The Reminders Window

When you first open PreMinder you will see three main windows. The large calendar window lets you see information in different views such as 'monthly' or 'weekly'. Below it is the Reminders window, which provides a view of information for a single day, and which allows you to edit the information for that day. The window on the left is the Edit Events window, which has controls for adding things like repeating events. To start with we will focus mainly on the Reminders window, which is the starting point for adding things to do, notes or events for a specific day. As you read this article, click on the pink text links to pop up a screenshot of the part of the software the text relates to. In many calendar programs, when you want to add some information you are presented with a lot of complex options that you need to set straight away before you can write your reminder. With PreMinder, the idea is that you can just click once on the day you want to note something for, and start typing. Any more complex options for an event can be added later if they are required. Let's try adding some text for a day. Choose a day in the Calendar window above the Reminders window and click on it. In the Reminders window below, that day's date appears in the date display in the top left and the insertion point starts flashing in the main field in the middle. You can now start typing anything you want. In the main field you can have different fonts, colours and styles in your Reminder messages. Let's look at how to set these now.

In the top-right of the window you will see three dark grey pop-up menu buttons. Select some text in the main field by dragging over it with the mouse cursor. If you click on the leftmost grey button a colour palette appears. When you click on one of the colours, the selected text in the field changes to that colour. The second menu is a text menu, which lets you choose a new font for the selected text, or a style such as bold, italic or underline, or a new font size. The rightmost button can perform various actions on pieces of selected text. If you choose the 'Type Bar' option at the top of the text menu (middle button), an editing bar appears at the top of the window. Type Editing Bar

The Type Bar also lets you change selected text in the Reminders window. You can set the style of text to be plain, bold, italic or underline, and you can set the alignment of text to be left, centre, right or full. You can alter the font and font size using the respective popup menus. To the left of the editing bar is a spell checking panel. Click on the right arrow to find the next spelling mistake in your text or the left arrow to go back to the previous spelling mistake in your text. Click on the ABC button in the middle to pop up a menu of suggestions; choose one to replace the highlighted text. You can also set the language you want to spell check in from this menu, including a multilingual option.

At the bottom-right of the Reminders window are two metal arrow buttons. Click on the right arrow to go to the next day after the currently displayed day. Click on the left arrow to go to the previous day before the currently displayed day.

You can also scrub through Reminders using the slider. To show it, click on the slider button in the bottom-left hand corner of the Reminders window. The slider is divided into twelve sections, one for each month of the current year. As you drag it, it will scrub through each day of the currently displayed year. When you reach the end of the slider, use the right arrow button to jump to the first day of the next year. The Reminders window lets you enter information for the day in a freeform manner. Want to schedule an event? Just start typing a time in the main field in the middle. If you type: 9am-11am meeting with Brad. You will notice that PreMinder automatically recognises you have typed a start and end time for a meeting and it adds the information to the schedule on the left hand side of the window. Try changing the times to see the different ways you can write event times that PreMinder will still recognise:

9-11am
9am-11
9.30-11.30h
11.30-4pm

PreMinder automatically adds text for the auto-event up to the first full stop or return character it finds. If we want to to make this event more formal, for instance add some options to it like an alarm or maybe have it repeat on different days, then we need to extract it from the general text for this day and make it a standalone event. It's easy to do this. Select the text '9am-11am meeting with Brad.'

In the Events field on the right-hand side of the window you will see a small plus button on the right hand side. Click this to remove the selected text from the general reminders field in the middle and add it as an event in the Events field on the right hand side of the window. PreMinder automatically recognises the times it finds in the event and sets the start and end times. Tip:If you want to create a new event from scratch, make sure there is no text selected in the central field, and click on the plus button on the right hand side of the reminders window. You will see the 'Edit Event' field is blank. You can add information to your event, including times which will be automatically recognised. When you are done, click on the green tick icon to save your new event. If the event times were recognised successfully you should see your event appearing in the schedule on the left of the window. In the schedule the event colour changes to the colour of the text. The slight limitation with events as that each event can only have one colour, one font, one text size and one text style, not various colours or text styles throughout the text as a general reminder message can have. However, standalone events can be set to repeat on different days and can also have alarms. Click on your event in the right hand field to edit it. You will notice that the the text of the field changes to only contain the event you are editing, and the title of the field becomes 'Edit Event'. All of the event text becomes selected. If you type a new set of start and end times, these will be recognised automatically as the new times for the event. You can change the colour of the event using the colour menu in the top right of the window, or the font and style using the text menu in the top right of the window. When an event is being edited you an alter repeat, alarm and calendar options using the controls underneath the editing field. To add a repeat to an event, check the 'Repeat Every' box, enter the time interval between repeats in the field underneath and choose between days, weeks months or years in the popup menu. If you want to add a more complex custom repeat, choose one of the options in the lower half of the popup menu and a window will appear allowing more detailed settings. To specify when a repeat event should stop repeating, click on the arrow button to the right of the popup menu and an options window will appear. Calendars popup menu

To change the calendar with which the current event is associated, choose a new calendar from the Calendar popup menu. You can add and edit calendars using the Choose Calendars window which is accessible by clicking on the folder icon in the toolbar of the main Calendar Window. More information about these features can be found by clicking here. To add an alarm to an event, check the 'Alarm' checkbox and choose the type of alarm from the popup menu. 'Notify' will display an alarm using Growl if it is installed. 'Notify- Sticky' will also use Growl but the alarm message will not fade away until you have clicked on it. 'Alert' displays the alarm in a dialog box. 'Email' will send an email to you using the Mail application. 'Open File or URL' will open a file on your computer or a URL in your web browser. Please note that PreMinder must be running for alarms to function. If any alarms happen when PreMinder is not open, they will be reported next time you run PreMinder. You can run PreMinder unobtrusively in the background by choosing 'View > Hide All Windows When in Background' in the menu bar. There is also a 'Pester' setting which allows you to choose any of the previously mentioned alarm options but over a period of time before an event. So you could get an alarm reminder five times in the run-up to an important event. The plus icon to the right of the 'Edit Event' title is a green tick icon. When you have finished editing this event, click on the green tick icon. All of the events for the day will once more appear in the events field.

The Events Window

To show this window, make sure the item 'Edit Events' is ticked in the 'View' menu.

Large Date Display. The Events Window can edit any event that falls on a particular date: either an event which begins or occurs once on the date shown in this large display, or which repeats on the date shown. If you hover the mouse over the day, date or month in the display you will see two arrows appear, which let you increase or decrease the value you are hovering over. If you click on the year, a menu will pop up letting you select another year. This display is for navigation only, it does not change the dates of any events. You don't have to use this display to navigate to a date, you can click on a date in the Calendar window and it will appear in the Events window display. Clicking on the triangle icon near the year will show or hide the rest of the window's editing options.
Select Event Menu. The pop-up menu allows you to choose which event you are editing for the date shown in the display. It will present you with a list of all events that fall on that date, as well as a 'New Event' item for creating a new event.
Start Date Editing Bar. This lets you change the start date for the event. Normally this will be the same as the date shown in the large display at the top of the window. However, sometimes repeating events may fall on a date but start before. For example, if your friend's birthday was on the 4th May it would appear in the Events window when the large display showed 4th May 2009. However, if your friend was born in 1976 then the date bar would show 4th May 1976. Clicking on any part of the date bar allows you to change the start date for the event. If you click on the date, you will see a date picker. You can either type a different date into the field and hit return, or choose a different date in the picker underneath. If you only have the date and month of an event, but not the year, for instance if you knew the date and month of someone's birthday but not the year they were born in, you can add this event by entering a '?' character into the year field. Please note that some types of repeat which depend on knowing the year value won't work with this type of event, but a yearly repeat for a birthday will work.
Start and End Times. If you tick the check-box to the left of the clock icon, you will give your event start and end times. Type the start time in the light blue field and the end time in the darker blue field to the right. Several common ways of writing times are automatically recognised.
Event Text Field. Enter the text for the event in the field here. You can also edit the text for an event in the Reminders window.
Event Options Menus. These three icons are pop-up menus. The first two will display a menu of colour swatches. The left-most one will set the text colour of your event and the middle one will set the background colour of your event. The actions cog menu presents two options:
- Make this a birthday event. This will make an event a birthday event, setting it to repeat on the same date every year from the start date. It will also display the person's age on a specific date in the calendar. You can turn off age calculations by choosing 'Preferences' from the 'PreMinder' menu. Under the 'General' section, un-tick the check-box marked 'calculate people's ages in birthday events'. Age calculation will only work for events with a start year, excluding anyone whose birth year you do not know and have entered a '?' for the year value.
- Delete event. This deletes the currently selected event in the pop-up menu. If you need to retrieve an event which you have accidentally deleted, choose 'Find' from the 'Edit' menu in the menu bar. Choose the 'Events' option and un-tick all the check-boxes except 'Show Items in Trash', which must be ticked. All deleted events will then be displayed in the search results list. If you click on any event in the list, a dialog box will appear asking you if you wish to restore the event: click 'Yes' to remove it from the trash and it will re-appear in your calendar. If you want to completely erase all events in the trash, click on the 'Empty Trash' button in the Search Window. Please note that once you do this, the events are gone forever.
Repeating Event. To set an event to repeat, tick the check-box marked 'Repeat Every'. In the field, enter a number for the frequency of the repeat, then choose 'days', 'weeks', 'months' or 'years' in the pop-up menu next to it. If you choose 'weeks…', 'months…', or 'years…' from this menu under the heading 'Custom' a small window will open allowing you to set more advanced custom repeat options. Further documentation for this will be added soon. You can also open this window by clicking on the plus icon next to the 'Repeat Every' check-box. If you tick the check-box marked 'Until' you can add a date on which repeats for this event will end (Otherwise repeats continue forever). If you hold down the mouse button on the word 'Until' a pop-up menu will appear; choosing 'For' allows you to set the repeat to continue over a certain time span.
Event Alarm. Documentation for this will be added soon.
Attendees Field. Documentation for this will be added soon.

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Version 1.0.4 (6 MB)

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