# The Daily Journal Help file

## Contents

Introduction
The User Interface

- Journal
- Appointments
- Contacts
- To-Do list
- Holidays
- Search
- Help
- Preferences

Key bindings
Storage and data files
Program limits
Compilation
License and copying policy

### Introduction

Fltdj is a PIM program. PIM stands for Personal Information Manager - a digital secretary, if you will. Only thing is, you have to do all the typing yourself...

Does it work at all? Well, it works for me, when it is in the mood. But that is probably because of its sense of obligation, since I wrote it and, in the process, pulled it out of binary limbo into PC hell. Your mileage may vary.
Does it do anything useful? Well, if you are in the habit of keeping daily notes, or a diary, or a journal of your activities, fltdj can keep them organised and accessible. It also stores your daily appointments, contact list and to-do list, and prompts you before upcoming appointments.

While there is no guarantee that there will be future versions, there is every probability of the version number increasing in the future as and when I get the time, and/or if enough people ask.

### The User Interface

The main user interface window is in two parts. On the left side is a clock and a calendar, which try to remain the same size however you try to resize the window. You can change the month and year by clicking on the arrows by the side of the Year and Month displays. The nice clock displays the current time so you can, well, see what time it is. There is an "Exit" button conveniently located which you can click on to get rid of the program when you are sufficiently exasperated, or if it has not segfaulted already. See figure below.
Some buttons and smaller windows display little boxes containing helpful information when the mouse pointer is held stationary over them. Sometimes they don't, if the program is not feeling particularly helpful, or if the mouse was thinking of something else when its cursor landed up on them. These little boxes are, quaintly, called "tooltips". While some may hold useful tips, many others may be just plain confusing. What the "tool" signifies, I don't know. Perhaps it is meant to clarify that, whatever the tips are, they won't be about the stock-market.
The current day and date is also always shown. This date is checked six times an hour by an internal timer and will change the display in ten minutes (at most) after midnight. If you are in the habit of burning the midnight oil while writing the Great Daily Novel, you can see that today has changed to tomorrow and start on tomorrow's , that is today's novel right away, before it becomes yesterday.
Along the top on the right is a row of tabs. (see the figure below) . When the program starts, it displays the licensing and copyright information under the About tab.
To enter a note for the day, you click on the Journal tab, and type your thoughts in the blank area to the right.
If you haven't noticed it already, the tabs are Journal, Appointments, Contacts,ToDo , Holidays, Global Search, Preferences,Help, and About.
Read on for the exciting details of how to use them.

#### JOURNAL

You can store your thoughts for a particular day by clicking on the appropriate date button on the calendar. The program displays any previous note, or shows a blank window if there is none, or shows a quote from the fortune database, if the preferences are set for that.Your note can be as long as you want (while it's only a note, you can write and store a novel everyday).
Days associated with notes are displayed inside a raised circular button, otherwise the buttons are square.
To retrieve the note for any particular day, click on the desired date; it is displayed on the right (if the Journal tab is on the foreground) and you can add to or modify the text if needed. The date associated with any note is shown above the note, and the corresponding button on the calendar shows the date in red.
You can go to the next or previous note (not the next or previous date) by clicking on the left and right arrow buttons to the left of the text area.
You can search for a particular text string by typing it in the box at the bottom. below the text area, and clicking the "Search:" button. The program searches for and displays the note in which the string is found. Repeatedly clicking this button searches for successive occurrences of the string only in the current month, (this a, well, feature, shall we say?) and continues to display the note in which it is found.
The program goes to the note for the day containing the search text, if it occurs in the current month.
Switching to any other day or tab automatically saves the data. Switching to any other month updates the notes file.

#### APPOINTMENTS

In order to see or add appointments to your daily schedule, use the "Appointments" tab.
To bring up the appointments for any particular day, click on the desired date and the "Appointments" tab, if this tab is not on the foreground. They are displayed on the right. Here you can enter your appointment details in the last row of two colored boxes (at the bottom).
The first box is for the time, in 24 hour format. Type only numbers in this field. Don't use any other character to separate the hours and minutes, such as ":", ".", or "-". Since this field is used to sort the appointments in chronological order, it will not accept any other character.
Also keep in mind that if an appointment is scheduled for more than 2400 hrs, (suppose you typed in 2430 instead of 1430! (we all make mistakes - see the number of fltdj bug-fix versions released!)) it is trapped as an error, and the time will be set at 2400 hrs. Similarly for times below 0000 hrs (say, -1430, though even I wouldn't make this mistake). These are set at 0000hr.
The other box can be used for any other information. Typically, you can put the name of the person, phone number, and place of appointment, but any alphanumeric information is accepted and stored.
Remember to restrict each entry to about 60 characters. There are only 24 appointments allowed in this version. I don't know of any real reason for this, but if you can think of any, contact me. But seriously, if anyone feels this number is not sufficient, let me know and I will increase it in the next version.
After filling in the details, click "Add" to add it to the appontments. It will be inserted in the correct place within the list of appointments.

If you want to modify an existing appointment, click the up or down arrow buttons until it is highlighted in red, and make the changes in the same boxes, where it will simultaneously appear. Click "Modify". That's it. If required it will be moved into the correct position so that the list is in chronological order.
In order to delete an appointment, highlight it using the up or down arrow buttons and click on "Delete". The list of appointments will move up to close the gap made by the deleted appointment.

The current appointment and the total number of appointments for this day is always displayed in the little box between the "Close" and "Add" buttons.
You can click on the left and right arrow buttons to move to the next or previous day with appointments. Days without an appointment are skipped. If you need to set appointments for a day which does not have any, you will need to click on that date button on the calendar.
Fltdj will alert you ten minutes before any appointment with a discreet little window that pops up with a beep. It remains onscreen until you acknowledge its presence by clicking the 'OK' button. Appointment alerts are issued only when the program is running. If you exit fltdj, there will be no alerts.
Appointment alerts are not issued if there are less than 10 minutes to go for a new or modified appointment! The program assumes that you can remember an appointment which has been fixed or rescheduled to occur within the next ten minutes. If that is not the case, the GPL does not cover short term memory, unfortunately. Actually it covers nothing, just like a real insurance policy, but your mileage may vary.

Two non-fatal but annoying bugs have been removed. Users of earlier versions (if there were any!) may remember that on modifying any future appointment, alerts were sounded on both the original time as well as the modified time. We always prefer to err on the safe side. This has been rectified, as promised. We always keep our promises, eventually! Another bug that has been rectified is the alert for appointments which have been deleted!

Normally, the days on the calendar are displayed as square buttons. Days with a note attached are displayed with a round button. Days with appointments only (and no note) are displayed with the square button depressed down. Days having both a note and appointments are displayed with a round depressed button.
The appointments data is stored when you switch to any other day and file is updated when switching to another tab.

#### CONTACTS

Clicking on "Contacts" will display the contacts data.

Type in the name, address and all other details in the larger area, below the top blank box. Enter carriage-returns wherever needed to format the data as you like. When you have finished, click "Add" on the left side of the window.
The first line of the data will be copied to the top blank box, and it will appear there.

To add more contacts, delete the data and type in whatever is needed, and again click "Add". This will add the second record.
You can continue to build up your contact list in this manner. If you click the small arrow to the left of the top text box, it will drop down to reveal a list which contains the first lines of all the contacts you have typed in. You can select any one of them to see the details.

To modify, alter the text and click "Modify".
To delete, just click "Delete".

You can search for a particular contact by typing it in the search box at the bottom and clicking the "Search" button. The contact containing that text will be displayed. Successive occurrences will be displayed on clicking the "Find" button again.

#### TO-DO LIST

Click the "To-Do" to display your list of pending work. Enter your text in the editor.

#### HOLIDAYS and ANNIVERSARIES

Select "Holidays" to bring up the list of holidays (if entered earlier), or a blank list if you are creating it for the first time. The interface is similar to that for appointments. Enter the date and month in the first two boxes in the last row, and a description of the holiday or anniversary in the third box. Click the "Add" button to add it to the list. The corresponding date will be colored yellow. Holidays are days of sunny happiness, right?

Continue adding in this manner to build up a list of upto 100 holidays. Look, if you have more holidays than this, you don't need this program anyway.

To delete a holiday use the up and down buttons to highlight and select it. Click "Delete" to remove it from the list.
The holiday list is stored in a file as soon as you switch to any other tab. It will be available the next time fltdj is used. When the mouse cursor is held stationary over a yellow date, the description of the holiday will pop up to remind you what the occasion is. The journal tab also displays the holiday by the side of the day and date near the top.

#### GLOBAL SEARCH

Normally, when the Search button is clicked after typing some text in the box to its right, it displays the next journal entry (or appointment day, if the Appointments tab is in the foreground, or the next contact if the Contact tab is visible) containing the text in the current month. When the Global Search tab is in the foreground, it displays a list of all the months and dates that contain the text (either in a note or appointment) that was typed in the text box. Multiple entries for a particular month means multiple occurences of the text in that month. This is another feature, shall we say. I am working on it.
Clicking on any entry highlights it. It is then possible to open that particular date by clicking again on the entry. This displays the Journal tab, or the Appointments tab, as the case may be, with the journal or appointments for that date.

#### PREFERENCES

Font face:Change by dragging the button on the slider. A sample of how the text will appear is displayed in the small window beside the sliders.
Font size: Ditto.
Show fortune when displaying blank notes:When this box is checked, fltdj will fetch a quotation from the database of the "fortune" program (if it is installed) when displaying the note window for a day which does not have any note. This quotation will become part of the day's noting if you leave the window as it is without typing anything in it, unless you explicitly erase it.
No quotation will be displayed if the day already contains some text. No point in having too much of a good thing, no? No.

You can apply the preferences for the current session by clicking on the "Apply" button.

Save your preferences for later sesions by clicking on the "Save" button.

#### HELP

Click on "Help" to display this information, which is stored in the file named "help.html" in the subdirectory "doc". You can also open it in any other browser (such as Mozilla) which will render the HTML better than the internal browser.

### Key Bindings

Some of the buttons on the program have keys bound to them, so that the action that is produced by the clicking of the left mouse button can be performed via the keyboard.
Some or all of the following can be used on the Notes, Contacts, ToDo and Holiday windows:
Alt-a: Add the data
Alt-m: Modify the data
Alt-d: Delete the data
Alt-s: Search for the text which has been entered in the box. This displays the next journal entry containing the search text if the Journal tab is visible. If the Appointments tab is visible it displays the next day which has an appointment containing the search text. If the Global Search tab is visible, it displays all the months containing the search text. An entry in the list can be highlighted with a left-click, and then displayed in the Journal tab by clicking on the "Show" button.
Alt-h: Display the highlighted entry in the Global Search tab in the Journal tab.

Alt-y: Go to the previous year.
Alt-Y: Go to the next year
Alt-m: Go to the previous month
Alt-M: Go to the next month

Alt-x: Exit the program.

### Storage and Data files

The program stores the notes for each month in a separate file. At present the names of these files cannot be altered.
The files are created automatically, as and when required, and are named with the year and month, in numerals, followed by the extension "tdj". For example, the notes for December, 2002 will be stored in the file "2002-12.tdj".
The contact list is stored in the file "contacts.tdj", and the to-do list is stored in the file "todo.tdj".
The holidays and anniversaries are stored in "holiann.tdj". At first I thought of calling it"annholi", but the present name has a more angelic connotation to it ...
The preferences are stored in the file "prefs.tdj".
All the files are in the "hidden" directory, ~/.fltdj, where the tilde (~) represents your home directory.
Different users can use the program without their data getting mixed up, provided the user directories are different.
fltdj checks for the presence of this directory when opening any data file, and alerts you if it is absent.

### Do not edit these files in any other editor!

### Program Limits

In this version:
Number of notes: One for each day, with no limit on the length of the note. The 1000 character limit of earlier fltdj versions has been removed. Progress! Well, of some sort.
Number of appointments: 24 for each day. How active can you be? One needs time to relax as well.
Number of contacts: 500, with no limit on the length of the contact information. The earlier 200 character limit no longer exists. More progress.
While this is only contact info, you may store a graphic description of the person, his (her) life history, where you met him (her), and why he (she) is in the database at all...
To-do list: No limit. Have you ever encountered the situation where your work is complete and you can relax?
Number of holidays and anniversaries: 100. You cannot type anything except numbers in the date and month fields. The description cannot be more than 35 characters.
Searching: At present the search function in the Journal tab spans only the month currently being displayed. Use the Global Search tab to locate other months.

If anyone wants more data space, just e-mail me, and I will provide...

The behaviour of the program is undefined if these limits are exceeded. Basically, this means that I have not incorporated any error checks, and that if you lose your data, the GPL protects me from any liability. But seriously, things are expected to improve For example, backups will appear in a future version. All in good time...

-:IMPORTANT:-
The program does not make backups at present!

### Do remember to make backups of files in the ~/.fltdj directory in order to avoid data loss.

### Compilation

It's not yet already compiled?
Very simple, just run "make". See the README file for details on what else you need to make a binary.

### About The Daily Journal

This program is copyright, (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, Kartik Patel.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

Kartik Patel
http://www.geocities.com/letapk/index.html