New Features in the V-5.1a Release of DateBk5:

Extensive Support for High Density Mode on OS5 Tungsten and Clie devices

V-5.1a adds extensive support for the high density screens of OS5 and high resolution Clie devices

• Day View can display in optional "Small" or "Tiny" mode using tiny versions of the 4 standard fonts (OS5 devices only)
• Split screen can display with Small or Tiny font (separate from Day View setting) - (OS5 devices only)
• Small and Tiny font mode support in the 1/2-1-2 week and list views
• New full-year calendar display with digits displayed
• Four/six month view uses smoother, more legigle small fonts rather than vector-drawn fonts
• Small icon mode in monthly view allows up to twelve icons to be displayed in each cell (Tungsten) or twenty on a Clie with graffiti hidden
• High density icons are supported in all views

High density icons supported - up to 2,600 icons

Datebk5 now supports the display of high density icons on all OS5 devices and all high-resolution Sony Clie's running OS4- these are icons created on a 20x18 matrix rather than the normal 10x9 matrix. Third party icon designers are now starting to produce icon collections featuring high-density icons. For now, you cannot edit these collections with dbIcon, but you can edit them with a third party shareware icon editor (IconMgr - available from most, popular Palm Software archives). A future version of dbIcon may add support for managing high-density icon collections. In small/tiny modes, DateBk5 will choose the low density version of the icon if available, or (OS5 devices only) will automatically rescale the high density icon on the fly to fit in the 10x8 slot. DateBk4 now supports icon collections up to 2,600 icons.

Option to track icons by Resource ID

This option makes it possible to have DateBk5 track icons by ID instead of index position. This allows you to move icons around and not lose any current associations in the Datebook database. However, you must ensure that the resource ID's are still less than 2,599 and you would only be able to use a third party icon editor that allows id tracking by resource ID (right now IconMgr meets that criteria). dbIcon does not support this option at present.

System Icons now in Color

All system icons are now displayed in color in all views (on color devices only, of course!). There are also high density system icons for use on high density OS5 and Clie devices.

Tungsten Navigator Dial support

The Navigator dial on the Tungsten device is now treated like a jog dial/wheel device so a press can be used to select items, and up/down and left/right function differently depending upon what view you are in. Note: the manner in which DateBk5 utilizes the Navigator device is intentionally not identical to the way that it works in the built-in Palm datebook application. The precise operation of the Navigator dial is covered in the DateBk5 user manual.

TapAndHold on Call/Action Button

TapAndHold on the Call/Action Button now displays all categories including categories that would otherwise be hidden. This is similar to how the Template button works now.

Alarm Selection by Duration for ToDo's

A TapAndHold on alarm selector in the ToDo details dialog now brings up the duration dialog so an alarm can be set at some number of hours and minutes in the future (as opposed to at a specific time).

Popup List in Day View enhanced

The popup list in the day view now displays the text of the selected item in white on Red (or black on B&W devices) on the top line for confirmation that the correct item was selected. Advance 1 Day option was added to the ToDo popup list to match the appointment popup list.

Snooze All Alarms

There is now a button in the Alarm Dialog labeled All (appears right below the snooze button when there are one or more pending alarms stacked up behind the current alarm) which will snooze all pending alarms. All pending alarms (and the number of pending alarms is now displayed in the Title window of the Alarm dialog) will be snoozed to the designated snooze interval in the popup list above

Snooze To Specific Time

There is now a Clock option in the popup list above the snooze button at top right of the alarm dialog. Select this item, and DateBk5 displays a dialog where you can set the time of day at which the next alarm will go off. This avoids having to calculate the duration for a snooze when all you want to do is snooze an alarm say to 4:35pm.

Limit # of display lines in Day View

There is now an option in the VIEW DISPLAY OPTIONS dialog of the Day View to limit the number of lines displayed in that view (Maximum display lines). Normally the default is All to display lines of the description, but you can select any number from 1-5 instead. When that is done, an ellipsis appears at the right-edge of the description to indicate that the description has been truncated to fit the maximum number of lines. Tap on the description and it will automatically expand as you enter edit mode, and automatically collapses when the focus is put elsewhere on the screen. This works with both Appointments and ToDo's in the Day View. Caution: The Palm OS table handler has some flaws and there have been some conditions under which expanding a very long entry that is longer than the number of rows displayed in the table can cause the Palm OS to hang. There is no way to work around this Palm OS issue, but it happens so rarely, that a decision was made to provide a warning to users about this rather than simply eliminate this extremely useful feature.

Elimination of conflict with Datebook+ on Handspring devices

DateBk5 now uses a slightly different method of handling completed floating events which eliminates the conflict with Datebook+ on Handspring organizer and communicators (Visor, Treo, etc.). In order to benefit from this feature, Handspring users must first hotsync with the desktop overwriting the handheld in order to "prep" the database first for the use of this feature.

Elimination of Duplicate Alarms

DateBk5 now eliminates the problem of duplicate alarms occurring after a hotsync if DateBk5 was not run. However, this is only supported on OS 3.5 and later systems. On earlier systems or on Samsung phones, you would still need to run Datebk5 after every hotsync to ensure that duplicate alarms do not occur.

Option to Remove Icons and Colors on Beamed-in events

There is now an option in the BeamRcv tab of the main DateBk5 preference panel, which if checked will cause any explicitly-assigned icon or color on a beamed event to be removed. This makes it easier to ensure that when sharing calendars, another person's calendar can always appear in a unique color or with a unique icon. Without this option, you can set a default icon or color, but any explicitly assigned icon or color would prevail. Also, it may make no sense to try and use an icon or color from another person's device as they likely have a different icon collection, and may well have a different color palette as well...

Category Move and Private Flag

The category move function (Options | Category Move in the Day view) or the category change function in the List View will now set the private flag on all items moved into a category that has the Private flag checked in its profile and will clear the flag if items are moved from a category that has the private flag set into a category that does not have it set. Note that when clearing the flags, the flags are only cleared if the source category had the private attribute set and the destination does not.

Lock feature in Graphical Weekly View

There is now a lock icon in the graphical weekly view. When locked, you cannot inadvertently drag items around on the screen. When unlocked, you can drag and drop items to new days and times. Tap the icon button to toggle the state. This is remembered as a preference item.

Recover Last Alarm

In the Alarms tab of the main DateBk5 Preference panel (Options | Preferences in any view) there is now a LAST button. Tap this button and DateBK5 will re-invoke the most recent alarm that went off. You can now dismiss or snooze that alarm.

More Advanced Settings

In the Display Options menu of the main preference panel (Options | Preferences in any view) there are now several new settings:

• Track icons by Resource ID. When this option is selected, all icons are tracked by Resource ID rather than by index position in the file (as has previously been the case). The advantage of this is that you can move icons around without affecting existing icon assignments in the Datebook Database. To use this feature if you are upgrading, you will likely need to reset all the resource ID's to match the index position to start off with in the third party application IconMgr (Shareware available at most Palm Software Archives) and then set this option in DateBk5.
• Hide Underline Dots (std). This option allows you to hide the underline dots that normally appear underneath the text in the Day View. The end result is similar to what a third-party hack accomplished on OS4 and earlier systems, but since hacks are no longer compatible with OS5, DateBk5 now has this feature built in.
• Hide Underline Dots (Tiny). Same as option above except it only applies when the TINY option is set in the VIEW DISPLAY OPTIONS dialog of the Day View. When really small text is displayed, the dots are more obtrusive, so more users may wish to use this option when using the Tiny option.
• Hide Underline Dots (Note). Hides the underline dots in the Note display. This also applies to attached notes in the Address and ToDo databases, and to all memos.
• Suppress links set by program. Normally, DateBk5 will link exceptions to repeat events to the repeat event itself (so you can easily manipulate the repeat and all exceptions) and also links advances to the target event (so if you see an advance, you can move instantly to the event itself). If you don't like this feature, you prevent the links from being set by checking this option.
• Use Low-Rez Year View. On high-rez devices, Datebk5 now displays the days of the month instead of unlabled boxes, However, some users may prefer the old-style low-rez display, so this option exists to use the low-rez version.
• Language: Reads Right-To-Left. When checked, this tells DateBk5 that there is a language hack/extension that is displaying text from right-to-left. This is needed in the Day view to ensure that colored text appears properly. It does not, at this time, affect any other views.
• Unfiled Category can be hidden. Unless this box is checked, you can no longer hide the unfiled category. Many new users were inadvertently hiding the unfiled category and then not understanding why all their appointments disappeared.

Other Minor Changes

• DateBK5 has newly-designed application icons, including a spiffy new icon for high density devices (including an all-appropriate gorilla!) - courtesy of Designs-by-Bert.
• Adds Struck option to the List View export-to-memopad function which allows struck items to be excluded from the export
• Added 15m option for the default snooze time (default snooze time is the time that appears on the rightmost button in the alarm dialog).
• Flush of event queue on alarms now takes place between multiple, stacked alarms (prevents inadvertent dismissal of more than one alarm when the screen is double-tapped, etc.).
• If dbAlarm is installed, DateBk5 no longer sets a wakeup alarm after a time change or other condition that would normally trigger the built-in datebook to reschedule alarms (which in turn required that DateBk5 weak up to squash them. This avoids unexpected "wakeups" with apps like ClockFix which are constantly changing the time on a device.
• If the Jog Dial/Navigator button is pressed when the popup list of appts/Todo's is displayed (month/4-month/year views), it will either dismiss the dialog (if the top line is selected), or go to that item in the day view (if an item is selected).
• Press of Jog Dial/Navigator in month view when no day is selected now goes to today's month
• Quick double-press of Navigator dial now cycles through views (sometimes handy especially if cover is in place on Tungsten)
• Automatically removes any old version of DateBk4 when installed and no longer complains when launcher shortcuts are used (i.e. when DateBk5 is placed on a card and a shortcut is placed in RAM).
• Edit menu support has been added to the registration dialog
• Display of icons in all views is now defaulted to the display condition if a color icon file is found when first creating the default DateBk5DB preference database.
• Template button has now been changed visually to look more like a conventional button and the Restore... button in note dialog now inverts in a manner identical to standard Palm buttons
• Float/done icons are now placed at the end of the line in the list view in order to make it easier to sort through those items
• If you use a bold font as the default in the day view, toggling the font will now toggle between bold and the Large Bold font.
• Weekly view now uses less obtrusive gray lines to draw the grid
• A bold line is now drawn between years in the list view
• Translations for the French and German versions include several revisions
• Increased maximum number of links allowed from 20 to 50
• Several obscure bugs and/or inconsistencies were corrected in this release.
• The Remind-Me and Play # of Times alarm options now include a value of None/Never to either silence alarms completely, or avoid any reminder alarms at all.
• Instead of displaying nothing, DateBk5 now displays a "null" icon which consists of a red box with an X inside.