\documentstyle[a4,12pt]{article} \begin{document} \author{Richard M. Marshall} \title{DIARY} \maketitle \parskip .1 in \setcounter{secnumdepth}{10} \parindent 0in \section{Preamble} \hspace*{1.4 in} DIARY - by Richard M. Marshall DIARY is a program for maintaining a record of your commitments. It is intended to be both a software equivalent of a hardcopy diary and an improvment upon it. Note that all commands may be abreviated to the minimum necesary to be unambiguous, case is not significant. Commands may be specified as a parameter to the DIARY program or may be typed interactively if no parameter is given. The following sections explain the use of the program. \section{Entry types} There are two kinds of Diary entries which the program knows about. The first kind is an OCCASIONAL event, like all traditional diary entries: \small\tt \begin{verbatim} -------------------------------------------------- Friday 13th Full Moon, Aboriginal festival of Haristocloc Dinner with Bella Lugosi -------------------------------------------------- \end{verbatim}\rm \normalsize These may be inserted into your diary with the ADD command, see section 2. There is also a DAILY OCCASIONAL event. This is something like a conference or workshop that takes place every day for three days or similar. See the DAILY command for details. The second class of entry is a REGULAR entry. These may be weekly, monthly or annual. For example: \small\tt \begin{verbatim} Weekly: Every Friday during term time VLSI Lecture at 10am. Monthly: Pay rates on 10th of every month. Annual: Wife's Birthday - don't forget. \end{verbatim}\rm \normalsize These may be added to your diary with the REGULAR command, see section 2. \section{Adding New Entries} There are three commands for adding messages as outlined in section 1. \subsection{ADD} This adds Occasional entries to the diary. You will be prompted for date and time (see section 3 for details). Then the specified date is printed out and you are prompted for a Subject. This is a heading for the diary entry and many entries will consist solely of this. Longer entries may be typed in after this, terminated with Ctrl-Z. Expired entries are deleted the day after they were for. If you want to abandon the entry type Ctrl-Z to the Subject: prompt. \subsection{DAILY} This adds Daily Occasional entries to the diary. You will be prompted for a start date, a finish date and a daily time. These are then printed out for confirmation and the subject and text may be typed in as for ADD. If the specified range falls accross a weekend you are given the option of excluding the weekend days. Expired entries are deleted the day after the finish date. Typing Ctrl-Z to the Subject: prompt abandons the entry. \subsection{REGULAR} This adds regular events to the diary. The first prompt is "W)eekly, M)onthly, A)nnual: ". Type 'w' to add a weekly item and you will be prompted for a day of the week that the event takes place, this should be typed as a word, and may be abreviated. Type 'm' to add a monthly event and you will be prompted for the day of the month. This should be given as a number. Type 'a' to add an annual event and you will be prompted for a date. This may be entered as a standard date, see section 3. Each will then prompt for a time, subject and text as for ADD. Both Monthly and Weekly will then ask if the event is only during term time. DIARY knows about terms until 1988...... If the entry is to be between two particular dates then if you say 'N' to the term time only command then you can specify a start and stop date to be used. The item will be deleted from the diary after its time slot has expired. \section{Listing Diary Entries} There are two classes of listing commands. The first command is ALL, which prints out all the occasional items in order, and then the regular items in the form of saying "On Mondays.." rather than actual dates. The other commands given below all list from the current date until another point, listing all appropriate occasional items, and then expanding regular events out to actual dates. \small\tt \begin{verbatim} TODAY - Lists todays events TOMORROW - Lists tomorrows events. WEEK - List events up to and including next Sunday MONTH - Lists all events to the end of the Month YEAR - Lists all events until the end of the Year \end{verbatim}\rm \normalsize All these lists include the starts and finishes of the University Term automatically. The last three commands may be preceeded by "Next " to list the events for that period. Two other commands are available for more specific requests: \small\tt \begin{verbatim} ON - This prompts for a date and then prints out events on that date. BETWEEN - This needs a From Date and a To Date and then prints out events between those two dates, inclusive. \end{verbatim}\rm \normalsize \section{Use at LOGIN} There is a special command REMINDER for use in your LOGIN.COM file. If you include the command \hspace*{0.4 in} DIARY REMINDER in the file then the first time you log in each day (and only the first time) you get a list of the days events. If it is a Monday then the following week is printed. Additionally, the first time you log in each month prints out a month, and the first time in a new year prints out the year ahead. \section{Specifying date and time} The format for giving dates is very flexible, with a large variety of forms. The following numeric examples are indicative of the format: \small\tt \begin{verbatim}20 - the twentieth of this month 20/4 - the twentieth of April 20 4 20/4/86 - the twentieth of April 1986 20 4 1986 \end{verbatim}\rm \normalsize Months may be given as words: \small\tt \begin{verbatim}20 Jan - the twentieth of January 20-January-87 - the twentieth of January 1987 \end{verbatim}\rm \normalsize Or simply a day may be given: \small\tt \begin{verbatim}Monday - next monday Next Tuesday - next tuesday {Next and This are noise words} This Tues Wed - next wednesday \end{verbatim}\rm \normalsize Dates always mean the next, so if no year is given and the day and month are before the current date they then mean next year. Today and Tomorrow are also valid dates. Specifying times is also quite flexible. \small\tt \begin{verbatim}12:00 - 12:00 12/00 12pm 12 Noon Midday Midnight - 24:00 10:40pm - 22:40 22 40 Breakfast - 07:30 Empire_Coffee - 10:30 Morning_Coffee - 11:00 Lunch - 12:30 Tiffin - 15:30 Afternoon_Coffee - 16:00 Tea - 18:00 Dinner - 19:30 (for 20:00) \end{verbatim}\rm \normalsize \section{Other Commands} The following extra commands are available: \subsection{EXIT} Leaves the DIARY program, writing back any changes to the diary file. The same effect can be acheived using Ctrl-Z. To abort without modifying the diary file use Ctrl-Y. \subsection{HELP} This lists very abreviated help information. \subsection{CLEAN} This program steps through all the diary entries offering the choice of whether to delete the entry or not. \hspace{0.2 in} Typing 'y' in response to the prompt will delete the entry, anything else (usually just RETURN) will move onto the next diary entry. To leave half way through type Ctrl-Z. Deleted entries cannot be recovered except by aborting the run of DIARY. \subsection{SEARCH} This command is similar to the VAX/VMS MAIL program command SEARCH. The command \hspace*{0.2 in} SEARCH $<$string$>$ will attempt to locate a diary entry containing $<$string$>$, starting from the first entry. With no parameter the command searches for the same text as before, starting after the previously located entry. Case is not significant in the search. \section{Silly Commands} \hspace*{0.2 in} Two silly features are included: \small\tt \begin{verbatim} MENU - This generates a random suggestion for what to cook for tea tonight. This is a perennial problem in the Marshall household. Please mail suggestions for more dishes to RMM at ECSVAX. COOKIE - This prints out a Fortune Cookie message, using the UNIX fortune file. \end{verbatim}\rm \normalsize \vspace{.75in} view:diary printed on 16/02/89 at 17.28 \newpage \tableofcontents \end{document}