What's New In Version 6.0a & 6.1a (Major New Release)

New features in V-6.1a

• You can now optionally hide the status bar (See More(2) Adv. Settings) on newer PalmOne devices or other devices that support the standard Palm OS API for hiding the status bar. This gains one or two lines of additional display in most views. Tap within a couple of pixels of the bottom of the status bar to toggle its display (or on the edge of the screen if you are in landscape mode).
• Adds Find/Highlight Text function to Options Menu for memos and attached notes in appointments, ToDo's or contacts. Replaces Restore.. button with Find... button (Restore is now a menu option under OPTIONS menu). Brief Tap on button will resume search throughout text if there are more matches. A Tap&Hold will always bring up the find dialog to enter a new text string. Shift-Period (pressed at the same time) on Treo and other keyboard-only devices will perform the same function a brief tap on the Find button.
• Now supports Anniversaries in the latest version of the PalmOne Contacts Database and provides separate preferences for icon, font and color. Also includes meta-tag <AnniversName=yyyy> which allows you to provide the text to be displayed for the anniversary (for example: <AnniversName=S & P's Wedding> ).
• Now supports display of Location field in Today View (you can set for 1, 2 or all lines to also display the location field on the line below - go into Options | View Display Options, tap on the top line selector and then on Show Location Field's popup list).
• Alarms are now handled by the smaller DateBk6-resources.prc file which allows you to put the main DateBk6.prc file on an external memory card and still have DateBk6 handle alarms.
• Changes Type of DateBk6-resources program so it's visible in the Palm menus (but not in the launch screen), so it can be explicitly beamed and deleted (previously it was completely hidden).
• Adds advanced option (See More(3) Adv. Settings) to avoid generating a DateBk6 style category tag if that is the only special attribute for an appointment - may be appropriate for some users with newer PalmOne devices that handle categories.
• Now displays all the MEETING information set by the Outlook Conduit (in Details Dialog see new icon that appears just below category information). Note: Reply/Reply-ALL buttons do not currently launch the Email Application).
• Provides compatibility between the way Palm's proprietary Calendar app handles timezones and how DateBk6 handles timezones. Changes made in either app, or on the desktop, are now properly reflected in all three places. There is an option to avoid this compatibility (See More(3) Adv. Settings) - by default, DateBk6 will provide this compatibility.
• Provides an option for compatibility between the way Palm's proprietary Tasks app handles repeats and alarms and how DateBk6 handles repeats and alarms. Changes made in either app, or on the desktop, are now properly reflected in all three places. This preference option is not set by default (See More(3) Adv. Settings).
• Now displays age/anniversary in the Day Details view of the second weekly view with text.
• Adds new option to split-screen menu: Top/Bottom Of List: if the list is currently displaying the first page, it moves to display the last page of the split-screen list, otherwise it displays the first page. This can also be used to shift the focus to the split-screen for devices that do not have a Treo-Style center button to shift the focus.
• Adds new note field meta-tag: with the form: <FixedTime> in the note field of a template. When used, this will always insert the template at the template's fixed time, regardless of whether or not a time slot was selected at the time the template was inserted.
• Adds three new meta-tags for note field for templates: <ForceInsert>, <ForceDetails> and <ForceReminder>. These meta-tags will override whatever pushbutton was selected when the template was selected. For example, a Reminder type template can now have <ForceReminder> so it will always bring up the duration dialog regardless of which pushbutton was selected. <ForceInsert> can be used in a view other than the DayView to always insert a template using the default time of that template (Normally, the details dialog would appear if the view is not the Day View).
• Adds 20 minute option for snooze interval.
• Menu/Period in the Day View now invokes the link function as if the Link pushbutton had been tapped (convenient for keyboard users). This option is in the MISC menu in the Day View.
• Adds options in Today View to display up to the next 2 weeks or 4 weeks of appointments.
• Adds option to have alarms sound on the first advance day and every day up to the due date on ToDo's.
• DateBk6 now detects changes to the calendar and Tasks databases made outside of DateBk6 and optimizes the sort and global find accordingly (previously, only changes due to hotsync were detected)
• Left on the 5-way navigator in the Today View now goes to yesterday in the day view (previously this did nothing - seems like a useful function, since Right goes to today in the Day View).
• Adds menu item and support for option-option-backspace in Today view to toggle status of appointments as well as Floats and ToDos.
• Adds new meta-tag for templates (<ScheduleIn hh:mm> or <ScheduleIn mm>) which will cause the template to be inserted at some future time from now (useful for preset alarms like parking meters, etc.) The value can be negative as well as positive.
• Now retains position in ToDo List in both split-screen and integrated mode when an item is rescheduled to another day (used to refresh the list and reset to the top).
• Adds solid line at noon in graphical weekly view to make it easier to distinguish morning from afternoon appointments.
• Adds ability to display text of ToDo's in the monthly view (in V-6.0 only appointments were displayed).
• Avoids losing position in Todo list (integrated or SplitScreen) when an item is rescheduled to a new day and the option to display that day is not set.
• Shift/Period in Day View with a ToDo selected now pops up the date reschedule list.
• Pressing (or graffiti'ing) the letter 'g' in the Today View with an item selected will now go directly to the Day View with that item selected in that view (similar to Tap&Hold function).

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.).

Important Note:

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.

BLOBs

DateBk6 now handles BLOBs in the newer PIM databases. Because of this, you may see all kinds of BLOB errors that you never saw in 6.0 - this is not a bug in V-6.1, but rather an indication of some corruption (often benign) that should be cleaned up. Either do a hotsync with the desktop overwriting the handheld for the calendar database, or use the new copy of dbScan in the AdvancedStuff.zip file, launch it, tap on Other button, and select Calendar DB BLOB Check from the Options menu. This feature will remove all improperly formatted BLOBs from the calendar database. This is done automatically by DateBk6 when upgrading from 6.0 or any earlier version of DateBk, but if an older version of 6.1 had ever been installed for testing purposes, this automatic cleanup might not have been invoked.

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.