Options
Options can be changed from the Options menu.
Most of the options from the
options screens are self-explanatory - except:
Appearance
Look And Feel - the combo box will be populated only with the installed look and feels in your JRE. Some of the L&Fs from Java are not so appealing with BORG. The PlasticXP look and feel is distributed with BORG to make sure you have at least one good looking one. If you change the look and feel, restart BORG to have it take effect.
As of release 1.7.6, you can edit the look and feel name to indicate any look and feel that you like. To add a look and feel that is not in the list, you need to place the JAR for the look and feel in BORG's lib/ext folder, turn on dynamic loading so that BORG will load the JAR, type the correct look and feel name in the look and feel combo box, hit apply, and restart.
JGoodies Theme: as of 1.7.6, BORG lets you select a particular JGoodies theme if you are using a JGoodies look and feel.
Week View Start and End Hour – the range of times shown on both the Week and Day View grids.
Hide strike-through items - To do items are marked with a strike-through when they are done and not removed from the calendar. Some people like to see their done items crossed out on the calendar. This option is for those people that would rather hide these items to reduce clutter.
Holidays - Most US and Canadian holidays can be shown (optionally). Except for Christmas, religious/ethnic holidays are not included - mainly because they are usually lunar based and harder to calculate - and because they aren't usually a day off from work. These can be added manually through the appointment editor.
Day start and end hour - controls the part of the day shown in the time grid of the week and day views.
Truncate Appointments in Month View – this is set by default and causes only the first line of appointment text to show in the month view. If you want all lines of multi-line appointments to show in the month view, shut this feature off.
Popup Reminders
Minutes between reminders for untimed todos: Timed appointments popup up according to the Popup Times selected for each appointment. Untimed reminders have no start time, but still need to pop up every so often to bug the user. This option sets how often these untimed todos get a reminder.
Show all reminders in a single window: You can have separate windows for each popup reminder (like sticky notes) or just as single reminder window with a list of items.
Show reminders for Tasks, Projects, Subtasks: if set, and the corresponding item has a due date, it will get periodic reminders like an untimed todo.
Birthday reminder days: how many days before a birthday to start showing reminders about it. The birthdays are taken from the Address Book.
Popup Times: see the popup reminders help
Database Information
Apply DB Change will change the BORG database location and exit the program. The new location takes effect when the program is restarted. No data is copied and the original database is not removed. If you just want to move or copy db files to a new location – just copy them and change to the new location from the options screen.
Email Parameters
An email message is sent once a day only, and only for the next day's appointments. Provide the name of an SMTP server and email address to send to.
Miscellaneous
Show Stack Trace Option – if an error occurs and this option is set, a button will appear with the error screen to generate a stack trace. This can be used for debugging the error and can be sent to the developers. This need not be turned on unless debugging is being done.
Socket Port – setting a value here, (2929 is the default), will allow the program to detect when another copy is running. If you start a second copy of BORG when one is already running, and the socket port is set, the second copy will just open the running copy and exit.
Backup Options: Various options to have BORG automatically backup your database to a ZIP file in a form that can be imported if you loose you data. For most people, this is a critical option to set. Stuff happens and disks die. It's important to do automatic backups, unless you are using some other means for backup. Backups should be done to a different hard disk form the one where the database is located.
Dynamic loading of plugins and JARs - enabling this option tells BORG to load all JARs from the lib/ext folder on startup. This lets the user add new look and feels, new database drivers, and the experimental BORG plugins. This feature should not be turned on unless the user has copied a JAR to the lib/ext folder to be loaded. Most users will not use this.
User Color Scheme
The Theme pulldown is used to select themes. There are buttons to add and delete themes.
When Apply is pressed, the currently set theme is saved with the color settings selected and the color settings are applied.
Mark todo in month view: the characters in the text box will be prepended to todo's in the calendar views to make them stand out. The "magic" value "redball.gif" will cause a red ball icon to be used instead of text.
Draw Gradient in appt boxes: used to shade the color of the appt boxes in the dya and week views. This should normally be turned on. This option exists to support slower linux boxes that cannot draw the gradients quickly enough. Slowdowns when drawing the gradient seem to be a uniquely linux issue due to poor video drivers in linux for some video chips.