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DateBk3 for the Palm OS Platform - The Enhancements over the Built-in Datebook

Introduction

Datebk3 is a very sophisticated and complete replacement for the built-in Datebook and Todo applications in all models of the Palm Pilot. Before using Datebk3 you should be familiar with the built-in Datebook and Todo applications as this manual only covers those aspects of Datebk3 that differ from those applications. If you are an existing Datebk3 user, note that the features new in V-3.1 are flagged with a red comment in the list of items that follow...

Datebk3 offers many substantial improvements, such as the ability to display and manipulate todo's from the todo database, two new weekly views with text, a powerful list view,  a monthly view with graphical icons, a surprisingly useful yearly view and a Daily Journal. Datebk3 also has its own flavor of integrated todo's (Floating Events) which can be scheduled like appointments, have alarms and be set up to repeat. Datebk3 supports categories and includes a raft of enhancements, such as the ability to schedule events to the nearest minute, schedule end times by duration, and insert appointments from templates that preset any event attributes to a specific value. Best of all, Datebk3 runs on ALL models of the PalmPilot without modification, while still supporting all the functionality available on each platform.

Datebk3 also includes fixes for all known bugs in the built-in Datebook application (although these bugs are of a minor nature and generally involve end conditions that are not likely to occur). For example, one annoying problem on repeat appointments in Datebook - you cannot set the end date of a repeat event to a date earlier than the particular occurrence that you called up - has been corrected in Datebk3. Another error involves the incorrect display of the start blip on a daily repeat event in the monthly view that started in the preceding month; the THIS WEEK button in the weekly view sometimes goes to the wrong week, etc.

Datebk3 uses the standard datebook and todo databases - the same ones that the built-in datebook and todo applications use, so you can freely move back and forth if you wish. Remember, however, that if you edit a Datebk3 floating or checked off event and modify the tag in the note field, that event may revert to a normal appointment-style event. Note that this guarantees that all applications designed to communicate with or HotSync with the Datebook or Todo databases will be compatible with Datebk3.

Datebk3 is a large and complex application (275k) and it is important that you make sure there is sufficient room on your Palm device to load the application. This is particularly true if you have the older V-1 or V-2 PalmPilots as there was a design flaw in the OS on those devices that caused memory fragmentation - even though there appeared to be enough memory, it may not have been contiguous and so Datebk3 might not load properly. The HotSync application is fragile and can easily tip over while loading large applications. If you encounter problems loading, see the section Download Problems for assistance on dealing with them. Most likely you will need to run a defragger prior to loading Datebk3. Do not get disillusioned if you have difficulty loading this application as some of these difficulties are quite easy to address. If you do not have room for V-3.1 of Datebk3, you might want to try V-2.1y (185k) which has full todo integration, or even V-1.5e (125k) that has floating events and other base features.

Equally, on the other side, if you have an 8Mb unit, you may well want to look at DateBk4 - the successor to DateBk3. DateBk4 is a very powerful application which features full integration of all four major databases, custom views, a new 4-month view, full color support, custom alarms, advances, fonts, colors and repeats on both appointments and ToDo's. It has support for contact management, linking, anniversaries - you will likely find it much more powerful than your current desktop application - and it fits in the palm of your hand! You can find more information by tapping on the link for DateBk4 on the Pimlico Home Page.

Before emailing Pimlico Software regarding problems, questions, or suggestions for improvement, please read the Datebk3 FAQ's page on our website, or read the   Planned Enhancements section first as your problem or suggestion may already have been anticipated.

Make sure that there are no copies of WeekView or WeekVu3 left around on your PalmPilot as they will conflict with Datebk3! Delete those programs BEFORE downloading Datebk3!

Datebk3 is shareware and has a 45 day evaluation period. All functionality is available during that period without restriction. At the termination of that 45-day period, a few of the Datebk3 enhancements are suspended on the last half of each month. Those users with very little memory may wish to use an earlier version of Datekb3 or forgo the Datebk3 enhancements and just  run the standalone version of WeekView by itself.

Making Datebk3 your default Datebook. The easiest way to do this (PalmPilot, Palm III/V/VII/Visor, etc.) is to go to the Prefs application in the system screen. Tap on the popup list at the top right of the screen, select Buttons. Tap on the popup list next to the Datebook icon and select Datebk3. On the original Pilot, you may want to look at AppHack which will allow you to do the same thing.

Note on Find Function: when you do a Find function, Datebook (since it is in ROM and cannot be removed) will also search the database, but if you have Datebk3 open, Datebk3 will always search it first. You can also use the freeware hack: FindIgnoreHack to prevent the Palm OS from searching the DateBook database.

Can Datebk3 run in Rom? Yes. If you have TRG's FlashBuilder or FlashPro, you can load DateBk3 into Flash Rom. If you do this, make sure that you leave the DateBk3DB preference database in RAM.

Why is there funny stuff (like: ##@@@@@@@) in the Note Field: this is normal if you look at an event on the desktop or in some other application. Information is encoded in the note field to track information for each event (Category, Icon, timezone, float/done, appt spanning midnight, etc.). It is hidden of course in Datebk3. See  Format of the tagged note field for further information. This is the ONLY way that Datebk3 can add functionality beyond that provided for in the Datebook database while still maintaining 100% compatibility with the Datebook database and all third party applications that use it.

Some Quick Tips (for Datebook AND Datebk3)

How do you schedule events like Father's Day? We often get asked this question. The trick is to set up the event as a monthly event, but one that only repeats every 12 months. This way, you can use the monthly repeat features to set Father's day as the 3rd Sunday of every 12th month starting in June.

How can I skip weekends on a daily event? Easy - just mark it as a weekly event and then select the days of the week you want it to repeat on, so marking it for Mo/Tu/We/Th/Fr would skip the traditional Sa/Su weekends.

How can I get an event to appear on the last day of every month? A bit trickier - you have to start the event on a month that has 31 days in order to guarantee that. If necessary, enter it a few months early and insert exceptions to prevent it from displaying before the first actual month it is to appear. The rule is that if a monthly repeat event repeats on a day greater than the current day and the current day is the last day of the month, the event will be displayed anyway.

Entering the time for an event. An undocumented feature of the V-2 and V-3 Datebook applications (which of course is also in Datebk3 so it now works also on V-1 PalmPilots too) is that you can use graffiti strokes to quickly enter a time for a new event, provided that no event is currently selected. The program is smart enough to think about what you are typing to make the best guess, so on a 12-hour clock, a '1' is first interpreted as 1pm, but if you type another '1' that is treated as 11am. If you type a '13' (on a 12hr clock), that must be 1:30p etc. Many users find this by far the most efficient way to enter a new timed event. Stroke a backspace to remove the digits you have already typed in order to start over again.

Entering an untimed event. Just start graffiti'ng or tapping characters on the built-in keyboard. If nothing is selected in the day view, typing a character immediately starts an untimed event. If it starts with a digit, just stroke a space (left-to-right) and then a backspace (right-to-left) to avoid the digit being treated as the start of a time (see above) and proceed. Datebook has a few bugs in doing this, but Datebk3 handles it properly (example: if you graffiti 12:30 which defaults to PM, the built-in datebook app will just ignore an 'a' at that point that was entered to try and set 12:30am).

What time is it? Just tap the title bar in any view and the time will be displayed briefly for about two seconds. This does not work on V-1 PalmPilots in Datebook and only works in the 2nd weekly view in Datebk3 on a V-1 PalmPilot.

Changing the time quickly on an event. Tap the time in the leftmost time column for an event and it will go straight to the time picker dialog - faster than going into the details dialog and then tapping the time.

Selecting overlapping objects in graphical weekly view. If two events overlap, tap the portion of the event that does not overlap in order to select it. If they start and end at the same time, you are out of luck in Datebook, but in Datebk3, a more  button appears which will cycle through all events scheduled at that same time.

How can I speedup the start of Datebk3? On startup, Datebk3 has to scan the entire Todo database. Some people never clean up their todo database and may have hundreds of completed todo's that have never been archived. We suggest that you archive off the older todo's to keep your todo database smaller. If the Todo database has only 50 or todo's, for example, Datebk3 only takes about an extra 1/4er of a second to start up. Note that V-3.1 of Datebk3 allows you to delete Todo's that are older than a specified date. Second, run Datebk3 immediately after you do a hotsync, to get the SORTING message out of the way. Third, use the Floating Advance Time feature in OPTIONS | MORE PREFERENCES to trigger the scan during the early morning hours when you are asleep - that way you will NOT see it when you power on your PP first thing in the day. 

How can I hide some repeating daily events but show others?. The option to hide repeating daily events in the monthly view only applies to events that are marked for a daily repeat. You can make a virtually identical repeat by selecting the weekly repeat and then marking every day in that week as a repeat day. This latter repeat will repeat every day but will display even though repeat daily events are hidden. Note, however, that since it is technically a weekly repeat, it will not show the row of dots at the bottom of each day the repeat occurs.

Now that I've loaded Datebk3, can I get rid of the regular Datebook application? No. The built-in datebook application is stored in ROM (Read Only Memory) and cannot therefore be removed. The only downside is that when you do a Find, the built-in datebook application will also insist on searching the same database, but no harm is done by that. Note that if you start the search while Datebk3 is running, Datebk3 will ALWAYS search the Datebook database before the built-in datebook application. Warning: If you have a flash ROM, you might think that you can remove the Datebook application, but if you do that, the Datebook database will NOT be HotSync'd, so we suggest you do not do this. It would also crash your system if you unchecked the option to have Datebk3 handle alarms (since the Rom code would try and launch the Datebook application that no longer exists). We actually do have a small "stub" application with the datebook's creator code which will "fool" the HotSync program into sync'ing the datebook database, but until it can be determined that there is a way of actually freeing up memory (FlashBuilder merely masks the built-in application - it does not remove it), there is little advantage in doing this.

HELP!! All/almost all of my appointments have disappeared in Datebk3 but still show up in the regular Datebook!??! Chances are you just viewing one category and most of your appointments are in another category not currently being displayed. Tap on Select Category in the Cat. menu and make sure all categories are selected.

Why are time bars (the lines in the left margin) being displayed in the day view even though the option to display them is unchecked? Datebk3 works the same way as the built-in Datebook application on this. Time bars WILL be displayed if there are any conflicting appointments on the day being viewed. The logic is that you would always want to know about conflicting appointments.

Three Quick (and often overlooked) featurettes in Datebk3:

  • To go to today in any view, just tap on the view button that corresponds to the current view (i.e. tap the left-most button in the day view, etc.).

  • In the day view, if you tap on the first day of the week selection button (on the top line) when you are already on the first day of the week, it moves the last day of the prior week, and if you tap on the last day of the week when the last day is displayed, it moves to the first day of the next week.

  • To quickly stop an alarm from sounding, tap anywhere on the screen and hold the stylus (or your finger) down until the alarm stops (may take up to 1/2 second or so - a tap is not long enough). Note that you can do this OUTSIDE of a button so the alarm dialog remains displayed on the screen - this is handy when an alarm goes off unexpectedly in a meeting!

What limitations are there in Datebk3? For the most part the same one's that are in the built-in datebook application:
Number of Events on a single day: 100
Maximum length of text in a description: 256 characters
Maximum length of text in a note: 4000 characters

The Enhancements...

List View

The list view provides a paged list of selected events and/or todo's in chronological order. Many users may find this view to be more convenient than the fixed-format weekly views, especially if the datebook has relatively few events. Extensive filtering and selection options, however, also make this view extremely useful for generating lists of items. For example, using the list view, you can easily generate a list of just up-coming alarms, or all events that have the text 'master project' in the description or note fields, or all completed todo's etc.

The list view has options to display the day name (with the start of the week set in bold), the time, and any associated icon. Note that in the case of Todo's, an icon can be associated with a category. The arrows at the top right page forwards and backwards (as do the Up/Down buttons). If you attempt to page backwards past where the list was started, a popup list automatically appears displaying options to go back one day, week, month or to invoke the date picker to set a new starting point for the list. Icons for alarms, notes, repeats etc. are displayed at the end of the line. The first event on today's schedule causes the entire line to be highlighted.

Any line in the list can be selected by tapping on it. When first tapped, the full date of the event and the start/end times for the event are displayed briefly on the title line. If the item is a Todo, the Todo category is displayed instead of the start/end time. To repeat the display, tap on the left side of the screen (to the left of the description) and the event details will be re-displayed. Tapping anywhere on the item's description (i.e. not the day or day of week name) of a selected line goes straight to the day view with that item selected. Tapping on the Details button brings up the details dialog for the selected item.

The list view is the sixth view in Datebk3 and is the last button in the bottom left corner of all views. As with other views, pressing this button while in the listview will automatically refresh the screen starting with today. The Go button brings up the standard date picker to select a new date for the starting point of the list.

There is also a Show All Events item in the options menu that starts the display with the earliest event in the datebook or todo databases. This is useful when you need to scan all events in the database(s).

Note: events or Todo's with a start date of 1-Jan-2020 will not be displayed in the list view since this day has been reserved for the storage of Datebk3 templates.

List View Preferences

A prefs button brings up the preference options for this view. The top row of pushbuttons select items from the Todo database. You can select either pending (i.e. incomplete) todo's or complete todo's. All includes all todo's and None skips todo's completely. When including todo's, the current category selection and priority selection within category apply as they do to all views that display todo's.

The next row of buttons control which entries from the datebook database are included. Again, the None or All options are present. Alternatively, you can include Appointments (Appt), Floating events (Float), done/completed events (done), events with alarms (Alarms) or repeat events but only with the first displayable occurrence shown (1 Repeat). The latter button is useful for performing cleanup operations: by tapping on all five buttons in the middle column, a list will be displayed of all non-repeat and repeat events but only the next occurrence of the repeat event will be listed (All would list every occurrence of the repeat, making it difficult to manage the repeat events for purposes such as deletion).

The Find checkbox allows you to specify a text string that must be present in either the description or note field for the event to be included in the list (so it functions as a filter). Both events and todo's are filtered and the search is not case-sensitive. Uncheck the checkbox to remove the text filter.

Checking the Icon checkbox, displays an icon selector along with the currently selected icon. Tap on the selector to bring up the standard icon selection dialog to specify an icon to be used as a filter on both Todo and Datebook events. For an event to be included in the list, it must either have an associated icon that matches, or belong to a category (as either a todo or event) that has a default icon associated with it that matches. Uncheck the checkbox to remove the icon filter. A typical use of this filter would be for example if you assigned a birthday icon to all birthday events. By selecting none for Todo's, and all for Datebook events, and then invoking this filter with the birthday icon selected, you would get a list of just the birthdays in your database.

The remaining three checkboxes at the bottom of the screen control the display of the list and are not part of the selection or filtering process.

If Time is checked, the starting time of each event is displayed (adjusted, if necessary, for the current time-zone). The format in which the time is displayed is controlled by the time preference setting in the second weekly view which provides for 12 hour and 24 hour formats with either just the hour displayed, or both the hour and minute.

If Icon is checked, the icon (if any) associated with an event (either associated with the event itself, or associated via an icon association for its category or timezone) is displayed. Note that an event will be displayed if any one of those conditions is present (example: an event has an explicit icon that does not match the icon filter, but is displayed anyway because it is in a category that has a default icon that does match the icon filter).

If Day Name is checked, the name of the day of the week is displayed at the start of each line. The day of the week corresponding to the start of the week (as defined in the Datebk3 start-of-week preference setting in the PREFERENCES dialog of the day view ) is set in bold.

If you are using a special program/hack to display non-Roman characters (such as Kanji or Hebrew), make sure that the option Display uses non-Roman chars preference setting in the second weekly view is checked or the characters may not display properly.

Remember that there is a preference setting in the preferences item of the options menu of the Day View that allows you to set any of the six primary views as the one to be displayed when you first run Datebk3.

Multiple Time Zone Support

Datebk3 includes very sophisticated support for handling multiple time zones. Before using this feature, you should read this section carefully as there are many complications in handling time zones, and you need to be aware of some important functions as well as some minor, but unavoidable, limitations. Once you get everything set up properly, however, you will find that Datebk3 manages virtually all the complications of viewing and creating events in different time zones.

Datebk3 allows you to assign specific events to locales in various time zones. In the Day View, Datebk3 then automatically adjusts the times of those events so they appear at the corresponding time in whatever time-zone you are currently in. Both the adjusted time and the native time of the event are displayed in the DayView. In other views, just the adjusted time is displayed.

Datebk3 can automatically adjust times for Daylight Savings Time (DST) based upon multiple rules which can be user-defined. It can also automatically adjust alarms so that alarms go off at the correct corresponding time in the current time zone. Finally, when switching the default time zone, Datebk3 can optionally adjust the System Clock to reflect the new time in that time zone. Please review the DST settings in the TIMEZONE.TXT file as they are not intended to be a definitive representation of DST rules throughout the world. Please feel free to email us with corrections or updates which we will then immediately incorporate for future downloads. With V-3.0f, we have also added a more detailed timezone-resource.txt file which has many more DST rules and locales. You might want to copy useful entries from that second file into timezone.txt before downloading the contents to a MemoPad record.

Time zones are defined in 15-minute intervals (yes, there are actually some time zones in the world that differ not by an hour, but by 30 or even 15 minutes!). All the time zone definitions are contained in a record in the Memo database called WORLD TIMEZONES. A default memo record is provided in the Datebk3.zip archive in a file with the name timezone.txt. However, this memo record can be edited to sort time-zones in any order you wish (provided locales are kept contiguous), to exclude time-zones that you do not want to display, and to include towns or countries that make sense for your personal schedule. The format of this memo record is defined later. Note that because Daylight Savings Time (DST) rules differ so widely, you may need to customize some of the DST settings to meet your needs.

If you ever intend to use the time zone feature, we recommend that you start with these settings:

1. Set the Home Time zone (Preferences in the Options menu) to the time zone in which you normally reside.

2. Set the Create Time Zone (Preferences in the Options menu) to the Home Time Zone.

3. Set the Current Time Zone (Set Display Time Zone in the Options menu) to the Home Time Zone

When you visit another time zone, all you would normally change would be the Current Time Zone. If you were staying in that time zone for a while, you might want to change the Create Time Zone setting so that subsequent events you create would be put in the time zone you are visiting rather than your home time zone.

If you do not intend to use time zones, then you should just set the Current Time Zone to ALL TIME ZONES. To avoid generating tagged notes, you should also have the CREATE ZONE set to HOME TIME ZONE and the HOME ZONE set to ALL TIME ZONES.

To handle time zones on an on-going basis, there are two things that you need to do:

1. Specify the time zone that you are currently visiting.

You do this by selecting the Set Display Time Zone item in the Options menu of the Day View. Do NOT confuse this setting with the Home Time Zone Setting which is a permanent setting that you will probably never change! Datebk3 then displays a dialog using information from the memo record that defines all the time zones. If you currently have a time-zone defined, it will be highlighted in the list. You can use the scroll buttons to page up and down, or push the Up/Down buttons to scroll line by line. Tap on the line that corresponds to the new time zone that you want to set and tap OK. When changing the timezone, a dialog will pop up asking you if you want Datekb3 to automatically adjust the system clock to reflect the local time in that new time zone.

Note that the offset from Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) starts each line, with a '-' meaning the time zone is West of (earlier than) GMT and a '+' meaning it is East of (later than) GMT. There is an icon selector below the list which can be tapped to bring up the standard icon selection dialog to set a default icon to be associated with that time-zone. You can display icons in the daily view, so this could be a useful way of tagging what time zone an event is in -- especially if multiple time zones are being handled. Immediately following the time may be a letter from A-Z to indicate a specific DST rule that applies to that zone. Each zone can have two locales in order to handle two differing DST rules.

Note that the first entry in the list is All Time Zones. If you select this line, the time zone handling in Datebk3 is effectively disabled (this is the default setting when you first startup Datebk3).

The Adjust Alarms dialog indicates that alarms in time zones other than the current time zone should be automatically adjusted so they go off at the corresponding time in the current time zone. Example: you have an event with an alarm (zero preset) in US EST at 10:00 and are currently in the UK (GMT). If this checkbox is checked, the alarm will go off at 3pm GMT (which corresponds to 10:00 EST). If the checkbox is not checked, alarms go off at the designated time for the event (with this same example, the alarm would go off at 10:00 instead). Normally, you would have this checkbox set, but if you had to take a quick trip to Asia from the US and did not have time to deal with alarms, you might want to uncheck it (so you don't unexpectedly remind yourself to take out the garbage at 2am!!).

2. Specify the time zone for specific events. You do this by tapping on the details button in the daily, weekly or List views, and setting the desired time zone by tapping on the time zone selector in that dialog. The same dialog used to set the display time zone is displayed. Note that you can have multiple events in a single day assigned to different time zones, and Datebk3 will automatically display the properly adjusted times for each event.

As a convenience, there is also a method of specifying the Home time zone for all unassigned events. Unassigned events are marked as being in the Home time zone, and this home time zone can be mapped to any time zone with a preference option (Select preferences in the Options menu and tap on the Home Zone selector to set the home time zone. By default, this Home zone maps to All Time Zones, which means that unassigned events will always display at their designated time and not be adjusted. Note that this is not a useful setting if you intend to use the time zone feature as all your home events will then not be readjusted based upon the time zone you are visiting.

This is NOT the setting you would change when visiting another time zone, this setting simply establishes a default for unassigned appointments so you don't have to go to the trouble of assigning all your current events in the Datebook database. You would typically only set this once - the only reason for changing it might be if you moved permanently to a new time zone. If you do set the home time zone to your current time zone, then when you visit other time zones, the program can automatically prompt you to reset the system clock to the new time setting.

There are times, however, when it is useful to be able to designate an event for All Time Zones, in which case the event will always display at the same absolute time regardless of what time zone you are in. For example, you might set an alarm to take a pill at 10:00 and you want to do that at 10:00 regardless of what time zone you are currently in. So you would mark that event for All Time Zones.

In all views other than the daily view, you will always see the adjusted time for an event -- i.e. the time of the event will be adjusted so it displays at the correct corresponding time in whatever time zone you are currently located. Note: only the day view will properly show the time of an event that has moved into a different day (although it will still display in the same day as the native time of the event). In other views, the time will either move to 23:59 if it is in the next day, or to 00:00 if it is in the prior day.

In the daily view, if there are any events in a time zone other than the current time zone, the time zone field will split into two columns The left column shows the event at its normalized time (normalized meaning that it has been adjusted to your current time zone). The right-hand column shows the time of the event in its native time zone. For example, if you have an event set at 8:00a in Hawaii time (-10:00 from GMT) and have your local time zone set to EST (-05:00 from GMT) the event corresponds to 1:00pm EST. Note that it is barely possible for these times to be the same (two adjacent time-zones, one of which has a DST setting which makes it effectively the same as the other zone while DST is in effect).

So in summary, the left column shows the time of all events normalized into the current time zone, while the right-hand column shows you the time of the event in its own time zone. If you tap on an event, the details dialog will always show the native time of the event. In the prior example, if you tap on the details button (or tap on the first time column) we will see a start time of 8:00a displayed as the time for the event.

Time Zone Details/Planning Dialog

You can also tap on the second time column to bring up a helpful dialog for planning. The dialog shows the description of the event in the title so you can be sure you have the right event selected. At the top, it will show you the time zone that you are currently in along with the start and end time of the event normalized to that time zone.

In the middle of the screen is the time zone that the event is in along with the start and end time in that native time zone.

Below that is a comment which reminds you as to how the event's time zone compares with your current time zone. Using the earlier example, the dialog would tell you that the event in Hawaii is taking place 5:00 earlier.

You can tap on the selector for either the current time zone or the event's time zone to temporarily change the time zone and see how it affects things. A SET button next to each time zone selector allows you to permanently set that time zone as the new time zone for either the event, or where you currently are. The Restore button will restore the most recently set values, or the values that were in effect when the dialog was first displayed. Note that the Set button does permanently update those settings.

This dialog is very handy when you are coordinating international conference calls with several time zones. In the prior example, if we had to coordinate this call with a relative in Hong Kong, we could set the Time Zone you are in to Hong Kong's time zone (+08:00 GMT) and quickly tell that person exactly what time they need to be on the phone, based upon a call placed in Hawaii at 8:00am.

If we do that, we can quickly see that the corresponding time in Hong Kong will be at 2:00am the next day.

Alternatively, we might choose to base the event time on the relative in Hong Kong, in which case we could change the Time Zone event is in to Hong Kong time and see what time that corresponds to in other parts of the world.

NOTE: in some cases, Datebk3 will not display events in different days if the time zone adjustment causes the event to be displayed in a different day from the day in which the event is located. Example: in the day view, if the event's adjusted time would be in the evening of the previous day, Datekb3 will show a time of 00:00 and an up-arrow to indicate that the event is really at a time in the previous day (you can tap on the 2nd time column to bring up the above dialog which will show the proper start/end times). If the event would be pushed into the next day, it will be displayed at 23:59 along with a down-arrow.

NOTE: some rather odd things can happen with DST. For example a repeat appointment may be at 10am and suddenly switch to 9am. This could occur if the event is in a different time-zone from the current time-zone and the DST rules are different in the two zones. Datebk3 does apply the DST rules properly in future and previous years (i.e. it does know the exact date that DST takes effect in the year 2005 in a particular time zone, etc.).

NOTE: Times of events are always stored as native times in the datebook database, and adjusted on the fly when displayed in Datebk3, so if you look at events in the regular datebook application or with your desktop, events will be displayed at the time they occur in that timezone. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is that it avoids the need to adjust the time of every event in the database whenever a new timezone is entered.

Editing the Time Zone Memo Record

All the time zone information used by Datebk3 is contained in a memo record which must be installed for this feature to be usable. As with the icon bitmaps, there is a file in the Datebk3 zip archive called timezone.txt. Copy the contents of this file into a memo record on your desktop and HotSync to transfer it to the Palm Organizer. Edit this memo record with extreme care. It is not practical for Datebk3 to protect against all possible end conditions from a mangled memo record. See below for detailed instructions.

The format of this file is as follows:

Line 1:                 WORLD TIMEZONES

Lines 2-27:          {period}{Letter}{space}WDMM{Space}WDMM{optional space}{description{eol}

Daylight Savings Time Rules. Up to 26 lines may be defined here, or the rules may be omitted completely. Each rule starts with a period followed by a letter from A-Z to identify the rule followed by a space and then a date specification in the form WDMM, where W is the week of the month: '1' for 1st, '2' for 2nd, '3' for 3rd, '4' for 4th, or 'L' for last (must be in upper case), D is the Day of the week: 1=Sunday, 2=Monday, 3=Tuesday...7=Saturday, and MM is the month: 01=January, 02-February, ...12=December. The first WDMM specifies the day on which Daylight Savings normally takes effect. In the US, for example, this would normally be: 1104 (1st Sunday in April), and in the UK: L103 (Last Sunday in March). The second WDMM specifies the day on which Daylight Savings normally ends (US and UK, normally: L110 - last Sunday in October). After the second WDMM can be an optional description of the time zone rule. DST rules differ very widely - some parts of the world do not have DST, some have DST rules that are changed each year, others may elect DST on a town by town basis. The standard WORLD TIMEZONES memo record supplied in the Datebk3.zip archive includes some of the more common DST rules in effect.

The letters for the rules can be any order and any letter from A-Z may be used (i.e. it would be ok to just have a B and M rule for example).

All following lines:   {+ or -}HH:MM{optional DST Rule}{optional space}{description}{eol}

The first character must be a '-' for times later than GMT (i.e. West of Greenwich) or a '+' for times earlier than GMT (i.e. East of Greenwich). This is followed by the displacement in hours and minutes in fixed format (use leading zero's for 1-digit hours). The minutes must be 00, 15, 30 or 45 as time zones only have a resolution down to 15 minutes (which takes care of all currently defined time zones in the world).

After the time is optionally a single character from A-Z or an @ which identifies the DST rule that applies to this time-zone (actually this locale - as there can be two locales for each time zone). If a space immediately follows the time, then Daylight Savings Time is ignored. An @ indicates that DST is ALWAYS on in this time zone. This should be used with care as it will apply to all dates displayed

After that is an optional space and a description. The description can be anything. The default file provided with Datebk3 lists some common countries and cities in that time zone.

The entries need not be in any order except that two locales in the same time zone must be contiguous, and need not be complete. So you can freely edit the file provided that the lines present in the file follow the above format. In particular you can sort the file so commonly used time zones appear first and edit it to include cities or countries that you personally visit, etc.

A typical memo record might look like this:

WORLD TIMEZONES
.A 1104 L110 US Std. 1st Sun Apr to Last Sun in Oct
.B L103 L110 W Europe
.C 1705 L409 E Europe
.D L103 1109 Israel
.E L103 L509 Moscow
.F L112 1104 Australia
-12:00 Kwajalein, Eniwetok
-11:00 Samoa, Midway Islands
-10:00 Hawaii
-09:00 Alaska
-08:00A US Pacific
-07:00A US Mountain
-06:00A US Central
-05:00A US Eastern
-04:00 Atlantic, Caracas, La Paz
-03:30 Newfoundland
-03:00 Buenos Aires, Brasilia
-02:00 MidAtlantic
-01:00 Azores, Cape Verde Is.
+00:00B Greenwich, London, Lisbon, Dublin
+01:00B West Europe, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Madrid
...

Note: starting with V-3.0e, comments are allowed in this memo record by beginning the comment line with a semicolon. This should be used sparingly, however, as extensive comments might slow the program down.

Setting up the Time Zone Memo Record for Datebk3

You must install the World Timezones memo pad record in order to use them with Datebk3. Download dbSetup.prc (in the zip archive) to your organizer and run it to install them. You can delete this application once it has been run. dbSetup installs a basic set of TimeZone resources.

Verify that you now have a new memo on your Pilot with just WORLD TIMEZONES on the top line followed by one or more lines beginning with a period (the DST-Daylight Savings Time-Rules, followed by the list of locales and associated time zones. Notice that we also include a far more detailed file called TIMEZONE-RESOURCE.TXT which has many more timezones and DST rules. You may want to copy and paste information out of that file into your memo record before hot syncing. Note that you can also edit in the names of places you personally visit, etc.

Warning about changing Time Zone on your PC - Don't do it!!!!

The following note is from the FAQ's on Palm Computing's web site. Read this carefully!

Q: I do some traveling and I usually change my laptop PC's regional time zone settings according to where I am. I have noticed, however, that whenever I change the time zone on my computer and I check my Date Book on Palm Desktop, several strange things might happen. The times and dates of some of my events will have been shifted strangely, some of my repeating events will have simply disappeared, and there are sometimes discrepencies between the events in the Date Book on my 3ComŽ connected organizer and the Date Book on Palm? Desktop. What is going on?

A: Changing the time zone in the Windows Regional Settings on the PC that you synchronize with is not recommended. Doing so can cause unexpected results with your Date Book and To Do List information on both your Palm Desktop software and the organizer that you synchronize with.

Changing the time zone in your Windows Regional Settings to its original setting (that you would normally use your organizer with) should reverse the adverse effects.

When traveling, it is recommended to change the time and date on your 3Com connected organizer to synchronize with your local time zone, and not the time zone in the Regional Settings for your Windows computer.

Daily Journal

The Daily Journal feature provides a convenient way of recording contemporary events in the datebook database with automatic time-stamping and without cluttering up the daily schedule. This feature can be invoked through a menu option in the record menu of the Day View, or by tapping the New button when it is set to bring up the popup list of options (see More Preferences dialog for setting up the NEW button to pop up an option list).

When invoked, Datebk3 checks to see if there is an event in the current day with the name Daily Journal. If not, an untimed event on the current day is automatically created. Datebk3 then brings up the Note field  for the event, inserts the current time on a new line and positions the cursor to accept text.

This feature is ideal for tracking things like sales calls, start and stop times for consulting or jobs, or any time a journal is needed of events. At a later time, these journals can be extracted to provide information that could then be fed into some other applications (we are planning a desktop program that will make this an easy process).

Appointments that span midnight or last more than 24 hours

Version 3.0 of Datekb3 now handles appointments that cross midnight and which last more than 24 hours. In order to maintain compatibility with the Datebook database, it is important to understand that these events are in fact handled as a special kind of repeat event in the datebook database. If you have an appointment that crosses midnight and lasts less than 24 hours, there is nothing special to do - simply key in the start and end times of the event. Datebk3 will notice that the end time precedes the start time and will know that this event must cross midnight and will set up the event accordingly by converting the item to a daily repeat appointment. To switch this back to a conventional event, you will need to manually remove the repeat status via the Details dialog.

If the event lasts more than 24 hours, you will have to set up the event manually: go to the details dialog, tap on the Repeat button and then on the Daily button to bring up the daily repeat dialog. Check the box with the legend: Events Spans Midnight and then pick the day on which the event ends (note that you can use the [1] and [7] buttons to quickly advance the end date by 1 or 7 days at a time). Set the start time of the event to the start time of the entire event on the first day. Set the end time of the event to the time at which the event ends on the last day.

Although the event is marked as a repeat event, Datebk3 is smart enough to know that this is a special, continuous event and will never bring up the exception dialog (asking you if you want the change to apply to All or just the Current occurrence). So in practice, you can manipulate this event just like any other event (exception: you can not drag and drop these events in the graphical weekly view, but you can in V-3.0 access the details dialog directly if you did indeed need to change the date or time of the event in that view).

Note: these events will not display properly in the associated desktop application. However, since they are marked as repeat events, they will display properly on each day, but the start time will only be correct on the first day and the end time will only be correct on the last day. The interim days will show the event as repeating each day with the start and end times that are designated. In datebk3, the intervening days show that the event lasts from 00:00 to 11:59p (23:59). Furthermore, as currently implemented, you will not be able to change the time of some of these events in most desktop applications because they will complain that the end time precedes the start time, so it's best to leave the times of these events alone. Some desktop applications may not permit any editing until the time "problem" is corrected.

Note: since these events are implemented as a special kind of daily repeat event, you cannot make the entire event itself a repeat event: i.e. you can not have an appointment spanning midnight repeat every Tuesday.

Categories

NOTE: The limitation in V-2.1y that categories could be forced back to Unfiled after a HotSync no longer exists in V-3.0 as category information is automatically reconstituted after any HotSync.

The Category feature allows events to be assigned to specific categories. This feature is implemented in a manner that is more sophisticated than the other built-in PalmPilot applications, such as Todo, Memo and Addressbook applications. Most Palm OS applications are limited to displaying all categories or just one category. Datebk3 allows you to select any combination of datebook categories for display (as you had been able to do with the Todo database in V-2.1y of Datebk3).

The commands below specifically refer to categories in the Datebook database and not categories in the Todo database (which are only displayed in the Todo preferences menu and the Details dialog when a Todo is selected). Category support is provided by the following items under the Cat. (Category) menu:

Select Category. When this menu option is selected, a category selection dialog appears. Tap on the category you want to select, or tap All to select all categories, or Edit Categories to change or add a new category. This menu option is available in all six views. When selected, the current view is redrawn to reflect items in the new category.

The All button will toggle the state of the categories - i.e. the first time you tap it, it will select all categories, but if all categories are selected when this button is tapped, all categories, except for Unfiled, are deselected. Note that one category must always be selected, and if you attempt to de-select the only selected category, Datebk3 will simply select Unfiled as a default.

You can also assign a default icon to a category by tapping on the button immediately to the left of the category name. This will bring up the standard icon selection dialog where you can assign a new icon or tap the remove button to remove the existing icon assignment. the default icon assignment will not override any explicit icon assignment made through the details dialog. The default icon will be displayed for any item in this category at any time where icons are being displayed (which now includes the daily view, all three weekly views and the new List View). Categories are always displayed in binary index order, which means that if you delete a category, you may see what looks like a "hole" in the list of categories - this is perfectly normal and that "hole" will be filled in the next time you create a new category.

Set Category Private. This menu option first checks to see if you have all categories selected and if so displays a warning alert. It will then display a confirmation alert to make sure that you want to make this change. If you select OK, then every single event in all selected categories will have its Private flag set. At the conclusion, the current view is redrawn. Note that if you have the system preference set to hide private events, everything will now disappear from the screen and it will appear blank. You will also get the warning about making events private, but only if private events are currently being displayed and if you have the preference option set to give you this warning.

Set Category Public. This menu option first checks to see if you have all categories selected and if so displays a warning alert. It will then display a confirmation alert to make sure that you want to make this change. If you select OK, then every single event in that category will have its Private flag cleared. At the conclusion, the current view is redrawn. You can not issue this command if your security preference setting is set to hide secret records (since all secret records in that category will now be displayed).

Move Category. This menu option first checks to see if you have all categories selected and if so displays a warning alert. Datebk3 then displays the category-picker dialog so you can pick the destination category. A confirmation dialog then appears to check that you really want to proceed with the move. Tap on the Move button to move all the items into that new category. Datebk3 then changes the default display category to the destination category and redraws the screen.

Delete Category. This menu option first checks to see if you have all categories selected and if so displays a warning alert. It will then display a confirmation alert to make sure that you want to proceed with the deletion. If you select DELETE, then every single event in all selected categories will be deleted. At the conclusion, the current view is redrawn and it will of course be completely blank since all displayed events have been deleted. This delete command always archives the records (regardless of the last preference setting in the delete dialog), so they can be retrieved if absolutely necessary.

Note on Invalid Categories. Some applications (like early versions of Birthday) place events into the datebook with invalid category numbers. This was not a problem with the regular datebook application because it simply ignored categories, but Datebk3 will see these invalid categories. If a category is not defined in Datebk3, the number of the category will be shown in hexadecimal as 0xAB, where A is the high order nibble of the attribute field in hexadecimal and B is the category number in hexadecimal. No harm is done, and if you subsequently define a category in that same index position, that name will be displayed instead.

Note for V-1 PalmPilots. V-1 PalmPilots lack the feature of a default, uneditable category called Unfiled. So when you edit categories, you should really first define a category called Unfiled before defining other category names.

Mapping categories to desktop PIM: Both Chapura and DataViz have released versions of their conduits (Chapura: PocketMirror <V-2.0.2>, Desktop To Go V-2.501 <build 120>) which support Datebk3 categories with MS Outlook. These conduits make it possible to share multiple calendars with multiple pilots (so you can have other people's calendars saved as a category in your datebook database).

Deleting categories: Before you delete a category, you should move any items in that category into some other category with the Move Category command. If you do not do this, the Palm OS will attempt to move the items into the UNFILED category, but does not of course update the tagged note field. As a result, on the next hotsync, Datebk3 will think that a hostile conduit has forced the items back into the UNFILED category and dutifully restore the (now-nameless) category. It is possible that this issue may be addressed in a future release.

Snooze Alarms

When an alarm goes off, the alarm dialog displays the time that the alarm went off at the top right. Next is listed the description and, if a note is present, a bullet followed by as much of the note as will fit. Below this is the time of the event itself and the date. The time in the top right is not updated if the alarm is not acknowledged, so it will always show the time that the alarm first went off.

The alarm dialog has a set of snooze buttons that can be tapped. The big button in the bottom left corner snoozes the alarm for 5 minutes (the OK, Edit and 5 min buttons are purposely designed to be big enough to easily hit with a finger so you don't need to pull out the stylus to acknowledge the alarm). Smaller buttons provide for 10, 30, 60 minute 4, and 24 hour snoozes. The Other button brings up the duration dialog which allows you to specify any snooze time from 5m to 23:55. When an alarm is snoozed, the alarm dialog is canceled and the alarm (and dialog) will re-appear at the snoozed time. When an alarm dialog appears that was tripped by a snooze, the alarm icon in the top left of the dialog changes to a set of Z's to indicate that the alarm is one that was previously snoozed. Snoozed alarms will still go off even if other alarms go off in the meantime, and will also generate repeat sounds at the specified repeat interval (like regular alarms) if they are not acknowledged.

The Edit button will take you directly to the Details dialog of the Day View with the event that tripped the alarm selected. This is especially convenient if you wish to re-schedule the event that tripped the alarm, or delete it. Exception: if there is another pending alarm(s) waiting to sound, an alert will appear and you will have to acknowledge the other pending alarm(s) instead.

On Palm III's, snoozes can also be assigned a different alarm sound (see the Preferences item in the Options menu of the Daily View). On  Palm III, you can also specify a different sound for the repeat sound if the dialog is not acknowledged right away. This allows you to associate the first alarm with a device like Tale-Vibes or Tale-light, but then use a sounding alarm for the repeat (if you miss the less obtrusive reminder).

Note that the 24 hour snooze can be a convenient way to deal with daily reminders. For example, if you set a 10-day advance alarm for a birthday, you can then just snooze the alarm by 24 hours to get a daily reminder each day.

Snooze alarms will be canceled for an event if you make any change to the event itself that involves alarms. This includes changing the date, time or the alarm preset for an event. Also, if you delete an event, any pending snooze will be removed as well. Although not likely, it is possible to cause some strange events, by, for example, setting a snooze alarm, doing a HotSync, changing the alarm on the desktop (where Datebk3 cannot see the change), and then hotsyncing again etc. However, it was deemed more important NOT to lose snoozes over a HotSync, so this type of "strangeness" is allowed as it does no harm.

Alarms will sound for events that are not currently displayed because they are in a category that is not being displayed. This can be useful to include, for example, a daily alarm that you do not wish to see in your schedule - simply put it in a category that you do not have selected for display. If you tap the Edit button on such an event, that category will, however, be selected and made visible so the event can be seen.

Be sure to run Datebk3 after doing a HotSync. If you do not run Datebk3, it is barely possible that the built-in datebook application may "grab" the alarms and ring them itself if the next alarm was entered on the desktop prior to the HotSync.

Weekly View with Text

The new weekly view offers an alternative to the graphical WeekView of the built-in Datebook application. Rather than showing appointments graphically, the text of each appointment is shown in a conventional "day-timer" type format. Note that the week can start on a day different from the preference option in the Day View. Even U.S. users who are used to starting the week on Sunday will probably find it more convenient to start this view on Monday, following the European standard. Note that you can also start this view on Today in which case today always appears in the top left followed by the next six days. If only one event is present on a day, the full text of the event is wordwrapped into multiple lines, otherwise as much text as will show on each line is displayed for each event. If there are more events on a day than can be displayed in the cell, the last line will have a bullet character at the end of the last line.  Todos' from the todo database can also be displayed in this view and are recognizable because the priority is displayed in a broken box at the start of the line. Todo's can be sorted ahead of or after appointments (see preference settings).

The weekly view is also available in a standalone program called WeekView. The cell containing today's date is always flashed gently on and off in the display, so you can easily identify today's date. If you find the blinking disturbing just tap the graffiti area twice (as if entering the period character) and the blinking will stop. When you next display a screen with today's date, a frame will be drawn around the date instead of inverting it. This setting is permanently remembered. Tap the screen again twice to re-enable the blinking on the next screen refresh.

Navigating and Features of this View

To move forwards and backwards, use the UP and DOWN buttons on the PalmPilot or click on the Left or Right arrows in the title line. When displaying two weeks at a time, the buttons will move two weeks in either direction, but the arrows will only move one week (that way you can display two weeks starting with any week).

To jump quickly to a specific date, click on the GO button on the title bar and the standard PalmPilot Date Picker dialog will
appear.

To jump quickly to a specific week, select the Week Number item in the Go menu (or stroke Command/W in the graffiti area) and then press the button corresponding to the week you want to go to. In the Week Number dialog, the current week number is in bold, and the currently displayed week has a bold border around it. Note that there is a preference option to adjust the starting week of the year to match fiscal or non-ISO standard week numbers. You will always go to the week in the same year as the year currently being displayed, so to go to a week in some other year, first use the GO button to select any date in that year, and then go into the week selection dialog.

To jump to today's date, just tap the third view button (this is true in all views - if you tap the button corresponding to the current view it goes to today's date).

To jump to a day in the day view, click on the inverted date in that day cell (i.e. that has the day of week and day of month displayed in white on black). There is a preference option that allows you to click anywhere in the day cell to go to the day view (instead of going to the weekly view's own details dialog).

To jump forwards or backwards by a number of days, select the GO FWDS/BKWDS BY DAY option in the OPTIONS menu. A dialog appears where you can type in a number of days (use a minus sign to go backwards). For example, you can easily move to a week that is 125 days before the current week by typing in -125.

To switch between the 1 week 2 week and 1/2 week views, tap the button in the middle of the title bar and the legend will toggle between 1, 2 and 3 (1-week, 2-week, 3-day)..

Text Wordwrapping. If there is only one appointment on the day, there is a preference option to wordwrap the text to the cell to show as much text as possible (normally this preference is checked). If there are too many appointments to display in the cell, the last appointment will end with a round bullet as a signal that there are more appointments (see Scroll button below)

Scrolling to More Appointments. If there are some appointments in one or more days that are not being shown, there will be a down arrow in the box just to the left of the GO button. Tap that button to scroll forwards to the next set of events on those day(s). If there are events before AND after those being shown, there will be both an up and a down arrow in the display. When the last set of events is being shown, there will be only an up-arrow in the scroll box. If you tap the scroll box again, it will cycle back to the beginning. If there is no arrow in the scroll box, that shows that all events in the period being shown are being displayed. Note that each cell is scrolled individually, so on each tap, all the appointments that are displayed are new.

To view all the appointments for a day (up to 16), just click anywhere on the cell for that day to bring up the DETAILS view. Note that this view is really more useful in the standalone version of the program - you may wish to set the preference option to go straight to the Day View if you tap anywhere in the cell.

Tapping on the Title Line. In the Weekly view, the title line shows the month and year of the week being displayed followed by the week number. Tap on the title bar to briefly see the time and also an indication of the +- offset in weeks from the current week in parentheses after the time). Note that this feature (also in the built-in Datebook application) may interfere with a hack like MenuHack. This feature also works on V-1 PalmPilots (although this is the only view which works that way on V-1 PalmPilots). Tech Note: this view does not have a conventional window title, so do not expect hacks which invoke special functions when the title bar is tapped (like MenuHack) to work normally with this view.

To specifically hide an appointment or floating appointment in the 2nd weekly view, put the text string ~HIDE~ anywhere in the note field for the appointment. It will then not be displayed. This can be done to suppress repeating appointments too.

Weekly View's Details View

This view is displayed when you tap anywhere in a day cell in the main weekly view (unless the preference setting to go to the day view instead is checked). Note that you may well want to have that preference setting checked.

To return to the WEEKLY view, just click below the last appointment line or the Done button. In the one case where there
are 16 or more appointments you will have to click on the Done button.

If the current item has a note, the note symbol will appear at the end of the line. You can tap the note symbol to bring up the note in a read-only window which will display up to 16 lines of the note. Just tap anywhere on the screen below the title line to return to the details view, or tap the EDIT button to jump to the day view with that note displayed so you can modify the note. Repeat items are flagged with the standard Repeat symbol (V-2 PalmPilots) or a diamond (V-1 Pilots) after the time.

To jump to a specific appointment in the Day View (where you can edit, make changes, etc.), tap on the appointment.

To create a new entry, tap the NEW button which will switch to the Datebook application and put the cursor in the first time slot for the day.

Weekly View Preference Settings

To change the appearance or settings in this view, select the Preferences item in the Options menu or stroke Command/R in the graffiti area. In the preference dialog you can change the following Items:

Time Format. The drop down list box allows you to omit the time or display the time in 12 or 24 hour formats with/without the
minutes. This refers to the time that is normally displayed in the left margin in the main view. This preference option also applies to the time format displayed in the ListView.

Wordwrap. If checked, a single entry will be wordwrapped to multiple lines. Normally, you would want this preference option checked.

Wordwrap All in Details. If checked, all entries in the Details dialog will be wordwrapped. This is probably the preferred setting unless you often have a very large number of appointments in each day. Since this version does not yet have scrolling, you will, however, not want to check this option if you have a lot of events to display on each day.

Condensed Font. If checked, a condensed font is used which will display more text but with a corresponding loss of legibility. At some point in the future, this may be replaced with a "better" small font.

Show End Time. If checked, the ending time of each appointment will be displayed in the Details view.

Hide Untimed Floating Events. If checked, untimed floating events or done items will be hidden from the display. Timed floating events, or done items will be displayed as usual.

Tap anywhere -> DayView. If checked, a tap anywhere in the day cell will take you directly to that day in the Daily View. This option will probably be checked by most users, but has been left unchecked by default to maintain compatibility with prior versions (and prior WeekView users who expect it to work that way).

Display uses non-Roman Chars. You will definitely need to check this item if you are displaying Kanji or Hebrew characters on your Palm Pilot. There is a special hack in fairly wide use in Japan to display Kanji characters and without this option, they will not display properly on the PalmPilot as certain optimizations for displaying accented characters in Roman Fonts are not compatible with the display of Kanji characters. There is a similar hack available for displaying Hebrew. All of these hacks depend upon the application program outputting full character strings and you must check this option to ensure that these hacks see the entire string displayed at once. If you enable this for Roman character sets, you may see the top pixel row of certain characters clipped off (such as accents etc.). This preference option also applies to the ListView which has a similar display.

Todo's: Before | After | Hide. This option allows you to place Todo's before regular appointments or after them. For those users who want to primarily look at their schedule in the 2nd weekly view, the after option will be preferred. The before option was the only option in prior versions. The Hide option will hide all todo's in the 2nd weekly view without affecting the display of todo's in the daily view (which can be controlled through the Todo Preferences dialog).

Pilot Week# | Custom Wk#. Normally, Datebk3 will display week numbers which match the numbers used in the PalmPilot's Datebook application. However, if you click on CUSTOM WK#, a date picker dialog appears where you can set any week of the year to be week 1. All Week numbers will then be calculated from that starting week number.

Wk Start. This option allows you to select the day of the week to start the display on. This option only applies to this second weekly view and therefore ignores the preference setting of the Day View (which also controls all other views besides the 2nd weekly view). There is also a Today option which will always start the display on today and then display the next six days.

Monthly View with Icons

This view is invoked by tapping on the Icon pushbutton in the monthly view. Rather than displaying spots to show where appointments occur during the day, it displays graphical icons associated with each appointment. Note that nothing will display until you actually assign icons to events in the Daily View. Also, you must set up a record in the Memo application that contains the bitmaps for all the icons. The adventurous user can even design and incorporate their own custom icons.

Up to three icons can be displayed in each day cell. As in the standard monthly view, you can tap on any cell in the calendar to go directly to that day in the Day View.

Setting up the Icon Bitmaps in the Memo Application

You must install the Datebk3 icons and World Timezones in order to use them with Datebk3. Download dbSetup.prc to your organizer and run it to install them. You can delete this application once it has been run. Remember that you need to set the preference option to display icons in the daily, weekly and list views. DbSetup sets up two Memo pad records (one for icons and one for timezones if you select both options). Do NOT delete or edit these memo pad records unless you know exactly what you are doing as these memopad records are used by Datebk3 to handle these features. The latest version of dbSetup also includes a set of alternate icons provided by TwoKidsInAGarage

Other Third-Party Desktop PIM's: if you are using some other third party desktop software and conduit, you will need to find out where that application stores information that is ultimately synchronized with the MemoPad database. For example, in MS Outlook, you need to put the contents of the bitmaps.txt file into Outlooks' Notes. If in doubt, create a new memo with a title like "HELLO, WHERE IS THIS?" and then hotsync. Then go searching through the application's various data files and records to see if you can find that memo - that will then tell you where to place the bitmaps.txt contents so it sync's back to the Palm Organizer.

For Consultant, make sure that what appears on line 1 of the memo in Consultant is what will appear on line 2 in the MemoPad organizer - i.e. the first #a bitmap definition should appear on line 1 in the Consultant memo and the title of the memo should be DATEBK3 or WORLD TIMEZONES, etc.

Attaching Icons to Events

To attach an icon to an event, tap on the event in the Day View and select the Attach Icon item in the Record menu. A dialog appears that displays the graphical icons along with their description. If this dialog does not appear when you tap on the menu command, this is a clear indication that the icon bitmaps have not been properly installed in the Memo database (see above). You should also see a dialog telling you to install the icons. If they are installed, but not correctly, you should see an error message indicating what icon the program was looking for that it did not find. If there is no description for an icon, you will see the graphic accompanied by the legend: icon a where 'a' is a letter from a-z that corresponds to that icon. If you are working with a repeat event, the icon will be applied to all occurrences. If you only want to apply the icon to a single cocurrence, you can tap on the details button (or the spot where the icon would be displayed in the day view) and then the icon button in the details dialog. When you exit the details dialog, you will be asked if you want the icon applied to all occurrences, just the following occurrences or the single occurrence that you had selected.

There are two pages of icons (1-26 with a-z, and 27-52 with A-Z) which you can select by tapping the PushButtons at the bottom of the screen. Note that the second page of icons is a new addition, so if you are using the Shuji Fukumoto's Datebk3 Icon Editor, be sure to download the new version that supports the second page of icons as the old version would remove the second page.

Icons can be attached to templates. This is very handy as you can create a birthday template which includes the icon for a birthday cake and that will be attached whenever you create a birthday event using that template.

Technical Details on Creating your Own Custom Icons

Several third party developers have released icon editors for Datebk3. There is also an interactive icon editor written in Java on another website and another user has created an Excel macro for generating the hexadecimal strings. While you can set up icons manually, you will find that there are now several very helpful tools for creating and manipulating icons.

Here is the current list of known icon editors - by all means contact Pimlico Software if you know of others or if these links below become invalid.

ICON Editor by Shuji Fukumoto, available from www.wakuwaku.ne.jp/shuji/soft/IconEditor
IcoEdit available from: http://www.kagi.com/maple/
DBICED by Intertron software available from: http://www.inertron.com/palm/index.html
Icon Editor for Datebk3 by Toshiaki Yamazaki available from http://www.mapletop.com/  
Excel Macro Icon Editor by Leo Steindl available from: http://www.gorilla-haven.org/pimlico/iconedit.xls

Format of the Datebk3 Memo Record

The graphics for the monthly icons are stored in a memo record that must begin with the text DATEBK3{eol} in capitals, where {eol} represents the End of line character. The ZIP archive contains a memo record with some suggested graphics.

This is then followed by 26 lines of Hexadecimal codes that describe the icon, one icon per line. The first line sets the icon for #a, the second for #b etc. Each line has the format:

#a{Description}={hexadecimal string}
#b{Description}={hexadecimal string}
#c{Description}=0000000000000000
#d{Description}={hexadecimal string}
...

No letters may be skipped, but you can have a line that has no icon as shown for #c above. Use caution editing this memo record. Obviously, if the format is corrupted, the icon display will not be available and an error alert will be displayed. The {Description}field has a 1-24 character description of the icon which is terminated by the equals sign. If the {Description} field is omitted, the legend 'Icon x' will be displayed instead (where 'x' is the associated character for the icon).

The hexadecimal string consists of 16 hexadecimal characters. These define the 8x8 bitmap graphic with the first hex character specifying the left nibble for row 1, then the right nibble for row 1, then the left nibble for line 2, right nibble for line 2, as shown below:

        01
        23
        45
        67
        89
        AB
        CD
        EF

For example, an small airplane could be described as: 18183C7EDB183C5A which would correspond to the following bitmap:

        ...xx...    18
        ...xx...    18
        ..xxxx..    3c
        .xxxxxx.    7e
        xx.xx.xx    db
        ...xx...    18
        ..xxxx..    3c
        .x.xx.x.    5a

Valentine Heart

        .xx..xx.    66
        x..xx..x    99
        x......x    81
        x......x    81
        x......x    81
        .x....x.    42
        ..x..x..    24
        ...xx...    18

For the hexadecimal characters, remember that:

        Bits        #
        ....        0
        ...x        1
        ..x.        2
        ..xx        3
        .x..        4
        .x.x        5
        .xx.        6
        .xxx        7
        x...        8
        x..x        9
        x.x.        A
        x.xx        B
        xx..        C
        xx.x        D
        xxx.        E
        xxxx        F

The sample memo record supplied in the file BITMAP.TXT contains these
graphics:

#a - airplane
#b - boat
#c - car
#d - Dollar sign (payday / pay bills)
#e - exclamation mark
#f - Flag
#g - big bullet
#h - happy face
#i - Racquet (Tennis/games)
#j - Birthday Cake
#k - knife and fork
#l - bomb (Deadline)
#m - man
#n - no symbol
#o - unhappy face
#p - phone
#q - question mark
#r - checkmark
#s - Star
#t - Tack (reminder)
#u - Checkbox
#v - Valentine's Heart
#w - Drink
#x - Big X
#y - Big Y
#z - Arrow

Yearly View

The yearly view displays an entire year all at once. Obviously with the rather small screen of the Pilot, there are limitations to the utility of this view, but with a bit of a care and careful application of the preference items in this view, it can be remarkably useful. When first displayed, today's date will be flashing on and off in the calendar, and the current month's name is displayed in bold. Significant items will cause a dot to be displayed in that day. There are many different options to determine exactly what constitutes a "significant" item (see description below in preference settings).

To select a day, tap on the day in the calendar. The day you select will gently flash on and off so you can determine whether or not you tapped on the correct day. In the title of the window, just after the year, the day of the month is displayed along with the text of the first event that caused a dot to be displayed. Separating the day of the month from the description will be a minus (-) sign if there was just one significant event on that day, or a plus (+) sign if there were two or more significant events on that day (only the text of the first event is displayed on the title bar).

The left and right arrows in the bottom right corner of the screen will move forwards and backwards by one day through the entire calendar (including across years). These buttons repeat, so you can hold them down to move the day quickly (and scan the appointments which flash across the title line). The Up and Down buttons serve the same function. Many touchscreens have noise, so don't be surprised when you tap on a day that another day gets selected. You can hold the pen down and drag it around on the screen and Datebk3 will show you which date it thinks is selected based upon the data from the touchscreen. You might also want to recalibrate your touchscreen (digitizer) from time to time (Select Digitizer in the Prefs application).

When a day is selected, you can tap on any of the four other view buttons to jump directly to that view with the day in the yearly view displayed in that new view. Tap on the last of the five pushbuttons (Yearly View) to select today's date.

To move to a different year, tap on the left (previous year) or right (next year) arrows at the right end of the title bar.

Filtering Significant Events in the Yearly View

To filter events in the yearly view, tap on the Show button at the bottom of the screen. A preference dialog appears with these options:

Hide Float and Done Events. Floating events and done items will be hidden if this item is checked (this is set by default). This does not refer to todo's from the todo database which are never displayed in the yearly view.

Hide Untimed Events. If checked, events which have no time assigned to them will be hidden. This will not cause floating events or Done items to be hidden (use the previous option to handle those).

Hide Zero Duration Events. If checked, events which are timed, but which have no duration (i.e. the start time is the same as the end time) will be hidden.

Hide Events < nnn Hr. This item has a popup list to select a cutoff threshold for events whose duration is less than 0.5, 1, 2, 4, 8, or 12 hours. Select the desired cutoff in the list and then tap the checkbox to set this option. The current selection is displayed. Events whose duration is 1 minute or more (i.e. not zero duration events) but less than the specified threshold will be hidden.

Hide Daily Repeating Events. If checked, daily repeating events (which have a frequency of 1 - i.e. every day) will be hidden.

Hide Events with no Icons. If checked, only events that have icons attached to them will be displayed. This is a very useful option as icons are usually only attached to significant events (such as holidays, business trips, birthdays, anniversaries, etc.).

Only Show Events with this Icon. If checked, an icon selector appears and the currently selected icon will be displayed to the left of the icon selector. To select a different icon, tap on the selector and select the icon from the list that appears. Only events that have that specific icon (either associated with the event itself, or associated via an icon association for its category or timezone) will be displayed. In the Yearly view, the selected icon will be displayed to the left of the Show button in a graphic button. You can tap on this button to bring up the icon selector directly to select a different icon to view.

To specifically hide an appointment or floating appointment in the yearly view (which will also affect the 2nd weekly view too), put the text string ~HIDE~ anywhere in the note field for the appointment. It will then not be displayed. This can be done to suppress repeating appointments too.

Floating Events ("Integrated Todo's")

Floating events are a hybrid -  in one way they are similar to todo's from the todo database since they float forward day-by-day like an undated todo, until they are checked off. On the other hand, they are like events in that they can be timed, have alarms and can repeat. These events were referred to as "integrated todo's" in prior versions of Datebk3, but are now designated as "floating events" in order to avoid confusion with todo's from the todo database.

A floating event can be created in two different ways. First, an existing, normal event can be marked as a floating event by going into the details dialog and tapping on the Float pushbutton at the bottom of the dialog. If the event had a date earlier than today, it will automatically be forwarded to today (since an incomplete floating event can never be displayed on a date earlier than today). Second, there is a menu option, new floating event, that creates an untimed floating event. Note that there is a preference option to make the New button create a new floating event rather than a normal event.

Floating events always display an open circle in the time column (if untimed) and in the right margin for timed events (exception: Palm V-1. devices cannot display a circle for timed events). A floating event can be marked as done by simply tapping the circle (like tapping a box in the todo application). Note that floating events display a circle rather than a box and do not have a priority number and can therefore be easily distinguished from todo's coming from the todo database.

Datebk3 sorts all three kinds of events in order: todo's from the todo database in priority order (with incomplete items preceding checked-off items) are followed by floating events (again with incomplete items first and done items last, sorted in alphabetic order) followed finally by regular untimed events, also sorted in alphabetic order.

Each day, Datebk3 checks to see if there are any floating events in the database. If there are, you will see the legend scanning... appear briefly in the top left of the screen as Datebk3 advances the date of all incomplete floating events and checks for any repeat floating events. When a floating event is marked as done, it will stay on that date and will not be advanced. This scan only occurs if there are one or more floating events in your datebook database.

Note that there are options in the daily, 2nd weekly views and yearly views to determine whether or not floating events should be displayed. The option in the Daily View affects the day view, all three weekly views and the monthly view. xThe Todo Preferences item in the Options menu of the daily view refers specifically to the todo's from the todo database and not the floating events. Whether or not floating events that are marked as done are displayed is handled by a checkbox in the More Preferences item in the Options menu of the daily view (so they can be controlled independently).

The default alarm preset does not apply to floating events, as floating events by default are never assigned a preset alarm - you have to go into the details dialog and explicitly set an alarm for a floating event.

Floating events have a special flag which is stored "invisibly" in the note field of the record. Normally, you would never see this special flag using Datebk3, but if you examine the event in a desktop application, or in the normal Datebook application, you will see a character sequence like: ##f@@@@@@  for a floating event, and ##c@@@@@@ for a done event. You should be careful to leave these alone if you edit the note field of one of these events in an application other than Datebk3. If it is really important to enter a floating event in the desktop application, you can use this knowledge to do it - just put ##f@@@@@@ in the note field, and the event will be marked as a floating event after you HotSync, or ##c@@@@@@ to mark it as a done item (but that's not really intended to be a "feature"). Note that you can still place the older V-2.x style tags of #~f or #~c if you wish as those are also converted after a hotsync into the new tag format.

Note on rescheduling of Floating event. Floating events can be rescheduled either when you run Datebk3, or can be triggered automatically at a preset time (usually in the very early, morning hours). The advantage of triggering the update automatically is that any alarms set on floating events will be automatically rescheduled even if the PalmPilot is never turned on. The disadvantage is that if some kind of error condition is present, the machine will not shutoff and will run the batteries down. In general, we recommend using the automatic rescheduling feature unless you are somewhere where it would be a disaster if you lost the batteries. By default, the scheduling is done when you first run Datebk3 on the day which is the safest approach.

Note on Floating Event Alarms. An alarm on a floating event will only go off if the floating event is rescheduled to today prior to when the alarm would go off. If you do not have automatic scheduling set and do not run Datebk3, the alarm will not go off. So if you do use alarms on floating events, it's a good idea to also use the automatic scheduling feature.

To set automatic scheduling, select the More Preferences Item in the Options menu of the Daily View and tap on the time selector in the bottom right corner. Set the number of hours and minutes after midnight that you want the rescheduling to be performed. It's probably a good idea to schedule it for as late as possible so if there is a problem, there will be the least amount of time before you notice it (say 04:00). If you happen to be awake at that time, you will see your Pilot turn on and launch the Datebk3 application at which time the legend "scanning" will appear briefly at the top left. If left untouched, the Pilot will then automatically turn itself off after the standard "Auto-Off" time has elapsed.

To remove the automatic scheduling, tap on the Cancel button in the duration dialog, and the time selector will go back to displaying No Time indicating that this feature has been disabled.

Note: this feature is not available if you use the Power On Password feature to prevent any application from running on your pilot until you put in your password. It will also not work if you are using the built-in Datebook application to handle alarms, or with certain third party programs designed to lock the Pilot after it is turned off.

Setting priorities on floating event. Floating events do not have priorities, but a simple technique provides that capability: simply begin each floating event with a digit and a hyphen:

1-Call Dr. Jones
1-Write Letter
2-Take out Garbage
5-Do Taxes

Since floating events are always sorted in alphabetic order, the floating events will be sorted on the first digit - thereby giving a priority sort order.

Repeats on Floating Events

Repeats on floating events are somewhat different from repeats on regular, scheduled events. Each day, when Datebk3 is scanning for floating events, it checks for repeat events. If a repeat event is found that has an occurrence on today's date, a duplicate of the repeat event (except that it has no repeat status) is generated and the start date of the repeat, floating event is re-scheduled to the next occurrence of the repeat event. Note that this allows you to mark that single occurrence as done without interfering with the repeat event itself.

When would you use a repeat floating event rather than a regular repeat event? A repeat floating event would be used for anything that you have to do on a regular schedule, but which still needs to be done if not completed on that day. For example, you use a repeat event for a regular doctor's appointment because if you miss it you can't just go in the next day. But for say, giving your dog its monthly worm pill, a repeat floating event is better than an event, because if you forget it on its scheduled day, it automatically carries forward, reminding you on a daily basis until you get it done. Also, you can set an alarm which will get rescheduled each day and nag you about it until you check it off.

Another handy use for repeat floating events is to set up birthday or anniversary reminders. For each event, set up a repeat floating event that is scheduled say 10 days in advance. 10 days before the event, a floating event is created that then floats day by day up to the event until it