© Copyright Psion Limited 1987.
All rights reserved. This manual and the programs referred to herein are copyrighted works of Psion Limited, London, England. Reproduction in whole or in part, including utilisation in machines capable of reproduction or retrieval, without the express written permission of Psion Limited, is prohibited. Reverse engineering is also prohibited.
The information in this document is subject to change without notice.
IBM is a trademark of International Business Machines Corp.
Sidekick is a trademark of Borland International Inc.
Typeset by Lotus Reprographic Services, London
Printed by Premier Metropolis, London
1 Introduction 2 Getting Started 3 Saving a Diary to your PC 4 Loading a Diary from your PC 5 Merging two Diaries together 6 Default filenames A Diary Link error messages B The Psion Diary Format on a PC C Psion-Sidekick Compatibility
The DIARY LINK program is designed to help you transfer diary information between your Psion Organiser II and any IBM PC or compatible. It allows you to save and load your Organiser diary (or, if you wish, diary files saved on your Organiser) to and from the PC, complete with any alarms. It can also merge Organiser diaries with diaries saved on your PC.
DIARY LINK uses plain typeable text on your PC, allowing you to use any PC text editor or word processor either to create a diary for loading into your Organiser, or to edit a diary already saved by DIARY LINK from your Organiser. This plain text format means that you can easily print Organiser diaries which you save to your PC, or use the diary information in other ways.
In addition to plain text, DIARY LINK recognises the format used by the calendar function in Borland's PC program "Sidekick". If you own a copy of Sidekick on your PC, this means that you can interchange diaries between Sidekick and your Organiser.
If you keep a diary on your PC, whether as plain text or in Sidekick format, you can load it into your Organiser and take it out with you. If you then make changes to the diary on either machine (or even on both of them), you can use DIARY LINK to merge them back into one up-to-date diary
DIARY LINK is supplied on a PC floppy disk, and it must be loaded into the Organiser by the Psion communications package, COMMS LINK. Together they will require less than 6K of Organiser memory. Consequently, DIARY LINK can run on all versions of the Organiser, although on a model CM you will clearly be restricted in the size of your diary and other data in memory.
Chapter 2 gives a full explanation of how to start using DIARY LINK. You should read it carefully, and follow its instructions. This will enable you to get as far as making the DIARY LINK menu appear on your Organiser screen. You can then move on to chapters 3 and 4, which explain how to save and load Organiser diaries to and from your PC.
From chapter 3 onwards each chapter ends with a brief summary. If you are already used to the Organiser and its other products then you may want to use these summaries most of the time, only referring to the main parts of the chapters for more specific information.
DIARY LINK may occasionally give you warnings while transferring diary information; this is explained in the relevant chapters. If warnings do occur, you may find it useful to refer to appendix B, which explains the Psion format for PC diaries, and appendix C, which examines the compatibility of Organiser diaries and Sidekick calendars.
The DIARY LINK software is supplied on a floppy disk, suitable for use on any IBM PC (including the IBM PC/AT), or compatible machine. DIARY LINK can only be used in conjunction with the Psion communications package, COMMS LINK.
You must first copy all of the files from the supplied DIARY LINK disk to the same place on your PC as your COMMS LINK software (either another floppy disk or a directory on a hard disk). For example, if your PC has a floppy disk drive called drive A:, and your COMMS LINK software has been installed on a hard disk directory called C:\COMMS, insert your DIARY LINK floppy disk into drive A: and type
copy a:*.* c:\comms [ENTER]
When you have copied all the files from the DIARY LINK disk to your COMMS LINK drive or directory, keep the original DIARY LINK disk sale as a backup copy.
First, physically connect your Organiser to your PC with your COMMS LINK cable, and run the COMMS LINK software on the PC. Your COMMS LINK manual will explain the different options which you can use when running the COMMS LINK software. However, in general you need do only two things.
Firstly, make the COMMS LINK drive or directory the current one. For example, if the COMMS LINK software is on a hard disk directory called C:\COMMS, make this the current directory by typing:
c: [ENTER] cd \comms [ENTER]
Secondly, run the COMMS LINK software by typing:
cl [ENTER]
You are now ready to run the DIARY LINK software itself. From this point onwards, you will only need to use your Organiser, not your PC.
Return to the top-level menu on the Organiser (which normally begins with "FIND", "SAVE" and "DIARY") and, with the COMMS LINK lead plugged in, press [ON/CLEAR]. This will ensure that the "COMMS" option is added near the end of the top-level menu. Move the cursor to the "COMMS" option and press [EXE] to select it. You will be presented with a new menu of COMMS options, from which you should select "BOOT". This will give the prompt "Name:" asking you to type in the name of a program to load and run from the PC. Type:
DLINK [EXE]
The DIARY LINK program will now be loaded, provided that there is enough free memory (about 2K) on your Organiser. If you do not have sufficient memory, an error message will be displayed and you will be returned to the COMMS LINK menu. If this happens, you will need to free some more memory by deleting some data records, diary entries, files or programs from device A:, before trying to run DIARY LINK again.
You will now see the DIARY LINK menu on the Organiser screen. It contains the following items:
MERGE merge PC and Organiser diaries TRANSMIT save a diary file to your PC RECEIVE load a diary file from your PC DEFAULTS set default filenames QUIT leave DIARY LINK
You are now ready to save and load diary files to your PC, as described in the following chapters.
When you have finished using DIARY LINK, select the "QUIT" option from the DIARY LINK menu. This will return you to the COMMS LINK menu, and the memory used by DIARY LlNK will be freed again.
Select the "TRANSMIT" option from the DIARY LINK menu. A new menu will appear, containing just the two items "CURRENT" and "SAVED".
If you wish to transmit your current Organiser diary to your PC, select "CURRENT".
If you wish instead to transmit a saved diary file on your Organiser, select "SAVED". DIARY LINK will in this case display the prompt "FILE" followed by the current device letter (eg "FILE A:"). If necessary, press [MODE] to select the device (A:, B: or C:) on which your diary file was saved. Then type the name of the diary file you wish to transmit, followed by [EXE].
Having selected what to transmit, another menu will be presented, containing the two items "PSION" and "SIDEKICK". You should select whichever format you wish the diary file to have on the PC. The Psion format uses only plain typeable text, while the Sidekick format is that used by the calendar function in the Sidekick program.
DIARY LINK will then display the prompt "PC:" and you should type in the filename, including the extension, which you wish the diary/calendar file to have on your PC. (You may also include a DOS drive and/or directory path, using the '/' character as a path separator, in the filename.)
When you press [EXE] to enter the filename, your diary will be transmitted to your PC. If there is already a file on your PC with the same filename as the one you specified, DIARY LINK will overwrite it.
In almost all cases, DIARY LINK will save your diary with no loss of information. It will then give you the message "TRANSMIT OK" and you will be returned to the DIARY LINK menu.
If there are any problems while saving your diary, DIARY LINK will display a message such as "3 WARNING(S)", to tell you how many warnings occurred.
For example, when saving in Sidekick format, DIARY LINK would have to omit any Organiser diary entries which lie outside Sidekick's time range, as explained in appendix C. If such warnings do occur, DIARY LINK will create a file called DLINK.LOG on the current directory on your PC. This file will contain full details of all the entries which have lost information, and the reasons why. No information will be lost from the diary on the Organiser.
If for some reason DIARY LINK cannot transmit your diary at all, it will display a suitable error message before returning you to the DIARY LINK menu. See appendix A for a list of error messages and their meanings.
If warnings do occur you may wish temporarily to quit the "CL" program on your PC in order to examine the DLINK.LOG file. If you have installed Sidekick on your PC you could load DLINK.LOG into the Sidekick notepad without leaving "CL" at all.
If you choose the Psion format for your PC diary file, it will contain plain typeable text, suitable for printing. If, for example, you have a printer attached to your PC parallel port LPT1:, and you use the TRANSMIT option to save an Organiser diary to a PC file called, for example, "MARCH.TXT", you can then print this diary by quitting "CL" on your PC and typing:
COPY MARCH.TXT LPT1: [ENTER]
DIARY LINK will finally display a message to tell you how the operation went. If there are any warnings they are written to the DLINK.LOG file on the PC.
Loading a diary from your PC follows a similar set of steps to saving a diary, as described in the previous chapter.
Select the "RECEIVE" option from the DIARY LINK menu. A new menu will appear, containing just the two items "CURRENT" and "SAVED".
If you wish to make the incoming diary your current Organiser diary, select "CURRENT". Note that this will overwrite any current diary which already exists on your Organiser - merging diaries together is explained in chapter 5.
If you wish instead to receive the incoming diary to a saved diary file on your Organiser, select "SAVED". DIARY LINK will in this case display the prompt "FILE" followed by the current device letter (eg "FILE A:"). If necessary, press [MODE] to select the device (A:, B: or C:) to use. Then type the name of the diary file you wish to create, followed by [EXE]. If there is already a saved diary file on your Organiser with the same filename as the one you specify, DIARY LINK will overwrite it.
Having selected where to receive to, another menu will be presented, containing the two items "PSION" and "SIDEKICK". You should select whichever format the diary file on the PC has. The Psion format uses only plain typeable text while the Sidekick format is that used by the calendar function in the Sidekick program.
DIARY LINK will then display the prompt "PC:" and you should type in the filename, including the extension, of the diary/ calendar file on your PC which you wish to receive. (You may also include a DOS drive and/or directory path, using the '/' character as a path separator, in the filename.)
When you press [EXE] to enter the filename, the diary will be loaded from your PC. If you make a mistake while typing in the PC filename and the file you specify does not exist, DIARY LINK will warn you of this with a "FILE NOT FOUND" error message, and then allow you to re-edit the filename.
In almost all cases, DIARY LINK will load your diary with no loss of information. It will then give you the message "RECEIVE OK" and you will be returned to the DIARY LINK menu.
If there are any problems while loading your diary, DIARY LINK will display a message such as "2 WARNlNG(S)", to tell you how many warnings occurred.
For example, if you create your own Psion format diary file on your PC and one of the entries exceeds the maximum length of an Organiser diary entry, DIARY LINK will have to truncate the entry. This is further explained in appendix B. If such warnings do occur, DIARY LINK will create a file called DLINKLOG on the current directory on your PC. This file will contain full details of all the entries which have lost information, and the reasons why. No information will be lost from the diary on the PC.
If for some reason DIARY LINK cannot receive your diary at all, it will display a suitable error message before returning you to the DIARY LINK menu. If the diary was invalid, the reason for this is written to DLINK.LOG. See appendix A for a list of error messages and their meanings.
If errors or warnings do occur you may wish temporarily to quit the "CL" program on your PC in order to examine the DLINK.LOG file. If you have installed Sidekick on your PC you could load DLINK.LOG into the Sidekick notepad without leaving "CL" at all.
DIARY LINK will finally display a message to tell you how the operation went. If there are any errors in or warnings about the diary they are written to the DLINK.LOG file on the PC.
DIARY LINK can merge a diary/calendar on your PC with a diary file, or your current diary, on your Organiser. It will ask you to specify the Organiser diary, then the PC diary, and finally the destination for the merged file; you can overwrite either the Organiser diary which was used, or the PC diary, or both of them.
Select the "MERGE" option from the DIARY LINK menu. A new menu will appear, containing just the two items "CURRENT" and "SAVED".
If you wish to use your current Organiser diary in the merge, select "CURRENT".
If you wish instead to use a saved diary file on your Organiser, select "SAVED". DIARY LINK will in this case display the prompt "FILE" followed by the current device letter (eg "FILE A:"). If necessary, press [MODE] to select the device (A:, B: or C:) on which your diary file was saved. Then type the name of the diary file to use, followed by [EXE].
Having selected which Organiser diary to use, another menu will be presented, containing the two items "PSION" and "SIDEKICK". You should select me format of the PC diary file you wish to use in the merge. The Psion format uses only plain typeable text, while the Sidekick format is that used by the calendar function in the Sidekick program.
DIARY LINK will then display the prompt "PC:" and you should type in the filename, including the extension, of the diary/ calendar file on your PC. (You may also include a DOS drive and/or directory path, using the '/' character as a path separator, in the filename.)
If you make a mistake while typing in the PC filename and the file you specify does not exist, DIARY LINK will warn you of this with a "FILE NOT FOUND" error message, and then allow you to re-edit the filename.
DIARY LINK will now display a menu containing the three items "ORGANISER", "PC" and "BOTH". You should select one according to where you want the diary to go. If you select "ORGANISER", then the merged diary will overwrite the Organiser diary, leaving the PC diary unchanged; if you select "PC", then the merged diary will overwrite the PC diary, leaving the Organiser diary unchanged; if you select "BOTH", then the merged diary will overwrite both the Organiser and the PC diaries.
When you select the destination, DIARY LINK will begin merging. In almost all cases, DIARY LINK will merge your diaries with no loss of information. It will then give you the message "MERGE OK" and you will be returned to the DIARY LINK menu.
When two diaries are merged it is quite possible for them to have entries at the same date and time as each other, particularly if they have been used in merges before. When this happens DIARY LINK will ensure that entries are combined if they are different and that, wherever possible, no information is lost. This means that if you keep one diary on both your Organiser and your PC and you make different changes on the two machines, you can use the "MERGE" option to correctly combine the two diaries.
The rules used to handle coincident entries are as follows:
For example, if you merge two diaries, and the Organiser diary has "cream" as an entry at the same date and time as "strawberries" appears in the PC diary, then the merge will combine them into a new entry, "strawberries+cream", according to rule 3 above.
If you write the output of the merge to both the Organiser and the PC, they will now both have the entry "strawberries+cream" at the same time and date. If you then merge the two diaries again, rule 1 will apply, and neither entry will change. Unless you change the entry in one of the diaries, you can merge them as many times as you like, and you will still have "strawberries+cream" as the entry in both diaries.
If, instead, you write the output of the original merge just to the Organiser, the Organiser will have me entry 'strawberries+cream", while the PC will still just have "strawberries". If you then merge the two diaries again, rule 2 applies, and the merged entry is still "strawberries+cream". Rule 2 also caters for entries being truncated on the PC because they exceed the maximum length for Sidekick calendar entries.
If there are any problems while merging your diaries, DIARY LINK will display a message such as "1 WARNING(S)", to tell you how many warnings occurred.
For example, DIARY LINK might have to truncate a merged diary entry in order to make it fit the Sidekick format, as explained in appendix C. If such warnings do occur, DIARY LINK will create a file called DLINK.LOG on the current directory on your PC. This file will contain full details of all the entries which have lost information, and the reasons why.
It is just possible to lose some information from your Organiser diary for good, but only if two different entries coincide in a merge to the Organiser, and their combined length is greater than 64. The loss of information occurs because the Organiser entry is appended to the PC entry, and this new combined entry must then be truncated if it exceeds 64 characters However, a warning message showing the truncation which has occurred will be written to the DLINK.LOG file.
If for some reason DIARY LINK cannot merge your diaries at all, it will display a suitable error message before returning you to the DIARY LINK menu. If either diary was invalid, the reason for this is written to DLINK.LOG. See appendix A for a list of error messages and their meanings.
If errors or warnings do occur you may wish temporarily to quit the "CL" program on your PC in order to examine the DLINK.LOG file. If you have installed Sidekick On your PC you could load DLiNK.LOG into the Sidekick notepad without leaving "CL" at all.
If both diaries have an entry at the same time and date, the Organiser entry will he added onto the PC entry, separated by a '+' character; this will become the new entry for that date and time. The exceptions are when the two entries are identical, in which case neither entry changes, and when the shorter entry appears in the longer entry, in which case the longer entry is used.
DIARY LINK will finally display a message to tell you how the operation went. If there are any errors in or warnings about either diary they are written to the DLINK.LOG file on the PC.
In DIARY LINK you can set a default Organiser filename, which will be suggested whenever DIARY LINK asks you for a filename to use on the Organiser, and a default PC filename, to be offered whenever DIARY LINK asks you for a PC filename. You should only use this feature if you normally use only one filename on your organiser, and/or only one on your PC. In practice, you will probably be more likely to want a default PC filename than a default Organiser filename.
For example, you could use this feature to set your default PC filename to be "MARCH.APP". If you then use the "TRANSMIT" option to transmit a diary file to your PC, the prompt for the filename to use on the PC would be "PC:MARCH.APP", instead of just "PC:". This would look just as if you had typed in the filename "MARCH.APP", but had not yet pressed [EXE]. You could then either accept this suggestion by pressing [EXE], edit it further before pressing [EXE], or press ON/CLEAR to remove it and type a new filename.
To set a default filename, select the "DEFAULTS" option from the DIARY LINK menu.
DIARY LINK will now display a menu containing the two items "ORGANISER" and "PC". You should select one according to which default filename you wish to change.
If you choose "PC", the top line of the screen will now show "PC:", followed by the default PC filename (if one already exists). If this is the first time you have used "DEFAULTS" to change the default PC filename, the filename will be blank.
Similarly, if you choose "ORGANISER", the top line will show "O2:", then the default Organiser filename, if any.
You can now edit the chosen default filename.
if you an changing the default PC filename, your filename should include an extension, eg "MARCH.APP". (You may also include a DOS drive and/or directory path, using the '/' character as a path separator, in the filename.)
If you are changing the default Organiser filename, you should type in a simple filename such as "MARCH", without an extension.
If you wish to cancel a previously entered default filename, press [ON/CLEAR] to clear the input line.
When you have finished editing the default filename, press [EXE] to confirm this new filename, and you will be returned to the DIARY LINK menu. From now on, whenever DIARY LINK asks you for a filename to use on the machine you chose, including any time in the future that you run DIARY LINK, the default filename which you have specified will be offered as a suggestion.
If, while typing the filename, you want to abort the operation and leave the default filename unchanged, press [ON/CLEAR] twice and you will be returned to the "ORGANISER"/"PC" menu. A further [ON/CLEAR] will then take you back to the main DIARY LINK menu.
You should only use this feature if you normally use only one filename on your PC, and/or only one on your Organiser.
In addition to the errors listed in your Organiser and COMMS LINK manuals, a DIARY LINK operation may fail with any of the following error messages.
A diary which you are trying to use does not have the correct format. In practice this will almost always occur for one of two reasons:
When DIARY LINK detects an invalid diary it will not complete the operation which you are trying to carry out. However, before terminating with an error, it will keep searching through the invalid diary and write up to 16 errors to the DLINK.LOG file before aborting.
An error, such as a disk failure, has occurred on the PC. The PC screen will contain more information on the error; you should read it and try to correct the problem.
The PC has run out of disk space on the drive which you are trying to use. You must delete some files to free disk space before you can save any more diary information on the PC
Below is an example of a PC diary in Psion format, which could be created with an editor or word processor.
18-9-87 19:30 Squash with Mark(A)15 20:30 Hospital 21-9-87 09:00 Brian's new product Launch 12:00 New spec to Philip at Lotus 19:00 Gordon Hewetson's + Rowan 22-9-87 11:00 Telex to Fiona (A) 12:30 1080 contest with Janet 18:00 "*King*" meeting with Steve 24-9-87 08:30 Hang-gliding spare underwear 12:00 Lunch at Seymours
Each line of a Psion format PC diary contains either a diary date or a diary entry, terminated by a carriage return/line feed pair {<CR><LF>). If a line begins with either a space or a tab character, it is considered to be a diary entry; if not, it is a diary date. If you create or edit PSION format PC diaries, you must ensure that all diary dates are exactly at the beginning of their lines, with no leading spaces.
A diary date will apply to all subsequent diary entries, until another diary date is encountered. Note that a Psion format PC diary must begin with a diary date, not a diary entry.
Although DIARY LINK will always save all diary dates and diary entries in chronological order, you can put them in any order when creating or editing Psion format PC diaries. Therefore if you do keep a diary file purely for loading into your Organiser you can add new entries, together with their dates, anywhere in the file.
If you have no diary entries for a particular day, you do not need to put that date in the file.
Diary dates take the same format as the PC in use, according to that PC's "country" statement in its "config.sys" file. If no such country statement exists, the PC diary dates will be in the American format, as in the following example:
9-27-87
In this American format the day follows the month. If, however, the PC has a "config.sys" file which contains the line
country=044
to set up the PC for the United Kingdom, then the diary date format used will be as in this example:
27-9-87
where the day precedes the month. The day, month and year may be on or two digit numbers.
When DIARY LINK saves a diary to a Psion format PC diary it will follow each diary date with three letters, to specify the day of the week. This text is not essential and will be ignored if DIARY LINK subsequently loads the file. You may, if you wish, follow a diary date with any text you like.
If a Psion format PC diary is being created for loading into an Organiser, the character used to separate the day, month and year may be either '/' or '-'. On DOS 3 and above the PC will have a country-dependent date separator (it is '-' on UK PCs), which may also be used. If DIARY LINK is saving a diary to a Psion format PC diary on DOS 3 or above, it will use the country-dependent date separator. If the PC has a lower version of DOS, DIARY LINK will use '-' instead.
A diary entry is a line in the Psion format PC diary which begins with either a space or tab character (or more strictly, any ASCII character below 33 decimal). It contains a line for the entry, followed by the text of the entry.
If the three character string "(A)" is present at the end of an entry then an alarm will be set on this diary entry on the Organiser. An upper or lower case "A" may be used. The "(A)" may be followed by a one or two digit number from 0 to 59 inclusive, to specify the number of minutes by which the alarm should precede the time specified. If the "(A)" is not followed by a number then the alarm will be set exactly at the time of the diary entry.
The text of the diary message itself may contain up to 64 characters. The hours must be a 1 or 2 digit number from 0 to 23 inclusive, The minutes must be one of '0', '00' or '30' The character which separates the hours and minutes must either be a ':' or a '.'. On DOS 3 and above the PC will have a country dependent time separator (it is ':' on UK PCs), which may also be used. When creating a Psion format PC diary, DIARY LINK will use ':' as the time separator, unless the country-dependent time separator is available.
When DIARY LINK is loading a Psion format PC diary and it encounters a diary entry it searches along the line, ignoring spaces and tabs, until it finds the time information. If the time is followed by a space or tab character, that character will be ignored; you do not have to separate the time from the text. DIARY LINK will check the end of the line for an alarm indicator, then make the rest of the text (up to 64 characters) an entry in the Organiser diary, for the previously specified diary date.
The Sidekick calendar is similar in structure to the Organiser diary, as both split each day into 30 minute sections, allowing one diary entry tor each.
The Sidekick calendar only covers the range 08:00 to 20:30 inclusive, whereas the Organiser diary is a 24 hour one. If an Organiser diary (or a merged diary) is saved to Sidekick calendar format on the PC and the diary contains entries outside of Sidekick's time range, these entries will be lost.
Sidekick calendar entries can have a maximum of 26 characters, while the Organiser diary allows 64 characters. If necessary, diary entries will be truncated when being saved to Sidekick format.
The Organiser diary supports alarms, whereas Sidekicks calendar does not. However, when DIARY LINK is loading or merging into the Organiser it will recognise the three character sequence "(A)" at the end of an entry as an alarm, even when it occurs in Sidekick calendars. For more details of this, see the section on diary entries in appendix B.
Each day in a Sidekick calendar can have a title, but these will be ignored if the calendar is loaded into the Organiser.
Finally, note that Sidekick's calendar can deal with the years 1901 to 2099 inclusive, while the Organiser deals with 1900 to 1999 inclusive. Naturally, you should only use entries in the years which your target, either the Organiser or Sidekick, understands.