TripNotes v1.5 Written by Ralph Krause 1992 Welcome to TripNotes for the Atari Portfolio! Since my job keeps me traveling most of the time, I started thinking about how my Portfolio could be even more helpful to me and I came up with TripNotes. TripNotes started out as a simple record keeping program that grew as I worked on it. This is my first serious project on the Portfolio and I would like to thank BJ Gleason for his Portfolio BASIC interpreter. PBASIC is (c) by BJ Gleason Portfolio is a trademark of the Atari Corporation Introduction ------------ TripNotes(TN) is a program for keeping track of information and expenses while traveling. The information is stored as a series of notes which can be identified by date, mileage, town name, or almost any way you can think of. Expenses are broken down by note and type of expense with a total for each note and a running total for the trip. You can enter an overall purpose or summary for the trip as well as individual remarks for each note. You will not need anything more than your Portfolio and a copy of PBASIC v4.91 or higher. I recommend, however, that you purchase a RAM card if you do not have one because the extra storage space will come in handy. PBASIC is available from a number of places including GEnie and CompuServe. Since TN is written in PBASIC and uses a lot of memory, the C: drive cannot be over 24K on a 128K Portfolio. This can be changed and the procedure is explained at the end of the manual. I recommend moving all unnecessary files from the C: drive to a RAM card and using the FDISK command to make the C: drive small enough to allow TN to run. Starting TN ----------- You start TN by typing: PBASIC TN[.BAS] or PBASIC TN[.BAS] [notes file] After the program and the starting notes file, if any, are loaded, you will be presented with the main menu. Main Menu --------- When TN is started, the screen clears and the main menu is presented. From the main menu, you can start a new notebook (New Trip), load and save a notebook(Load Notes, Save Notes), add a note to the current notebook(Add Notes), and view or edit the notes in the current notebook(View/Edit Notes). The main menu is shown below: +- TripNotes 1.5 -+ | New Trip | | Load Notes | | Save Notes | | Add Notes | | View/Edit Notes | | Quit | +-----------------+ To make a selection, you can either type in the first letter of your choice or use the arrows to move the cursor over your choice and hit the ENTER key. New Trip -------- New Trip starts a new set of notes. If you have not saved the notebook you were working on, you will be asked if you want to save it before starting a new one. When New Trip is selected, the screen clears and you are asked for a purpose or summary of your trip. TN will accept up to 4 lines of text and you must hit ENTER at the end of each line. If your trip's purpose is less than 4 lines, hit ENTER on a blank line to continue. If you hit ENTER without typing anything on the first line, you will be returned to the main menu. After entering a trip purpose, the screen will clear and display "Note 1 of 7" in the upper left corner and "Enter stop ID?" below it. You can enter any string after the prompt as long as it is not over 30 characters. You can break the trip down by dates, odometer readings, times, town names, persons visited, etc. Valid entries include: "7 Jul 92", "Tue 1 P.M.", "577 Miles", "Fred Thomas", and "Joe's Garage". Pressing ENTER without entering anything takes you back to the main menu while retaining the trip's purpose. To start adding notes again, just select Add Notes from the main menu. After the stop ID is entered, the screen will clear and the ID will be displayed in the upper right corner. You will then be asked to enter up to 4 lines about this note. You will have to hit ENTER at the end of each line and on the blank line if your description is less than 4 lines. Pressing ENTER without entering anything on the first line will take you back to the main menu. Select Add Notes if you want to continue entering notes. Trip Expenses ------------- Once the details of the current note are entered, the screen will clear and you will be asked to enter a breakfast expense. For any expense entry, hitting ENTER without typing anything is the same as 0 and the decimal point does not have to typed if you spent a whole dollar amount. Do not enter the dollar sign. Valid entries include: "5.15", "5", "6.7", and ".75". After breakfast, you will be asked what you spent on lunch, dinner, auto, and any misc. items. The section called Modifying TN explains how to modify TN to use only the fields you need. Once you have entered all of the expense information, the screen will clear and you will be presented with a summary of the current note. The stop ID will be displayed in the upper right corner with the description of the stop below it and the total of all expenses for the stop and the running total of all expenses on the bottom. The summary screen will appear as: +----------------------------------------+ | 7 Jul 92 | <-- stop ID | | |This is the first entry of the notebook | <-- stop description |for a trip beginning on 7 July 1992. | | | |Expenses:$ 27.00 Total:$ 27.00 | <-- expense totals | | +----------------------------------------+ To see a breakdown of the expenses, perss the SPACE BAR. The breakdown screen will show you each expense on the left and that expense's running total on the right. Pressing the SPACE BAR again brings back the summary screen. The expense breakdown screen appears below: +----------------------------------------+ | Bkfast:$ 5.00 5.00 | | Lunch :$ 7.00 7.00 | | Dinner:$ 8.00 8.00 | | Auto :$ 3.00 3.00 | | Misc. :$ 4.00 4.00 | | ------- ------- | | Total $ 27.00 $ 27.00 | +----------------------------------------+ Pressing any other key exits from the summary screen and lets you enter information about your next note. If you are done entering notes, just hit ENTER when asked for the stop ID. When you reach the last entry of the current notebook, the screen will display "LAST STOP" in the upper left corner, above the stop ID prompt. After entering the details and seeing the summary, you will be returned to the main menu. It is impossible to add entries after the last stop. As shipped, TN is configured to allow each notebook to hold seven notes. The section titled Modifying TN explains how to change the number of entries per notebook. Load/Save Notes --------------- These options allow you to save the current notebook or load a new one. If you attempt to load a file without saving the current one, you will be asked if you want to save the current notebook first. After selecting load or save, a window will open up in the middle of the screen asking for a filename. Filenames may be any legal DOS filename with a .TRP extension. TN will automatically use the current directory if you do not specify one and add the .TRP extension if you leave it off. Deleting the filename in the window with the INS/DEL key and pressing ENTER will take you back to the main menu. Pressing the ESC key is the same as pressing ENTER. If you enter a pathname followed by an * in the load file window, the screen will clear and the notebook files in that directory will be displayed. For example, to see a listing of all the notebooks on your C: drive you would type "c:*" and press ENTER. If you specify subdirectories, be sure to include the "\" before the "*". An example would be: "c:\trips\*". Pressing any key after the listing will bring up the load filename prompt again. If TN cannot find the file you want to load, the message "FILE NOT FOUND" will appear. Press any key to re-enter the name, see a directory, or blank out the window with the INS/DEL key to return to the main menu. TN is user customizable and generates a checksum for each notebook. If the current configuration is different than the configuration for the notebook you are trying to load, or if that notebook has more entries than the current set-up, the message "CHECKSUM ERROR" will be displayed. TN must have the same expense fields enabled as the notebook on disk has entries for. Add Notes --------- This allows you to add a note to the current notebook if it is not full. You will be asked to enter a stop ID, stop information, and expenses the same way as when you started a new trip. If the notebook is full, the message "NOTEBOOK FULL" will be displayed. Pressing any key will return to the main menu. View/Edit Notes --------------- This option allows you to view or edit the notes in the current notebook. When you select View/Edit, the screen will clear and the help page will be displayed. The help menu for viewing notes is shown below: +----------------------------------------+ | v=advance ^=back up | | F=First Note L=Last Note | | E=Edit Note ?=this menu | | P=trip Purpose ENTER=EXIT | | | | | | | | Press any key. | +----------------------------------------+ After pressing a key, the screen will clear and the purpose of the current trip will be displayed. Use the up and down arrow keys to see the notes in the notebook. Pressing the SPACE BAR toggles between the summary page and the expense breakdown page for each note. Pressing "F" will take you to the first note and pressing "L" will take you to the last note. "P" will re-display the trip's purpose. "E" will take you to the edit menu and "?" or "/" will display the help page. Pressing ENTER will take you back to the main menu. If you press "E" to edit a note, the screen will clear and you the edit menu will appear. If you do not want to change anything, press "E" to exit the edit menu and return to viewing notes. The edit menu is shown below: +----------------------------------------+ | S=Stop ID T=Text desc | | B=Breakfast L=Lunch | | D=Dinner A=Auto | | M=Misc. P=Purpose | | E=Exit | | | | | | | +----------------------------------------+ After selecting an item to edit, the screen will clear and the current entry will be displayed. You will then be asked to enter the new information below it. Pressing ENTER on a blank line leaves the entry unchanged and takes you back to the edit menu. If you select a field which is not enabled, the message "FIELD NOT ENABLED" will appear. Quit ---- Quit allows you to leave TN. If the current notebook has been changed, but not saved, you will be asked if you want to save the file before quitting. Modifying TN ------------ I have tried to make TN as flexible as possible. To change the configuration, load TRIPNOTE.BAS into your favorite text editor and go to the beginning of the file. SSIZE determines the size of all strings used by the program. It is set to 160 to accomodate the four 40 character lines used for trip purpose and stop description and 40 for the stop ID of each note. If you do not think you will need this much space, change the SSIZE commands to a more appropriate size. The number of notes is determined by the variable "num" and you can change this to reflect the number of notes you will need. Decreasing this variable will free up more memory while increasing it will use more memory. To use or ignore certain expenses, edit the line under the line containing num. It should resemble this: bkf=true:lun=true:din=true:car=true:msc=true:edt=false:savd=true Changing any of the first five entries to FALSE will disable that expense and space for it will not be reserved. Do not change the state of "savd" as this is used by TN to remind you to save your notebook. NOTE: TN generates a checksum depending on what expenses are active and the value of num. You cannot load a notebook if the expense checksum in the file is different than the current checksum. If you try to load a notebook with a different checksum, you will get a message saying "CHECKSUM ERROR". You will also get this error if the notebook you are trying to load has more entries than the current set-up. You will not have any trouble loading a notebook with fewer entries, though. If you need to know what expenses were active for a notebook, run the CHECKSUM.BAS program explained below. There are two more things you can do if you still do not have enough room on your Portfolio to store and run TN. The first is to run the SPB.EXE program which comes with the PBASIC package. This program will remove all the comments and extra spaces from the TRIPNOTE.BAS file, leaving the file still readable by a text editor. Running the PBCOMP.EXE program will compress the TRIPNOTE.BAS file considerably, but it cannot be edited after compression. If you run PBCOMP, make sure that you have an uncompressed version of TRIPNOTE.BAS in a safe place. CHECKSUM.BAS ------------ I have included a program to check a notebook and tell you which expenses are active and how many notes it has. The program is called CHECKSUM.BAS and you start it the same way as TripNotes (PBASIC CHECKSUM[.BAS]). Upon start up, the program will display a welcome screen. Pressing any key will take you to the file window. This window functions identically as the one in TripNotes. Pressing ENTER in a blank window exits the program and adding an "*" after a drive or subdirectory shows a list of notebooks. After selecting a valid notebook, the screen will clear and the number of notes in the notebook will be printed as well as the active expenses. In the future ------------- In the future, I would like to add some screen printing routines and a report generator. I would also like to re-write TN in C to speed it up and make it more user friendly. Future versions will let you type in longer descriptions of the trip's purpose and summaries of the stops without hitting ENTER at the end of each line. I would appreciate any feedback or suggestions that you have to offer. I can be reached on either GEnie or CompuServe: GEnie - R.KRAUSE6 CIS - 76150,462