Category : Databases and related files
Archive   : AN300.ZIP
Filename : TECH.DOC

Technical notes regarding Ample Notice 3.0


If you want to run ALARM.COM with DESQview or Windows, we
recommend loading ALARM in a window within these environments
rather than before DESQview or Windows are loaded. Create a
little batch file, say AN3.BAT, which loads ALARM, then runs Ample
Notice:

CD C:\AN3
ALARM -L
AN

For Windows, edit a PIF file with 'Execution: Background' checked.
You can change the icon from the generic one Windows gives you to
AN3.ICO (on the Ample Notice disk) if you like. Switching tasks
in Windows sends an keypress to Ample Notice, which
inadvertantly activates the AN's menu bar. If this bothers you,
change AN's menu selection key from to (e.g.) by
including
Tap 3
in CONFIG.CAL.

For DESQview, edit a PIF file to run AN3.BAT which include 'Runs
in background'. You'll also want
Virtualize text/graphics
set to 'N', and
Uses serial ports
set to whatever your mouse is on. Add
!k
Tap 3
to your CONFIG.CAL file to suppress the time display (which seems
to bleed through into other DESQview tasks) and to make
rather than (used by DESQview) the key you tap to bring up
the menu bar.


If you make use of the 43- or 50-row display option (by including
Rows 43 or Rows 50 in CONFIG.CAL), you may want to return to a 25-
row display when you exit Ample Notice. Include
ExitVideoMode 3
to accomplish this on color displays.


Jagged borders on your HP LaserJet printouts may indicate that
you're using a proportional font. You can fix the problem by
selecting the PC-8 symbol font from your printer's control panel, or
you can append the sequence
,27,40,49,48,85
to the lines starting with Dimensions in your CONFIG.CAL file.

Jagged borders will also result if your printer doesn't support the
control codes used for date headings. Printer installation
(performed when ANSETUP is run) should set the appropriate codes,
but if there are problems with headings you can edit the codes in
the CONFIG.CAL file. For example, the entry
HeaderStart 1,27,69
turns on emphasized print for headers in the 'Normal' style. (27 =
, 69 = 'E') The line
HeaderEnd 1,27,70
turns off emphasized print at the end of each header in Normal
style. Look at CONFIG.CAL to see what the entries for the four
styles (Normal, Compressed, Tiny, Custom) are now. (These will be

four HeaderStart entries and four HeaderEnd entries.) If an entry
is missing (e.g. no HeaderStart 3 or HeaderEnd 3 lines for Tiny),
that means that the Epson defaults are used instead. To omit
special codes altogether, just put blank entries such as
HeaderStart 1
HeaderEnd 1
Blank entries will fix the jagged borders, but won't highlignt
headings. Here are some alternatives with which to experiment:

HeaderStart 1,27,69 Emphasized
HeaderEnd 1,27,70
HeaderStart 1,27,52 Italics
HeaderEnd 1,27,53
HeaderStart 1,27,45,1 Underline
HeaderEnd 1,27,45,0

(And likewise for HeaderStart 2, HeaderEnd 2, ...)
AN will print calendars using graphics characters for borders by
default. The result looks good, but printing is slow. The entry
BorderStyle 0
in CONFIG.CAL will substitute ASCII characters such as '|'
and '-' for graphics characters and substantially improve
printing speed.

One user reported difficulty reading the screen on an LCD laptop
with the default colors in AN. He fixed the problem by putting
the following line in CONFIG.CAL:
ColorList 0,15,7,15,7,8,1,2,0,2,7,0,1,15,7,14,8,1,0,7,0,1,2,7,9,7,0
Also note that on a laptop you may have to change the state of the
NumLock key for the cursor keys to work properly in AN.

While you can use the AN editor to modify files other than NOTES,
don't try to edit non-ASCII files (containing characters such as
).

Ample Notice can handle as many appointments per day as you like,
and each appointment can be arbitrarily long subject to the
following constraint: when you print out the appointment list, no
single appointment should be too big to fit in a single column.
If you get the message

Appointment won't fit in column - use wider/longer column.

then you should try a mode (normal, compressed, tiny or custom)
which has larger columns. If no such mode is available, you can
edit your CONFIG.CAL file to reduce the number of columns in a
printout, thus making each column wider. (See Section 8 of the
manual.) Another fix is to split an extremely long appointment
into two or more appointments on the same day. Note that there is
no problem with viewing very long appointments on the screen - the
restriction applies only to printouts.

If your computer shows the wrong time on the alarm clock but the
correct time when you type TIME at the DOS prompt then you should
try running the utility TIMER (a public domain program by David
Macchiarolo and Jim Seley) or FIXCLOCK before running ALARM
(preferably in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file). In particular, AT&T 6300
users should run the sequence
TIMER
ALARM
FIXCLOCK


The ALARM program doesn't get along perfectly with the DOSSHELL
program included with DOS versions 4 and 5. If you load ALARM
before running DOSSHELL you can bring up the alarm window from
within the DOSSHELL menu in the customary manner. However, the
ALARM window then ignores the next 61 keystrokes. For example, if
you want to close the ALARM window you normally press .
Within DOSSHELL you must hold down for a few seconds before
your keyboard's autorepeat feature sends enough ignored keystrokes
to finally send the magic 62nd one.

If this solution bothers you, you can run any program from
DOSSHELL and bring up ALARM without this difficulty. For example,
run COMMAND.COM, press the magic shift combination for popping up
ALARM, then operate as usual. Type EXIT to return from
COMMAND.COM to DOSSHELL.

The AN.EXE program itself works fine with DOSSHELL.


USING AMPLE NOTICE ON A NETWORK

When AN is run the program uses the appointments file specified in
CONFIG.CAL or (if not so specified) in the directory in which
AN.EXE was found. This means that if AN.EXE is on a network
drive, all users will access the same NOTES file by default.
While multi-user access to a single NOTES file may be supported in
the future, it is not recommended in the current version of Ample
Notice. However, network users can still maintain individual and
group files of appointments; following are a few suggestions.

If you want to access your private notes file, there are two
approaches.
AN -F C:\NOTES
will use the default CONFIG.CAL file, but will use the
appointments file C:\NOTES. This means you'll share color
preferences and other options with other network users, but you'll
load your own appointments file. The command
AN -C C:\CONFIG.CAL
will load Ample Notice using the preferences in your private
CONFIG.CAL file (assuming that this is located in the directory
C:\). Your CONFIG.CAL file can in turn specify the appointments
files; e.g., the lines
Archive C:\ARCHIVE.CAL
Notes C:\NOTES
in CONFIG.CAL determine your archive and appointments files. You
may want to create a one-line batch file containing such a command
so that you don't have to remember the syntax.

What about viewing several users' appointments at once? Ample
Notice lets you import and export appointments to and from other
files. If several users want to share appointments listings for
scheduling meetings, each user can export pertinent appointments
to a file with an agreed-upon name (e.g. JUDY.CAL on the network
drive). A manager scheduling a meeting can include these files in
a single NOTES file. The menu for file import and export is
viewed by pressing 'F' once to enter the File View, and 'F' a
second time for File Operations.

One user offered the following suggestion for sharing a notes file
on a network. He uses a short batch file


ren g:\an\notes notes.rbw
d:\an\an -f g:\an\notes.rbw
ren g:\an\notes.rbw notes

to make the notes file 'disappear' while he (rbw) is using it.
His secretary (cm) uses a similar file:

ren c:\an\notes notes.cm
c:\an\an -f c:\an\notes.cm
ren c:\an\notes.cm notes

If either user finds that the notes file is missing, he knows that
the other is currently using it.

More sophisticated network options may be added in the future. If
you have suggestions for the ways in which files should be shared
on a network, please let Granny know.