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