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Calendar Homepage : Special Days Information

General Information:

Special Days are events like holidays that occur on specific days of every year, however are not limited to just national holidays, but can be other events like birthdays, religious events, and anything else significant that occurs annually. Calendar v1.0 has the ability to handle and display Special Days on the calendar and in list form where the entries are managed, and an important feature this program gives is the ability for users to set their own special days.

From the second item of the Main Menu: "Display Special Days", the user can see a list of all the special day entries that have been stored, viewing each of their titles (e.g., "New Year's Day") in the list, and then the date phrases in which they fall on (e.g., "01/01 - January 1st") are shown at the bottom of the screen when the user points to each of the titles using an arrow cursor. The list of special days may exceed the viewing area of the screen, so the entries may be scrolled up and down using the arrow cursor that the user controls with the Up/Down keys.

This program has several Built-In special days that are stored by default, and these consist mostly of United States holidays and other notable U.S. events. If the user does not celebrate some of these days and wishes to not view them, the entries may be Deleted, as well as any other entry that the user has created and wants to get rid of. Pressing the Del key on an entry will remove it from the list, and scroll any entries below it upwards into the current position. If the option is set to "Confirm on Deletion", then a message will appear on the screen making sure the user wants to delete the selected user day.

From this section of the program the user may also Add a new entry using the function at the top of the list: "Create New Special Day". Pressing enter on this function will take the user to a series of screens that allow them to choose the date for which this event falls on, and then type the title of the special day. Any day that is added will be displayed in the list in sequential order of storage, and when viewing the calendar, every special day event will have its date value shown in inverted text for easier identifying.

Below is a summary of all the keys that can be used on the Special Days list, and during the process of Creating a New Special Day. Located further down is more information about each of the aspects of the Special Days section of this program.



    





Summary of Special Day Keys:

When On The Special Days List:

Enter/2nd:    Activates the Function to Create a New
Special Day when Cursor is on First Item.

Up: Moves Cursor Up and Scrolls List Down.
Down: Moves Cursor Down and Scrolls List Up.
Del: Delete the Selected Special Day.

Clear: Returns to the Main Menu of Calendar.
Mode: Quits the Program Back to MirageOS.

When Creating A Special Day:

Enter/2nd:    Processes the Currently Selected Item in Lists.
Selects Fixed or Relative Sp Day on 1st Screen.
Increases Selection by One for Sp Day Aspects.
Confirms Sp Day Title at Text Input (Not 2nd).

Up: Moves Cursor Up in Selection Lists.
Down: Moves Cursor Down in Selection Lists.
Left: Decreases Day/Month Aspect Rapidly.
Right: Increases Day/Month Aspect Rapidly.

Clear: Returns to the Special Days List.
Mode: Quits the Program Back to MirageOS.

Creating Special Days:

Creating a New Special Day is an aspect of this program that takes the user through a series of three screens: The first one allows the user to decide whether the entry will be a 'Fixed Day' or a 'Relative Day', the second screen lets the user choose the Day and Month which the special day falls on, and then the third screen lets them type the Title of the special day entry. Pressing Clear at any time during this process, except when typing a title, will abort the creation of a new entry, and will return to the Special Days list.

First of all, the difference between a Fixed and Relative date is that Fixed days have actual month and day values that do not change from year to year, and Relative days occur on certain days of the week in a month and which do not always have the same exact date. For example, New Year's Day is a Fixed Date since it always falls on 01/01, and Martin Luther King Jr. Day always occurs on the 3rd Monday in January. For 2001, this exact date was January the 15th, but in 2002 it will be January the 19th. This aspect occurs for other Special Days as well that are built in, and the same functionality is given to the user when they are creating a special date.

The second screen has a selection list of several items that the user must choose before they proceed to typing the title of the special day. For Fixed Days, there are selections for the Month: January through December, and the Day: 01 through 31 (or whatever the maximum is depending on the month). The third item in this selection list is where the user should press Enter to move on to the next screen. For Relative Dates, the selection list consists of slightly different items for the user to choose, but the first one is the same: To select which month the day occurs in. The next item allows the user to select which Week of that month the special day occurs in: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or Last, and then the third item asks for which Day Of The Week that the special day should fall on: Sunday through Saturday. The fourth item is where the user should press enter to confirm this information and move on.

The next screen of this process to Create a New Special Day is where the user will enter the Title of the day that will be shown in the Special Days list and when viewing the event from the calendar. The Text Input routine of Calendar v1.0 is used here, which lets the user to type characters of Uppercase, Lowercase, Numbers, and Miscellaneous chars, also giving abilities of text editing such as Moving a cursor back and forth in the text, Deleting characters, overwriting or inserting characters, and clearing the line completely. See the section of this Calendar Homepage on Text & Date Input Info for complete details on how this process works. The user should press Enter when they are done typing the Title of the Special Day, and this will complete the process of creating a new entry, then return the user to the Special Days list.



    







Deleting Special Days:

To Delete a Special Day that has been stored into the program, either Built-In by default, or created by a user, you must go to the Special Days list, point to the chosen day with the arrow cursor, and then press the Del key. A message will appear that says: "Delete Sp Day? (Y/N)", confirming whether or not the user actually wants to delete the entry. At this point, they should press the 'Y' key to finish deleting the Special Day, or 'N' to cancel that deletion. Here, the Clear key will also function to cancel the deletion. This confirmation message is provided to protect any Special Day entries from being accidentally deleted with the Del key. However, this message can become annoying and slow down the user from quickly getting rid of entries. For this reason, there is an option found at the Options Screen where the user can turn of these confirmation messages upon deletion. View the Options/Commands Info page for more details on this aspect. When Special Day entries are deleted with this option off, they will immediately be removed and the remaining entries below will be shifted upwards. If the cursor is at the bottom of the Special Days list when an entry is deleted, then the cursor will be shifted up one position to the previous entry.



    




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Last Modified: 2002-09-03 22:01:22 GMT