Fresh Fish 9/FreshFishVol9-CD2.bin/bbs/reviews/calendar.lha/calendar/TimeTracker

Internet Message Format | 1993-11-10 | 16KB

Path: menudo.uh.edu!usenet
From: [e-mail] (Edward D. Berger)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: Time Tracker version 1.0
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.applications
Date: 10 Nov 1993 02:39:43 GMT
Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett
Lines: 358
Sender: [e-mail] (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator)
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <2bpk9f$[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Edward D. Berger)
NNTP-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu
Keywords: address book, appointment book, calendar, notepad, commercial


PRODUCT NAME

    Time Tracker version 1.0


BRIEF DESCRIPTION

    Time Tracker is what the DOS/Windows world call a Personal
Information Manager, or "PIM" for short.  It is basically a combination of
appointment calendar (with alarms), address book, phone note editor, "to do"
list manager and calculator.


AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION

    Name:        INVENTURE
    Address:    P.O Box 777
            Morrison, CO  80465-0777
            USA

    Telephone:    [phone]
    FAX:        [phone]

    E-mail:        Unknown

    The program was written by M. Joel Guerra.


LIST PRICE

    Unknown.  I purchased the package for $69.95 (US) at a local Amiga
dealer.


SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

    HARDWARE

        512K RAM or more.
        Hard drive recommended, but not required.
        Battery backed clock recommended, but not required.


    SOFTWARE

        AmigaDOS 1.2 or higher required.
        AmigaDOS 2.x and 3.x compatible.
        req.library required (and is provided with the package).


COPY PROTECTION

    None.


MACHINE USED FOR TESTING

    Amiga 3000/16
    2MB Chip RAM
    12MB Fast RAM
    AmigaDOS 2.1


INSTALLATION

    Drag the program drawer from the floppy to a hard drive partition.
To get automatic startup, drag the special project icon to your WBStartup
drawer and manually edit the icon tooltype with the correct AmigaDOS path to
find the program.  Under AmigaDOS 1.x, you add a line to your
startup-sequence and add req.library to your LIBS: directory.


GENERAL INTERFACE

    Time Tracker is a multiple window program that can open on the
Workbench or on a custom screen.  When run, it pops up its calendar
window, or you can set it to start iconified with or without a digital style
clock.  It uses the AmigaDOS 2.x 3D-style buttons for its calendar days and
other uses.

    Unfortunately the program has the Topaz font hard-coded into its
interface.  I'd prefer it to use either my default screen font or my default
system font (Times 11, Courier 13) for its text.  When Time Tracker is
opened on the Workbench screen, its title bar and menus are in my default
screen font (Times 11).  When opened on its own custom screen, it uses my
system default font (Courier 13) for its screen title and window title bars
and menu texts.  The gadgets' texts always remain in topaz.font.  I would
prefer this to be consistent, and preferably user-configurable.  The program
would look more professional if the Day buttons matched my Workbench font or
used a prettier font like Helvetica.

    Time Tracker is unaware of public screens (AmigaDOS 2.0 and up).
Other programs cannot easily open on the Time Tracker screen, and the Time
Tracker windows cannot open on a named public screen.  These are general
faults of programs written for AmigaDOS 1.x.  Perhaps a newer version of
Time Tracker will be enhanced for later versions of AmigaDOS.

    One slightly quirky thing about the interface is that some of the
windows are available by way of button gadgets at the bottom of the calendar
window, and some through menu items in the calendar's 'other' menu.  I think
they should be available by both methods.  The Icon button at the bottom is
also redundant since it performs the same thing as the window's close gadget
does.  While there is a button gadget for help in the calendar window, the
program does not respond to the keyboard 'help' key.  Also the help gadget
only puts a text help on top of the calendar display.  I'd like it to pop up
a separate window with AmigaGuide help.

    The menu layout does not follow the Amiga User Interface Style
Guide.  The menus do have many shortcut keys, using an unusual combination of
both upper and lower-case shortcut keys.  Unfortunately, the shortcut keys
are not always consistent between the various windows of the program,
sometimes leading to confusion for this user.


CALENDAR AND APPOINTMENT REMINDER

    From the calendar window, you can click on a Day button to pop up
that day's schedule window and add an event.  Once you add an event to the
calendar, the button for that date gets a highlight added to the right side
of its button.  A small horizontal line appears relative to the time of the
appointment, with earlier events being towards the top and later ones toward
the bottom of this highlighted section.

    With the pre-marked Alarm times for non-repeating events you can add
events for times on the hour or half hour between 8:00am and 5:30pm.  You
can enter any time you wish; but if your schedule is quite different, you
may wish that the preset times listed would either go 24-hours or be user
configurable.

    Below the preset times is a subsection for writing notes about the
day.  A short note can be added to a given date's button on the calendar
window by typing an exclamation point before the alarm text.  The alarm text
will be spoken, if you have the appropriate speak-handler software installed
from AmigaDOS 1.3 or 2.04, or it will use the standard AmigaDOS "display
beep" function.  I would prefer to have the addition of using multiple
sampled sounds instead of one display-beep.  Alarms can also launch AmigaDOS
programs if you precede the command with a "^" character.  The programs do
not inherit Workbench's search path.  They can only find C:  and
"Current_Dir".  You could work around the display beep limitation by using
an outboard AmigaDOS program which can play a sample.  You must specify the
commands full path such as "SYS:mybin/play8svx".

    ARexx is not supported by the alarm, nor the rest of the program.

    Adding repeating events is handled one of two ways.  The first way
is for 'every month on this day' type of events which you add by way of a
requester, and a user-defined abbreviation of up to four characters appears
on the calendar day.  The second way uses an editor window where you type
'first Sunday of every month' or similar verbose descriptions.  This allows
for such things as 'every Wednesday' or 'odd Thursday'.  Unfortunately, you
can't enter 'the Wednesday after the third Sunday'.  I'd need this for one
of my user group meetings.  I was also unable to enter 'last weekday of
every month:  Pay day!'.  I'd like to see more flexibility here.

    It would be a welcome addition if you could choose images to appear
on the day button for a given event, such as a dollar symbol for paying
someone or a telephone for reminders to call someone.  This would probably
require a less cluttered view such as a 'view by week' instead of the
current monthly format.

    The 'Tickler' button gives you a preview of the next seven days'
events.  The Monthly summary gives a listing of all the month's entered
events.  Both of these are editor windows and you can delete all the lines
that you feel are unimportant.  I think the event editor should have a line
option so you can exclude events from the monthly summary at the time you
enter them.  I plan to use the monthly summary for work related reports.
You can print either of these out.  You can only have one or the other open
at a time as they use the same window.  I'd like to have two separate
windows instead.


TO DO LIST MANAGER

    The To Do List manager opens up with a blank text editor window.
You can select from one of three lists.  To enter an item, you simply click
and start typing.  To show that you have finished an item, you press Shift
and click on the left mouse button with the cursor on the line you wish to
check off.  It then displays a copyright symbol in front of the line.  I
think this interface, while usable, is not intuitive.  A 2 column
arrangement with the first column having some sort of GUI selection for, say,
a check mark and other visual queues for such things as priority (How
importa