Hi everyone, For those not subscribed to the talk list, please read on. (smile)
Thanks, and all the best, Rod Hutton -----Original Message----- From: Talk [mailto:talk-bounces+rod_hutton=hotmail....@lists.window-eyes.com] On Behalf Of Rod Hutton via Talk Sent: Friday, January 13, 2017 2:43 PM To: Window-Eyes Discussion List <t...@lists.window-eyes.com> Subject: New app - Easy Calendar 1.0! Hi everyone, I would like to let you know about a new app I've just submitted: it's called Easy Calendar! Here's how to find and install it: Open the Apps menu in the Window-Eyes control panel, arrow down to AppGet, and press Enter twice to load the list of available apps. Then, press Control-F to open the search dialog, place my name "Rod Hutton" in the Author field, and ensure that all of the other edit boxes are empty. Tab to the Find button, press Enter, and you should then see a treeview of several categories of apps; these are the categories into which my apps have been placed in the App Central repository. Now, find the General category, press right arrow to expand this category, and arrow down to Easy Calendar. Finally, tab over to the Install button, and press Enter to install Easy Calendar.. At the end of this email message, I've pasted the first part of the documentation for Easy Calendar, just to whet your appetite, and possibly to help you decide whether you'd be interested in taking it for a test drive. I hope you enjoy this app; it is, in fact, a labour of love, as indeed are all of my apps, but I share them, as always, to help make life easier for those of us who push on despite, or perhaps due to, overwhelming odds. (smile) Enjoy, and all the best, Rod Hutton, and please read on for the app introduction Welcom to Easy Calendar! This app speaks the information associated with calendar events stored in a text file, and which you can edit easily using your favorite text editor. While you can still use other calendar software to manage your appointments and other important events, the real power of this app is how easily and quicly you can record an event in Easy Calendar, and have its details spoken to you, either before, or when, the event takes place. Quick Start Easy Calendar stores its calendar events in the text file Easy_Calendar_Events.txt; you can open this file either using a hot key (Control-Alt-F8, by default) or from the Easy Calendar pull-down on the Window-Eyes Apps menu; regardless which method you use, the file will open in the application associated with text files on your system. Easy Calendar is a tool for manually speaking the events you record in the events file; it does not pop up dialogs or alerts. All Calendar events for the current day are spoken using the SpeakEvents hot key (Alt-F8, by default); pressing this key repeatedly will cause the individual events for the current day to be spoken, until you press any other key to return to batch mode. Use the hot keys PreviousDay (F9, by default) and NextDay (F10, by default) to set the day whose events you want spoken; the day you set stays in effect until you change it. When first installed, the events file contains text which is formatted in a special way so that the app will speak messages on certain days; you can review the events file to get a sense of how events are formatted; however, to avoid problems, it is recommended that you read the detailed discussion of how to format events later in this documentation; for now, it is enough to say that Easy Calendar events have a header preceded by a return character, and with a colon at the end of the line, the event's message text is below the header, and any number of blank lines keep calendar events separated. Easy Calendar comes preconfigured to read events at medium rate and without punctuation to make events easy to understand for most people; however, if you prefer to use your current speech settings, choose the Capture option from the Speech parameters for speaking events sub-menu in the Easy Calendar Apps menu pull-down. The events file, Easy_Calendar_Events.txt, being a text file, can be moved to a shared folder (such as DropBox) so that it can be accessed by more than one computer; use the Events file location sub-menu to change or restore its location; keep in mind that if you restore the location of the events file to its default location (the Window-Eyes Profiles folder) on any of the computers which had been sharing it, this will prevent it from being accessed by other computers. A more detailed discussion of changing the events file location can be found later in this documentation. One event header which is not present in the events file when the app is first installed, but which you will most likely want to use right away, is for a specific date. An example of this event header is: January 1, 2017: You will notice that the events file contains event headers similar to the above, but they are missing a year; this makes them annually repeating events, whereas event headers containing a year are unique and non-repeating. Another event header you may wish to use right away is for a certain numbered day in each month. This event header looks like the following: Day 1 of every month: Another event header, helpful for scheduling events occurring on a certain weekday within every month, looks like: First Tuesday of every month: and holidays which occur on a particular weekday within only one month look like: Last Thursday of November: The final two event headers are for ongoing tasks which you want to monitor daily, and they both contain a counter. For example: Task 1 starting January 15, 2017: Cash The above event will count up to the day called "Cash day," serving as a reminder to go to the bank to get needed funds. The events file can only have 10 of this type of event header, Task 1 through Task 10. Note that tasks cannot be greater than two years in duration from the starting date to the current date for Easy Calendar to monitor them. The final event header is similar to the previous one, insofar as it also counts days, but the counter is reset after a specific number of days have elapsed. Here's an example: Task 1 starting Jaunuary 1, 2017 and repeating every 30: Meds The above event will count the days since starting medication, thereby serving to remind you how long you been taking it, when it will run out, and when to refill it, if necessary. The events file can only have 12 of this type of event header, Task 1 through Task 3, for each of four intervals, that is, 2, 14, 28, and 30 days. Again, note that tasks cannot be greater than two years in duration from the starting date to the current date for Easy Calendar to monitor them. Easy Calendar speaks messages not only on the actual day scheduled events occur, but, for those events for which this makes sense, messages will also be spoken prefixed by the phrase "Reminder for," along with the number of days, i.e., 14, 7,3, 2 and 1 day prior to the actual event. This makes it easy to keep track of upcoming events. Again, more detailed information for using Easy Calendar can be found later in this documentation, but, for now, this should get you up and running with Easy Calendar. The purpose and features of Easy Calendar For those of us who are blind, keeping track of appointments and important dates is an ongoing challenge. In the realm of adaptive technology software, it is possible to find accessible calendar programs, and even mainstream calendar software has been made quite accessible by screen reader software developers; indeed, even Apple's Calendar program in its mobile operating system, IOS, is very accessible. While all of this is true, for the longest time it has amazed me how complicated it is to record an appointment using any software or device. When I first learned to use a computer over 30 years ago, I thought it was so wonderful how much one could accomplish using simple text files in DOS at the system prompt. I learned to write simple batch files to run software with multiple parameters on the command line, allowing me to automate repetitive tasks. As time went on, I learned to write more and more complex batch files, and, up to quite recently, to have messages spoken at specific times on particular days. I had become so dependent on this message system that when I got my first 64-bit PC and found that the tools I had been using would no longer work, since they were based on 32-bit hardware, it felt as though my world had fallen apart. It was then that I was fortunate enough to learn Window-Eyes app development through the archived class lessons taught by Chip Orange. Using Window-Eyes scripting, I was able to restore the message system I had used before. I have created quite a large number of apps over the last few years since learning Window-Eyes scripting. However, it was only recently that I decided to try to transform the speaking calendar, the very first app I created, into something which the entire Window-Eyes user community could use effectively. To be honest, I doubted seriously whether I could actually do this; this is because it is relatively easy for a programmer to build an app which they can use and manage, because they know how to use it in such a way that it doesn't produce errors which cause the app to fail; however, if they want to share their program with others, they have to take great pains to design it to allow others to use it problem-free. I was fortunate that I was able to upgrade my app so that it can be used effectively by everyone, as long as they learn how. I have provided this background in order to try to explain the basis of my approach in designing Easy Calendar. The text-based solutions I have used over the years have always been easy to customize, and, for this reason, I have been able to have the information I need read whenever I want, and in the form I wanted. This may seem somewhat unnecessary to some, but I have good reason to care how time-sensitive information is presented in my daily life. Both I and my wife are blind, and we are both very sensitive to how each item in our calendar is spoken, how much is presented at one time, and how easily it can be reviewed. Therefore, I have designed this app to allow for a reasonably high degree of flexibility in reading the contents of the calendar which my wife and I use on a daily basis. ----- Here ends the Easy Calendar announcement email ----- _______________________________________________ Any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Ai Squared. For membership options, visit http://lists.window-eyes.com/options.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com/rod_hutton%40hotmail.com. For subscription options, visit http://lists.window-eyes.com/listinfo.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com List archives can be found at http://lists.window-eyes.com/private.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com _______________________________________________ Any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Ai Squared. For membership options, visit http://lists.window-eyes.com/options.cgi/scripting-window-eyes.com/archive%40mail-archive.com. For subscription options, visit http://lists.window-eyes.com/listinfo.cgi/scripting-window-eyes.com List archives can be found at http://lists.window-eyes.com/private.cgi/scripting-window-eyes.com
