WHATSUP(1) USER COMMANDS WHATSUP(1) NAME whatsup - MIT calendar of events SYNOPSIS whatsup DESCRIPTION Whatsup is an interactive calendar of events for the MIT community. Anyone with access to Project Athena computers can post events on the calendar, or find out what is happen- ing at any given time in the coming year. Keep in mind that the listings you read in the calendar may have come from most anyone, so they may not all be accurate. Use the calendar information at your own risk (or correct it your- self if you are sure it's wrong!) The whatsup program is used to browse the calendar and pos- tit, which has its own man page, is used to post or change event listings. You can also use whatsup to write your own file containing just the event listings that interest you. If your display looks garbled when you invoke whatsup, it almost surely means that your TERMCAP entry is not set prop- erly for your terminal. Ask a Project Athena consultant to help you configure your terminal properly. If the vi editor works properly on your terminal, then whatsup should too. Also, make sure your window is at least 24 lines long and 80 lines wide, or whatsup will refuse to start. You may exit from whatsup at anytime during its operation by typing CTRL-C (i.e. hold down the CTRL key and press C at the same time.) GETTING HELP A message line near the top of the whatsup screen gives you hints about how to use the program. The line changes as you interact with the program; if you're lost, start by reading the message line. If the message line doesn't tell you what you need to know, press the ? key. Like the message line, the help supplied by ? varies according to what you're doing. SEARCHING FOR EVENTS IN THE CALENDAR Whatsup starts by presenting a screen on which you may sup- ply information about the portions of the calendar you're interested in seeing. From this screen you should type over the appropriate fields to: 1) Specify the days you're interested in. 2) Specify times of day to be checked. 3) (optional) indicate the types of events you interested Project Athena Last change: 26 August 1987 1 WHATSUP(1) USER COMMANDS WHATSUP(1) in. 4) Press the * key to initiate a search of the calendar. DEFAULTS are supplied for you for all fields. If you just invoke whatsup and press * to begin a search, all events starting immediately and continuing to the end of the day will be retrieved. If the events you're interest in finding fall within the coming week, then the day fields provide a convenient means of specifying the dates. Just type M for Monday and so on. If you specify a STARTING DAY it will be presumed to fall within the next 7 days. (e.g. if today is THU, then FRI will be tomorrow and WED will be 6 days off.) If you type an ENDING DAY it will be presumed to fall within the 7 days following the starting day. DATES always refer to the coming year; you cannot search for events which happened yesterday. You may may type over the starting and ending date fields to change their values. Dates take the following forms: 3/25 March 25th 22 22nd of the same month You may also indicate the TIMES of DAY that interest you. Legal specifications for time include: You type this To get ------------- ------ 9 or 9A or 9:00 9:00 AM 8P or 8:00P or 20:00 8:00 PM 3:15P or 15:15 3:15 PM 2:25 or 2:25A 2:25 AM N or 12N Noon M or 12M Midnight IMPORTANT: the time range is applied to each day separately. For example, a search of MON thru FRI 3PM to 5PM would search 2 hours on each of 5 days. Specification of an EVENT TYPE is optional, and you should probably not try it until you are familiar with the basic operation of the calendar. If no type is specified, or if you blank out the type field (with the SPACE BAR), then all events at the designated times will be retrieved. One of the shortcomings of the current version of whatsup is that there is no easy way to learn the type codes which have been used; the best way to find them is to look at some of the events in the calendar. The type code is shown in parenthesis on the scrollable selection screen, and also on the event details display. Project Athena Last change: 26 August 1987 2 WHATSUP(1) USER COMMANDS WHATSUP(1) THE EVENT LIST If your search succeeds in finding some events, then you will be shown a selection screen with one line for each event. Using the keys indicated on the screen, you can move the cursor to the line for any event which interests you. You should then press S to get details about the event. EVENT DETAILS The event details screen shows all the information which was entered into the calendar for a given event, except that only the specific time listing you select is shown. WRITING EVENT DETAILS TO A FILE If you press the F key while viewing event details, the com- plete listing for the event will be appended to a local file named "whatsup.items". You may print this file or keep it around to provide a convenient summary of the events that interest you most. You may also edit or delete the file as you see fit. CUSTOMER RESPONSES A mailing list named `whatsup' has been set up at Project Athena. Please send your questions and your comments. DO NOT SEND EVENT ANNOUNCEMENTS TO THAT LIST. POSTING EVENTS ON THE CALENDAR Whatsup is an open calendar; any Athena user can post or change event listings using the postit program. Use the com- mand man postit for information on posting events to the calendar. CAVEATS The whatsup system is experimental; we hope that it will provide a new way for the MIT Community to keep in touch and to find out what is happening around town. We cannot be responsible for innaccuracies in the information posted on the calendar, for errors in the calendar programs, for accidental loss of posted event listings, or for periodic unavailability of the system. Your comments and suggestions are urgently solicted. BUGS Uses the curses program. It does not understand mice or the X window system. You MUST have your TERMCAP entry set prop- erly or your screen will be garbage. (CTRL-C to get out.) If you're telnet'ing from a PC or PC/AT, you must turn on the telnet wrap option or your screen will not format prop- erly (PRESS F10 and w after starting telnet and before starting whatsup. To recover if you're already in whatsup, turn on wrap with F10/w and then press CTRL-L, which forces whatsup to repaint its screen.) Project Athena Last change: 26 August 1987 3 WHATSUP(1) USER COMMANDS WHATSUP(1) CTRL-L is not documented. There is no convenient way to find out about event type codes or to enforce their consistent use. Neither is there a way to make event type synonyms (e.g. a search for movies should match on film or screen). If you do a search which retrieves hundreds of events, the system may appear to hang for several minutes while the information is retrieved. Some curses bugs occasionally cause the scrollable selection screen to be garbled. Another curses bug on the RT causes minor disruption in the main prompting panel at times. VERSION This man page applies to whatsup version 0.5. SEE ALSO postit(1), bulkpost(1) AUTHOR Noah Mendelsohn, IBM T.J. Watson Research and MIT Project Athena Copyright 1987, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Project Athena Last change: 26 August 1987 4