Nag! is a reminder program, sort of an electronic personal organiser. You set appointments and it brings them to your notice at the proper time.
Introduction
We all know what it’s like to get doing something on your Mac only to find out when you finish that your favourite TV program started 20 minutes ago and you’ve missed the beginning (or missed it completely). Or what about the time you forgot about Uncle Bobs birthday, sure, you wrote it in you filofax, you just forgot to read it. “Damn! I was supposed to meet Fred at the Leisure centre!”. If any of these example sound as they could be applied to you, then you need Nag!
How do I install it then?
It couldn’t be easier. Nag! is a FAT application which means it will run at full speed on both PowerMacs and 68k Macs, and because it is an application, you can just double click on it to start right now. However, I would recommend copying the Nag! folder to your Hard Disk and then putting an alias of Nag! in your “Startup Items” folder. To do this, select the Nag! application and choose “Make Alias” from the “File” menu. Then locate the “Startup Items” folder inside your “System Folder” and drop the alias inside. Now Nag! will run whenever you start your computer so you’ll never miss an appointment again!
Using Nag!
Once Nag! is running it’s easy to set your appointments. If you are feeling confident I recommend that you start using Nag! straight away. The combination of Nag!’s easy to use interface and on-line balloon help practically makes this manual a thing of the past!
This section will take you through the various windows and dialogs of Nag! explaining what each button and window is used for. There is a Tutorial section further on in the manual which guides you through how to make nags. You may prefer to start there.
The Main Window
Below is the main window from Nag! with some example message in it. The messages (or nags) are listed in chronological order, the one which is next to occur is at the top of the list. A nag is hilighted with a simple click and the next and previous nags can be selected with the up/down arrow keys on the keyboard. The text at the bottom of the window tells you when the nag will next occur.
OK
This will close the Nag! window and return you to the Finder. It is the same as clicking the close gadget in the window or choosing “Close Window” from the “File” menu.
Preferences
See “Editing the preferences”.
Edit
Clicking this will edit the currently selected nag. See “Editing nags”
Delete
Clicking this will delete the currently selected nag. Be careful, there is no way of getting it back!
New
New allows you to create a new nag. See “Editing Nags”.
Edit Sets...
See “Editing Sets”
Set popup menu
This popup menu allows you to view nags by the set that they are in. If you selected your “TV” set for example all other nags that aren’t about television would be removed from view (but not deleted or anything). To view all of your nags again choose the set “All”. See “Editing Sets”.
Next Occurrence...
This line shows when the selected nag will next occur. If there will be a warning before the nag occurs, a small warning symbol will also appear here. See the tutorial section Making a nag with a warning.
Editing the preferences
The preferences dialog box allows you to control some of the aspects of Nag!. Feel free to experiment as none of the options have potentially disastrous results.
Delay Nags for “XX” mins
When your nag comes up on the screen, there is a delay button. Hitting this button will cause the nag to go away and come back in “XX” minutes. Type in a new number here to replace the default delay of 5 minutes. The maximum number of minutes you can delay the nag by is 99. A value of zero here will disable the delay button.
Dates as figures
Ticking this will mean that dates throughout Nag! will be referred to numerically. Eg, if there was a nag for tomorrow, instead of saying “Next occurrence tomorrow...” it would say “Next occurrence is on 18/7/98...”.
Zoom windows
Is that zooming effect when windows and dialog boxes open annoying you? This box allows you to turn it off.
Warn on delete nag
With this option on Nag! will always double check that you really do want to delete that nag when you click on delete.
Auto open/close main window
Have you noticed that when you choose Nag! in the application menu, it’s window automatically opens? And when you switch over to another application, Nag!’s window closes? Unchecking this checkbox will stop Nag! auto open/closing it’s window.
Editing Sets
It is possible to group your nags together into sets. So for example you could have a set called “TV” which had all your favourite TV programmes in it. The Set Editor works in a similar fashion to the main window. You select the set with the mouse and you can edit it’s name in the box below. The number of nags in the current set are displayed in the top left of the window.
OK
Dismisses the Set Editor saving the current set and any deletions you have performed.
Cancel
Dismisses the Set Editor without saving any changes to the sets or deleting any sets.
Delete Set & Set Entries
Does what it says, removes all the nags in the selected set, then deletes the set. Be careful with this one eh?
Delete
Deletes the selected set. Any nags in this set will be moved into the set “All” and will not be affected in any other way.
New
Creates a new set. Click once then type a name to replace the default “Untitled Set”.
Name text
This is where you change the name of the currently selected set.
Nags in set
This only appears when you have a set selected and shows you how many nags are currently grouped under the selected set.
Editing nags
You are presented with Nag Editor when you create a new, or edit an existing nag. It is from here that you enter all data relevant to the nag. Below is a picture of the Nag Editor.
OK
Accept changes made to the nag and saves them.
Cancel
Cancels all changes made to the nag and leaves it untouched.
Text box
This is where you enter the message for the nag.
Wooden speaker
If you have the “Nag! Extras” in the same folder as Nag! then clicking on this will allow you to cycle through sounds which will be played with your message. Holding any modifier key, except control, and clicking will cycle backwards through them. Clicking on the speaker while holding control will pop up a contextual menu allowing you to select the desired sound from a menu without cycling through all the other sounds first. Clicking on the picture of the silvered speaker will play the selected sound again. The question mark will pick a random sound for you.
Silvered speaker
This button will play the currently selected sound. See above.
Alarm clock
This works in the same way as the wooden speaker except cycles through pictures rather than sounds. Again you must have the extras file in the same folder as Nag!. This box allows you to cycle through the various pictures you can have occur with your nag. Again holding down any modifier key (except control) and clicking will cycle backwards. A control click will result in a contextual menu where you may select the desired picture without cycling through all the others first.
The question mark will pick a random picture. As you cycle through the pictures, the alarm clock is replaced with the currently selected picture.
Set popup
This is where you define what set your nag will be placed in. See “Editing sets” and the “Ed” button below.
ED
This is a short cut to the Set Editor. See “Editing Sets”.
Frequency
See “Type”.
Type
The type popup menu allows you to define whether your nag will reoccur and if so, when. Single is the default and means that the nag will simply occur and go and that will be the end of it. However the others are more powerful.
For example, take the example TV program “X-Files”. This is on every week, right? Now, rather than putting the message in every week so you don’t forget, you can get Nag! to do it automatically. Select “Every X weeks” in the popup menu. This will have enabled the “Frequency” text box. It will be set to one. One means every week. By simply replacing “X” with the frequency in the “Every X weeks” title you can see how often the nag will occur, “Every one week”. Typing two in the frequency box would mean “Every two weeks”. The same is true for all the other types like “minute” and “hour”.
A new feature in Nag! is the “On Marked days” item. When you select this a bunch of checkboxes appear and you tick all the days that you want the nag to reoccur on. The nag will start on the first marked day after the date that you’ve set the nag to go off on.
Time & Date
This is where you select the time & date for the nag to occur at. It is simple to do. The date has the day first, then the month followed by the year. Simply click on the figure to change and two little arrows will appear. Use these to alter the figure or alternately type in the figures. Then click on the next figure to change. Nag! will automatically check the dates (taking into account leap years and days in the month etc) and so the date you enter will always be valid, although it could be in the past. If it’s in the past nag will warn you when you click OK.
Black arrow next to date box
This is a short cut for setting dates. It is actually a popup menu. Selecting a day in here will change the date that your nag will occur on to the one selected. You may notice days in the “This week...” sub menu are sometimes ghosted, this is if they are in the past and no nag can occur on them.
At the bottom of the popup menu, it tells you what day of the week the currently entered date is on.
Black arrow next to time box
This is a popup menu for setting warnings for the nag.
A warning is simply a message which is displayed before the nag occurs stating, “This nag will occur today at 13:12...” or something similar.
You may select one of the preset warning times or select “Other...”. Selecting “Other...” will bring up a dialog for you to enter the length of the warning you want.
Warning Symbol
If a warning is set, a warning symbol will appear next to the popup menu to let you know. It will also appear in the main “Nag!” window if you click on the nag. If there is no warning set then this symbol is not present. See Black Arrow next to time box (above).
Nag alert box
When a nag goes off you are presented with a dialog similar to this one. Your custom sound will also be played.
OK
Dismisses the nag. If it is set to reoccur it is rescheduled as requested.
Nag in x mins
This delays the nag for x mins. The values of x depends on the nag preferences. If there are multiple nags to go off then holding the option key and clicking will delay all nags by the requested time.
OK All
This button is only present if there are multiple nags to go off, either because you’ve not been on your Mac for a while, or just because they’re scheduled for the same time. Clicking on this will OK all the pending nags without you reading them.
Holding down the control key while clicking on the delay button will bring up a contextual menu where you can tell the nag to delay for a selection of common times. Selecting the item “Other...” brings up a dialog where you can delay the nag for however long you want.
Tutorials
This section will take you through some of the basics of Nag!.
Making a simple nag
This section gives you a step by step guide to creating a new nag and customising it to your liking. If at any point you get stuck or are unsure, turning on balloon help from the help menu will often help.
• Firstly you must bring the Nag! application to the front. To do this, select Nag! from the applications menu in the top right of the screen.
• Now, click the “New“ button. The Nag Editor will open.
• Type your message in.
• Now your message is in, you must set the time and date for your nag. To set the time, click on the field you want to change in the time box and then use the up down arrows to adjust it, or simply type in the figure you want. Do the same for the date. Note that the time and date displayed to start with are the current time and date.
As a short cut to entering the date, you may click and hold the mouse on the black arrow to the right of the date section. This will present you with a menu which allows you to set the date from choices like, today, next Friday etc.
• Now that the date, time and message is entered, you may simply click OK or press return to return to the main window. Congratulations, you have just created your first nag!
Customising you nags with pictures and sounds
It is possible to customise you nags with considerable ease using Nag! so that each nag has it’s own picture and sound. This section of the tutorial takes you through that procedure.
• Select the nag you created in the first tutorial and click the “Edit” button. Nag Editor will open with the Nag! you have recently created.
• Firstly, we will select a custom picture and sound to go with you message. Click on the picture of an alarm clock. It will change to a different picture. Repeat this until you find a picture you want to go with your message. Alternately click on the question mark to the right to select a random picture.
• To choose a custom sound, click on the wooden loudspeaker. Continue until you find one which you think suits the message. Again the question mark to the right will randomise the sound. To hear the currently selected sound click on the silvered speaker to the right.
• Now your nag has a custom picture and sound with it. To see your nag in all it’s glory, set the nag to go off in a minute or two and click OK. Once back in the main window, click OK again to return to the Finder. Wait for your nag to occur.
Making a nag with a warning
Sometimes you need to know about an event before it occurs, for instance a 15 minute warning before you have a meeting is always appreciated. Rather than setting a nag to go off 15 minutes before the event, you can get Nag! to warn you before the nag goes off.
• Create a nag as instructed in the first section of the tutorial.
• Now, select the nag in the main Nag! window and click the “Edit” button to bring up the nag editor.
• Click the black triangle on the right of the time entry box. A popup menu will appear with a selection of different warning lengths.
• Select “Warn 5 mins before”.
You didn’t have to choose “Warn 5 minutes before” from the popup menu. As well as the other settings, there is a settings called “Other...”. This allows you to set up a warning of any length you like.
• A small warning symbol will have appeared next to the black arrow. This indicates that a warning is set for this nag.
• Click OK. Now 5 minutes before the nag goes off, you will get a warning telling you that the nag is coming up.
Grouping your nags into sets
Often you nags will evolve around certain topics such as “Business appointments”, “TV” or “Birthdays” etc. Nag! offers the facility to group you nags under headings of your choice to make them easier to manage.
• You may have noticed a popup menu at the top of Nag!’s main window. This tells you what group or “Set” you are currently seeing. It reads “All” at the moments indicating that you are seeing every set. We will add another set to this menu now. Click the button “Edit Sets...” next to the popup menu. The Set Editor will open up.
• Click the “New” button. A new set will be created called “Untitled Set”. You may change the name of the set by simply typing now. After entering the name, click OK or press return to return to the main window.
• Start editing an existing nag or create a new one as instructed in steps one and two. In the Nag Editor, there is a popup menu entitled “Set”. Choose your newly created set. This nag is now part of that set. Click OK or press return, to return to the main window.
• Now if you choose your newly created set from the set popup menu at the top of this window, you will see all other nags (if there are any) disappear and only the one you have just made part of the set remain. As many nags as you want can be put into a set, the more sets you have the easier it becomes to handle large amounts of nags.
Setting your nags to reoccur
Some events in life occur regularly, an example could be a TV program which is on every week. Nag! allows for you to set nags to reoccur with amazing flexibility.
• Create a new nag and customise it if you wish, as instructed in parts one and two of this tutorial.
• In the Nag Editor there are options to change how often the nag will reoccur. These are part of the “Event Type” menu. It is currently set to “Single”. This means that once the nag has occurred it’s gone. If you examine the contents of this menu you will see that there are other options which you can choose from.
Choose “Every X minutes”.
• When you do this, the “Frequency” box below will suddenly become active and set to 1. This is the value of “X”. Putting it together we get “Every 1 Minute”. This nag will now reoccur every minute. It is just as easy to get it to occur every two minutes by changing the 1 into a 2 etc. Setting it to occur weekly etc is just a case of choosing a different event type.
Choosing on marked days allows you to set the nag to reoccur on whatever days of the week you like.
This concludes the tutorials. Now you have a basic feel about the way Nag! works reread the sections explaining the various parts of Nag! and use balloon help to explore the interface a little. The best way to learn is to experiment. Nag! is very tolerant and it’s easy to use interface will often guide you through what you want to do.
Hints and Tips for the advanced user:
• Holding down the shift key while Nag! is launching will stop Nag! launching into the background. Instead it will launch into the foreground with it’s window open, ready for you to use.
• Holding down the shift key whilst switching to Nag! will temporary toggle the “Auto open/close main window” setting. This means that if you don’t have it on, switch to Nag! while holding the shift key will open the main window.
• If you want to create a large number of nags in the same set, switch to that set first in the main window, and then create your nag. The nag will default to the set you were viewing.
• If you quickly want to know how many nags are in a set, go into the Set Editor and click on the set. Nag! displays how many nags are in the set above the “New” button.
• Check out the “Quick Nag!” control panel. It should have been distributed with Nag!. It allows you to set universal quick keys to functions like “New nag” and “Open Nag! window”.
• You don’t need to hold the Control key down to get a contextual menu for the select sound and select picture cycle boxes. You can in fact just hold the mouse button down for a second.
• In the edit nag dialog you can now tab through all the date and time fields and also enter figures into them by keyboard. Shift tab will cycle the other way. Using the up/down cursor keys will increase/decrease the selected figure respectively. There are also two quick keys for setting the date. Command-T for today and Command-M for tomorrow.
Shareware
Nag! is SHAREWARE. This means that you are free to use Nag! for a trial period of 30 days. After that you should either deinstall Nag! or register it. Nag! is copyright, meaning it is still my product and you can’t hack into it or change it in any way. When redistributing Nag! to your friends (which I encourage you to do) ensure that you give them the entire folder which contains six files: Nag!, Nag! Extras, Nag! Read Me, Quick Nag!, Version History and Quick Nag! Read Me.
Registering
Prices
For 1-10 copies of Nag! it costs £8/$15 per license
For 10+ copies of Nag! it costs £6/$10 per license
For a site license of Nag! it costs £200/$350.
A site license covers all users on a site. A site is specified as a collection of buildings within a 1 mile radius which are all owned by the same authority.
How to pay
There are three ways to pay for Nag!. You can either pay me directly, pay via Kagi, or pay over the web. You should only pay me directly IF you are sending me UK Pounds Sterling cheques UK Pounds Sterling postal orders, UK Pounds Sterling currency, or cheques drawn in UK Pounds Sterling by a UK bank. The address to send these cheques to is at the bottom of this document. Please ensure you enclose either your email address or a return postal address with the cheque as well as your name. Please don’t send me cheques in foreign currency as I cannot cash them. Any cheques directed to me should be made payable to “Mark Tully” and NOT “TNT Software”.
To pay for Nag! via the web go to http://order.kagi.com/?OVV.
As mentioned you may also pay via Kagi. Kagi is a flexible system which allows users from all around the world to pay in whatever method is most convenient to them. To pay via Kagi, run the “Register” program which came with Nag! and fill in the details it prompts you for. Once you have done this either Save, Copy or Print the data and send it onto Kagi who will process the payment.
If paying with Credit Card or First Virtual, you can email or fax the data to Kagi. Their email address is sales@Kagi.com and their fax number is +1 510 652-6589 (NB: This is a USA number). You can either Copy the data from Register and paste into the body of an email message or you can Save the data to a file and attach that file to an email message. There is no need to compress the data file, it's already pretty small. If you have a fax modem, just Print the data to the Kagi fax number.
Payments sent via email are processed within 3 to 4 days. You will receive an email acknowledgement when it is processed. Payments sent via fax take up to 10 days and if you provide a correct internet email address you will receive an email acknowledgement.
If you are paying with Cash or USD Check you should print the data using the Register application and send it to the address shown on the form, which is:
Kagi
1442-A Walnut Street #392-OVV
Berkeley, California 94709-1405
USA
You can pay with a wide variety of cash from different countries but at present if you pay via cheque, it must be a cheque drawn in US Dollars. Kagi cannot accept cheque in other currencies, the conversion rate for non-USD checks is around USD 15 per check and that is just not practical.
If you have a purchasing department, you can enter all the data into the Register program and then select Invoice as your payment method. Print three copies of the form and send it to your accounts payable people. You might want to highlight the line that mentions that they must include a copy of the form with their payment.
Kagi can not invoice your company, you need to act on their behalf and generate the invoice and handle all the paperwork on your end. Please do not fax or email payment forms that indicate Cash, Check or Invoice as the payment method. Kagi say there is still no technology to transfer physical objects via fax or email and without the payment, the form cannot be processed.
Payments sent via postal mail take time to reach Kagi and then up to 10 days for them to process it. Again, if you include a correct email address, you will hear from Kagi when the form is processed.
Once you get your code
Once registered, you get your unique code which will allow you to register Nag! in your name. To register Nag!, go into the about box by selecting “About Nag!...” from the Apple Menu and then click “Enter code”.
Deinstall
If you decide not to register Nag! it is easy to deinstall. Simply move the Nag! folder to the trash. Don’t forget about trashing the alias to Nag! in the startup folder.
Editing the “Nag! Extras” file
It is possible to edit the Nag! Extras file completely. The number of pictures and sounds is completely flexible. I hope that people will produce their own extras files based on themes and spread them around. Now editing the Nag! Extras file is not hard to do but you do need to know how to use ResEdit. I’m not going to explain that, just a few guide lines to be aware of when changing things.
Pictures
These are numbered from 1 upwards and you mustn’t miss out any numbers or Nag! will have a cow. The pictures themselves are 128x128 in 256 colours in the system palette. You can break any one of these limits and Nag! will still except them but...pictures won’t ever be displayed larger than 128x128 so why do it bigger? I use the 256 System palette as it will show up well on any colour system. Not everybody has 16-bit colour you see.
Sounds
Numbered from 128 upwards, again, don’t miss out numbers. HINT: Drop your sounds down to 8-bit 11kHz or less to stop them taking up too much memory.
For both pictures and sounds, the resource name is the name which will be displayed in the contextual menus.
Known Limitations
Nags do not occur in certain situations. These are when some application takes over the Mac without sharing it with any others. Most of these are games. Nags also won’t occur in some dialog boxes particularly load/save boxes. If Nag! does miss one, as soon as it can it will inform you of the message and when it was supposed to occur. If a nag occurs when your computer is off, as soon as it loads up again Nag! will inform you of it. If multiples of the same nag have occurred, say because you’ve been on holiday, Nag! will tell you how many of them have occurred rather than repeating the same nag like 6 times.
Nag!, along with the Mac itself, is year 2000 safe, if you don’t know what that means, don’t worry about it.
TNT Software
TNT Software are a new software company dedicated to bringing quality shareware to the Mac. TNT’s future projects include games as well as applications, these will be released as shareware as they are finished.
Address
Mark Tully
TNT Software
133 Warley Road
Blackpool
Lancs
FY1 2RW
United Kingdom
M.C.Tully@durham.ac.uk
If the above account is closed then try:
TNT@Kagi.com
Check out TNT’s webpage for the latest version of Nag! at :
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~mtdesign/
Enjoy Nag!,
Mark Tully
28/1/99
Disclaimer
In using this software, you understand and agree that this software is provided “as is” without warranty of any kind. The entire risk as to the results and performance of using this software lies entirely with you, the user. The author does not make any warranties, either expressed or implied, including but not limited to implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose, with respect to this software.
In no event shall the author be liable for any consequential, incidental, or special damages whatsoever (including without limitation damages for loss of critical data, loss of profits, interruption of business, and the like) arising out of the use or inability to use this software.
Legal Stuff
Although copyrighted, Nag! may be freely distributed by electronic means, provided that it is not modified in any way and that it is accompanied by all of the original documentation unaltered. However, ownership of and interest in this software, together with all associated codes, techniques, software tools, formats, designs, concepts, methods, ideas, and documentation shall remain with the author. Use and distribution of this software is governed by the following terms in an effort to reasonably ensure that this software will remain freely available and that no one other than the author will derive a commercial benefit from distributing this software.
Although the author would appreciate any feedback and bug reports, the author shall not be responsible for correcting any problems which you discover or otherwise help you maintain and use this software. Furthermore, the author may at any time replace, modify, alter, improve, enhance or change this software.
You may:
1. Use this software on as many computers as you want at a cost of £8/$15 per computer after the 30 day trail.
2. Make as many backup copies of this software as you want.
3. Freely distribute this software via wire or electronic communications (BBS's and online information systems) for the sole purpose of use by their customers.
4. Terminate this agreement at any time by destroying all copies of this software and derivatives of this software and cease distributing the same.
You may not:
1. Create any derivative works from this software for distribution.
2. Charge money for this software other than reasonable charges for downloading time or shipping expenses.
