

AddBDay 1.1                                         (c) 1996 by Fionn Behrens



**** Installation


Just copy AddBDay to a directory fo your choice and install it the usual
way. AddBDay will write a preferences file M:\OPD\ADDBDAY.DBF. This file
should not be deleted as long as you use AddBDay to add/update birthdays
in your agenda.

If AddBDay exits irregularly (file error, memory) there will be a file
named M:\OPD\ADDBDAY.BAK. Do **not** delete it, just start and exit
AddBDay once to get rid of it.



**** Introduction and general information


AddBDay is a tool to help you in having always an up-to-date Agenda file.
It will scan any database file with your birthday entries (I suppose every
Psion user has something like a names database).

The format of the birthday entries may be anything, as long as there
are three numbers somewhere in it and they are always in the same order.

AddBDay wont write to your Data file at all. It will write to your Agenda
only with your explicit permission, or, if you dont want to confirm every
entry manually, it can perform its task automatically.

Birthday entries which are already existing are detected and wont be written
a second time. This, however, only applies to entries which are in exactly
the same format as the entries written by AddBDay.

AddBDay remembers which birthdays you did not want to have in your agenda
last time and will not write them automatically in all future runs. (they
will be marked "No" in manual update mode)

AddBDay does *NOT* write (type 5) repeating entries to your agenda. This
was a design decision for the following reasons:

- Repeating entries eat up twice as much disk space as single entries.
  This means you can have *different* single entries for 2 years for
  the same diskspace cost.
- Times change, people change, preferences change. You may not want to see
  a persons birthday next year whom you had to congratulate this year.
- Identifying non-repeating birthday entries is technically easier (I do not
  have to rely on the text string information only)
- Running AddBDay once a year is only 5 minutes at max.

So, if you want to have some entries repeating, just mark them as repeating
after the first run of AddBDay. When you run AddBDay next year or just for
an other year, AddBDay will try to write them again and you will have to
mark them "No" to avoid duplicate entries showing up.
However, AddBDay will remember those crossed out entries.

This program is Shareware. It is fully functional in unregistered state
but the registered version is a lot more comfortable. See the "Registration"
part below.



**** Usage


There are three basic menu entries, Info, Prefs and Start.

Info:
    Gives you some information about AddBDay

Prefs:
    You will be prompted to select an Agenda file, a database file and
    the birthday field within that database.

    Note: Please make sure the files are not in use while running AddBDay
          You will get error messages if you dont.

    The program also asks you for a primary name field, a secondary name
    field and an alternative name field.

    The meaning of them is as follows:

        - The primary name field and the secondary name field will be used
          to construct the birthday entry, that is, if you have a database
          field for the first name (e.g. Kathy) and another field for the
          last name (e.g. Robbins):
              * You may select the first name field in the primary name
                gadget and "None" in the secondary name gadget. You will
                get f.e. >> Kathy's Birthday << in your agenda (without
                the quotes)
              * You may select the first name field in the primary name
                gadget and the last name field in the secondary name gadget.
                You will get >> Kathy Robbins's Birthday << in your agenda.
          If you have only one name field in your database the first choice
          is yours.
        - The alternative name field will be used if the primary and/or
          secondary name fields are empty but the birthday field has a value.
          You may use something like a company entry in your database for
          this or just leave it set to "None".

    The programm will now ask you if you want to update manually or
    automatically. Automatic updates are only available for registered
    users. In automatic mode the program wont ask you anything and just
    write any new entries from the Database to the Agenda. Entries you
    have chosen not to write to the Agenda in a previous manual run will
    not be added, just the real new ones.

    If you do a manual update you can have yourself being asked to add
    existing entries a second time. This should normally be left "No",
    because you dont want duplicate entries, do you? I may add the option
    to delete existing entries at this point somewhen in the future.

    The other preferences entries should be quite self explanatory. Just
    fiddle around a bit with them and make sure you really want what they
    say. If you happen to find that your 50 new bold birthdays look actually
    ugly in Agenda you will have to delete them all by hand *grin*.

Start:
    Starts the program itself. You will see it scanning your database, then
    your agenda. After that the data will be compared. If you selected manual
    mode in your prefs you will be prompted for all new entries if you want
    them. After that they will be written to the agenda.

    If you did not set your prefs, Start will bring you to the preferences
    menu!

    Note: AddBDay stores quite some information in its data file while
          scanning. For a database of 25kB with 75% birthday entries you
          will need estimated 6kB of temporary free disk space on M:
          If AddBDay runs out of space it will abort with an error.

Exit:
    Save your preferences and quit the program

For unregistered users:

Register:
    This menu will give you the possibility to enter a registration key.
    You can also obtain registration details here if you want to register.



**** Registering


    Registered users get a separate preferences menu. They can set
    preferences for data, agenda and general options separately without
    walking through the entire procedure each time.
    All settings, including file names, style, year, manual/auto etc.
    will be loaded from the prefs file and do not need to be set again
    on each run.
    The option to act automatically (see above) will be enabeled for
    registered users.
    All additional features of future versions will only be available
    for registered users.

    You can register by sending $10, DM10, 5 or a valid key to a Psion or
    Amiga Shareware program you wrote to:

    Fionn Behrens
    Glckaufstrae 48/102
    57076 Siegen

    This snail mail address will be valid until late 1997.

    Email: fionn@unix-ag.uni-siegen.de     (will be valid for many years)
           fionn@informatik.uni-siegen.de

    Accepted payment is cash only. The bank would charge f.e. 5 for
    cashing in a 6 Eurocheque, so I am sorry not being able to offer any
    other possibility. Be inventive when sending, dont just put money in
    an envelope, it may be found and stolen. And *please* inform me by
    email before you do so!

*** History

1.00 - first release

1.10 - fixed wrong TYPE tag, caught some minor internal bugs.
     - added cache statement (a lot speedier now)
     - fixed crash problem with birtday string >40 chars. may
       now be up to 255 chars.

**** EOT                                        last Update: 01-01-1997
