COMPREHENSIVE MANUAL FOR CALH / CALH_TSR (version 1.2) ====================================================== Benno van Dalen 1996/1997 1) When the opening screen appears simply press . 2) A calendar can be selected by pressing the first letter of its name or by moving the highlighted bar to the desired calendar and pressing . 3) When entering a date, CALH excepts any input as soon as it is unambiguous. This means that, for the day of the month, digits 4 till 9 are accepted at once, whereas after digits 1 till 3 either or a second digit is expected. Months can now also be entered by their number (as shown in the listing on the right of the screen, note that leap months or "epagomenae" always have number 13); digits 2 till 9 are accepted at once, after digit 1 either or a second digit is expected. Alternatively, the month can be selected by moving the highlighted bar to the desired month and pressing . The highlighted bar can be moved by using the up- and down-arrow keys as well as by typing the first letter of a month name. Years are NOT accepted as soon as a fourth digit has been entered in order to allow correction of typos. If the year number is STARTED with a - (minus sign) it will be counted in the astronomical way (i.e. the year 1 is preceded by years 0, -1, etc.). If a minus sign is typed after one or more digits of the year number have been entered, the year will be taken to be before the epoch concerned and the epoch indication will be changed consequently (before Christ, before Nabonassar etc.) Note that, except for the Julian and Gregorian calendars, years before the epochs will only be shown if the toggle SHIFT-F3 is on (see below). At any time the calendar variant can be changed by pressing TAB or SHIFT-TAB. A message at the bottom of the screen indicates whether the selected calendar actually has variants or not. Depending on the newly selected variant some entries on the screen may change (order of the months, name of the epoch), but the date remains as it has been selected so far. Finally, once you have specified the date as desired, the key may be pressed in order to perform the conversions to all available other calendars. 4) The corresponding dates in all calendars will be shown on a single screen. After every date, ö indicates a leap year. For the Hebrew calendar the type of year is indicated by its length. You now have the following operations at your disposal (which are all shown at the bottom of the screen): a) Change the date by jumping forwards or backwards by a day, week, month, year, 10 years, or a century by pressing D, W, M, Y, T and C (forwards) or the same keys while holding the ALT-key (backwards). The jumps are performed in the current calendar (originally the one in which you have entered a date), even if you have moved the highlighted bar to a different calendar. To change the current calendar to the one which is presently highlighted, press F8 (one of the special commands which is shown at the bottom of the screen only when you type F9, see below). b) Change the date by jumping a number of days to be specified by pressing F3. At the prompt in the upper part of the screen type a positive number of days to jump forwards, a negative number to jump backwards. c) Save a date in order to be able to return to it quickly by pressing F4. The message _date saved_ will be shown at the bottom of the screen. You can save 10 different dates at the most, the eleventh save will erase the first one. To jump back to previously saved dates, type F5, which will cycle through the saved dates. d) Count the number of days between certain dates using the "Total jump: " indicator at the bottom of the screen. The number indicated is the difference in days between a "reference date" (originally the first date entered after starting the program) and the currently selected date. The reference date can be reset to the presently selected date by pressing F6; the "Total jump: " indication will then disappear, meaning that it is presently zero. Example 1: To find the number of days between two particular dates, first enter the first date in any way you like, press F6, enter the second date in any way you like, and read off the "Total jump". Example 2: Finding the number of days between two epochs can be done particularly fast by using F7, "jump to epoch", another special command (see below): move the highlighted bar to the first calendar, press F8 to make it the current calendar and F7 to jump to its epoch. Press F6 to reset the counter. Now move the highlighted bar to the second calendar and again type F8 and F7. Then read off the "Total jump". e) Change the date into the epoch of the current calendar by pressing F7. To change the current calendar, use F8 (f) below). f) To change the current calendar (in particular necessary for jumping to to the epoch of a calendar different from the one in which you have entered a date or to use the jump functions under a) for a different calendar), move the highlighted bar to it and press F8. A message at the bottom of the screen indicates that the current calendar has been reset. You can easily recognize which calendar is the current one, because the highlighted bar is reset to the current calendar after every jump operation. g) Change the variant of any calendar by moving the highlighted bar to it and pressing TAB or SHIFT-TAB. The highlighted bar can be moved by using the arrow keys or typing the first letter of the calendar name except when this letter is one of the keys D, W, M, Y, T, or C, which are reserved for jumping as explained under a). h) Change the way in which the dates are displayed in one of the three following ways. All three are "special" functions, only shown on the screen when F9 is pressed. Furthermore, all three are "toggles", which means that the reverse operation can be performed by pressing the same key once again. 1) Toggle the indication of the month number (in square brackets after the month names) by pressing SHIFT-F1. 2) Toggle the use of astronomical years versus years before the epochs. For instance, SHIFT-F2 will change the year 10 Before Christ into -9 and conversely. 3) Toggle the display of years before the epochs by pressing SHIFT-F3. If this toggle is off, only for the Julian and Gregorian calendar dates before the epochs are always shown. To see the effect of this toggle, select a date like 1 January 1 A.D. and press SHIFT-F3. At any time, if you want to enter a new date in the current calendar, type F2; if you want to enter a date in a different calendar, type F1. To leave the program, type F10 or ESC. In the memory resident version CALH_TSR (TSR for Terminate-and-Stay-Resident) the effect of F10 and ESC is slightly different: F10 resets the program to the initial screen, so that you will have to start from the beginning when calling the program again. ESC leaves the state of the program unaltered, so that you will be returned to the same date (and the same settings of current calendar, reference date, stored dates) as before. Note: you can use the special functions F7, F8, SHIFT-F1, SHIFT-F2 and SHIFT-F3 at any time; there is no need to type the special key F9 first. In fact, F9, does nothing more than showing the menu of the special functions. LATER ADDITIONS: Version 1.21 (1 Februari 1997): SHIFT-F7 jumps to the beginning of the current year in the current calendar. For instance, to find the Byzantine New Year just preceding the Hijra epoch, first select the Hijra epoch (either by specifying 1 Muharram 1 in the date selection screen or by using F7), then make the Byzantine calendar the current one by pressing F8 when it is highlighted, and finally press SHIFT-F7. BUGS: In versions 1 and 1.1, I sometimes noted strange things when jumping through dates using the M, Y, T and C with or without the ALT-key. Versions 1.2 and 1.21 have not yet been tested anew. Since the changes from version 1.1 are relatively small, I expect few problems. If you encounter strange things, please report them to me. There are some problems with the memory resident version CALH_TSR which I do not understand very well and will probably not be able to fix. They are probably related to interrupts (in particular, the timer interrupt) and sometimes cause the program or the whole machine to crash. Part of the problems seem to occur on slow machines (I have had no problems like this on a fast 486 or pentium), others when converting dates in the Uighur and Maliki calendar (on any machine). Before trying out the memory-resident version, please save your data in other programs. Millennium Bug: Internally CALH and CALM operate with year numbers between -9999 and +9999; dates which fall without that range will be indicated by a hyphen behind the name of the calendar concerned. CALH and CALM do not carry out any operations involving the system date and/or time. Therefore, both programs can be considered to be millennium proof. Disclaimer: The author of CALH disclaims liability for any errors that may be present in the program and for any damage that may ensue from its use. Benno van Dalen Institut fuer Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften Postfach 111932 (FB 13) 60054 Frankfurt am Main GERMANY