******************************************************************************** Meanwhile I do not run Windows anymore so cannot maintain the code anymore. If there is someone who would like to take care for this program, just write an e-mail to . If you want to stay up to date with the latest converters use the command line program `hrsh2csv' which runs also under linux and is actively developed by me. May 3, 2003 - Peter Novotnik ******************************************************************************** About h2csv ----------- This file contains informations about the h2csv converter for the Windows platform, if you are running Linux or a Macintosh please visit http://hours.sourceforge.net for more information on converters. If you should find a bug or if you should have a comment about the `h2cvs' utility, please do not hesitate to write an email to `peternov1@gmx.de'. WARNING: While every effort has been made to find and remove bugs from the converter as well as the hours software, it is still under active development. You use it at your own risk! Since hours is still under active, there may be bugs in the software on your PDA as well as in the converter on your desktop. This program converts PDB files which were created with the Hours software on devices running the Palm operating system into a (comma separated value) CSV format. Why CSV? -------- First of all, let me quickly explain the idea behind the converter: The Hours application creates database on your PDA which are in three different formats (versions). Each database contains records which are all of the same format within a database. As Hours helps you to gather data which is quite usefull in applications like Excel, StarOffice or OpenOffice you need to get this data to the desktop. The Hours project relies on the desktop software provided by Palm Inc. (HotSync Manager) to make a backup of the created databases. This manager has a default conduit to backup all databases on your PDA which have no conduit assigned. These backups are stored in a PDB (Palm DataBase) format on your desktop. Unfortunatelly these file are not readable by humans because it contains binary data. That's why PalmOS applications often come with a conduit or a converter. They transform the "unreable" data into a different format which can be text-format or other format that desktop applications can read and continue working on it. Why a converter? ---------------- You may be wondering why there is no conduit for the Hours software. - As Hours is a multi-database application the conduit would be hard to implement (when I'll have more time, maybe there will be a conduit one day, but do not rely on this). - The second and very important reason is that the source code can be taken to build versions of the converter running on other platforms than Windows. Converting ---------- So how do you get your data from PDA to a "readable" format on the desktop? First of all you need to locate those PDB files described earlier. As you probably perform periodically a HotSync those files will already be on your desktop. However, be sure to perform a HotSync if you've changed the Hours data on your PDA so you will have always the latest PDBs for the conversion. The default backup conduit writes the files into the backup directory of the appropriate Palm user. On my Windows machine this is the following directory for example: "c:\Palm Desktop\pete\Backup". Well, "c" is the drive, "Palm Desktop" is the installation-directory of my Palm software and "pete" is the user name of my PDA. In this directory (of course the names are different on your machine) you may find many (this depends on the sofware you have installed on your handheld) PDB files. Not all of them are generated by the Hours application. ONLY files ending with "-HRSH.PDB" are relevant for the provided `h2csv' utility. If there are no such files you have probably not created hours databases on your handheld or have not performed a HotSync operation with the proper user name. Now that you've located the files, double click the `h2csv.exe' file and a window should appear. You can drag the files into the window or use the "add..." button to fill the list of PDB files to be converted. Clicking the `convert' button starts the conversion. Please check the `preferences' button before running the application the first time! Notable ------- To keep the window on top of your desktop above all other windows, just use the Pin-icon on the left of the titlebar. In the preferences section of the converter there's an option to `remove CR' from the description of an hours record. Please leave this option checked unless you know what you are doing. Uncheck `print header' to leave out the description of the columns in the resulting CSV file. The separator of the CSV file is a plain comma (,) by default. As there were reported problems about this with Excel 2000, there is now the possibility to switch the separator to a semicolon (;) or a tabulator character. If you should have some problems with opening the file with you favourite spreadsheet application just try a different separators on the conversion. All preferences are stored in the registry when you exit the converter and are restored when you launch it again. In the new version (v1.1, press F1 to pop up the about dialog) of the converter, you can check `remember files' to let the utility remeber the files in the list, so the filelist will be restored next time you'll start the programm. -- Fri Jun 14 23:32:02 CEST 2002 Peter Novotnik