What's New In Version 6.0a (Major New Release)

New features in V-6.0a

• Today Screen with multiple display options including ability to create and edit new appointments and ToDO's and check them off without leaving that screen. Also optionally displays status of VersaMail, phases of the moon, next upcoming alarm and has options to create an alternate or two-color gradient background. Tap on Appt./ToDo to bring up Details, Tap&Hold to go to Day View with item selected. Tap&Hold on date line to go to that day in the day view. Tap on VersaMail line to launch VersaMail.
• Handles location and birthday fields on newer PalmOne devices
• Alarm Manager dialog replaces Next Alarm function - now shows up to 50 future alarms with ability to go directly to that event, also suppress alarm sound until a specific time and displays Days/Hrs/Mins. to next alarm. Also implements a special <NoAlarms> tag in an event which silences all Datebk alarms while that event is in progress
• Todo Sort - allows ToDo's to be sorted on the basis of up to 11 criteria in either ascending/descending order and also to suppress the display of ToDo's based upon those criteria. Custom ToDo Sorting now applies to both integrated display and the SplitScreen display
• Monthly View has a text option to display text of appointments on hi-rez screens (tight, but quite usable, esp. if screen supports landscape mode).
• Context-sensitive popup lists for appointments and ToDo's are now completely user-definable and allow selection of up to 30 different options in any position. Setting the list empty disables the Tap&Hold and setting it to just one item, invokes that item directly.
• Set/Adjust Date/Time of multiple items in List View - allows you to change the date and/or time of appointments or ToDo's to either a fixed date/time or adjust them by an offset, forwards or backwards.
• Saved Views can now have a repeat attribute, start date and independent start/end times. This allows saved views to be automatically triggered and exited at any time of the day and also to follow a repeat specification like repeat events. This replaces the prior, more limited feature of automatically hiding and displaying categories (which has now been removed since it is redundant).
• Adds Urgency attribute to ToDo's which can be used to implement Franklin Covey style prioritization. Urgency is supported in the ToDo sorting and displayed in the Day, List and Today Views.

   Minor Features

• Display Today's date letter in red at top of screen in Day View
• Displays next event in current day (if any) with red time field
• On most phones, Dial Phone # will automatically find phone # in description, location or note and dial it.
• Can now create new events in all views, not just the day view as before
• Adds Include Hidden Categories checkbox to Find/Filter dialog so filtered split-screen display includes all occurrences including items in currently hidden categories
• Implements special <NK> tag for note field of a floating reminder to indicate that it should not be removed when the reminder catches up to today: instead it starts to display a + sign, so [+2] would indicate a reminder for an event that occurred two days earlier. <NK> tag can be placed in original event so that floating reminder, when created, has this attribute set.
• Preference has been added to allow logging of completed ToDo's and Events (both floating and regular) to the Daily Journal along with time stamp of completion (ToDo Preferences).
• Increases size of clipboard inside of DateBk6 from PalmSource standard value of 1,000 characters to the full note limit (32k on newer PalmOne Devices, 4k on other Palm OS devices) so an entire note or memo can always be copied and pasted (from within DateBk6). Items copied or cut are also placed on system clipboard, but truncated to the maximum size that it can handle.
• Daily Journal Template can now have a time or alarm setting which will then appear in newly created journals.
• Recent Icons list is invoked by tapping on the down-arrow button on the top line of Icon Selection Dialog which then pops up a list of the last 14 icons which were selected.
• Note View now supports the use of the four small fonts on High Density devices as well as the four large fonts (Font Dialog in Note View now has Normal/Small selection list). This also applies to editing memos and the note field of Contacts when accessed via Split-Screen.
• Shading of days of month now supported in weekly views as well as monthly and yearly views and the color of the shade is now a user-defined preference option.
• Allows up to four separate icons to be specified in the List View for filtering the display.
• Icons are now displayed on floating reminders and floating reminders can be selectively hidden in the Monthly and Graphical Weekly views (to avoid confusing icons on reminders with the target event itself).
• All Items to MemoPad now supports <Add-Time: hh:mm> meta tag which can be followed by hours and/or minutes in the format (12h 30m or 5:30 etc.). This will add that time to the duration of the event (can be useful in setting up fixed templates, etc.). Also supports <add$: dd.cc> meta tag which can add a fixed monetary amount (in form 23.12 or 135,156 or .24 etc.).

Note that DateBk6 now requires two prc files to be installed. Due to size limitations in the Palm OS development tools, the program had to be split up into two separate modules. DateBk6 has a new registration system. Registration codes from DateBk3 or Datebk4/5 will not work with Datebk6. The upgrade to DateBk6 from DateBk5 will be free to users who purchased DateBk5 or a Datebk5 upgrade on or after January 1, 2005.

Downgrading back to DateBk5:

If you decided you want to downgrade to DateBk5 either temporarily or permanently, be sure that you do not have the startup view set to the Today View as that did not exist in DateBk5 and can under some circumstances cause a reset if DateBk5 is reading DateBk6's preferences. Either restore your original DateBk5DB preferences or delete the DateBk6DB preference database if you encounter any problems downgrading.