chart will be opened containing their information. See the ‘Compare’ window help for details of how you can use this feature there.
The first time you use 5.03c you will find no information stored in the menu. To add some people or edit the names and dates, choose ‘Edit this menu…’ from the Edit menu. Scroll through the list, and if you want to deactivate one, just uncheck the checkbox next to it. If you want to edit the name or date, click on the slot you want modified, change the value in the name box and date boxes, then press 'Modify'. Choose ‘Save’ to update the menu. You can delete existing ones by selecting them and pressing ‘Remove’, or add new ones with ‘Add’. 5.03c will let you store information for up to 64 people in the menu!
If you have a chart window open, you can add that information directly into the menu, by choosing ‘Add this chart…’
• When you’re editing the entries in the menu, click on an entry to select it. Hold the mouse down for a second, and the cursor will change and a thick border will be drawn around the entry. You can now drag the entry up or down and therefore rearrange the order in which they will appear in the menu.
Windows Menu
This menu contains a list of all the windows currently open in 5.03c, and choosing one will bring it to the front. You can tell whether that window is a biorhythm chart, or one of the utility windows, perhaps ‘Compare…’ or ‘Colour Information’, by the icon next to it in the Windows menu.
Date Menu
’Today’s date’ replaces the values in the date boxes with today’s date.
’Birth date’, when used in a chart window sets the ‘current date’ equal to the date of birth.
’Previous/Next day’ subtracts or add one day to the date.
’A week earlier/later’ subtracts or adds seven days to the date, while ’A week earlier/later’ subtracts or adds 10 years.
’First/Last day of month’ sets the day part of the date to be either the first or last day of that month.
’Swap dates’, when used in the Date Calculator, exchanges the first date with the second.
Depending, on which date is selected in the Date Calculator, ‘Use other date’ will copy the first date into the second, or vice versa.
’Date Information’ reveals information about the date – its full name, the gap between that date and today's date and the number of that date within the year, eg Jan 1st = day 1. Also the week the date is in, is shown.
’Get date:’ reveals a hierarchical menu showing 12 ‘favourite’ dates. Choose one of these and it will be copied into the relevant date boxes. Initially all dates are set to 1/1/1960, but you can change them to anything you want and they will be saved in the Preferences file
’Set date:’ lets you alter the 12 ‘favourite’ dates. Choose one of these and the date from the relevant date boxes will be copied into the menu in the slot you choose, replacing the one that was there before. The new date is now saved for later use.
