Installation of WWCalc is as simple as hot-syncing the WWCalc.prc file to your Palm compatible device. The WWCalc program will be installed into the Main category of the PalmOS Launcher as shown below.

The minimum requirements for running the WWCalc program are:

• PalmOS version 3.0 or later.

WWCalc version 2.3 add the following enhancements:

Main Screen

1) Title Bar

The main screen title bar always displays the date of the selected day. When the program is started this will be the current date but may change as the selected day is changed either via the Go To button or using the weekday controls in the upper right corner of the screen.

2) Activity Points

This control displays the number of points that have been earned during the selected day by exercising. The number of points earned is displayed within the dotted border box, which is called a selector trigger.

The number of activity points may be directly entered in the Activity Points field or selected from the Select popup trigger. The following buttons may be tapped to take action on this dialog:

3) Vitamin Check Box

This check box is just an indicator that you have taken you vitamins for the selected day. If you aren’t taking vitamins … well, stop for a minute and ask yourself why not!

4) Water/Veg/Milk Counters

These counters track the number of items of each category you consume during the day. Tap on the number within the selector trigger to increment the counter by one. The maximum value for each of these counters may be specified on the Preferences dialog. When a counter exceeds the maximum value it returns to zero.

5) Current Weight

6) Meal Counters

The meal counters display the number of points consumed for each meal. These counters may be disabled by unchecking the Meal Totals check box on the Preferences dialog. Following are the meanings of the one-letter abbreviations:

• B – Breakfast
• L – Lunch
• D – Dinner
• S – Snack

Figure 5 shows an example of the results of enabling/disabling the Meal Total feature.

7) Quick Access Buttons

These buttons allow quick access to commonly used features as follows:

8) Scroll Buttons

These buttons appear when more food items are entered for a day than can be displayed on the main screen. Tapping the up arrow scrolls the food item table up, tapping the down arrow scrolls in the other direction. Note that the hardware scroll button may also be used for this purpose.

9) Food Item Table

This area, which occupies the majority of the screen, is used to display the food item descriptions, point values, and meal designations for the current day. To enter a new item tap on the description area of empty item at the end of the table and enter the description and then tap on the zero to the right of the description to enter the point value. The meal designation will default to the row immediately above the one being entered, if this is the first row the default if breakfast. If the designation is incorrect you may tap on it to pop up a list allowing it to be changed.

10) Point/Bank Adjust Controls

The point/bank adjust feature allows the remaining points and bank values respectively to be adjusted for the current day. Each value may be adjusted in the range of –4 to +10. Unchecking the Enable Adjust check box on the Preferences dialog will disable this feature and remove the controls from the main screen.

11) Current Bank Value

The bank value, assuming the selected day is the current date, is displayed here. If the selected day is not the current date, no bank value is displayed.

12) Remaining Points

13) Note Indicator Icon

WWCalc supplies a menu bar with three top-level menus providing selectable options. Some of the options provided are duplicates of features offered from controls on the main screen while others are only available from these menus.

Record Menu

The Record menu provides options, which affect or change the selected day.

Edit Menu

The Edit menu offers the standard Palm features. Please refer to your Palm documentation for information on these items.

Options Menu

The Options menu offers various program features as well as access to all the Weight Watchers caclulators.

The Preferences dialog presents various options available in WWCalc and allows you to specify how you would like the program to operate. Figure 8 shows the Preferences dialog and the following text discusses each of the available options.

• Description Lookup – The Description Lookup feature examines the description of food items previously enter and offers matching suggestions as a new item entry is being made. WWCalc offers the following options:

1. No Lookup – The Description Lookup feature is disabled.
2. Lookup Field – As an item is being entered the closest matching description is presented on the same line as the entry. As additional characters are entered the matching description is updated to reflect the new closest match.





3. Lookup List – As an item is being entered all matching items are displayed in a list under the entry line. This list may be scrolled and an item may be selected from it to complete the entry. Due to bugs in earlier PalmOS versions this feature requires PalmOS version 3.5 or later. If you have an OS version prior to 3.5 selecting this option effectively disables the Description Lookup feature.

1. 7 Day - The bank is calculated as the sum of the remaining points over the past seven days.
2. 7 Day DOW - The bank is calculated as the sum of the remaining points over the past seven days, however, the bank is reset and starts at zero on the selected day of the week. See My week starts on.
3. Prev Day - The bank is calculated as the remaining points for the previous day.

• My week starts on – Setting this value affects the bank calculation for the 7 Day DOW method as well as the weekday control at the top-right of the main screen. If you have a regular weekly weigh-in day you might consider making that day the start of your week. The following screen shots demonstrate the effects of setting this option:

Export

The Export feature allows data that you have entered into WWCalc to be formatted and written to the built-in Memo Pad data base. After hotsyncing your device these Memo’s will be available on the Palm Desktop where you can print or archive them.

Purge

When a purge operation is started it examines the databases for records which are more than the specified number of days old. All records that meet this criterion are removed.

The Purge feature also supports a warning value, which will not delete data within the warning period without your approval. This protects you against accidentally specifying a very recent purge date and removing most of your data.

For example, assume that today is December 30, 2001 and you have the Purge Warning Days set to seven (7) days. Invoking a purge operation and selecting Christmas day results in the following warning being issued. The data will only be removed if you respond Yes to this warning.

Set POINT Ranges

The Set POINT Ranges dialog allows setting the range of points to be assigned to each weight group. WWCalc defaults these values to those specified by Weight Watchers for the 2001 POINTs program. If the program changes this dialog offers a means to set the new range values. In addition, there are circumstances where a change is warranted. For example people who have reached their goal and are maintaining, pregnant women, or teenagers have special requirements that may require modification of these values.

Following is the layout of the POINT Ranges dialog with a discussion of the various options.

The values specified for each weight group are Maximum Weight Value, minimum POINTs, and maximum POINTs. For example, the above setting specify that for weight values from 0-150 pounds the point range to be assigned should be 18-23. Likewise for weight values from 151-174 the point range is 20-25.

The Global Adjust control allow a value to be added to (or subtracted from) each point range. This is convenient if you wish to alter the point ranges assigned by a set value without changing each individual value. For example, suppose that you are at your goal and attempting to maintain your current weight. You have determined that using three points above the ranges specified by Weight Watchers lets you do this. You can set the Global Adjust option to 3 and avoid changing the min/max range values. If, for example, your current weight was 172 then rather than the range 20-25 being assigned, WWCalc would assign the range 23-28.

Tapping the Done button will save your current settings. Pressing Reset will set all values back to their default settings.

Activity Calculator

The Activity Calculator is a tool which can be used to convert exercise into additional points which may be used during the current day or carried over in your bank value. Weight Watchers defines three levels of activity as follows:

• Light - Light activities that do not make you sweat. Your able to talk and sing as you're exercising. Examples include stretching or walking at a leisurely pace.

• Moderate – Activities that probably make you break into a sweat after 10 minutes of continuous exercise. You breath more often and deeper as you exercise. You’re able to talk but not able to sing. Examples include walking at a fast pace or biking.

• High – Activities that make you break into a sweat after several minutes of continuous exercise. Your breathing is more rapid and deep. You’re able to speak briefly, but not hold a long conversation. Examples include jogging, running, and competitive swimming, or biking.

In addition to the activity intensity level the duration of the activity (in minutes) and your current weight are variables to this calculation. WWCalc will use your current weight value, however, you can over-ride and specify a new value in the calculator.

To calculate activity points select the intensity level and enter the duration in minutes. If you wish to change the weight value used tap on the weight selector. Press the Calculate button to display the points associated with the activity.

Points Calculator

The Points Calculator is a tool used to determine the number of points charged for a food item based on its nutritional composition. The input to the calculator is the number of calories, the fat grams, and the fiber grams per serving. The following screen shot show the format of the Points Calculator.

To use the calculator enter the required values and press the Calculate button. The computed point value will be display next to the POINTS label.

BMI Calculator

To use the BMI Calculator, enter your weight and select you height in feet and inches. Press the Calculate button to compute your BMI value. Tapping the OK button dismissed the dialog and returns to the WWCalc main screen.

Following are the published meanings of the BMI values returned by the calculator:

• BMI below 20 is considered to be underweight.
• BMI of 20-25 is generally considered to be healthy.
• BMI of 26-30 is generally considered overweight.
• BMI over 30 is generally considered to be very overweight (obese).

Notes

Tap the Save button to save your notes and the Cancel button to dismiss the dialog without making any changes. If you wish to delete all the notes for a day simply select all the text in the dialog, backspace to delete it, and then tap the Save button. WWCalc will notice that all the text has been deleted and will remove the notes data record.

Lookup

The Lookup Items screen offers the following features:

• Find – The find feature allows the item descriptions to be searched for a matching string. Both a string search and an incremental search are supported and they work in combination with each other. When no find string exists, the find selector at the top left of the screen displays ==Find ==. Tapping on this selector brings up a find dialog allowing a find string to be entered. While a find is in progress the find selector will display the current find string:

1. The find selector is tapped which brings up the Find Item dialog.
2. The search string apple is entered and the OK button is tapped.
3. The find string is updated to display the current search string apple and the display is scrolled to the first matching entry, which is selected. At this point the user enters an ‘s’ via the graffiti pad (or keyboard) to extend the search using the incremental search feature.
4. The current find string is updated to display apples and the display is scrolled to the new matching entry.

• Category Select Trigger – Each List database can have its records assigned a category. These categories can vary from database to database generally reflecting food groups for the subject of that database. The Category Select Trigger allows selection of a particular category for display. While a category is selected it is used to filter the database items so that only records with that category are displayed. In addition, the find feature will only inspect records belonging to the current category. Selecting a category of All returns to displaying all items in the database. Following is an example of using the category:

• Select Button – Tapping the Select button while an item is selected dismisses the lookup screen and enters that item into the selected day. Pressing Select when no item is selected issues a short beep and ignores the request.
  
• Cancel Button – Tapping the Cancel button dismisses the Lookup screen and returns to the main screen without taking any action.
  
• Next Button – Tapping the Next button searches for the next match of the find string. The search continues from the currently selected item. If the end of the database is reached without finding a match the search position is reset to the top so tapping Next again will search from the beginning of the database. Tapping Next when there is no search string causes the request to be ignored and no action is taken.
  
• Open Button – Tapping the Open button returns to the Select Database screen allowing another List database to be opened.

Item Cache

The Item Cache is a very useful feature that remembers the items that you’ve entered and the point values assigned to them. The next time that same item description is entered the point value is retrieved from the cache and displayed. You are free to change the point value after it is retrieved from the cache and this will cause the cache to be updated with the new point value.

The Item Cache is a Least Recently Used (LRU) cache meaning that when it exceeds the number of entries specified in the Preferences dialog the items that are the oldest are discarded. This insures that the cache contains items that you frequently use and doesn’t waste storage space for Papa Bear’s Meat-like Substance (motto: It’s hot, brown, and plenty of it :-) which you ate last March and swore you’d never touch again.

WWCalc is freeware and, of course, comes with no guarantees. In addition, there is not dedicated support staff to answer your questions or address your problems. However, I have put a lot of work into WWCalc and I want it to be the best Weight Watchers tool available at any price. I am happy to offer whatever support I can and I’m always willing to listen to ideas for ways to improve the program. That doesn’t mean I’ll act on those ideas but I’ll certainly consider them for inclusion in a future release. I’m a pretty reasonable guy when I remember to take my medication!

Best of luck in your weight loss endeavors.

Bob Withers

December 2001