README

HyperCal Version 3 Beta 1

Several lifetimes ago (I think it was October, 1995), I was a new Perl hacker, and I wrote HyperCal as an exercise. It did not occur to me as I was writing that the program would find uses all over the world, and that I would spend hours every week answering email asking about the cryptic code I had thrown together. But, the code worked, and is being used in numerous places around the world. Amazing what people will put up with.

Well, after two years of answering those email messages, I decided that it was about time to rewrite the program in such a way that I would not cower in shame every time I looked at the source. Along the way, I would use some of the tricks that I had developed on the way to becoming a seasoned Perl Hacker.

So, here it is. HyperCal Version 3. The main changes are as follows:

Data file format: Seems that when I originally wrote HyperCal, I was blissfully unaware that Perl had date and time functions built right in, and I quite happily reinvented the wheel (or the calendar). Unfortunately, I did it badly. The new data file format makes use of the time functions that Perl gives you for free - localtime and timelocal. Also, in addition to storing the start time and end time of an event, I allow events to be annual events, so that you don't have to re-enter them every year. I have also put in there a concept of event type, and something for recurring events, although I have not yet implemented either of those ideas.

Code structure: OK, I admit it, the code was ghastly, unreadable spaghetti code. I have attempted to make the code more readable, use syntax that is more appropriate for Perl 5, and use functions and subroutines a little more consistently. This should reduce the number of support emails more than anything else.

HTML template files: In the past, in order to change the look of a page, you had to paw through the code, try to figure out where that part of the page was getting generated, and modify print statements. Arrgh! Now, everything is based off of HTML template files. Editing rather ordinary-looking HTML changes the look of the pages that are produced. The default HTML pages are not intended to be attractive, but just to give you an idea of what my tags look like, and how to make your templates work. Should be self-explanatory. Plus, for all the newbies that try to use my code, you don't actually have to know Perl to use these scripts. Another thing that will save me time answering email.

HyperCal is a production of RCBowen.com. HyperCal is distributed freely, and you are encouraged to hack on the code as much as you like. If you do something really cool with it, I'd like to know about it, and would also appreciate seeing your source code.

At some point, there is likely to be another version of the product that lives on top of a real database - Access for Win32, and mSQL for Unix systems. That version will probably not be free, but will be more robust and faster, by virtue of using a real database. Stay tuned.

Rich Bowen
RCBowen@RCBowen.com
www.rcbowen.com
December 22, 1997