Event Manager Version 1.03 (Shareware) (C)opyright 1993 by Doug Laine The Philly Exchange (609) - 927-5771 Disclaimer: I am responsible for NOTHING! You are using this system totally at your own risk! User takes sole responsibility for security and safety of any datawhile using this program. EM is not in the Public Domain. It is shareware. This means that you are free to copy it, upload it to bulletin boards, and share it with friends so long as no modification is made to the files contained in this archive but you must either register it or stop using it after thirty (30) days. No changes made be made to the contents or archive except as required to accommodate the default archive format of a particular BBS. No -AV's or ads for any BBS may be placed on, or in, this archive without the express permission of the author. Setup: The setup of Event Manager is very simple and will be very unobtrusive in the every day running of your board. We have made it that way, so that you will be able to add multiple event capability to your PCBoard system without many changes. In fact, it literally requires only two additional lines in your BOARD.BAT file! Since you are reading this document, I will assume that you have already un-zipped the file. As you will see there is only one main file called EM.EXE. This file is the actual program that does all the work. You may place this anywhere you would like, provided you can run it. Somewhere in your path is defiantly a good idea. The shorter the path search though, the faster it will work. Remember, this is run EACH time that the BOARD.BAT file is! The next thing is to make your actual event files. I placed mine in a subdirectory off of each node. For example, if your board directory is F:\PCB\NODE1 which is what mine is, the event files would be placed in F:\PCB\NODE1\EVENTS. This is to keep your board directory from getting filled with a bunch of junk. I have named each one of my event files to represent what they do. There are a couple of requirements for your batch files. 1. They must end with the word BOARD so that they will re-run the system. I do not have Event Manager add that line as some people may not want it to do that. 2. Do not try to set the environment variables EMWEEKDAY, EMDAYNUMBER, or EMEVENT. These are automatically added to your batch files when the system sets up the event. They will be set to equal the right information, so you may use the information freely. For example, if it is Sunday, then you will see the line: SET EMWEEKDAY=0 added in your EVENT.SYS file. Also, at the end of your event file, there will be the line: SET EMWEEKDAY= to clean up these environment variables, provided there is the word BOARD at the end of your event file. When Event Manager creates your event file that PCBOARD will actually use it appends the above information along with one command at the very beginning of the file: EM /NEXT. This will tell Event Manager that the event has run and that it may continue with the next event. This will all be handled automatically when BOARD.BAT is re-run after the event. Ok, we have now gotten everything figured out about creating our event files. Now we have to tell Event Manager all about them, such as when we want to run them, and what we need to change. Setup (Continued) I have included a sample events file. This is a comma delimited file that is used to "teach" Event Manager about our events. The sample file also contains this information. 1. The first thing we need to tell Event Manager is what days we want the event to run. You will place the day number in this area. Sunday = 0 through Saturday = 6. If you want your event to run only on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday you would use: 124, 2. This is the line number of the data you want to change in your PCBOARD.DAT file. We start counting at 0, so keep this in mind. By our count, line 112 is where the event time is kept, so that is our next chunk of data. 112, 3. This is the information that we want to place on the line specified in column two. This will usually be the time in 24 hour format. In the example below, you are telling the system that you want the event to occur at 12:15am. 00:15, If you want to replace something else, for example a filename you would specify that here. However, if you want to just update the PCBOARD.DAT file, in column 4 you must specify NONE. If you don't the system could get confused. In our example we wanted to place a different welcome file for each day, so in column 2 we specified line 35, in column 4 we would place the word NONE, and here in column 3 we would place: F:\PCB\HELLO\DAY0, 4. This is the name of the event file that we want to use for our event. You must place NONE here if you want this column ignored. Otherwise the system will try to copy the event file to EVENT.SYS and possibly confuse PCBoard. In our example we used: EVENTS\USERBKUP, 5. This is a 0 or 1. This is used to tell the system whether you can slide the event. In our example we used: 0, 6. This is a 0 or 1. This is used in the Registered versions to allow the Sysop to synchronize all the nodes for events. 0 You would then repeat these steps for each event that you want to run. You must be sure that the event times are sequential. If you don't your event might not occur! Once you have created this events file, you must convert it. The conversion will create a file called EM.INF and must be in your board directory. This is used to keep track of all the event information. To create this file: EM /CONVERT sample.em If all went well, you will be displayed what the events look like. DO NOT panic if it does not show any events pending, this is normal as you have not run EM in the mode to setup the first event yet. Setup (Continued) You now must edit your BOARD.BAT file. Somewhere in the file you will find either PCB145 or VRM145. You will be adding two lines directly above this line. Before: IF EXIST ENDPCB DEL ENDPCB PCB145 After: IF EXIST ENDPCB DEL ENDPCB EM IF EXIST FORCED.BAT FORCED PCB145 Thats all the changes you will have to make to BOARD.BAT This will allow Event Manager to function completely. Setup is now complete! There are additional commands, and are explained further on in the manual. As you can see, most operations of Event Manager are totally automatic and do not require any intervention from you. Also, there are the three environment variables automatically added to the beginning of your event files on the fly. They are as follows: EMWEEKDAY - This will contain a number from 0 through 6 representing the day of the week with 0 being Sunday. EMDAYNUMBER - This is the day number of the year starting at January 1. EMEVENT - This is the number of the event that is being run. /CONVERT {filename} This command is used to actually create the EM.INF file. This will require that you specify a filename after the /CONVERT command. You must place a space after /CONVERT. Example: EM /CONVERT sample.em This will take the comma delimited file and create our database for events. /FORCE {event number} This command is used to allow you to force any event to occur right away! Well right away is sort of an exaggeration, as it will not occur until the next time you run BOARD.BAT. You must specify a valid event number. When you do, your event will be created as usual but will be placed in a file called FORCED.BAT and will have a command EM /FORCED_RESET added to the beginning of that file. This will make the FORCED.BAT file go away after it has been run. Example: EM /FORCE 1 /FORCED_RESET Command used internally. This is used to reset the forced event flag in the database. You may use this command if your system has a problem or you decide you don't want to force your event. /INFO This is used to have Event Manager display all the event information. All the information is self-explanatory. /NEXT Command used internally. This is used to reset the pending event flag in the database. You may use this command if you want the system to go onto the next event. /RESET This command is used if you want to start your event sequence over. This will make the system forget any pending events, and to find the first event for the day. To Register EM: Send me five bucks. Doug Laine C/O EM Version 1.03 661 2nd Street Somers Point, NJ, 08244 Enjoy.