O R G A N I Z E A Productivity tool for the NEC featuring: - Phone dialler/directory for voice and BBS - Logon scripts - Maintains a log of all calls - "Hold" function for voice - Call timer for voice and BBS - Redial (Automatic for BBS) - Works with internal Touchbase modem or external Hayes compatible - Appointment Calendar - Covers the full range of the built-in date function - No limit on the number of lines of text for each appointment - Uses standard calendar format w/inverse video to highlight appointment dates - To-Do List - maintains a list of undated reminders - Calculator - A scientific RPN calculator (emulates Hewlett Packard) - Floating or fixed format - Degrees or radians - Constant function - One memory - 4 register stack is always visible - 30+ functions including trig and log functions - Time Functions - Time (always on-screen) - Date - 24 hour alarm - 24 hour countdown timer - Note function - Leave time & date stamped notes - Easy to use Macintosh style interface And now a word from your sponsor: This program is hereby released to the public as SHAREWARE. It provides a tightly integrated set of functions which have been made extremely accessible because of the many hours I have labored over the user interface. All "navigational" commands and most of the function commands have been implemented in pull-up menus, windows, or with the five function keys. Commands which were not practical to do in these ways were assigned to keys as intuitively as possible. No control or escape sequences are used. I believe that the tremendous ease of use I have built in to this program makes it far more useful than other similar programs and you can affirm that belief by sending $10.00 to: Tim Darby 2368 Glenmont Circle, #107 Silver Spring, MD 20902 Genie: TDARBY CompuServe: 72376,3352 Installation: This program is designed to work in one bank of an NEC 8201A without a disk drive. It requires 24K of memory at a minimum and really needs 32K to be useful. It also requires the public domain program which adds the LINE statement to NEC BASIC. This is usually called LINE.CO. Installation is as follows: 1. Get LINE.CO and install it according to the accompanying instructions. It is usually accompanied by a loader program in BASIC 2. Run ORGNIZ.BA. The program will count down from 514 to 0 and stop. At this point, you should see the BASIC "OK" prompt. 3. Delete lines 273 through 282 by typing each line number and hitting return after each. 4. Run ORGNIZ.BA again and when the main program screen appears (the one with the clock face), hit return. The program will create whatever files it needs. That's it! 5. Return to the NEC directory menu by hitting the Exit key (F5). You should see a new file, "SEARCH.CO", and you should immediately save it to disk or cassette. This file need not be in the directory, but the contents must be in memory in order for ORGNIZ to work. You may kill this file to free up memory. ORGNIZ will warn you if you ever need to re-load "SEARCH.CO". Moving around: 1. Function Keys - A. Most commands are selected from one of the 5 function keys and each function key is clearly labelled with the command name positioned directly over that key. F6 thru F10 perform the same functions as F1 thru F5. B. When a function key is pressed, one of two things will happen: 1. The command will be executed and the key labels may change to indicate a new set of commands. 2. A pop-up window will appear with a list of choices numbered from [1] to a maximum of [7]. You select your choice by hitting the appropriate number key. If one or more of the items is highlighted with inverse video then hitting the return key will select that item and close the window. If more than one choice is required then the window will stay open until you hit return otherwise it will close as soon as you hit the appropriate number key. If you decide not to make a selection, hit the function key again and the window will close (unless the function key label changed to "More" when you first hit that key - hitting the key again will produce an additional menu of choices). 4. F5 is always the "Exit" command. This key will always return you to the main program screen, unless you are there, in which case, it will take you to the NEC directory menu. 5. After a pop-up window has been opened, any function key whose command name is not completely covered by the window is still active. If, for example, you hit the 'Set' key, you need not close the window to hit the 'Calc' key Calculator: Hit the 'Calc' key at the main program screen. Anyone who has used an HP calculator will already know how to use this calculator. For those of you who haven't, a brief tutorial on Reverse Polish Notation (RPN): Central to operation of the calculator is the STACK. This is a memory device which holds up to 4 numbers. The 4 numbers are arranged vertically on the screen and the lowest one is boxed and always holds the result of a calculation. Each operation involves 2 operands which are always labelled X and Y on screen and an operator which is either chosen from the function menu (selected by the F1 key) or entered from the keyboard. Entering a number: Simply type the number in using keys 0-9, '.', or 'e' for entering the exponent part, and '-' for a negative exponent. To enter a negative number, key in the number and hit the change sign key (F4). A typical entry would be: 234.23423423e-33 Entries can be corrected with the backspace or "left-arrow" key. Your entry will be labelled X on the screen. At this point, hitting either the space bar or carriage return (equivalent to 'Enter' on an HP) will push the stack numbers up one level and put this number in the box. Hitting these keys if X is the boxed number will cause the stack numbers to move up and X will be duplicated on the stack. When an operation involving X and Y is performed and X is the boxed number, the operation will be performed and the stack will drop one level with the top number duplicated. Other operations which manipulate the stack are "up-arrow", which rotates the stack by pushing up one level and replacing the contents of the box with the top value in the stack, and "down-arrow" which rotates the stack downward Operation Key --------- --- Y divided by X / Y times X * (hit ':' w/o shift) Y plus X + (hit ';' w/o shift) Y minus X - change sign of X F4 clear X F3 Others F1 (may be pressed up to 3 times to get 3 menus of choices) Watch the screen to see which numbers are X and Y! The memory functions accessed by hitting the 'Mem' key (F2) all act on X and are to be interpreted as though the memory register is Y. Thus, when F2 is pressed followed by the / key, the number in memory will be divided by X. The constant function provides the ability to perform the same calculation repeatedly (if you wanted to find 60% of each number in a list, for example). It works as follows: 1. The memory is used to hold the constant. 2. If there is a number in the memory, selecting constant will take the calculator in and out of constant mode without affecting the number in memory. 3. If the memory is empty, selecting constant will store X in memory and put the calculator in constant mode. 4. In constant mode, pay attention to which number is X (memory) and which is Y. The only exception to the normal rules for X and Y is that any function which operates on X only (such as log X) will now operate on Y. The result will still be displayed in the box and the stack will NOT drop down! This will become clearer when you try it. Modes: The calculator has several modes which are always clearly identified on the top line of the screen. These are: Degrees or Radians - the type of angular measurement being used for the trig functions. Fixed N or Floating - the number of decimal places displayed in the BOX. The other 3 stack values are always displayed as floating point. Fixed 0 is the same as floating point. N is 15 max. Constant - already discussed To-Do List: The To-Do list is good for any reminder you don't want to put a date on and is activated by hitting the 'To-Do' key on the main program screen. When you do, you will see the first seven lines of the list plus some commands on the function keys. 'More' gives you the rest of the list a screen at a time and wraps back to the beginning of the list. 'Enter' is for adding items to the list and utilizes the Note Pad, which is a tool used in other parts of ORGNIZ. For that reason, I will now digress to a discussion of Note Pad. Note Pad: The Note Pad is used whenever lengthy text input is required. The text entered in Note Pad will be stored in the file "to.DO" for the To-Do list, in the file "memo.DO" for the phone dialler and in the file "notes.DO" for the Note function. The Note function is one of the menu choices on the 'Set' key (F4) and creates date and time stamped notes which may be read and edited by using the NEC's editor. Note Pad word wraps and limits lines to 39 characters, but there is no limit (other than memory) on the number of lines in a note. Editing is limited to backspacing and retyping. A note is automatically saved when you exit Note Pad. Calendar: The calendar function (activated by hitting the 'Dates' key) displays standard format calendars for any month and year in the NEC's range and lets you enter and view appointments for any date. When the 'Dates' key is first pressed, the function keys change, but no action is performed. In the lower left corner is the current date with the day selected. Dates are in MM/DD/YY format. To change to a different date, you may: 1. Key in a new value for the day. 2. Use the up or down arrow keys to incrementally adjust (it knows the number of days in the month!). 3. Change the month or the year by first selecting it with the right or left arrow keys. 4. A range of dates may be selected by hitting the F1 key after selecting the first date in the desired range. You will see this date followed by the word "thru" and then you may key in the last date in the range. If you made a mistake in choosing the first date, just key it in again, hit F1 again and select the last date. The commands 'Vu', 'Enter', and 'Clndr' will work with whatever date or range of dates is selected. 'Clndr' displays the calendar for the selected month and year with appointment dates highlighted in inverse video. If the calendar for the current month is displayed, the current date will be boxed. 'Enter' uses Note Pad to enter an appointment for the date or range selected. The appointment will be appended to the file "dates.do". To delete an appointment, you must use the NEC's editor. 'Vu' (or carriage return) displays first all the appointments stored for the date or range selected, then the To-Do list. It does this a screen at a time, using the 'More' key. Time Functions: These are selected by hitting 'Set' (F4) key and they operate very similarly. Each is performed only if the carriage return is pressed. To close the menu without performing a function, hit F4 again. Clock or Alarm: right or left arrows select hours, minutes or am/pm up or down arrows adjust values incrementally value may be keyed in directly am/pm toggles by hitting any key Alarm setting is displayed on screen Countdown Timer: left or right arrows select hours (0-23), minutes (0-59), or seconds (0-59) up or down arrows adjust incrementally values may be keyed in directly Timer appears on screen and counts down Date: right or left arrows select month, day, or year up or down arrows adjust incrementally values may be keyed in directly Values which are illegal, such as 31 for a date in June will sound a beep and force a re-entry. The alarm and timer functions are active ALL the time, even when not displayed on screen (like when you are using the calculator). In addition, the alarm sounds VERY different than the timer to audibly distinguish them. To shut off the beeping, hit any key. To cancel the alarm or the timer, select them from the SET menu and hit the SET key. The time will ALWAYS be displayed on screen, except when using the phone dialler (you get a call timer display instead). The date will be displayed only in the calendar and at the main program screen. The Phone function in the Set menu is used to tell the phone dialler whether it needs to dial a '9' before a phone number and which modem is being used for dialling. The internal modem selection is only to be used if you have a Touchbase 300 baud modem installed. The external selection is for any Hayes compatible modem that plugs into the serial port. Phone Dialler/Directory: The phone dialler searches for and dials a number you have stored in the file "phone.DO". The number can be either voice or BBS and is stored with a name and possibly a logon script in the file "phone.DO". You add or delete names, phone numbers, and logon scripts using the NEC's editor. The format for a valid directory entry is as follows: Voice: name,phone number or BBS: name,*phone number name,*phone number|logon script where is a carriage return. The comma between name and phone number is required, no commas are allowed within name and name must be all capital letters. Phone number and logon script have no restrictions on characters. The '*' identifies a phone number as being a BBS. The format of logon script is as follows: NEC TELCOM string|P|R...|S... Where: NEC TELCOM string is, for example, 3I71XS. | is used as a delimiter (do not end the string with this character) R tells the program to wait until the string immediately following R is received. S sends the string immediately following S. P is a special feature of this program which tells the NEC screen to stop scrolling. This is useful because screen scrolling is painfully slow and costs money when one is downloading messages from a BBS at 1200 baud. Not scrolling speeds information transfer tremendously! A typical Genie logon script would be: 5I71XS|SHHH|RU#=|S'control-R'your userid,your password'control-M' A typical Compuserve logon script would be: ?I71XS|P|S'control-C'|R:|Syour userid'control-M'|R:|Syourpassword'control-M' Note the ? - This is handy if you use both 300 and 1200 baud. The program will prompt you for the baud rate you want. The R and S commands will handle control codes such as 'control-C' and 'control-M' (carriage return). These are entered as two characters - the first being Graph-C and the second being C or M or whichever control character you are using. You use the phone dialler by entering a string to search for (it can be any part of a name) or a phone number to be dialled immediately. If it finds a name match, the full name will be displayed along with the number which you may then dial by hitting 'Dial' or carriage return or you may continue the search for another match by hitting 'Search' (you might, for example, have both a work number and a home number for someone). If you enter a string which contains 3 or more numerals, the string will be interpreted as a phone number and dialled immediately. To dial a BBS, type a '*' as the first character - you will be prompted for baud rate and the parameters will default to I71XS. The Touchbase modem uses pulse dialling and requires that you manually connect when you get a carrier. The 'Cnct' key will make the connection and should also be used to get to TELCOM if the logon script should fail for some reason. When used with an external modem the phone dialler is set for tone dialling (no choice). The 'Redial' key will redial a voice or BBS number. For a BBS, it works automatically by redialling continuously at a fixed time interval which is set to the duration displayed on the call timer when the 'Redial' key is hit. When making a voice call, the 'Hold' key will put the caller on and off hold. The Note Pad pops up as soon as the number is dialled so you can make notes during your conversation. These will be date, time and phone number stamped and stored along with the call duration in the file "memo.DO". For a BBS call, a trick is used to record the duration. After you leave TELCOM, if you restart ORGNIZ immediately, the program will note the time and compute the duration of your BBS session. I have created an IPL for ORGNIZ, so all I do after signing off the BBS is hit the reset button and I'm back in ORGNIZ Similarly, when you exit the program either by hitting the 'Exit' key at the main program screen or calling a BBS, the current values of the Alarm and Timer functions will be stored in the file "times.do" and will be read back into the program automatically when you restart it.