I never used Lotus Agenda, but I’m told it was a popular productivity tool for MS-DOS in the late 80s. I’ve been on a retro software rediscovery kick lately, so I’ve decided to give it a whirl and write about my experiences. There is something that appeals to me about using long-abandoned software. Perhaps it’s update fatigue, there’s certainly no need to dread a major update breaking something!
Regardless, I’ve always enjoyed finding new productivity tools to try out, and I’m not afraid of steep learning curves or getting my hands dirty. I’ll usually choose powerful and flexible software over simplicity.
At the moment I mostly use taskwarrior, but I’ve lost count of all the others I’ve tried!
Castle+crashers+save+editor+exclusive
Agenda is a PIM, a Personal Information Manager. That term has fallen out of fashion, I think a quick summary might be “anything that manages those small pieces of information we all deal with”. Things like contacts, todo lists, notes, and so on.
I found a 1989 episode of the TV show Computer Chronicles that discussed how people thought about PIMs at the time.
At the 21-minute mark there’s a demonstration of Lotus Agenda, but it’s not easy to follow, watch the clip and you’ll see what I mean. Still, you do see some interesting features:
Some form of NLP is used to extract dates and names from free-form text.
Categories are a little like what we would call tags today.
You can create custom dashboards called views.
Apparently this was an $800 software package (That’s $395 adjusted for inflation from 1989), yikes! You don’t have to pay that, Lotus made it available for free when development ceased.
In preparation for trying out Agenda, I found a copy of the original manuals on eBay for a few dollars. Just look at this monster, the user guide alone is over 700 pages, that’s not including the supplementary guides. The supplements I have are Working with Macros, Working with Definition Files, Setting up Agenda, and a few miscellaneous leaflets.
I guess that’s my bedtime reading taken care of for a while. I actually received the macro reference still in the original shrink wrap, it almost seems a shame to open it!
The Ultimate Guide to the Castle Crashers Save Editor Castle Crashers Save Editor
But that’s entry-level stuff.
Error: "Character texture missing (Pink Square)"
Then, his eyes caught a check box at the very bottom of the GUI, separated by a thick black line. It was grayed out, but the text was a stark, bold red:
It wasn't until the kingdom was on the brink of collapse that the Castle Crashers realized their mistake. Lord Rat, taking advantage of the chaos, had launched a surprise attack on the kingdom. The heroes knew they had to act fast to save their home.
Hidden Item/Relic Purge: Allow users to reset only specific "Collectable" bytes (like the Compass, Telescope, or Wheel) without wiping character levels, which is currently impossible in-game. Implementation Guide (Data Structure)
“You’re not the same as before,” Tomas said, plucking a green apple. He smiled at Jory as if he remembered an old joke and maybe he did. “Neither are you.”
Character Unlocks: Access secret characters like the Cult Minion or the Pink Knight immediately.
One evening, a woman came cloaked in moth-gray, her hair braided with threads of silver. She did not beg. She produced a parchment with a single line: “The King’s Bargain—exclusive.” She was not seeking supplies. She wanted a name removed: the name of the old courtier who had signed away her family’s lands decades before. The Ledger shimmered; the council voted. Mira, who had come around to the Ledger’s possibility of pragmatic mercy, argued in favor; Rowan argued against what felt like erasure of history itself. Jory held his silence.
Castle+crashers+save+editor+exclusive
You probably need to use other applications or services, and sync your data with your phone. Writing and reading files from outside DOSEMU is no problem, so if you just want to sync files this is no problem.
As it’s a terminal application you can also just SSH in and run it.
You probably also want to have your appointments sync with your calendar or something.
Export
There are two ways to export data from Agenda. If you have a commandline tool that you can pass arguments to, then you can write a macro that will invoke it. castle+crashers+save+editor+exclusive
Otherwise, you can export your data to a file.
Files
Agenda can export items to a format called STF, Structured Text File. The specification for that format is (mostly) documented in the manual, but it didn’t catch on.
I wrote a quick parser that can convert it to JSON, so now you can use modern tools like jq to manipulate and transform the data however you wish. The Ultimate Guide to the Castle Crashers Save
And so on, there are more examples in the README. If you can exchange data with other apps, you can now use stfjson to generate the correct format.
You can automate exports, Agenda has “Special Actions” in the category options. Alternatively, if it’s just a one off or for a macro, you can use the Transfer > Export command. Lord Rat, taking advantage of the chaos, had
Commands
In DOSEMU, the UNIX command will invoke a shell command on the host.
C:\>unix uname
Linux
If there is a commandline tool that will import data, e.g. a TaskWarrior user might use task add drop off laundry at dry cleaners, then you can create a macro in Agenda that simply launches that command.
You can use something like {F10}ULUNIX task {TYPE;%TASKTEXT}.
Import
Surprisingly, Agenda supports importing arbitrary text data. One of the manuals that came with agenda was Working with Definition Files, which explains how to write a configuration file that allow Agenda to parse anything.
It even has a Regular Expression tutorial, pretty impressive for a 1980s consumer product.
Castle+crashers+save+editor+exclusive
I quite like Agenda. It does many things well, but it’s absolutely true you could replicate most of it’s functionality with modern tools. However, I do enjoy using it, and I’m a big enough nerd that I quite like the challenge of using retro software.
I think the closest modern equivalent to Agenda would be taskwiki. It’s not a perfect match, but if you liked some of what you saw here but are not interested in retro software, try it out!
I’m still using Agenda after two weeks, and about 40% of the way through the manual 😂
The Ultimate Guide to the Castle Crashers Save Editor Castle Crashers Save Editor
But that’s entry-level stuff.
Error: "Character texture missing (Pink Square)"
Then, his eyes caught a check box at the very bottom of the GUI, separated by a thick black line. It was grayed out, but the text was a stark, bold red:
It wasn't until the kingdom was on the brink of collapse that the Castle Crashers realized their mistake. Lord Rat, taking advantage of the chaos, had launched a surprise attack on the kingdom. The heroes knew they had to act fast to save their home.
Hidden Item/Relic Purge: Allow users to reset only specific "Collectable" bytes (like the Compass, Telescope, or Wheel) without wiping character levels, which is currently impossible in-game. Implementation Guide (Data Structure)
“You’re not the same as before,” Tomas said, plucking a green apple. He smiled at Jory as if he remembered an old joke and maybe he did. “Neither are you.”
Character Unlocks: Access secret characters like the Cult Minion or the Pink Knight immediately.
One evening, a woman came cloaked in moth-gray, her hair braided with threads of silver. She did not beg. She produced a parchment with a single line: “The King’s Bargain—exclusive.” She was not seeking supplies. She wanted a name removed: the name of the old courtier who had signed away her family’s lands decades before. The Ledger shimmered; the council voted. Mira, who had come around to the Ledger’s possibility of pragmatic mercy, argued in favor; Rowan argued against what felt like erasure of history itself. Jory held his silence.
