Almathera Ten Pack 3: CDPD 3

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ Almathera Ten Pack 3: CDPD 3 / Almathera Ten on Ten - Disc 3: CDPD3.iso / scope / 176-200 / scopedisk186 / badger / badger.doc < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1995-03-19 | 21.4 KB | 500 lines

BADGER Copyright (c) 1990 by George Kerber --------------------------------------------------------------------------- SHAREWARE SHAREWARE SHAREWARE SHAREWARE SHAREWARE SHAREWARE SHAREWARE --------------------------------------------------------------------------- BADGER is released as SHAREWARE. This means that all users who find this program useful and continue to use it are required to mail the author (me) $15 to pay for the program and to register their copy. Failure to make the required payment is THEFT. This program may be used for a period of 30 days (one 30 day trial period per user) without charge. Any user that continues to use the program past the 30 day trial period should mail payment to: George Kerber 19756 E. Linvale Drive Aurora, CO 80013 (303) 693-2890 As the author, I choose to make this program shareware and require a payment of $15 for the use of the program. If anyone does not think the program is worth $15 (which is anyone's choice to make), that doesn't justify not making payment if you continue to use the program. If my price it too high, then simply delete the program & documentation. Your permission to use this version of BADGER expires 30 days after the first time you execute the program. Forty five days after you first use this program, BADGER will delete it's data files and become inoperative. Whenever BADGER is executed, insure that your computer clock is set correctly. The data files that are created by BADGER will only work with the copy of BADGER they were created with. If a new copy of BADGER is started, it will destroy the old data files. BADGER will not permit the user to set their computer date years ahead to start the program in an attempt to get more usage time. BADGER will detect this and become inoperative. All registered users will receive an unprotected copy of the latest version of 'BADGER' that operates without any SHAREWARE message notices. The shareware screen was intended to be annoying. Please send your registration payment, and you will never have to see the screen again. Any attempt to remove the SHAREWARE notice using some type of sector editor will make the program inoperative. When ordering, please specify MS-DOS or AmigaDOS. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- SHAREWARE SHAREWARE SHAREWARE SHAREWARE SHAREWARE SHAREWARE SHAREWARE --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Program: BADGER 03/28/90 Programmer: George Kerber Written: 03/15/90 - 12/09/90 Application: MS-DOS (3.0 or higher) AmigaDOS (1.2 or higher, 2.0 compatible) PURPOSE: (MS-DOS or AmigaDOS) -------- BADGER is a 'quick' reminder program. The user can enter important events via prompts, along with the number of days to pre-notify. BADGER will display any important events that fall within the pre-notify date from the menu or using the '-s' or '-o' option. The '-s' & '-o' options will only display the important events that are 'due'. This is useful for inclusion in your autoexec.bat/startup-sequence file. SYNTAX: ------- BADGER BADGER -s BADGER -o BADGER -c (MS-DOS Only) BADGER -l (MS-DOS Only) BADGER -check BADGER -h or ? With no option BADGER will display a menu to add, view or search for current due events. BADGER is easy to use, most choices are self-explanatory. -s BADGER will display only the current due important events and then exit. If no events are due, there will be no output. -o This option is the same as the '-s' option above, except that BADGER will only check the Important Event List once per day. Add 'BADGER -s' or 'BADGER -o' to your autoexec.bat/startup- sequence file. -c Toggle color/black & white. See the section titled "COLOR" for more information. (MS-DOS ONLY) -l This option prevents BADGER from using any text attributes in it's display. This is useful for LCD displays due to the "reversed" nature of their output. See the section titled "COLOR" for more information. (MS-DOS ONLY) -check This option will display the status of this copy of BADGER, along with the compile date. If this copy is a SHAREWARE version, '-check' will also display to the user if this copy of BADGER has ever been executed. See the 'STATUS' section for more information about this option for SHAREWARE users. -h A short help/information screen will be displayed. or ? A short help/information screen will be displayed. When choices appear between [] brackets, any choice that is capitalized is the default and can be selected by simply pressing any key. MENU OPERATION --------------- All menu selections can be selected by the choice number or the highlighted letter of the description. (s) 1. Search For Important Events. (a) 2. Add Events. (v) 3. View Events. (h) 4. Help/Information. (q) 5. Quit. (default) (P) Print Event List. (not shown on main menu) (W) Write (SAVE) changes to disk. (not shown on main menu) 1. (s) Any important events that are "due" will be displayed. The user will have six possible choices. If a reference year was entered on the ADD EVENT screen, the number of year elapsed since the reference year will be displayed. 1. (s) Snooze: This is the default and will be selected by pressing any key not used for the other menu choices. The event will be kept and the user will be reminded again the next time the program is executed. 2. (d) Delete: The event will be removed from the Event List. 3. (q) Quit: Or press ESC to return to the main menu. 4. (w) Remind Again Next Week: The event will be moved ahead seven days from the Important Event date. 5. (m) Remind Again Next Month: The event will be moved to the same date in the next month if possible. If the new date is invalid, the day will be moved to the last day in the new month. Example: 05/31/90 will be changed to 06/30/90. If you want to be reminded of an event at the end of every month, enter the event for the 1st day of the next month to notify you a few days before that. This will insure that you will always be notified the same number of days before the end of each month, no matter how many days are in the month. 6. (y) Remind Again Next Year: The event will be moved to the next year in the list. Any dates of 2/29/LEAPYEAR will be moved to 2/28 of the next year. 7. (a) Change Advance Notice: This option allows the user to change the number of days in advance that this Event will be displayed. 2. (a) Enter Date: The user will be prompted for a date. The date must be entered as m/d or m/d/y. Leading zero's can be entered, but they are not required. Today or later is all that will be accepted up until year 2030. Any date entered without a year, will default to the next date in the upcoming year. Enter Days: Enter the number of days you would like to be reminded of this event ahead of time. The default is 10 days. You can enter 0 - 45 days. Enter (Reference) Year: You may enter a 4 digit year from 1800 up until current year. This is useful for birth years and wedding anniversary years. If a valid year is entered, the number of years from the reference year to the current year will be displayed on the SEARCH EVENT screen. Press <return> to skip the reference year. BADGER will not allow the user to enter an invalid year. Enter Event Description: Enter a description of the event. This is the message that will be displayed to the user when the event is displayed. NOTE: The SEARCH EVENT screen will show how old a person is or how many years ago their anniversary was if a reference year is entered and the word 'birthday' or 'anniversary' appears in the Event Description field. 3. (v) The user will be prompted for all or part of an Event Description to search for. The search is an un-anchored & non-case-sensitive. This means that entering "ann" would locate both: Mom & Dad's anniversary Ann Miller's Birthday Or, press <return> to view all records. Any event that is 'due' will be highlighted on the VIEW EVENT display. MS-DOS: Due events will appear WHITE, all others will appear in LIGHTCYAN. AmigaDOS: Due events will appear in bolded color 3, all others will appear in color 3 only. Color 3 (when the default colors are being used) is orange in AmigaDOS1.2 and lightblue in AmigaDOS2.0. 1. (c) Continue: 2. (d) Delete: 3. (q) Quit: 4. (r) Change Remind Date: The Event Date can be changed with this option. 5. (a) Change Advance Notice: The number of days advance notice for the event can be changed with this option. 6. (y) Change Reference Year: The reference year can be added, deleted or changed with this option. An existing reference year can be removed by entering a '0' at the prompt. 7. (e) Change Event Description: The Event description can be changed with this option. 4. (h) A short help/information screen will be displayed. 5. (q) If any changes were made to the event list, the user will be prompted to save or ignore the changes. THE FOLLOWING CHOICES ARE NOT SHOWN ON THE MAIN BADGER MENU. ------------------------------------------------------------ (P) Print Event List: An uppercase "P" must be used for this option. This option is only available if there are any events in the Event List. Selecting this option will print your entire Event List on stdprn(MS-DOS) or prt:(AmigaDOS). Insure that your printer is turned on before selecting this option. If any changes were made to the Event List, the user will be prompted to store the changes before printing begins. It's usually a good idea to store the changes at this point in case some printing error occurs. MS-DOS users must be especially careful to insure that their printer is turned on & is operational, since MS-DOS will exit the program if any errors are encountered. Data loss could occur if your events have not been saved and a printing error occurs. (W) Write Event List: An uppercase "W" must be used for this option. This option is only available if any changes have been made to the Event List. Selecting an uppercase 'W' will write the Event List to disk if any changes have been made. Use of this option is normally not necessary, since the user will be prompted to save any changes on exit from the program. DATA FILE LOCATION: ------------------- MS-DOS: The BADGER program looks at the drive that it was executed from and assumes that this is the drive that the user wants to store the data file on. So, if you have BADGER.EXE on your c: drive, BADGER will use C:\BADGER\BADGER.DAT for the data file. Or if you have BADGER.EXE on the a: drive, BADGER will use A:\BADGER\BADGER.DAT instead. This allows the program to be used by both hard drive and floppy disk users. If a current file exists, then it will be renamed to 'BADGER.BAK' and the new information will be written to 'BADGER.DAT'. This insures that the previous generation file will always be available in the \BADGER directory. If the \BADGER directory doesn't exist, BADGER.EXE will create it. AmigaDOS: BADGER stores the data file in your logically assigned s: directory. The date file is named s:badger.data. Whenever BADGER writes new information, badger.data (if it exists) is renamed to badger.bak and the new data is written to badger.data. This insures that the previous generation file is always available if needed. AUTOEXEC.BAT (MS-DOS) / STARTUP-SEQUENCE (AmigaDOS) FILE -------------------------------------------------------- Add the following line to your autoexec.bat/startup-sequence file after any commands necessary to set your system clock. BADGER -s : check the event list on very boot or reboot or BADGER -o : check the event list only the first boot per day Each time you boot your computer, BADGER will check for any important events that are 'due' and display them to the user. If there is nothing to display, there will be no output. See the RETURN CODE section below. The display will be identical to the "Search For Important Events" from the BADGER menu, except that the main menu will not be displayed. AmigaDOS: Since the Amiga is a multi-tasking machine, BADGER can be 'run' to allow your startup-sequence to continue in the background while BADGER is running. This allows BADGER to check and/or display events that are due while your startup-sequence continues. If you desire to 'run' BADGER, add this line to your startup-sequence instead of 'badger -s': run >nil: badger -s -or- run >nil: badger -o INSTALLATION: ------------- MS-DOS: Execute the supplied 'install' program. BADGER will be installed on your hard-disk. Your autoexec.bat file will be modified so BADGER will check the event list for 'due' events when the computer is booted. See the README.1ST file for more information, or.... Copy BADGER.EXE to any directory that is in your current path. Remember that BADGER will use the drive that you executed BADGER.EXE from for the location of the data file as described above. BADGER will fail if a file named BADGER exists in the root directory of the disk you are running BADGER from. This is because BADGER will try and make a directory called BADGER and will fail if a file named BADGER exists. AmigaDOS: Badger and badger.info can be copied to any location on your disk. If you copy badger to a directory that is not in your current path, you will have to give a fully qualified path when executing badger from your startup- sequence. For example: If dh0:extra is not in your current path and you have copied badger to this directory, you will need to enter dh0:extra/badger -s (or dh0:extra/badger -o) to your startup-sequence so your computer can find it. FLOPPY DISK USERS ----------------- This program will work from floppy disks, but may be annoyingly slow to run each and every time your system is booted from every disk. I suggest that a bootable (and writable) disk be created with the program run from the autoexec.bat/startup-sequence as described above. Then simply boot from your BADGER disk whenever you want to check your event list. RETURN CODE (MS-DOS and AmigaDOS) ----------- If an error occurs that terminates the program prematurely, a return code of 10 (ERROR) is passed to the DOS shell along with a message printed to the screen informing the user. When the program is executed using the -s or -o option, a return code of 5 (WARN) is returned to the DOS shell if there were important events to display. No messages or errors are displayed. Adding 'BADGER -s' to your autoexec.bat/startup-sequence file will produce no output unless an important event is displayed. The user can safely ignore the return code if desired. AmigaDOS: You can trap for a no-event condition by checking the return code in the script you are executing 'badger -s' from. .... badger -s if NOT WARN echo "No Important Events Today" endif .... If you want some type of message displayed if there were no important events to display, add the above code to your startup-sequence. Otherwise badger -s (or -o) will execute quietly unless there is an important event to display. Color: (MS-DOS users only, AmigaDOS always uses color) ------------------------------------------------------ Text and background color is difficult to control in MS-DOS due to the many possible combinations of graphics cards and monitors. Many programs will change the text or background colors for their use and not return them to the original colors when the program ends. This is poor programming. BADGER always attempts to return your display to the way it found it. BADGER attempts to determine the type of video adapter and current textmode to determine if the display should be in color or black & white. You can override the automatic choices using one of the methods shown below: Using the '-c' option will cause the display to change to the opposite of the currently 'normal' display when executing BADGER with no option. That is, if BADGER normally displays in color, using the '-c' option will change the display to a black & white display, and vice-versa. Of course you must have a color monitor and color video adapter to have a color display. The '-c' option can be set with an environmental variable if desired to avoid having to specify the '-c' option every time BADGER is executed. Add the following line (or enter it at the DOS prompt) to your autoexec.bat file. set NOCOLOR=x (no spaces are allowed on either side of the equals sign) Using the '-l' option will cause the BADGER display to use no text attributes in it's display. This can be useful when using an LCD monitor due to the "reversed" nature of their display. set NOCOLOR=LCD (no spaces are allowed on either side of the equals sign) If the NOCOLOR environmental variable is set to LCD or the '-l' option is used, the '-c' option will have no effect. If you are not using a color monitor, experiment with the NOCOLOR variable or the '-c' and '-l' options to get the best and most readable display. Public domain programs UDATE (v1.21s+) and FORTUNE (v2.02s+) can also read the NOCOLOR environmental variable if it's set. UPDATES? -------- Due to the initial low price of BADGER, registered users will not receive automatic notification of any updates, bug fixes or improvements to BADGER. Any registered user may request the latest version of BADGER by sending $5 (for shipping & handling only) to the author. To be eligible for the update, you must send me your current version number and serial number. Very early AmigaDOS versions of BADGER were not serialized, you must inform me of this fact. Updates will only be sent to the original address of the purchaser. If you have moved, you must send your original disk as proof of purchase. STATUS: ------- This program is SHAREWARE. If you find this program useful, you are required to mail the author $15 as payment for the program and to register your copy. If you have a registered version of BADGER, you MAY NOT FREELY DISTRIBUTE your copy. Only unregistered 'usage' protected copies may be freely distributed. Usage protected SHAREWARE versions of this program can be freely distributed as long as all files are included in the archive. The archive should contain the following files: MS-DOS: 1. badger.exe AmigaDOS: 1. badger 2. badger.doc 2. badger.doc 3. badger.reg (register) 3. badger.info (icon) 4. README.1ST 4. REGISTER.TXT 5. convert.exe 5. convert 6. convert.doc 6. convert.doc 7. install.exe 7. help.me 8. help.me If a SHAREWARE copy of BADGER is redistributed, it should be the exact copy copy that was obtained from the archive. This is, the copy that is distributed should not have been executed. You can determine if BADGER has ever been executed by executing badger using '-check' as an option. If If BADGER has been date-stamped, that copy should not be distributed, since since it will become inoperative 45 days from the first time it was executed, not 45 days from when the new user first executes it. Please specify MS-DOS (3 1/2 or 5 1/4) or AmigaDOS. If you wouldn't steal a program off the shelf in a software store, please don't steal the program from me. If you use the program beyond the 30 day trial period, failure to mail payment is theft. An ordering form has been provided in the text file "BADGER.REG" (MS-DOS) or REGISTER.TXT (AmigaDOS). Registered users of BADGER may purchase a copy of BADGER for the other operating system for $10. Please include your current serial number when ordering. I am not responsible for any failure of this program, or any missed events or any consequences of the missed event. (I hate responsibility) George Kerber 19756 E. Linvale Drive Aurora, Colorado 80013 303-692-2890 Compuserve 74010,2132