Harry (Version 1.11): 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
eight 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. Several improvements have been made to the version originally published
on the 6:4 magazine disc, the most important of which is that Harry can now
handle leap years.

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
------------
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.
        The date shown in the list window can be displayed either "as is",
        e.g. "Monday, 23rd January", or in a "friendly format", e.g.
        "tomorrow" or "yesterday" or "Monday". This is controlled by an
        option in the Settings dialogue box (see below). 
         
        Alternatively, no date may be specified, in which case a question
        mark is displayed in the list window instead of a date, or it may be
        given as "asap" (as soon as possible). A task marked as 'asap' will
        be placed first in the sorting order; one with no date specified
        will come last.
         
   iii) Category

        The task may be placed into one of eight 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). You can also
        control whether tasks belonging to a particular category are
        displayed. See below for more details.

THE TASK SUBMENU
----------------
Tasks can be selected in a similar way to objects in a Filer window, by
clicking or dragging with Select and Adjust. Double-clicking Select on a
task displays a window giving details of the task, its category and
completion date in both "friendly" and ordinary format. Double-clicking
Adjust displays the "Change task" dialogue box.

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.

CHOOSING CATEGORIES FOR DISPLAY
-------------------------------
The "Show category" menu option leads to a dialogue box which allows you to
control which categories will be displayed in the list. This is useful since
it allows you to effectively keep more than one list at once.

This feature could be used to keep a list of birthdays, for example,
entering the name of the person as the task, their birthday as the task
completion date and using a special category called "Birthday". Tasks in
this category are not normally displayed, but Harry will still remind you
when you load the program if a birthday is near. Once reminded, the birthday
"task" can be deferred by twelve months.

THE SETTINGS DIALOGUE BOX
-------------------------
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.
        Setting the "warn if not completed" flag causes the program to look
        through the list when it is first loaded, and warn you if tasks in
        this category, due to be completed within a number of specified
        days, are not marked as being done. The pre-selected 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 8, 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

      * The "to do" list can be opened automatically on entry if required.

      * 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 a floppy drive
        you may wish to turn this feature off. If you do so, the program
        will prompt you if you try to quit without saving a modified list.
        The list can be loaded and saved specifically using the icon bar
        menu entries.

      * A reminder of today's date can be shown at the bottom of the list.
        This is useful if you have a tendency to forget what day of the
        week it is!

      * You can switch the "friendly" date format on and off.
      
   v)   Warning options
     
        There are options which control whether or not and how you are
        warned of incompleted tasks.

        * Warning can be switched on and off.

        * Normally, Harry will sound a beep when warning; this may be turned
          off.

        * Harry keeps track of when it was last used. You can tell it to
          warn you only once on a particular day, since it may become
          annoying to keep being reminded of particular tasks everytime you
          load the program.

        * The "warn always on boot" option overrides this in the case of the
          program being run from a boot file using the "-warn" option (see
          later). In other words, if you have run the program already today,
          you won't be warned if you load it in yourself, but if you boot up
          your system you will be warned.


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

You could then have the Harry icon on the backdrop, so if you need to
inspect the "to do" list later, you can run the application and it opens the
list automatically. When you quit Harry or shut down your system, any
changes made to the list are saved. The warning options can be set so that
Harry reminds you of incompleted tasks only on rebooting the system and not
when loaded directly.

 RISC User 1993
