Lotus Agenda

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Agenda is a DOS-based personal information manager, designed by Mitch Kapor and Jerry Kaplan, and marketed by Lotus Software.

Lotus Agenda is a "free-form" information manager: the information need not be structured at all before it is entered into the database. A phrase such as "See Wendy on Tuesday 3pm" can be entered as is without any pre-processing.

Its distinguishing feature was the ability to allow users to input data before the creation of database tables, giving the program immense flexibility to accommodate the myriad pieces of information a person may need to keep track of.

The program was an attempt to create a "spreadsheet" for words. The computing industry was at first quite taken by its audacious goal and the power it brought to users as they were given a tool that allowed them to structure "real life" information in any way they wished.

Its flexibility proved to be its achilles heel. New users confronted with so much flexibility were often overpowered by the steep learning curve required to use the program. Attempts to overcome this through packaging pre-built databases with the program were insufficient to lift sales to adequate levels. In the end only several hundred thousand copies were sold.

The program reached version 2.0b. Instead of porting Agenda to Windows, Lotus stopped development on this program and introduced a new PIM, Lotus Organizer, that uses the paper-based organizer metaphor, in its place.

1 The Program
2 Current Status
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] The Program

The following jargon is used to describe Agenda's concepts:

An "Item" is a piece of free-form text

A "Category" is a way of organising information and was the original smart folder concept used by Microsoft Outlook 2003 and by the Spotlight utility in Apple's MacOS X 10.4. Items can be automatically or manually assigned (linked) to one or more Categories.

Categories can be organised hierarchically and viewed as a tree network. "Parent" categories could inherit assignments from "child" categories.

The information could be presented in "views": in effect spreadsheet-like grids with items forming the rows and categories forming the columns.

Once an item is entered, the program can interpret the text to assign it to various categories. In every database a "When" category is included automatically so that if a date is embedded within the text, it is interpreted and an assignment is made. For example, the item "See Wendy on Tuesday 3pm" is automatically assigned to the following Tuesday at 3pm. If a category "Wendy" had also been created then an assignment could also have been made as well.

This gives the user a quick ability to find every item that has an association to Wendy.

The program can be used for:

Time management
Project management
Research and information sifting
General purpose database
Accounting
Problem solving
Legal practice management
Managing legal litigation cases

[edit] Current Status

The program has been released as freeware. It can be downloaded from the links below.

Lotus Agenda can still be used on Windows 3.x/9x/ME/2000/XP computers and there are still many active users around the world (see the Pimlist email list on Yahoo groups).

It suffers from:

Only handling textual information
A lack of file compatibility with Microsoft Office applications and information from the internet means that information must be transferred manually between them.
The program cannot print directly to USB printers.

On August 7th, 2006, Wired carried a report that Lotus Agenda was being redeveloped as a FOSS application, named Chandler. As of August 2006, Chandler is available as an alpha release for Windows, Linux and Macintosh.

Printfil, a shareware utility can be used to overcome the USB printer issue. The Utility can be configured to sniff for a particular text file within a folder and print it; or it can capture all codes being sent to LPT printer port and re-direct the output to the USB printer. See www.printfil.com.