PROGRAM LICENSE =============== ProPoc 1.20 for PSION Series 3 is owned and (c)Copyright 1993 by Berthold Daum. All Rights Reserved. This program is shareware. It may be freely distributed (not for resale) only in its original form including this documentation. It may be used freely during a trial period of 3 weeks. After that period you will have to register or you have to cease using the program. For registration details see below. Although ProPoc has been extensively tested, the author shall not be responsible for any loss of any kind due to its use. It is the user's responsibility to establish the suitability of this software for any particular purpose. Registration ============ The registration fee is US$30. Please use the form jpreg.txt and send cheques made payable to an Australian bank, or money orders (no credit cards numbers please) to Berthold Daum 21 Margate St. Beaumaris, Vic. 3193 Australia CompuServe User ID: 100026,3365 You may also pay with Eurocheque issued in the currency of your country. Alternatively, you can register and pay via CompuServe. GO SWREG and look for ProPoc V1.0 , Registration number 1695 . Registration gives you the following benefits: 1. Unlimited use of ProPoc on any one machine. 2. Free use of all future shareware versions of ProPoc. At present, upgrade versions can only be distributed via electronic networks. 3. Free application support for three month. At present, application support can only be offered via CompuServe and not by mail or telephone. 4. Free detailled user manual in printed form. Allow a few weeks for delivery. 5. Your receive a registration number which enables you to switch off that annoying registration prompts that appear after a certain time. ProPoc for Series 3a -------------------- We have been asked to provide a specialized version for Series 3a. Such a version could make use of the larger screen and the grey layer of the S3a. We can supply such a version - but not as shareware. At the current moment we are searching for Beta testers. Anybody who is interested should contact me until 7.5.94 under CompuServe 100026,3365. ProPoc Version 1.20 - Release Notes =================================== Program Description: -------------------- ProPoc is a project planner. It can handle multiple projects, activities, milestones, and resources. Activities and milestones can depend on the completion of other activities. Activities can share resources, even between different projects. ProPoc determines the StartDate and EndDate of each activity, the ActualDate of each Milestone, the number of days each activity is allowed to float, and if a activity or milestone is critical. The results are displayed in graphical form on screen or can be printed in ASCII form (tables). New features in Version 1.1: ---------------------------- Workday / holiday concept including public holidays (modifiable by user). Screen display shows now the float days of milestones as dotted line. WORD documents can be associated to items (PSION-A). If a document has been associated to an item, the cursor changes its form to a little document icon. PSION-H removes an associated document. If items or projects are deleted the associated document is deleted as well. Goto_depending_item function (PSION-B). "required by"-items now displayed in Info screen (PSION-W, Spacebar). You can now use all navigational functions in link mode, too. Selective browsing via alpha keys. Browse through all items starting with the letter entered. Shift-DEL key deletes without copying to the paste buffer. Cursor position now saved with file. Reordering process is now interuptable by certain commands. New features in Version 1.2: ------------------------------ New status attribute for activities: Activities can be marked as done or delayed. Done activities are displayed as a broken line, they do not have floating days, disappear from the critical path list and from the resource schedule, and do not generate alarms. However, they still keep their resources allocated. Activities which depend on other open activities cannot be closed. When an activity is set from closed to open again, all activities depending on this activity are set back to open, too, during recalculation. You can set an activity to "delayed". In this case ProPoc will set the "Earliest Date" to the next day (after today), if the "Earliest Date" has not been higher than this date. The current date is now marked in the calendar line (bottom line). You have now the choice of three screen fonts: small,medium,big. This can be set for each file separately (PSION-Q). Default is "small". Depending on the font the screen can display 30,40,48 days and 4,6,8 parallel activities. The status window can now be controlled from the Preferences (PSION-Q) in addition to Control-Menu and the setting is remembered for each file. We have included a function for cost evaluation. You can now define fix costs per activity and a per_day_costs for each resource. For each resource you can define if the costs are applied fully, or based on the actual resource utilisation (percentage defined with each activity). Based on these definitions ProPoc computes the total costs for each activity and for the whole project. Milestones display the cumulated costs that arise from all activities finished at this date. This allows to estimate necessary payments in installments. This version has an additional option for semi graphical printing of project plans. If necessary the output is tiled across several sheets. The definition of new holidays has been simplified. The information in the manual no longer applies, instead have a look into PROCAL.OPL . ProPoc Description: =================== Explanation of terms: File: ----- Each file can contain: 7 projects 224 activities 56 milestones 7 resources 1 set of preferences(alarm, mode, holidays) Files are totally independent from each other. It is possible to copy activities and milestones from one file to another by using the Copy function, closing the first file, opening the second file, and using the Insert function. Project: -------- Insert a new project with the Insert function. Modify a project with the Modify function. Delete with the Delete function or Delete key (Items must be deleted first.) Name: a unique name Description: up to 255 characters of text Priority: 1 for high, 7 for low Priorities are unique! If you specify for instance priority 3 the other projects in the file are pushed upwards or downwards. High priorities wins in resource conflicts. Start Date: Official project start date. Alarm advance days: How many days before the event you want to have the alarm Alarm for: Type of events generating alarms End date: Computed end date for project. Total duration: Difference between end date and start date Critical: List of critical activities Hot milestones: List of milestones where the actual date is higher or equal the planned date. Item: ----- Can be both an activity or a milestone. Create a new one with the Insert function. Modify with the Edit function. Cut with the Delete function or Delete key. Delete (no Cut) with Shift/Delete. Copy with the Copy and Insert function. Project: to which project it belongs Name: unique name Description: up to 255 characters of text Earliest date: Activities may depend on external influences, e.g. suppliers. This may define an earliest date for activity start. Duration: Duration of Activity in days. Usage of: Percentage (0-100) of how much the resource is used. Most important resource: Yourself. If some activities must be done in business hours, create a resource business hours - or split yourself into a business you and a home you. Planned date: Planned date for milestone. If the actual date exceeds the planned date, the activities causing this will go critical and the milestone will go hot. Links: List of activities the current activity or milestone is depending on. Start date: Computed start date for an activity. Activites in other projects with higher priority can influence the start date when they compete for the same resources. End date: Start date + duration Float days: Number of days, the activity is allowed to float. Activites in other projects with higher and lower priority can influence the float days when they compete for the same resources. An activity with null float days is called critical. Actual date: Computed actual date for a milestone Links: ------ Milestones and Activities can depend on other activities in the same project. To define such a link, use the Link function. Then navigate to the desired activity and press Enter. ESC will cancel the link mode. To remove links, use the Unlink function. Resources: ---------- Resources are created and edited with the preference function (second screen). It is not possible to delete resources. You may only rename them. When no resources are defined the project planning process is straight forward. However, when resources are defined, the planning becomes a tricky optimisation process. We use a heuristic strategy (otherwise computation times would be enormous). This strategy may sometimes not lead to the shortest possible project duration. You can, however, use "Earliest date", dummy links, dummy activities, to make manual adjustments. You can print or display a resource schedule for the current project or for all projects with PSION-Z. Preferences: ------------ The preferences are file specific and can be modified with the Preferences function. Alarm time: Time of day when the alarms shall go off. Reorder: For small projects choose "automatic". For big projects it is better to use "manual" and to call the Reorder function from time to time. Note: During reorder (auto or manual), the current project and all other projects are recalculated. Holidays -------- By default all days are regarded as workdays. The same is true for files resulting from ProPoc V1.0 You may, however, introduce weekend and public holidays. Choose PSION-Q (Preferences), the select Calendar. You may then mark week days as holidays. Also a list of public holidays appears, where you can select the ones that apply. If you need new public holidays that are not in the list you have to modify the module PROCAL.OPL. A description is found in that module. Note, that screen display slows down when weekends or public holidays are defined. Display: -------- The screen shows a window to the current project. Switch projects with PSION-T or the TAB key. Navigate along the time axis with the forward/backward cursor keys. The PSION key accelerates. If not all activity lines fit on the screen, scroll with the upward/downward cursor keys. You can switch the Statuswindow on or off with CONTROL-MENU. The project name is found in the botton right corner of the main window. Activities are displayed as horizontal solid 1-pixel lines, if critical as solid 2-pixel lines. The name of the activity is found below the line. Milestones are displayed as vertical dotted 1-pixel lines, if critical as solid 1-pixel lines, if overdue as solid 2-pixel lines. In this case a dotted line to the left at the bottom of the vertical line indicates the delay. The name of the milestone is found to the right at the bottom of the vertical line. A calendar is displayed at the bottom of the screen. Saturdays and Sundays are marked with a dash, Mondays are marked with a dot. The date displayed above refers to that Monday. Holidays (weekends and public holidays) that have been declared via Preferences have a dash at the very bottom of the screen. Activities stretching over declared holidays appear dotted in that area. During link mode a line is drawn from the origin item to the target item. Associated documents: --------------------- Items (activities and milestones) can have associated WORD documents. These can be quite complex documents containing very detailed descriptions. When you press PSION-A or Shift-ENTER, the WORD processor is activated and the associated document is opened (or created if it did not exist). Then you edit the document in the usual way (you may even print it). When you leave the WORD processor with PSION-X you are back in ProPoc. You can delete an associated document with PSION-H out of ProPoc. Associated documents are deleted, too, when the item or the whole project is deleted (PSION-D or PSION-V). Associated documents are stored under the following pathname: project_folder\project_file\itmname.WRD for instance, an associated document for item REGIST in project PROPOC would be stored in LOC::M:\PROJ\PROPOC\REGIST.WRD. Restrictions: The hardest restriction is memory. Each WORD document uses at least 700 byte, so 20 documents would use a minimum of 14k. So use associated documents sparingly. Use the item description entry for short descriptions. The ProPoc print functions will not print associated documents. Associated documents must be printed out of the WORD processor. Installation: ============= You may want to use the MCLINK command file JPINSTAL. First change the drive letters to your requirements, then call under MCLINK "@JPINSTAL". Macintosh-Users: Use JPINSTAL as a guide to transfer the modules into the right folders. Then install ProPoc via PSION-I. Projects reside in folder \PROJ and have the suffix .PRJ . The following modules are shared with other applications: rsset.opa with SimPoc and HyperPoc morpheus.opa with HyperPoc about.opa with HyperPoc and RepPoc If you already have these modules installed you may want to remove the appropriate lines from JPINSTAL. The following modules are optional: If you do not want to use the holiday function remove PROCAL.OPA from the installation list. If you do not want to use the semigraphical printing facility remove PROPRNT.OPA from the installation list. You should always install MORPHEUS.OPA on the internal disk. MORPHEUS is the ProPoc alarm handler and always runs in the background. If you already have installed MORPHEUS (as part of product HyperPoc) dont need to install again. Simply ignore the next two paragraphs. If you install it on disk A or disk B you will have trouble when you want to reformat a disk. Install MORPHEUS as a separate application using PSION-I. Start it by moving the highlight to it and pressing ENTER. MORPHEUS prints a protocol of the alarms set. Leave the MORPHEUS screen by pressing the SYSTEM key. If you want to remove MORPHEUS from the system screen, deinstall it with PSION-Y. It will still run in the background. If you want to stop MORPHEUS, because you don't need the alarm facilities any longer, reinstall it with PSION-I, reactivate it, and press the DELETE key. MORPHEUS picks up the alarms set by ProPoc and passes them to the Series 3 alarm system so that always the next ProPoc alarm is known to the system. It will be shown in the TIME application screen as a MORPHEUS alarm. After the alarm has gone off, MORPHEUS will pass the next alarm, etc.. However, it may take up to five minutes for MORPHEUS to recognize a new alarm or an alarm update. MORPHEUS communicates with ProPoc via the file ALRM.$$$ located in the root directory of the internal disk. If you delete this file, you will loose all alarm information. However, opening a project file and closing it again will generate a new set of alarms. Contents of this disc: Notes for Macintosh users: All files listed below must be unzipped as binary files. Use Zipit to do so. Available in Compuserve GO PALMTOP. Modules: ProPoc.opa, Procal.opa, Prorout.opa, Morpheus.opa, about.opa, rsset.opa Sources: Procal.opl Fonts: progrph.fon Docu: readme.txt, jpinstal, jpreg.txt Files: ProPoc.prj Requirements: The system requires about 38k of disk space plus 2k for MORPHEUS. When active, the system requires about 29k of main memory. MORPHEUS requires constantly 9k of memory. We recommend to install the system (except Morpheus) on flash SSD, the PROJ folder on the internal disk. Other products -------------- HyperPoc is a card oriented hypertext an hypermedia system. Cards are organised in stacks (files). Cards may be superimposed with backgrounds. Cards and backgrounds can contain a variety of objects, such as: application, bitmap (animated), card link, clock, expainer, hotTab, icon (animated), keyword, music, phone number, polyline, rectangle, text. Functions include: Invocation of Series 3 applications, several navigation functions, phone dialling, alarms, stopwatch. Comes with 30 icons and 20 tunes. Shareware. A good complementing product for HyperPoc is PicPoc. PicPoc is a fully fledged paint program. It allows to create icons and bitmaps up to a size of 640x400 pixels. It includes the usual tools including spray and fill patterns (even custom fill patterns). Freeware. Another complementing product is MusiPoc. MusiPoc is a graphical editor for musical tunes of up to 255 notes and rests. It comes with an OPL-subprogram to play tunes from your own application or program and includes more than 20 predefined tunes. Freeware. SimPoc is a spreadsheet application for the Series 3 computer. It can print, displays business graphics, and scrolls fast. It is possible to call OPL-programs from formulas and formulas from OPL-programs. Although it includes such nifty things like lazy evaluation and result cache it comes as freeware. The new version features column and row freeze, variable column width and automatic formula detection. RepPoc is a report writing / mail merging application based on WORD and DATA file formats. It provides: complex search criteria, automated form generation, text functions. Comes with 5 standard form sheets: Phone list, Labels, Letterheads, FAX, Envelope. Shareware