Harry: Personal Organiser
by Andrew Cumming

Harry is a 'to-do-list' manager. It allows you to maintain a list of tasks which must be completed by specified dates. Tasks may be placed into one of four user-defined categories, and the program can behave in a similar way to Alarm, warning you as the completion date for a particular task draws near.

Running the application in the usual way installs an icon on the icon bar. Clicking Select on the icon bar icon opens a window containing the list.


ADDING TASKS
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Tasks are added to the list using the 'Add task...' entry on the list window menu (or by clicking Adjust on the icon bar icon). This shows the 'Add task' dialogue box, which allows you to enter details about the task:

i) Description

ii) Completion date
This may be specified as a specific date or as a relative time, for example, in 3 days. The date shown initially is always today's date. Alternatively, no date may be specified, in which case a question mark is displayed in the list window instead of a date. The date shown in the list window is in a "friendly format", e.g. "tomorrow" or "yesterday" or "Monday".

iii) Category
The task may be placed into one of four categories. Each category has a short description, and a particular colour, as well as the option of being warned near to or on the completion date, which can be set using the Settings dialogue box (see below).


THE TASK SUBMENU
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Tasks can be selected in a similar way to objects in a Filer window. The 'Task' or 'Selection' submenu allows you to:

i) mark tasks as being completed or not completed - completed tasks are shown by a tick to their left; all of the completed tasks may be removed by using the 'Remove done tasks' entry in the list menu.

ii) defer tasks by a particular number of days, weeks or months.

iii) remove tasks from the list.

iv) change the selected tasks' categories.

v) change the description and other details from a 'Change task' dialogue box.


THE SETTINGS DIALOGUE BOX
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This is accessed from the icon bar menu via the 'Settings...' entry, and allows you to tailor the program to suit your own requirements.

i) Categories
Each category can have a short description and a particular colour. The "warn if not completed" flag when set causes the program to look through the list when it is first loaded, and warn you if tasks in this category and due to be completed within the number of specified days are not marked as being done. The preselected category is the category that is selected on opening the 'Add task...' dialogue box. Note that the categories are sorted in the order 1 to 4, and you may like to take this into account when naming them.

ii) Done colour
This is the colour in which tasks marked as completed are displayed. By default this is colour 3 (grey), i.e. the completed tasks appear "greyed out".

iii) Sorting order
There are two possible sorting orders, either by category then date so that the tasks are grouped firstly by category, or date then category so the tasks are firstly in order of completion date.

iv) Options
Normally, Harry will sound a beep when warning you of incompleted tasks; this may be turned off.

The to do list can be opened automatically on entry if wished.

The data can be automatically saved on exit. This is recommended, particularly if you have a hard disc drive since it allows you to load the program and quit it later without having to worry about specifically saving the data. If you are working from floppy drive you may wish to turn this feature off. If you do so, the program will prompt you if you try and quit without saving a modified list. The list can be loaded and saved specifically using the icon bar menu entries.

The Save icon causes any changes to be noted and the new settings are saved. The OK icon does not result in the settings being saved. Note that any changes to the settings are NOT automatically saved on exiting the program!


SAVING THE LIST AS A TEXT FILE
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The 'Save as text' entry in the list menu leads to a save dialogue box that allows you to save the list as a text file. The list is written to the file as it appears in the window, with spaces seperating the columns.

When saving to another application, the scrap directory is used. Hence floppy disc users should have a !Scrap or old !System directory on an appropriate disc.

The program will use the DragASprite module provided by RISC OS 3 (if the appropriate CMOS RAM bit has been set).


RUNNING HARRY FROM A BOOT FILE: THE -warn FLAG
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If you run Harry from an Obey file (such as your Boot file) with a line such as:
Run ADFS::HardDisc4.$.!Harry -warn
the -warn flag causes it to check through the list on entry (and warn you about any incompleted tasks if necessary) and then quit immediately.

If no warnings are necessary, this operation will be completely transparent - the program simply loads then exits. If not, a window will be displayed giving details of the first incompleted task. Clicking the OK button will display the next task until no more are left when the program will exit, clicking CANCEL will exit the program immediately and clicking SHOW LIST will open the window showing the list, i.e. run the program properly.

This is useful when used in a boot file since it allows you to be notified of any tasks that need to be completed without having to explicitly load Harry. It also means that the application is not left running; this could be important if you only have 1Mb.


CONFIGURING YOUR SYSTEM
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The -warn flag and the various settings can be used to tailor the program to your own requirements. For example, I use RISC OS 3 together with a hard drive on a 1Mb A3000. In my boot file is a line to run Harry with the -warn flag. When I switch on, Harry loads and quits quite transparently, only notifying me if there is some urgent piece of work that needs to be completed.

I then have the Harry icon on the backdrop, so if I need to inspect the to do list later, I run the application and it opens the list automatically. When I quit Harry or shut down my system, any changes made to the list are saved.

 RISC User 1993
