absence V2.0 (Abwesenheit in german)
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			#### DESCRIPTION ####
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"absence" is virtual white-board.

The purpose was to give a graphic, real-time, distributed
overview of the activities of members of a group.

The columns are individual days, the rows are people to keep track of.
The extreme left hand column (day) is always today.  (You cannot see
where people were, only where they are or will be.) The number of days
the can be seen is configurable, set at the moment to 240.  To use, a
person (normally oneself) is locked (the button to the left of the row
is clicked and turns red), MB1 is clicked on a morning or afternoon
(resolution is 1/2 day) and dragged to the RIGHT to the ending morning
or afternoon and released.  A prompt window materializes to get
relevant information about the absence (vacation, customer visit,
etc).  Also there are two possible colors, blue and red.  Red is used
to indicate a physical absence, whereas red to denote intense,
uninterruptible activity ("don't bother me!").

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This has been almost completely re-written, although the look-and-feel
has remained almost identical.  It is now somewhat more
buzzword-complient than the last version, as it is now based on a
Client/Server (fanfare!) architecture.  It is therefore necessary to
get and compile the DP (Distributed Processing) extension to TCL in order
to use it, but I think it's worth it! Also, an entry in the
/etc/services called "abwesenheit" is necessary, preferable in
yellow-pages (and if you don't have such things centralized, and have
more than 3 hosts in your net Selber Schuld!)

Also, "absence" must be used with TCL 7.4, TK 4.0.

A server process must run all the time (I start it when the system
boots).  The server is responsible for maintaining the DATA files,
managing locks, etc.

The client does what clients usually do.

The relevant files are:
-----------------------
server		guess what?
abwesenheit	client, call it whatever you like, for example absence
abwesenheit_vt	a character-cell client, for the X impaired (not very
		nice, but does the job)
config.tcl	site configuration file ** EDIT THIS **
utils.tcl	common procedures for the clients and notify.tcl
notify.tcl	a script to compile a summary for the week and send via
		mail (to a secretary, for example)
rec_help.tcl	help routines, used by 'abwesenheit'
run-notify	a script to call the notify.tcl script
*.bm		various bitmaps
run		the script that I call from the boot scripts. It will
		restart the server should it ever die (doesn't happen
		very often)
.feiertage	list of holidays (format is described below) (LANG=german)
.holidays	list of holidays (format is described below) (LANG=english)
.messen		list of trade fair days (format described below) (LANG=german)
.tradeshows	list of trade fair days (format described below) (LANG=english)
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===================== CONFIGURATION =========================
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First, edit "config.tcl".  The scripts "notify.tcl", "abwesenheit",
"abwesenheit_vt", and "server" pull in config information from it.
These scripts plus the "run" script must also be edited to set lib_dir.
The places are all marked with *EDIT*.

I have all the scripts in /usr/local/lib/abwesenheit. This is what is
known as "$lib_dir" everywhere.  There are links from
/usr/local/Scripts (in our $PATH) for the 'executable' scripts that point
to the executable scripts in $lib_dir.  That is:

/usr/local/Scripts/abwesenheit -> /usr/local/lib/abwesenheit/abwesenheit
/usr/local/Scripts/abwesenheit_vt -> /usr/local/lib/abwesenheit/abwesenheit_vt

Also, the data files (for historical reasons) are kept in
"/ossc/local/Wesen". Change this is  "config.tcl".

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Seeing as this is the only documenation, here are a few notes:

====================
===   COLORS     ===
====================
The default colors can be (partially)
customized. A file called ".absence_colors" (".abwesenheit_colors" if
language=german can be created in the login directory with following
format (one entry per line):

<color-name-in-abwesenheit-script> <color-name-from-/usr/lib/X11/rgb.txt>

Example:
reserved_person_color darkRed

for all color names used, look in absence towards the end.

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== HOLIDAYS and TRADE FAIRS ==
==============================
the systems displays holidays and trade fairs in the matrix (by default
in green). 

Holiday file (.holidays)
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Has the following format:
<designation> <date in dd/mm/yy format>: <description inside '{' and '}'>

example:
Holiday: 15/8/95 {all good sinners go to heaven day}

look at the example ".feiertage" for more examples

Trade fair file (.tradeshows)
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format:
<date in dd/mm/yy format> <description in '{' and '}' chars>

example:
3/4/95 {DECUS Germany Symposium}

look at the example ".messen" for more examples

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Hope it works for you.

Rob Urban
urban@rto.dec.com