What's New In Version 6.0a (Major New Release)
New features in V-6.0a
Major Features
- 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).
- Graphical Weekly 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.).
- Now consistently uses the space bar (either from keyboard
or graffiti stroke) to cycle/toggle between all the sub-views in the
Graphical weekly, Text-Weekly, Monthly and Yearly views.
- Adds preference option for DST changeover time (2am for
USA and most countries, 1am for some EU).
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.
The upgrade to DateBk6 from DateBk5 may be free to users who purchased DateBk5
or a Datebk5 upgrade on or after January 1, 2005 (but they do have to be able to
use the automated upgrade system for which no assistance is given).
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. Note that there is also a
feature in DateBk6 to remove all the special tags that it has placed in the note
field of appointments (Remove All Tags - in the Options menu of
the main preference panel). Do not invoke this feature unless you are
definitely removing DateBk6 as otherwise, you will lose all the special
attributes that you assigned to events with Datebk6. Note that use of this
feature is only to address a cosmetic issue - the tags in the note field have no
affect on any other program.
Cheers!
C. E. Steuart Dewar (aka
CESD), Pimlico Software, Inc.
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