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!
Modern Family Season 10 - Threesixtyp -
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!
Ultimately, Modern Family Season 10 serves as the essential bridge in the show’s history. It transitions the series from the nostalgia of the early years into the finale. By introducing the next generation—Haley’s twins—the season ensures that the "modern family" will continue evolving even after the documentary crew stops filming. Whether you are streaming it on official platforms, revisiting the DVDs, or searching for a high-quality release associated with "threesixtyp," Season 10 stands as a testament to why Modern Family remains a beloved fixture in television history.
In a bittersweet moment for fans, the season also deals with the death of DeDe Pritchett, the often-hilarious but chaotic ex-wife of Jay and mother to Claire and Mitchell. Episode 5, titled "Good Grief," is widely considered one of the best episodes of the season, handling the family's loss with a poignant blend of tragedy and realism, showing how each character processes grief in their own unique way.
. This season, the family faces major milestones: Jay and Gloria navigate Joe's school years, Phil and Claire deal with the 'empty nest' (that isn't quite empty), and Haley prepares for her biggest adventure yet—motherhood.
Offers the complete series with adjustable quality controls in the web browser and mobile app settings.
The season premiere, "Trophy Wife," sets the tone for the rest of the season, as Jay (Ed O'Neill) and Gloria (Sofía Vergara) adjust to life without Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) and Cameron (Eric Stonestreet) in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Phil (Ty Burrell) and Claire (Julie Bowen) try to get their daughter Haley (Sarah Hyland) ready for college.
Navigating Modern Family Season 10 in 360p: A Nostalgic Streaming Guide The Cultural Impact of Season 10
The couple deals with a maturing Lily while Cam continues to balance coaching high school football with his dramatic theatrical flair.
Modern Family Season 10 - Threesixtyp -
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. Modern Family Season 10 - threesixtyp
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.
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. Whether you are streaming it on official platforms,
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.
Modern Family Season 10 - Threesixtyp -
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 😂
Ultimately, Modern Family Season 10 serves as the essential bridge in the show’s history. It transitions the series from the nostalgia of the early years into the finale. By introducing the next generation—Haley’s twins—the season ensures that the "modern family" will continue evolving even after the documentary crew stops filming. Whether you are streaming it on official platforms, revisiting the DVDs, or searching for a high-quality release associated with "threesixtyp," Season 10 stands as a testament to why Modern Family remains a beloved fixture in television history.
In a bittersweet moment for fans, the season also deals with the death of DeDe Pritchett, the often-hilarious but chaotic ex-wife of Jay and mother to Claire and Mitchell. Episode 5, titled "Good Grief," is widely considered one of the best episodes of the season, handling the family's loss with a poignant blend of tragedy and realism, showing how each character processes grief in their own unique way.
. This season, the family faces major milestones: Jay and Gloria navigate Joe's school years, Phil and Claire deal with the 'empty nest' (that isn't quite empty), and Haley prepares for her biggest adventure yet—motherhood.
Offers the complete series with adjustable quality controls in the web browser and mobile app settings.
The season premiere, "Trophy Wife," sets the tone for the rest of the season, as Jay (Ed O'Neill) and Gloria (Sofía Vergara) adjust to life without Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) and Cameron (Eric Stonestreet) in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Phil (Ty Burrell) and Claire (Julie Bowen) try to get their daughter Haley (Sarah Hyland) ready for college.
Navigating Modern Family Season 10 in 360p: A Nostalgic Streaming Guide The Cultural Impact of Season 10
The couple deals with a maturing Lily while Cam continues to balance coaching high school football with his dramatic theatrical flair.
