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.
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