DATEBOOK(1)

NAME

datebook − calendar and reminder program for X11

SYNOPSIS

datebook [-W] [-V] [-D date] [-F datefile]

DESCRIPTION

Datebook is a personal appointment calendar. It can be used to log activities as well as to remind you of appointments. Datebook provides calendar features that let you enter and review events for a particular day or week, as well as reminder features that notify you before particular events.

Each activity or appointment entered into Datebook is considered an event. Events that are entered into Datebook with a starting time generate an alarm. An alarm is actually a window that appears on the user’s screen. This window presents the user with the option to acknowledge, delay (snooze), or delete the event in question.

When events are scheduled with Datebook, you can specify an alarm type for the event. Each alarm type has the following attributes that affect the alarm window :

* The amount of time that the user will be forewarned of the scheduled event.

* The bitmap (picture) to be displayed.

* The ’snooze’ time -- the amount of time between clicking on the alarm’s snooze button and when the alarm window reappears.

Upon scheduling an event with Datebook, you can select the alarm type most suitable for that event. For example, for most meetings you might want the alarm to appear 5 minutes prior to the meeting time. For an offsite meeting it might make more sense to receive 30 minutes advance warning. This distinction can be made with the proper alarm type selection.

OPTIONS

-W List the events for the next week to stdout. This option does not bring up X windows and therefore works outside of X.

-D date This option is like the list week option, but it only lists the events for a particular date. This date should be in a simple date (month, day and year) like 12/14/89 or November 28. If used in combination with -W the week starting at date is listed.

-F datefile
This option allows the user to start with one or more (one -F option per file) date files instead of the date files specified by the user’s .datebookrc file.

-V Turns on the verbose mode. The program prints additional information about the program state.

THE DATEBOOK CALENDAR WINDOW

When Datebook is initially started, the calendar window appears on the screen. The current month and year is displayed in this window with today’s date highlighted.

In the upper corners of the calendar window are arrow buttons. When these arrows are clicked with the left mouse button, the calendar increments/decrements by one month; when clicked with the right mouse button, the calendar increments/decrements by one year.

At the top of the Datebook calendar is a Commands button. By moving the mouse to this button and holding down the left mouse button, the following features are accessible from a pull-down menu:

View Current Month
This option returns the calendar to the current month. Typically, this option is useful after you have been using the arrow buttons on the calendar window.

Browse Week
This option opens a datebook browser window that displays the events of a selected week. When this option is selected, the cursor changes to a question mark; move this question mark to a date in the week of interest and click the left mouse button. If the browser is already open, the dates being displayed are changed to the selected week. If the browser window is not open, it will be opened and the selected week is displayed.

Browse File
When this option is selected, a cascading menu shows you which files are available to browse. The files listed are those included in the DateFiles: specification in /usr/lib/X11/datebook/datebookrc or $HOME/.datebookrc.

When a file is selected to browse, the Datebook Browser is opened to show which events are in the file.

View Year
This option displays each month of the current year. To return to the current month, pull down the Commands menu and select View Month.

From the current year, the events for any date can be viewed by clicking the mouse on the date of interest. This causes the browser to be opened.

When you select Print Month while viewing the year, the cursor changes to a question mark. You must move the cursor to the month of interest and click the left mouse button to select the month to print.

Print Week
This option formats and prints out the events for the selected week. By selecting this option, the cursor changes into a question mark; position this question mark over the week of interest and click the left mouse button. The information for the week is formatted and printed using the program specified by the PrintWeek entry in the /usr/lib/X11/datebook/datebookrc or $HOME/.datebookrc file.

Print Month
The events for the currently displayed month are formatted and printed using the program specified by the PrintMonth entry in the /usr/lib/X11/datebook/datebookrc or $HOME/.datebookrc file.

Quit Update all event files and exit the Datebook program.

THE DATEBOOK BROWSER

The datebook browser window can be opened by:

* Clicking the left mouse button over any date on the calendar.

* Selecting Browse Week or Browse File from the Command menu on the calendar.

The browser window is composed of next/previous buttons, an event list, an Event Editor button, and a Close Browser button. The next/previous buttons appear in the upper corners of the browser. By clicking the left mouse button on these buttons, the date being displayed increments/decrements by one day. The event list area displays those events and corresponding times that have been entered for the current day. The Close Browser button closes the browser but not the Datebook calendar. The Event Editor button opens an ’event editor’ window.

In the browser, if you click the mouse on an event in the event list, the ’event editor’ is automatically opened. Modifications made in the event editor are reflected in the browser.

When Browse Week is selected from the Command menu, the events for the selected week are displayed in the browser. If a single date is selected from the calendar, only the events scheduled for that date are displayed.

THE EVENT EDITOR

The event editor operates on one event at a time. Each time an event is added, deleted, or modified from the event editor, the event editor is closed and the datebook browser becomes the active window.

The event editor window can be invoked by:

* Clicking the mouse on the Event Editor button of the browser.

* Clicking on an event in the event list of the browser.

The event editor is used to enter new events, delete events, or modify events.

To enter an event, click the mouse on the Event Editor button on the datebook browser to open the event editor window. Position the mouse within the description field area and enter a description. Only the first line of the description is seen in the browser and on alarm windows. If the event is to cause an alarm, enter a starting time in the Start Time field by moving the mouse to the area after the Start Time label. The time is in the form H:MM. To select the alarm type, move the mouse cursor to the area after the Alarm type label. Hold down the left mouse button and select the desired alarm type. By default, events are written to the file .appts. A different file can be selected by moving the mouse to the area following the File label, holding down the left mouse button, and selecting a filename. This event is entered into the browser by clicking the mouse on the Add button.

To modify an event, click on the event in the event list in the datebook browser. In the event editor, make the modifications to the event information and click the mouse on the Add button. The changes are reflected in the browser.

To delete an event, click on the event listed in the datebook browser. This opens the event In the event editor, click the mouse on the Delete button to delete the event. The change should be reflected in the browser.

The Clear button on the event editor causes all fields of the editor to be cleared.

USING DATE FILES

Events can be entered into Datebook by using either the event editor or a date file. Entering a number of events via the event editor is quite tedious; constructing a date file is much faster.

The date file must be included in the /usr/lib/X11/datebook/datebookrc or $HOME/.datebookrc using the DateFiles: option. This causes Datebook to read the date file each time it is started up. This file also appears in the File pull-down in the event editor. The format of a date file is explained in datebook(4).

DATEBOOK CONFIGURATION FILES

Many aspects of datebook’s behavior can be customized through configuration files. Datebook examines the file .datebookrc in the user’s HOME directory for configuration information. If this file does not exist, then datebook looks for the system-wide configuration file /usr/lib/X11/datebook/datebookrc. If neither of these two files exists, then datebook prints an error message and terminates. The datebook configuration file contains various keywords which affect a facet of datebook’s behavior. The keywords together with their default and acceptable values are described in the following paragraphs.

DateFiles Perhaps the most important value in the configuration file as it tells datebook which event files to read in at start-up. The value of DateFiles is a list of file names separated by whitespace. Typically most of these files are “private” to the user, while others may be shared by all members of a project, section, etc. The user is only allowed to edit, delete from, or add to files that are owned by him. For this reason, at least one of the files in this list should be owned by the user. A relative file name is interpreted to be relative to $HOME. The default list of files is “.appts .birthdays”.

Snooze Determines how many minutes to delay when the user responds to an alarm with the snooze button. At the end of that time the alarm reappears. This is the default snooze time. The snooze time can also be set for each event class, as described below.

PrintWeek Specifies a command-line for a program used to read datebook weekly summaries and format the information for a printer. This program must be written to parse the datebook week summary format. The command-line /usr/lib/X11/datebook/dbweek lp -oraw is the default. The dbweek program formats entries for the Hewlett-Packard Laserjet family of printers.

PrintMonth
Specifies a command-line for a program used to read datebook monthly summaries and format the information for a printer. This program must be written to parse the standard datebook month summary format. The command-line /usr/lib/X11/datebook/dbmonth | lp is the default.

Morning This value is useful when the user specifies times in 12-hour AM/PM (in lieu of 24 hour) notation. The value of Morning helps datebook make reasonable assumptions about times when the user does not specify AM or PM. For example, if a user indicates a meeting is at 2:00, the user probably means 2:00 PM instead of 2:00 AM. If the hour portion of a specified time is less than the value of Morning, then datebook assumes the time is “PM”. Morning only applies to times where neither “AM” or “PM” is specified by the user. If Morning is not set or set to zero, then datebook uses standard 24-hour time notation. The default value is 6.

Hidden This lists one or more alarm types (described below) which are “hidden” from view in that events of these types do not cause a highlight to appear in the calendar window, nor do they appear in weekly or monthly print-outs. Events in these classes do display alarms in the normal fashion, and can be edited using the browser. An example use for the Hidden alarm type would be an everyday event telling you to go home. The value for Hidden should be a list of alarm types (specified by AlarmTypes below) separated by whitespace.

NoHighlight
Similar to Hidden, NoHighlight lists a set of alarm types which do not cause the date to be highlighted on the calendar. Unlike Hidden, these events do appear in your printed weekly or monthly calendars. NoHighlight is useful for things like regular staff meetings. This way the on-screen calendar only highlights days with “unusual” events.

AlarmTypes:
This entry describes the various types of alarms that datebook understands. Each alarm type consists of at least a name and a warning period (the number of minutes prior to the event when datebook notifies you). The alarm type can also specify other information about the alarm type, such as the number of minutes to “snooze”, the bitmap to display in the alarm window, and the colors of the bitmap. The AlarmTypes specification in the configuration file spans several lines. The first line is “AlarmTypes: { ”. Each following line specifies a new alarm type. The format of each line is:

classname: warning [snooze [bitmap [fore [back]]]]

Finally a single “}” closes the AlarmTypes entry.

The example .datebookrc file below contains an example of AlarmTypes. One of the alarm types specified is “meeting”, e.g.

meeting: 10 2 stop.bm Red

This entry specifies that the user wishes to be notified 10 minutes before meetings. The “snooze” button causes the alarm to snooze 2 minutes. The bitmap file “stop.bm” is displayed in the alarm window with a Red foreground.

One sample .datebookrc file might look like:

DateFiles:        .appts .birthdays
Snooze:           5
Morning:          6
PrintWeek:        dbweek "lp -or"
PrintMonth:       dbmonth | lp
AlarmNotify:      dbalarm
Hidden:         hidden
Common:         periodic
AlarmTypes {
        reminder:          0 45 remind.bm
        meeting:          10   2 stop.bm    Red
        periodic:         10   2 stop.bm    Red
        offsite:          30   5 meeting.bm White Black
        holiday:           0   0 holiday.bm Blue White
        birthday:          0   0 cake.bm    Black White
        hidden:            0 45 remind.bm
}

X RESOURCES

The file /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Datebook contains system-wide configuration information which affects the visual appearance of datebook windows. You might find it useful to look at the app-defaults file for Datebook to see what resources can be set. Many are resources that are specific to the HP Widgets that datebook contains. See the manual page datebook(5) for a complete description of the widget hierarchy.

The file .Xdefaults in your home directory is used to customize datebook for your account. If you are using the Visual User Environment (VUE), then see also the VUE CUSTOMIZATION section, below. The rest of this section describes resources that can be customized in the .Xdefaults file.

The syntax for all xhpcalc resources is

Datebook.<resource_name>:<resource_value>

For example,

Datebook.datebook.showDayNames:no

Resources specifically for the datebook are:

datebook.BitmapPath:
Specifies the directories to look in to find bitmaps used for the event classes. The default path is /usr/lib/X11/bitmaps.

datebook.showDayNames:
Indicates if daynames are to be shown the calendar window. Default is yes.

datebook.showClock:
Indicates if clock is to be shown the calendar window. Default is yes.

datebook.traversalOn:
Indicates if keyboard traversal is to be enabled in the text-edit widgets of the browser window. If set to True then the mouse does not control which text-edit widget gets the keyboard input but rather the highlighted widget gets all keystrokes until one of the keyboard traversal keys is used. Cntrl Next is the standard way to traverse to the next widget. In datebook the [Return] key traverses to the next widget if the current widget can only hold a single line. In addition the [Tab] key traverses to the next and [Shift] [Tab] to the previous widget. Datebook*TextEdit*highlightColor: Indicates what color should be used to highlight the textEdit widget to which typed input is sent. This is only significant if traversalOn is set to True. A sample fragment from .Xdefaults might look like:

datebook.BitmapPath:                 /usr/lib/X11/bitmaps
# Datebook, colored like SoftBench
Datebook*topShadowColor:              LightBlue
Datebook*Foreground:                  White
Datebook*Background:                  SlateBlue
Datebook*bottomShadowColor:           DarkSlateBlue
# Menus
Datebook*Pulldown*bottomShadowColor: MidnightBlue
Datebook*Pulldown*Background:         SteelBlue
Datebook*Pulldown*topShadowColor:     LightSteelBlue
# Places where you can type
Datebook*TextEdit*Background:         MediumSlateBlue

DATE SPECIFICATION

The date specification for Datebook can take many forms. The simplest form is a single date. Periodic events can also be specified using some of the more advanced constructs. (The exact syntax is covered the the datebook(4) man page.)

Some sample date specifications are:

March 18, 1989
October 10
Monday
2nd Tuesday
Aug 1 - Aug 5
Tuesday and Thursday between Jan 1 and Mar 15
Thursday after January 19
Everyday
Tuesday except April 25
1st Weekday

All but the first date (March 18, 1989) will be repeating events.

VUE CUSTOMIZATION

If you are using the Visual User Environment (VUE) then you must let VUE know when you make changes to your .Xdefaults file. In order for your changes to take effect, run:

xrdb -nocpp -merge $HOME/.Xdefaults

VUE automatically saves your new defaults in the file $HOME/.vue/$DISPLAY/current/vue.resources.

You can also edit the vue.resources file directly. If you do so, and want to store your changes for the next time you login, then run:

xrdb -load $HOME/.vue.$DISPLAY.current/vue.resources

Background Information for the X-Knowledgeable Reader

The X Resource Data Base (xrdb) allows users to customize the look and behavior of their applications. The advantage of using xrdb becomes apparent in a distributed environment where a program may be running on one machine and displaying output on another machine. This allows users to specify different defaults for the different systems they use. The xrdb is kept on the server side (the display side), not on the client side (where the program is running). Therefore, at run time the program can check to see what kind of display it is displaying to.

You can use any file (not just .Xdefaults ) to specify customizations, and then run:

xrdb -nocpp -merge <filename>

But this is not recommended, because some clients do not use xrdb. Any additions or changes of defaults should be made to both .Xdefaults and the xrdb files.

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