This will be a window into my attempt, which no doubt will be long-running, to recreate thalo's favorite calendar utility, Calendar 2.1. I think it would be a true success if I simply recreated it as is and didn't add a single feature to it. That's why it will be version 2.2. It's not a makeover. It's an homage.

I got Calendar 2.1 to open on my PowerBook G3 refurb that is running OS 9.1, to be exact. It seems to be running just fine.

Even though I'll be shooting only for version 2.2, it's likely that some enhancements will be there merely as a function of the software. If so (like maybe being able to past QuickTime movies into the text area), I'm certainly not going to disable that feature. If auto-spell checking is a function of text entry (and I doubt that it is), I would keep something like that as well.

Thalo may hate me for saying this, but I’m thinking that it might actually have to be made a bit larger as well. It looks fine on my 800 x 600 screen, but would it be too tiny on a modern hi-res LCD? Maybe a little.

Ideally something like this would be stuck in the menubar, but I don't think I'm going to be able to do that. This is going to be a stand-alone app unless there are built-in tools in SuperCard to do more. And I'm not against a slight cosmetic improvement such as perhaps changing the way dates with stored notes is shown. I think we can do something a little better than just that outline type. But maybe nostalgia demands it be like that. I don't know. Even if this is a stand-alone app, I'd certainly love to see a way to "minimize" it so that it just showed the date in the titlebar, or could be minimized to just the calendar.

Thalo, your suggestions are welcome. I'll post a screenshot of Calendar 2.1 as it looks now as soon as I can figure out how to pull it off this PowerBook (no USB ports on the thing, but I think I can email myself a screen shot).

Do you see what I mean about the paste bug, though brother? Try to paste text into the calendar. Bizarre.

Oh my god, this is exciting. It' going to be proof that Apple should have listened to my Feedback about iCal. I friggin' BEGGED them to go more "Calendar 2.1" than bollox it up with stupid to-do and day planner features that nobody uses.

It's just so much easier to type "Dr.'s appointment 3pm" in a text field, than it is to set beginning and end times and alarms and all that bullshit. If configuring the calendar to tell you about the appointment takes longer than the appointment itself, something is wrong.

There is no calendar app on the market that just follows the simple format of Calendar 2.1, that is, just a month calendar above, with a dynamic text field below. Click on a day, type in the associated text field. You don't have to hit an edit button, you don't have to map out the exact hour and duration. You just jot down notes about what's going on that day. That's all I ever needed. And it's immediate. It doesn't take five clicks to see your notes. Click on the day, note is there, and editable. All ready for you.

I have tried every calendar out there, hoping for this simple feature. Not one utility has anything comparable. Not one. Almost like it's too easy, we can't have that.

I had high hopes for iCal. I liked the idea of typing right in the month cell. But I do need more room for notes. It's just too cumbersome to add a new event, change the time from the wrong time, and then enter the note info. I want to see and be able to edit the note info the second I click on the day.

Oh, Calendar 2.1 is small all right, but look at how surprisingly readable it is. It was originally what was called a "Desk Accessory"... kind of the widgets of the legacy. Calendar 2.1 would have made a PERFECT Dashboard widget. But no. Every calendar widget is just a dumb calendar with no text entry window associated with each day. Make a widget like that, just on the model of Calendar 2.1 and I'd use it every day.

Do you see what I mean about the paste bug, though brother? Try to paste text into the calendar. Bizarre.

I'll try that tomorrow in Classic on my G4, but I'm not getting that in OS 9.1 on the G3 Powerbook. It pastes just fine.

Oh my god, this is exciting. It' going to be proof that Apple should have listened to my Feedback about iCal. I friggin' BEGGED them to go more "Calendar 2.1" than bollox it up with stupid to-do and day planner features that nobody uses.

Well, famous last works, but this doesn't look to be a very difficult project.

It's just so much easier to type "Dr.'s appointment 3pm" in a text field, than it is to set beginning and end times and alarms and all that bullshit. If configuring the calendar to tell you about the appointment takes longer than the appointment itself, something is wrong.

Yup. I'll bet you more people use (and effectively use) little yellow sticky Post-it notes than highfalutin' calendar programs for that very reason.

I liked the idea of typing right in the month cell.

Yeah, but I don't see a way of doing it that is neat and compact. But I do think at least a slight redesign is in order for Calender 2.2. What draws your eye most? Yeah, the words "Calendar 2.1" in reversed white type in that solid black title bar at the top. That at the very least ought to be showing the date. I think a bit of reinforcement of the actual date in or near the text area would be good. But no use having the date twice. I think I'd put it just once above the text area where "About Calendar 2.1" now resides. That's wasted space. We'll move the date from the top (where it's a little wimpy) and put it between the calendar and the text area and make it stand out at a glance. I don't think anyone needs to jump ten years into the past or future, so that feature will be ripped out. And I'd like to be able to drag the scrolling text area farther down vertically if I wanted to. I know the scroll bar scrolls. But it could be useful from time to time to be able to see more.

It's debatable whether all twelve months of the year need to have a button. I would think that just a little arrow sending you forward or back a month at a time would do. What do you think? I just don't think a small calendar like this is for anything more than just managing a few things from day to day, not something for keeping track of stuff over months or years. You just jot and go. Or are you constantly looking at stuff one or two months ahead? For me, it would be so much more useful if (and I know this would probably get too large) if it simply showed the prior and next months. Maybe I could stack them that way vertically (and there's lots of room to make up horizontally, and the note area could be at the right edge? I just know how handy it is, especially when you're getting near the end of the month, to be able to see the next week or so continuously with then of the prior month rather than having to switch back and forth between months. Ideally the preceding and next month's calendars would be smaller and tone back a little in some way so that the current month pops out. But they'd be there visually at-a-glance. When I get a chance, I'll mock up something real quick in Illlustrator and see how it looks. And see what size it would take to do that. It's gotta be small and compact or it's just not going to be worth the effort.

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I don't think anyone needs to jump ten years into the past or future, so that feature will be ripped out.

I dunno man, I always loved that. Let's see what day my birthday falls on in 2043, or when did I bill that client five years ago?...

There's not a feature on that app I didn't use.

The only thing I would have added, was some kind of a search. Spotlight integration would be great here... where the search results would take you to a particular day. So you could search for "Dentist appointment" and find your last, next, or anywhere in the text where you mentioned that.

The ability to have live hyperlinks in the text would be great too. The way stickies does it.

Another feature that would rock, would be to be able to quickly add recurring events. "Mom's Birthday"... you enter it the first time on the proper day, then select it, and either hit a button or control-click and make it recurring. Whereupon that text finds its way to that date in all years. The way iCal has the "U.S. Holidays" calendar subscription. So you can go to 2011 and see what day of the week Christmas Day falls on.

Types of content that you could paste into the text field would be neat. Voice notes, and some way to paste a picture in, but have a thumbnail show. Aliases to files in the Finder. There's all kinds of possibilities to make it useful.

I can definitely see things like Thursday, install new router... and then attach the PDF of the router user guide. Most people who design calendars don't do stuff that MAKES SENSE. They don't think about how people actually use calendars.

I used to fantasize about Apple making the FINDER more calendar-based. People work on certain things certain days. If there were some way to smartly assemble assets and apps for that day, everything you need to get through that day... it would be amazing.

The only thing I would have added, was some kind of a search.

That's surely doable. And regarding the jump ten years thing, I'll think I'll do something quirky and just make that a function of option-clicking a "forward/back" arrow for the year. That's a hell of a lot easier than trying to click in that tiny sliver. Yeah, that makes it hidden functionality, but what the hell. There will, of course, be some kind of "Go to specific date" button you can click.

Spotlight integration would be great here... where the search results would take you to a particular day. So you could search for "Dentist appointment" and find your last, next, or anywhere in the text where you mentioned that.

Spotlight integration would be great, but I doubt that I can do it. But searching for stuff should be no problem.

The ability to have live hyperlinks in the text would be great too. The way stickies does it.

Okay. Good idea. That's might be doable. It just depends on what kind of standard stuff is supplied merely by having a stock text field. If something like that is, then great. If not, it will have to wait for later.

Another feature that would rock, would be to be able to quickly add recurring events. "Mom's Birthday"... you enter it the first time on the proper day, then select it, and either hit a button or control-click and make it recurring. Whereupon that text finds its way to that date in all years.

Yes. That would be very useful and logical for even a minimalist calendar. I don't really know how daunting a task some of this stuff will be. Sometimes what looks difficult turns out to be easy, and vice versa.

Types of content that you could paste into the text field would be neat. Voice notes, and some way to paste a picture in, but have a thumbnail show. Aliases to files in the Finder. There's all kinds of possibilities to make it useful.

All that would be good. But be sure to check out DropDrawers because that app really specializes in just that. But from what I read, it looks like they're no longer developing it and are urging everyone over to DragThing which has been made to duplicate and import old DropDrawer features. I'll be lucky just to get the functionality of the original Calendar 2.1 implemented. Anyway, if and when I get around to this, I'll first try to recreate the functionality of the original and then do some feature creep from there.

Oh, and did I mention that #1 on the Priority List is to make the font used in the text field not user settable? I just want to see those veins on you neck bulge for a while, especially knowing how friggin' easy it is to implement that feature. Nope. It will be Lucida Grande 24 pt whether you like it or not. Not negotiable. Even if you offered to blow me, no dice. Can't have users changing things like the font used to display information. [Evil laugh] [More evil laughs]

Hahahaha....
Hey, as long as the font is GENEVA 9, like it is in Calendar 2.1, I don't care that I can't change it! Isn't it beautiful?

After loading up my new system, for the hell of it I went to look at the latest widget offerings on the Apple site. I don't know what on blessed Teegeeack some of these guys are thinking. Most of the popular widgets are dumb shit that does nothing. The old following eyes... except now it's Homer Simpson. It's cute, but there really are very few truly useful widgets.

The calendar one that bundles with Leotard is great to look at, if it had a text field below it like ol' 2.1 it would be great. A calendar on the computer has to do AT LEAST what a wall or blotter calendar can do (let you write things on it)... and THEN you can start adding bells and whistles and alarms and crap. But nobody has their priorities straight. It's eye candy first, bells and whistles... and then they release the crap and the most important thing, having a place to write shit on the day... ain't there. Or it's buried in nonsense.

A calendar on the computer has to do AT LEAST what a wall or blotter calendar can do (let you write things on it)... and THEN you can start adding bells and whistles and alarms and crap.

I totally agree. The lack of such a capability is puzzling.

It's eye candy first, bells and whistles... and then they release the crap and the most important thing, having a place to write shit on the day... ain't there. Or it's buried in nonsense.

I think I've already decided on the mind metal look. Oh, indulge me. It's probably the only thing that will keep some wind in my sails, if I can make fun of Aqua. But for you, I'm inventing a new size: Geneva infinitely small. I will be sending each registered user an electron microscope so that they can read their notes. The upside is that in one little note window you can type the entire Encyclopedia Britannica.

By the way, running Calendar 2.1 in Classic in Tigard doesn't seem to suffer from the double-paste problem. And here's a picture of Calendar 2.1 for reference:

Sigh. Swoon. Look at that. Perfection.

Oh man, I just tried pasting in OS X Server (Tigtard) from Classic yesterday and saw the bug. Running 9.2.1

Try copying and pasting from the Calendar window itself.

Oh, that ain't Geneva, in the interface is it. It's friggin MONACO 9. Even more hardcore. Yeah, baby. But you typed in Geneva.

Try copying and pasting from the Calendar window itself.

I copied some text from Tigard's OS X TextEdit and it worked fine. I don't know what the difference is. Is that Monaco 9? You've got a better eye than I do. Could be.

I think with the search function, it won't be a live search like Spotlight (nor do I think you'd want it to be). Hitting the return key will bring you to the first hit on the search term. Addition presses of the return key will bring you to additional hits of the search term, if any results are found. (If not I suppose it would beep or something.) Don't know if that's clunky or not, but it should be easy to implement. And that's how I've always done it in HyperCard. If it's unclear or confusing which field has focus (the search field or the text field), I'd just implement a "next" button. Maybe.



I decided against trying to show three months at a time. It would sort of defeat the purpose of small and compact, although I also had a thought about showing just the last week of the previous month and the first week of the next month. That's mainly all the info I would want to see in the context of the current month. That's a feature that I'm going to think about.

The blue box in the sample hilites the current day selected and the date below the calendar will change accordingly. But no matter where you are, click on the bold date below the calendar and you'll go to today's date. The red line marks dates with recurring events. (Theoretically. This may be a bitch to implement.) I'm thinking a Control-click (right-click for the rest of the world) would make selected text recurring text. This will be less-is-more compared to a dedicated button. And I suppose any recurring text would be shown in red, eh? I didn't show a scroll bar in the text field because sometimes you can have a field that doesn't show a scroll bar at all until you need to scroll (I think). But, of course, there would be a scroll bar when needed.

Option click on that small "07" or "09" and skip ahead 10 years. That little widget-like "i" in the lower right corner is the "About box...", of course. It would also have any preference settings should such a thing ever come about. The mockup shown is basically just about the exact same size as Calendar 2.1. My instinct is to make it about 15% larger. Just a tad, but not too much. But I thought I'd take a look at it same-size first. Ideally I'd like to have the text field suck up like a drawer (but not a drawer...I hate those things) so that you could just display the calendar only if you wanted. If you searched for something then, of course, the text part of it would automatically expand itself. Not a big deal feature-wise, but just a thought. And I've decided to rename the month of May. No, that's not a typo. And do you think that Calendar 2.2 needs to display the time? I forgot to set the hilite of February on the right side, although I'm not sure it needs to do that. In fact, I can easily talk myself out of needing to do that. If there were a small "08" between the "07" and "09" buttons that was always hilited to show the year, then that would be consistent. But they don't have that in Calendar 2.1 so to me it seems inconsistent.

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I didn't show a scroll bar in the text field because sometimes you can have a field that doesn't show a scroll bar at all until you need to scroll (I think). But, of course, there would be a scroll bar when needed.

You didn't want to show a scrollbar because what you have is beautiful, and a fucking giant crystal sausage was going to ruin it.

You do know it's 2008, though, right brother? LOL.

If I saw that screenshot you made, and the shareware price for the app or widget was $100, I'd still buy it. That's how much I've wanted this.

A control click is always going to bring up the contextual menu, so it would probably better to have a contextual menu item that said "Make text recurring".

The red highlight is so highly visible, that's great for days with recurring events. But it trumps the blue for visual importance. The blue is great for today's date. What you need now is black with the text dropped out to white for the primary selection (meaning the day you are working on at the moment. How would you highlight today's date WHILE you were working on it? Black, text dropped out to white and a BLUE rule?

The blue is great for today's date. What you need now is black with the text dropped out to white for the primary selection (meaning the day you are working on at the moment. How would you highlight today's date WHILE you were working on it?

Interesting point. Calendar 2.1 doesn't have a special hilite for today's date. It simply hilites whatever date you have selected. Should we "keep it simple stupid"? Well, it probably would be a good idea on a calendar to actually hilite today's date. But the interface is about as much as it can absorb having three things, dates with notes (bolded numbers), dates with recurring elements (color outline...if not red then some other color), and the selected date. But come to think of it, I could just make the type for today's date blue instead of black. That should work.

I'll probably stick with the red hilite for recurring elements because it needs to stand out, especially if you have that day selected. That red would show up against the normal blue hiliting. But if it's ever implemented, changing the actual color is the easiest thing in the world to do.

It's 2007? Oy, vey. When I'm in conceptual mode, things like spelling go to hell. Are you happy with the overall size of Calendar 2.2? Should it be a little bigger? Should I implement a "grow" triangle on the lower right corner so the text field can be stretched larger in the vertical direction? Or just KISS?

Fucking crystal sausages.

Regarding the buttons to the right, I think of these as "go to" buttons instead of "state of" buttons. I think that's why I'm not too concerned about hilighting them...unless, of course, the current year was hilited in that same right-side region. The "state of" the calendar will always be reflected in that big, bold date. And it will always show "2007." That's a feature, not a bug.

Calendar 2.1 ...

OMG, the clearness!!! Even that little strange layout can't disturb the pixel sharpness.
I WANT THAT BACK!

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Interesting point. Calendar 2.1 doesn't have a special hilite for today's date.

No? I seem to remember somehow it knew what was today, and showed you. But you click on the head text, and always go back to today, right? Maybe that's all. If there was no text on today, it was still outline type, is that right? Maybe that's how it showed today.

I can't believe you're not having the double paste bug. Try copying something you've already typed IN a calendar window, and pasting it into another day.

Yeah, those are go-to buttons on the right, for the YEAR... instead of arrows, you just have the text 07, 09. But the MONTH fields above should be highlighted (Jan-Dec) depending on where you are, where you've clicked in the calendar.

If you feel like it, try one with the date and time back above the calendar (you can do bold as you have it), and just the search field below (where the old "about" bar was in 2.1)... or maybe one widget (recur?), plus the search field.

No? I seem to remember somehow it knew what was today, and showed you. But you click on the head text, and always go back to today, right? Maybe that's all. If there was no text on today, it was still outline type, is that right? Maybe that's how it showed today.

Calendar 2.1 knows what the day is. If you click on the date line at the top it will always take you to today's date and hilite that day in the calendar. That's the same thing I would implement in mine. But today's date wasn't permanently hilited or marked in any way. If you clicked to another day in the calendar, that other day would become hilited and there was nothing special at all to show you what the day's date was.

I can't believe you're not having the double paste bug. Try copying something you've already typed IN a calendar window, and pasting it into another day.

Well, it didn't double-paste into a TextEdit (OS X) window. Worked just find pasting into Classic Illustrator as well (8.0 running in classic mode).

But the MONTH fields above should be highlighted (Jan-Dec) depending on where you are, where you've clicked in the calendar.



Then I'm going to have to bring some better logic to this because the logic as it is now just ain't working for me. I think if I reversed to black the month name on the right, that might worked. But it bothers me that it shares the same hilite look as a calendar day does. And the calendar day hilite is all about which day the text in the text window is attached to. Okay, I think I have talked myself into a better way of doing it. You want the hilite, and I can agree with that, but I've got to do it better.

I think recurring elements are going to be a bitch to implement. I'm not sure yet. You'll see that I've used red to hilite today's date and a green outline for recurring elements. I'm not married to green. And I played with a couple different hilite colors, the usual Mac hilite blue and a deeper one. (I prefer the deeper one.) Here's the version you suggested:



Your way seems to make some sense now that I look at it, although it's not quite as compact. But I'm having second thoughts about it as well. I really like having that day right near the text field so that there's no doubt about what day you're inputting for.

One problem with SuperCard is that it can be extraordinarily obtuse. There's no undo. And it autosaves everything, like it or not. There's no changing your mind. You're like Indiana Jones -- one wrong move and you're history. Using this program is like playing Donkey Kong. You do fifty things right but just one little slip and you have to start all over. The interface is atrocious. You grab the eraser tool and...it doesn't erase anything (and I'm talking about a bitmap I'm trying to erase).

This program is unbelievably opaque when it actually comes to doing something. I must be missing something basic here. But I'm glad I haven't purchased it yet. This is really frustrating. I tried to flesh out an interface. Basically think of Interface Builder in OS X. You basically just drag interface elements form a palette and arrange them as you wish. You really haven't done much until you put the code in, but at least it's easy enough to drag a button or field and resize it. Not so with SuperCard. Again, this is so stupid I have to assume that I'm missing something basic. But I don't think I am. I just could be that this thing is a bit too unrealized.

I'm going to read some of the manual this weekend, but I'm really disappointed that it is such a poorly performing program. All was relatively fine when I was just editing the code of my own stacks. I've got to calm down a bit before emailing tech support because I'm still amazed that the way this program operates could be so horrible.

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Well, it didn't double-paste into a TextEdit (OS X) window. Worked just find pasting into Classic Illustrator as well (8.0 running in classic mode).

You're killing me here.

What does an aneurism feel like?

Copy from a calendar window into a calendar window. Do not leave calendar. Do not pass Go. If you don't see this bug, I'm cutting my wrists with a rusty coffee can lid.

Oh, that last screen shot is beeeyoooteeeeful.

Sign me up. Take my money. Everything I've dreamed of. It looks like the friggin' first MACLASH program. It's giving me that thrill in my stomach that you get on a rollercoaster, or when you go over a bump in a car (did I say bump? I meant after you run over an X-Man).

It really is glorious.

I think youre gonna get caught having to give more of a border at the bottom, because I think the info widget will need room for a circle surround mouseover, which is the current widget spec. I don't think that will wreck your design.

You know that crystal sausages will wreck it. You need Flash scrollbars, which I'm sure you've seen. Those thin minimal ones.

OMG, no undo? No history? Yipes. I would pretty much fuck everything up in an app like that. Working in GoLive 9 (Xenu himself couldn't have made a more evil beta), if I didn't have undo or the ability to backtrack with History or VersionCue, I'd be drooling and rocking in a mental ward.

OMG, no undo? No history? Yipes. I would pretty much fuck everything up in an app like that. Working in GoLive 9 (Xenu himself couldn't have made a more evil beta), if I didn't have undo or the ability to backtrack with History or VersionCue, I'd be drooling and rocking in a mental ward.

You can use the premium version's "SuperEdit" version (which is also included with the trial) and it will not auto-save, but it's even a worse pain in the ass than the other version. I created a simple scrolling field in a 240 x 310 pixel window. And now it won't let me select the field, resize it, delete it, nothing. And, believe me, I know all about the various modes. It's just fucked. I just can't in good conscience pull the trigger yet on that program until I figure out how much of this is just my own ignorance. But I don't think much of it is. Pisses me off.

Nope, can't do it. Just now I used for the first time the "Save Project" open/save dialog. I expand it into Column View open/save, of course. And then I tug on the window resize widget and -- whammo -- the window instantly grow beyond to bottom edge of the window. The resize widget is now out of reach.

I tried starting over again. This thing is completely unusable. Damn. Might have to take a look at Revolution again. Jesus, this program is buggy. For some damn reason if I started with a window s 240 x 310 pixels, and then added an interface element to it, I could then never move or select that element again. But this time I started with a larger window size, threw a few fields and buttons on it, and then down-sized it to my desired size of 240 x 310 pixels (the titlebar and window border are not included in the 240 x 310) and I can then select these elements and resize them. Ever work with a really creepy program like this? It doesn't crash, but it's like a big black box as to how to make it actually work as opposed to how it's supposed to work. This is far worse than anything OS X has ever thrown at me. I'll see if I can persevere just long enough to do something useful. Boy, this is really difficult though. They ought to bundle this with OS X and then all the inconsistencies of the Finder wouldn't seem so bad. I might be able to work around some of the bugs, but the Sword of Damocles will always be lingering over my head. When will the next tiny little weird shit cause me to basically get completely stuck again?

As far as that little "i" widget at the bottom, I can just make the button pretty much any old size I want.

The thing that was stymying me was that for some reason known only to God and programmers when I had the style of the titlebar (just the style, mind you, no programming or anything else...just setting the eye candy) to the palette style (prefer this because of the thinner titlebar), it would then not allow me to edit ANYTHING that I had done. Everything was locked. Why? As I said, only God and programmers know. So that means if I do this project I'm stuck with a standard thick window title bar from the get-go. Sucks, but it's progress in the way I'm used to measuring progress on anything in OS X.

I'd kill for a grid, guides, or something. Or if I could just import vector art from Illustrator.

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For some damn reason if I started with a window s 240 x 310 pixels, and then added an interface element to it, I could then never move or select that element again. But this time I started with a larger window size, threw a few fields and buttons on it, and then down-sized it to my desired size of 240 x 310 pixels (the titlebar and window border are not included in the 240 x 310) and I can then select these elements and resize them. Ever work with a really creepy program like this? It doesn't crash, but it's like a big black box as to how to make it actually work as opposed to how it's supposed to work.

Welcome to GoLive 9. Nothing works as expected, when you ease any object like a container or table open, it bolloxes everything up, and you get weird unexpected results. I've literally gone to preview in a browser and seen a blank page... GoLive erasing almost all the code on something I was working on, where all I did was remove a few extra returns in layout mode with the text tool. You have to do things five times and hope the program eventually figures out what you're trying to do. I swear, it's like nobody tests anything anymore.

Or they test it on intel macs, and it works fine for them... but they neglect to tell PPC people that they're fucked.

With GoLive, I can't imagine they'd release it in this rough a shape, unless it tested well on SOME machine somewhere.

There's no way I can find a way to set lines to anything but solid black or a funky pattern. So what I'll do is just import a bitmapped image and put it in the background (you can see that I've done that as a test). Over it I will draw transparent buttons or fields for the calendar dates and let the grid of the calendar itself be a bitmapped image. I'll probably do that with the day titles as well and simply not anti-alias the bitmapped image when exporting from Illustrator. That should work. Same thing for the grid of months to the right. And brother smithz will be a happier man as well without all that blur...as will I. And you can see how the 9 pt. Helvetica date will actually display by that out-of-place sample under Mon. That's good, although surely that's because I have my system-wide AA to not kick in under 12 pts.



Yeah, I'll have to find some room (or a new position) for that little "About box..." 'i'. The "find next" box (as well as the magnifying glass icon) is implemented completely from within SuperCard using vector graphics, but I think it will look a whole lot better with my Illustrator bitmap with a SuperCard transparent button positioned over the top. But I just thought I'd try to see what I could do. The search box is real (although not yet programmed to search for anything). And the text box at the bottom is real as well (as is the date title at the very top in bold).

So basically in a couple hours I could finish the interface. Then the programming begins. And I'm not really sure how to implement saving the text with each date. Drawing a calendar, while not simple, is theoretically not that hard because the programs (at least HyperCard did) have a way to determine dates and days pretty much into infinity. All you have to do is supply the right equations and then fill a grid of fields with the numbers from 1 to 31 (or 1 to 30, or in the case of Feb. this year, 1 to 29). That can be a bit challenging, but I've done stuff like this before. It's doable. But storing the data, I'm not sure. I don't know offhand how to make it extensible into infinity. But I don't think I have to. I think I may just program it through the rest of this century. Or maybe this will turn out to be simpler than I thought. But I really don't know how a professional programmer would do it. Every time you set a note for a day, you have to create a data structure somewhere, somehow, that can hold it. Can I just make a big "user property," one for each year to avoid the chances of corruption and make searching faster? The date itself could be the unique marker for the beginning of the file (along with some odd characters or something so that user input isn't ever likely to match it). And "end of file," so to speak, could just be the next date. Just thinking out loud. I see myself probably first just implementing a functioning calendar as step one. Thalo can type all his little notes wherever he wants, but none of them will get saved. He'll feel like he's at home in a typical prefnesia app. In fact, prefnesia is very easy to do.

When you think of the way you'd do it on the web, it would be a MySQL database. So you're probably caught retrieving and sending text to a tab-delimited database file that the program calls. Remember one of the strengths of OSX is junk drawering. Just heaping info into containers all willy-nilly but with tags that allow it to be retrieved and shown on demand.

Hey, I'll take the crystal sausage if you can get the app to work. In the OS X toolbox, though, wasn't there a MINI crystal sausage, grey, for use in pallettes or whatnot? I think I remember seeing the spec.