Table of contents
	Overview Shareware Expiration/Registration/Liability Frequently asked questions Wish list Changes between versions Acknowledgments How to order Order form	Manual

1. Overview

Keep track of friends and family birthdate events

Birthdate for Pilot keeps track of the birthdates and other events of your friends and family. Simply use the Pilot built-in Address-Book to enter the birthdates. Birthdate for Pilot will help you keep track of all the dates and automatically create entries in the Date-Book to notify of upcoming events. Using advanced features of Birthdate for Pilot you can even manage national holidays and other comparable lists of events!

You'll always be reminded of that important birthdate in time!

Birthdate for Pilot:

• keeps track of all your birthdates and other events
• event-types like wedding, anniversary, holiday, etc. can be defined by yourself
• shows a sorted list of events
• enters notification for events into Datebook upon request
• creates notify entries for all your birthdates and other events in one step
• looks up events on selected date
• allows quick lookup up of birthdate events for today
• automatically calculates age
• allows to enter all birthdates of a whole family in one address-book record
• optionally sets a pre-notification alarm a few days before the event
• supports international Dateformats

Special features:

• supports different methods for entering the event data in your address-book using custom-fields and notes
• notification details can be set per event or for all events
• supports birthdates of persons born before 1904 (Pilot dates can normally not be before 1904)
• supports leap-year kids. In none-leapyears the birthdate will be entered for the 28th of february

Birthdate for Pilot history

August 6, 1996-- As one of the first european software companies Fahl software is joining the Pilot development community. We are happy to announce the "Birthdate" application for the U.S. Robotics Pilot.

September 30, 1996 - 0.9 -- Over 700 people have taken part in the beta-test of Birthdate for Pilot 0.4. Thanks to the big support by all these customers Birthdate for Pilot was improved and the last pre-release beta version 0.9 is available now.

There are a lot of new features. Now all kinds of events can be managed with Birthdate for Pilot.

October 1st, 1996 - 0.9a -- Two small bugs have been discovered and immediately fixed. The suggestion to allow multiple entries directly in the custom field is implemented now in 0.9a.

October 10th, 1996 - 0.9c -- 6 KBytes smaller! Some more minor "situations" cleared. Address book entries are now checked during "collection" phase. This helps in getting started with Birthdate for Pilot..

October 28th, 1996 - 0.9e -- There is a user-manual and tutorial in HTML-format now! Version 0.9e should be a lot closer to the release version then the previous versions.

November 27th, 1996 - 1.0 -- This is the official release version. There are purposely only minor changes to 0.9e. 0.9e has proven to be fully functional and stable so Version 1.0 should have the same quality level.

April 1st, 1997 - 1.1 -- Palm Pilot compatibility added.

July 12th, 1997 - 1.1a -- Small bug fix, national holidays for 1998 added.

January 1st, 1998 - 1.1b -- Small bug fix - privacy of records now kept

Feedback

Birthdate for Pilot has been developed in close contact with it's users. This approach was very successful and a lot of fun. We want to stick with the good habit and hope that the participation of our customers will continue. Any feedback is welcome. Please use e-mail:info@birthdate.com or the feedback form on the web feedback form on the web to submit your comments and suggestions.

2. Shareware-Expiration/Registration/Liability

Shareware-Expiration

Birthdate for Pilot is Shareware. There are two limitations which can be removed by unlocking them with a shareware key. The shareware key is available upon registration.The first limitation is that the Software will expire by October 1st '98. The second limitation is that only 10 events can be transferred from your birthdate-list to the datebook. When you register the Birthdate for Pilot will neither expire nor limit the number of events that can be transferred as notifications to the datebook.

Registration

The price for Birthdate for Pilot is US $19.95 (+16% sales tax for european community customers).

For registration send e-mail to info@birthdate.com or use the order form on the web.

Liability

Although we put a lot of effort in testing this software using it is at your own risk. Over thousand beta testers have used Birthdate for Pilot with no complaints about loss of data. Still we can't take any liability for damage of your data. We advise to take the necessary steps in backing up your data.

3. Frequently asked questions

Click here to get to the list of frequently asked questions.

4. Wish list

Click here to get to wish list.

5. Changes between versions

Version 0.1 beta July 1996 not released

• Minimal feature set implemented

Version 0.2 beta August 2, 1996 beta test release version

• Added logo and info text
• Packaging of birthdat.txt, birthdat.prc, birthdat.zip
• Web-Site www.tzl.de/pilot

Version 0.3 beta August 6, 1996 beta test release version

• Shows help-message on first start to remind of renaming a custom field + Important Note. Renaming a custom field is mandatory know to avoid confusion.
• Show "Important note" before leaving application - hope we can get rid of this some time (see Wishlist)

Version 0.4 beta August 8, 1996 beta test release version

• Use of custom field name as title for selection dialog in "Lookup" function.
• "Anniversaire" recognized as custom field name
• Fix of BR#001: Notify on an emtpy birthdate entry will show a help screen.
• Fix of BR#002: Automatic resorting of addresses when leaving birthdate, except when goto-button is used. Manual resorting will work directly now.

Version 0.5 beta September 22, 1996 - not release

• Birthdate Notification Dialog implemented
• presetting of notification attributes, e.g. time of day/no time etc.
• Options/add to Datebook menu-item renamed to "notify in Datebook" and enabled
• Notify selected record or all records
• Notification of all entries in one step
• optional calculation and display of age
• Shareware limit: maximal 10 notify operations

Version 0.9 beta September 30, 1996 beta test version

• Modify/Keep option for notification of all records - check for existing entries
• Feedback on registration in about box
• special handling for 29th of february birthdate
• sorting of address book made unnecessary - collecting to own database now
• show only Address Book entries with a valid birthdate entry
• sorting speed is improved by more than factor 5
• other field labels then "Geburtstag" or "Birthdate" - especially for other countries using a preference setting (custom field made renameable)
• feature for labeling birthdates with notification flag and number of days to be notified in advance ("N 2")
• Progress Bar for notification and cleanup
• Multiple events from address-book note
• Multiple types of events from address-book note.
• Documentation cleanup

Version 0.9a beta October 1st, 1996 beta test release version

• scan-addr-notes checkbox for Preferences dialog added
• Custom field may now contain multiple entries, too
• Fix of BR#003: "Invalid Chunkptr" when "* Jill" (date missing)in a note
• Fix of BR#004/BR#005: (assumed) "Chunk over-locked" when using an address that was looked at start of BfP Pilot and BfP didn't find an event there

Version 0.9b beta October 6th, 1996 beta test - inofficial release

• smaller by ~6 KByte - details view not as detailed any more
• event-format-check during "collect birthdates" phase
• no splash screen when address data hasn't been changed
• added national holiday files for United States and Germany

Version 0.9c beta October 10th, 1996 pre-release version

• Application - Id "Bidt" registered with U.S. Robotics and used for correct application-deletion and display of # of records within Memory application. This should also fix BR#006 (Shareware limit can be worked around)
• When the custom-field name is changed a message appears that Birthdate for Pilot needs to be restarted for the changes to be effective.
• Device Full - Alert during Notify All is only shown once
• Fix of BR#007: Secret records are now shown again when system preferences are set accordingly
• Fix of BR#009: Switching system preferences to "D-M-Y" leads to black screen and reset is necessary
• Fix of BR#010: Pressing "Today" if only 1 record exists leads to reset

Version 0.9d October 26th, 1996

• Tutorial and User-Manual in HTML-format now included!
• Fix of BR#011: After changing the custom field in the preferences dialog the restart would not automatically recollect the birthdates according to the new field definition.
• Fix of BR#012: "goto" now correctly goes to and highlights the event within the address-book even when the event is part of a multi-line entry in a note or custum address-book field
• Fix of BR#013: pressing "today" in the Birthdate List View you are now put on the next birthdate after today. This now even works wrapping around the year's end.
• This dialog shouldn't be caused by Birthdate for Pilot anymore "MemoryMgr.c, Line: 2760/Chunk over-locked/Reset":
  
• CR#006 implemented: Age is now always calculated & shown in Birthdate View
• The Notify entries "on Birthdate" have the alarm checked now just as the pre-notify entries if a time other than "no time" was selected for notification
• Menu/Options/Cleanup: detection of Birthdate for Pilot datebook entries made safer by not only checking for "*" and ":" but also for the right order - first "*" then ":".
• Austrian version of national holiday list added

Version 0.9e pre-release October 28th, 1996

• Fix of BR#008: after using cleanup and "notify all" one after another some entries might not show in the datebook - after a hotsync they re-appear.Also known as "record not on day/reset" displayed by datebook application
• CR#003 implemented: allow for birthdate/other date entries to start at another position then the first position of a note/custom field
• A stop sign "<>" can now be used at the beginning of a note or custom field to prevent the field from being checked for events by Birthdate for Pilot

Version 1.0 November 27th, 1996 - official release

• Fix of BR#014: registered users can now enter their shareware key even when the software is expired. This should help in situations where some other program forced you into a hard reset
• CR#018 implemented: the calculation of the age in the details-of-a-record-view now shows two numbers like: [44->45]. This way it is made clear that the person is 44 now and gets 45 on her next birthday.

Version 1.1 April 1st, 1997 - Palm Pilot compatibility

• There was an incompatiblity in Version 1.0 that made registration impossible on Palm OS 2.0 devices.
• The shareware expiration of Version 1.1 is extended until July 1st, 1997

Version 1.1a July 12th, 1997 - small bug fix and 1998 holiday files

• Fix of BR#015: when upgrading to a Palm Pilot Birthdate will no longer think that the address book never changes. Collecting of events now works properly again
• National holiday files for 1998 are added
• The shareware expiration of Version 1.1 is extended until October 1st, 1997

Version 1.1b January 1st, 1998 - privacy of records enforced

• Fix of BR#016: private records in the address book aren't shown any more when the security preferences are set to "hide private records"
• The shareware expiration of Version 1.1b is extended until April 1st, 1998

• July 1st, 1998
• The shareware expiration of Version 1.1b is extended until October 1st, 1998

6. Acknowledgments

The difficult point about acknowledgments is not to forget anybody. Since I know that I'm not perfect in tracking all the contacts I had by e-mail, fax and phone I apologize that the list of people mentioned here might not be complete. If you feel that your name is missing, just drop me a short note and I'll make sure you get your place in the hall of fame of Birthdate for Pilot!

I am grateful for the help of all the people who participated in the progress of Birthdate for Pilot. I had the pleasure of working with a lot of people who gave valuable comments on the software: Jürgen Allgayer, Amy Ball, Michael Barr, Mark S. Bergmann, Howard Bochner, Reto Brütsch, Thomas Callsen-Rauer, Stephen Garran, Jeff Gauger, Michael Gombar, Ronald R. Gouldner, Dave Gunnett, Alexis Hadjisoteriou, Steffen Hagene, David Harley, Andrew Hill-Male, Howie Hirsch, Matthew G. Humphrey, James Inglis, Mike Jacquot, Chris Jones, Mike Kosner, David Landrum, Douglas Morse, Mark Naber, John O Newell, Bob Pearl, Kevin Preblud, Kate Purmal, Roger Richards, Dave Ryan, Russell Scherker, Martin Schulte-Ladbeck, Michael Stoehrel, Christy Thomas, Douglas Thorpe, Ingo Weber, Neil Weisenfeld, Jeff Wolinsky

Bug fixing was made possible by excellent and detailed reports from: Richard Barth, Christian Busch, Wes Cherry, Jose Coto, Greg Elmassian, Janet Lea Hutchinson, Bill Jaeger, Mark Kohler, Mark Naber, Kamal Mistry, Calvin O. Parker, Ted Peer, Bill Raventos, Markus Reichart, Daniel Schröder, Douglas Shieh, Chuck White

The national holiday lists where compiled by: Christian Busch (Germany), Thomas Callsen-Rauer (Austria), Janet Lea Hutchinson (United States)

At U.S. Robotics Palm Computing division there has been a lot of support for the development of Birthdate for Pilot. I can only name some of the persons I got in touch with here: Adrian, Ankur, Arnold, Chris, David, Kate, Marge

The tutorial's screen-shots were made possible by use of the Copilot-simulator by Greg Hewgill. See his web-site on my Other Pilot Sites-page for this great tool.

These web pages are hosted by WWW-Service, Neutraubling - Germany.

The whole work would not have been possible without my wife Maria and my two kids Martin and Sandra bearing that a big part of my sparetime went into this project.

January 1998, Wolfgang Fahl

7. How to order

Birthdate for Pilot is shareware. The freely accessible version on the net expires after a couple of weeks if you don't obtain a shareware key.

A shareware key to unlock the limits and prevent expiration is available for US $19.95.

Preferred delivery is by e-mail. For sending a floppy disk we charge $5 handling + whatever the shipping cost to you is.

To order online visit the order form on the Internet.

To order by e-mail or fax use the order-form below.

e-mail: info@birthdate.com
fax: +49 2154 952651

Birthdate for Pilot is NOT free software. It's distributed as shareware. You can try this software for 30 days with no obligation, although if you choose to continue using it, you must pay the registration fee. If you continue to use the software after the evaluation period without purchasing a license, you are in violation of international copyright laws.

When you register the software, you're registering for a single user.

You may pay by cash ,

VISA, DINERS or MASTERCARD credit cards.

European customers may also pay by Eurocheque or money transfer to
german account No. 2 66 33 010, Gladbacher Bank AG, BLZ 310 601 81.

Please print and complete the following order form to register by e-mail or fax, or include all the information in the file in free format with your order.
If you wish to send cash print out the form and send it with snail-mail.

8. Order form