User Manual

This is Part 2 of the original user manual that came with the Psion Organiser One.

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Table of Contents

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'ENTER'

'ENTER' is the neutral activity and can be used for entering and editing information before electing an activity such as 'SAVE' or 'CALC'. Pressing EXECUTE with 'ENTER' selected has no effects.

INFORMATION EDITING

Full information editing is available for all activities. For convenience, editing is described here with a reference to 'ENTER'.

Press MODE/HOME repeatedly until 'ENTER:_'  is displayed. The cursor appears to the right of the activity indicator. This is your invitation to type something. As an example, you could type your name and address. Press any key whose upper label is one letter of the alphabet to produce that letter in the display, in the position currently marked by the cursor. To enter a space, press SPACE. Don't forget, you need to press SHIFT to type any of the numbers and symbols shown in yellow under the keys. The cursor flashes to indicate the change, and to return to the alphabet you must press SHIFT again.

For example to enter 'ANN 28 NOV' you need to press the following keys:

A   N   N

SHIFT   S(,)   P(2)   D(8)   SPACE

SHIFT   N   O   V

You will see that the display window automatically moves along the line as you type more than nine characters. To look back to an earlier part of the text, press <<. Use >> to move forwards through the text. To return the cursor to the beginning of your line, press the MODE/HOME key once.

For instance:

Hold down << for 2 or 3 seconds

Press MODE/HOME

Mistakes in your text are easily rectified with the editing facilities of the Organiser. To delete any character from your text, use the chevron keys to position the cursor under it and then press DELETE. If the cursor is beyond the end of your line when you press DELETE, the first character to its left is deleted and the cursor moves under the vacant position.

Hit DELETE

Characters can be inserted at any point in your text, and will appear on the left of the cursor when you type them.

For example, if you have entered 'LDON' instead of LONDON, position the cursor under the D and press the O and N keys.

O   N

If you suddenly find that the display doesn't change when you enter something, you are probably trying to exceed the limit of two hundred characters per line. If necessary, edit your text to reduce its length.

Clearing The Display

Pressing ON/CLEAR chancels the current entry and lets you start again in the same activity. This is the key's CLEAR function.

For instance:

Press ON/CLEAR

Only the activity indicator is retained, and you can now enter something else or go to another activity. Pressing ON/CLEAR when the current line is empty recalls the clock display and the Organiser is reset as if you had just switched on. You can always use this key to clear the line and escape from whatever you are doing.

'SAVE'

Note. The 'SAVE' and 'FIND' sessions assume that you have a datapak in drive one only (which is how the Organiser is supplied).

Use the 'SAVE' activity to make a permanent copy of the current line in the removable datapak. When you press the SAVE key, the Organiser will display the indicator 'SAVE1:' and the first nine characters of the current line.

Nothing is actually copied into a datapak until EXECUTE is pressed, so press it when you are ready. When you do this, you will see the cursor move through your text as the text is copied into the datapak. When this process is completed, the activity indicator changes from 'SAVE1' to 'ENTER', to prevent you accidentally saving the same record twice. If you really want to return to 'SAVE', press the SAVE key.

To conserve space in your datapak, Organiser only saves information you have entered or edited, as opposed to information it has produced itself. For example the indicator 'SAVE1:' is not saved.

Although 'SAVE' has full information editing facilities, enabling you to type and edit information with 'SAVE' selected, it is wise to do these things in 'ENTER' until you are properly familiar with the Organiser. Remember, every time you save an entry you are using storage space in your datapak.

Don't use 'SAVE' if the " LOW BATTERY" warning has appeared. If you do so, you may spoil the remaining space in your datapak.

'FIND'

The 'FIND' function is a powerful tool which searches through your datapak for the information you wish to recall. When you press the FIND key Organiser will display 'FIND1:_'. Organiser now expects you looking for a record you have already saved, and gives you a clear line in which to enter the clue for the next search. If you didn't clear the search clue last time you used 'FIND', it is shown now, in case you want to use it again or modify it.

To search for a particular record all you have to do is give the Organiser a search clue that is a series of characters that matches some part of the record you want to retrieve. (For example, 'ANN' would be sufficient to find a record of Joanna's name and telephone number.) When you press EXECUTE, Organiser searches for and displays the first record containing exactly that series of characters. If this is not the record you need, press EXECUTE to see the next one containing the same series of characters.

Search Clues

A search clue does not have to be a whole word and can occur anywhere in the record. It may consist of anything from one to fifteen characters, including spaces, but generally three or four characters will be sufficient to find a record quickly.

A more restricted search can be instituted by prefacing the search clue with an asterisk. This tells the Organiser that the search clue must occur at the beginning of the record. For example, 'FIND1:*SUS' would find the record 'SUSAN SMITH .....', but not 'CONSENSUS .....' whereas 'FIND1:SUS' would find both.

To broaden the search, do not enter a search clue at all. With the display empty except for the activity indicator 'FIND1:' press EXECUTE to see a copy of the next record in the datapak. Press EXECUTE every time you want to move on to the next record.

If you ask your Organiser to find a series of characters which does not occur in that datapak, the message 'NOT FOUND' will be shown. Press ON/CLEAR to clear the message and recall the 'FIND1:' indicator and your original string of characters. Check your search clue carefully and modify it if necessary. Press EXECUTE to repeat the search.

Scanning A Found Record

When a record is displayed, you can scan it from left to right at the comfortable reading pace by pressing >>. The record loops round to the beginning when it reaches the end, so that you see a continuos progression of its contents. To hold any part of the text in the window, press << once, and if you want to move backwards press << again. In that case you press >> to freeze the display.

Editing A Found Record

The line of information which Organiser displays when it has found a record is a copy of the original stored in the datapak. Thus you can edit it, calculate and manipulate it as you please without affecting the original.

Immediately you attempt to edit a found record, the Organiser selects 'ENTER' and you can edit in the usual way. To clear a displayed record (and go into 'ENTER') press ON/CLEAR.

Erasing A Record

Erasing a record from your datapak is like crossing out a piece of written work. It is still there, occupying space, but you can no longer read it.

'ERASE' only becomes available when the Organiser is displaying a retrieved record in 'FIND'. Press MODE until 'ERASE:' appears to the left of the text. Now press EXECUTE to erase the record. The text is cleared from the display and the Organiser automatically presents 'ENTER'.

The record can never be found again.

Updating Records

If you wish to update a record, for example to alter train times when the service is revised, you must find and erase the old record and save the new one. Alternatively, if a large part of the old record is still valid, you can find and edit it, save the new version, then find the old one again and erase it. Either way, as far as your Organiser is concerned, the old record no longer exists.

'CALC'

'CALC' is for arithmetical calculations. When you select 'CALC' Organiser automatically behaves as if you have pressed SHIFT, and cursor flashes to indicate that the keyboard will respond according to the yellow numbers and symbols. (You can return to the alphabet by pressing the SHIFT key, but the Organiser will not perform calculations on letters).

To Carry Out The Calculation

Select 'CALC', type your calculation, leaving no spaces between characters, and press EXECUTE.

Provided that your calculation contains no errors, the Organiser immediately displays the result, which consists of an equals sign and the answer. The last few characters of your entry will also be displayed. Use the chevron keys to see the rest of the line.

If the Organiser finds any errors in your entry it will move the cursor to the first character it does not understand, and wait for you to correct it. (Some possible errors are: an unpaired bracket, a letter of the alphabet, a space, a number containing more than seven digits, or an incorrect operation such as division by zero.) When you have made the correction, press EXECUTE to try the calculation again. Every time you press EXECUTE the cursor will go to the next error, until you have corrected them all.

The exciting feature of the Organiser's calculation facility is that you can see the whole calculation, and can edit any part of it as you wish. (Very important when your calculation can be two hundred characters long.) Before examining this detail, a word about numbers and symbols.

Numbers

Your Organiser can deal with numbers containing up to seven digits. You may enter numbers less than one as decimals (with or without a nought before the point) or as fractions. For example 0.25, .25 or 1/4. To make a number negative, simply enter a minus sign before it. Your Organiser can distinguish between this use of a minus sign and its use in subtraction.

The Organiser recognises and uses exponential format. This is a neat way of presenting very large or small numbers which would otherwise use too many digits, and is explained below.

Recognising The Symbols

You will find the arithmetical symbols marked in yellow under some of the character keys. Those you may not recognise are:

You can also use these symbols in general text.

Exponential Format

A number which contains many noughts may be conveniently written as a number between one and ten multiplied by ten to a given power. For example, the number 2 300 000 may be expressed as 2.3 times 1 000 000.

Now 1 000 000 is ten raised to the sixth power: that is six tens multiplied together. Therefore we may sensibly express the number 2 300 000 as 2.3 times ten to the sixth power. Exponential format is a form of shorthand which allows us to write this as 2.3 E6. The E stands for 'multiplied by ten raised to the power given by the next number', and the six means the sixth power. Negative powers of ten are used with 'E' in a similar way, so that 2.3 E-6 means 2.3 divided by ten to the sixth power, that is 0.0000023. The smallest value your Organiser can accept is 1.000000 E-99 and the largest is 9.999999 E99.

Where it is appropriate, the Organiser presents the results of calculations in exponential format.

Using Brackets

Organiser allows you to use as many pairs of brackets as wish in your calculation, but only two levels of brackets are allowed: i.e. you must not enclose more than one pair of brackets within another pair. For instance, 3*(1+2+3*(4+5*(7-6))) is unacceptable because there are two pairs of brackets enclosed in another pair, making three levels at all.

Like other calculators, Organiser will normally carry out any multiplication or division operations before addition or subtraction. If you want to carry out any additions or subtractions first, you must enclose them in brackets. For example, the Organiser calculates 4*5+3 as 23. To make it add the 5 and the 3 together before multiplying by 4 you must enter 4*(5+3) which is calculated as 32.

Editing A Calculation

Remember that a calculation can be edited just like any other line of information, both before and after the result is displayed. As well as making it easy to correct typing mistakes, these facilities mean that you can perform a whole series of calculations by editing the preceding version, rather than re-typing it each time.

This is useful for 'What if' analysis, where you want to examine the effect of changing one parameter of a system, e.g. the effect on profit of increased component price.

When you start editing the calculation the result disappears because it is no longer valid.

If you want to use the result of one calculation in the next one, simply enter the additional numbers and symbols to form the new calculation and press EXECUTE for the answer. Organiser assists you by deleting the equals sign and everything to the left of it as soon as you start editing the original result.

The answer produced by the Organiser does not form part of the current line, so if, for instance, you press SAVE, your calculation will be retained (as you typed it) but the answer (which the Organiser supplied) will not. However, if you edit the answer, it becomes the current line and can thus be saved and generally manipulated the normal way.