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DISMISSAL 1.2.2
Application and this README.TXT file Copyright © 2005 Dcn. David B. Keim.


I. USAGE AND DISTRIBUTION LICENSE
Permission is granted to freely distribute this application so long as such distribution includes this 
README.TXT file, is otherwise without alteration, and is without any charge.

Your use of DISMISSAL 1.2.2 or any previous or subsequent release is without any warranty, express or 
implied.  Your use is "as is" and at your own risk.


II.  COST
DISMISSAL is free.  Distributing it for a fee is not allowed.


III.  RELEASE NOTES

A. VERSION 1.1.0
This release adds the following functionality and/or bug fixes:

*  In the initial release, the user was prompted to manually designate the patron saint of the temple 
if the patron or titular feast was not among the choices listed on the screen (which includes only 
those potentially be included in the dismissal for other reasons).  The user's entry was not saved at 
the end of the session, forcing him to re-enter the patron's designation each time DISMISSAL was run.  
The current release saves the user's manual designation of patron and defaults to it each time the 
program is started.  The manual designation can be overwritten by re-entering information in the 
prompted text box.  If the user selects one of the listed patrons, any previous manual designation is 
deleted.

*  In the initial release, selecting the choice "the Twelve Apostles" as patron of the temple did not 
properly define the patron variable.  As a result, when the little dismissal was generated (for Daily 
Orthros and Daily Vespers), the apostles were not mentioned in the patronal commemoration.  They were, 
however,  mentioned in the daily commemorations included in the little dismissal for Wednesday evenings 
and Thursday mornings.  This release fixes this bug.

*  In the initial release, formatted output was automatically directed to Microsoft Word.  In this 
release, the user has the option to select instead unformatted output, saved as a text file named 
"dismissal.txt" in the application folder.  The text file is then opened in Microsoft Notepad for 
proofreading and manipulation.  If the user does not have MS Notepad in the path, a runtime error will 
be generated.  The text file will still be available for opening with any application that can open a 
*.txt file (for instance, another word processor, a text editor, or a web browser).

B. VERSION 1.2.0
This release adds the following functionality and/or bug fixes:

*  When certain feastdays fall during Great Lent their commemoration is moved to Monday, Tuesday, or 
Wednesday of Bright Week.  This release adds support for this rubric.  Accordingly, if April 23 falls 
before Pascha, St. George will not be mentioned as the saint of the day during the dismissal(s) for such 
date.  Rather, he will be commemorated on Bright Monday.

*  In 1993, the Holy Synod of Antioch glorified St. Joseph of Damascus (July 10, Third Class). This 
release adds St. Joseph to the saints of the day.

*  In prior releases, a bug prevented the saints of the day from being properly suppressed on Holy 
Saturday and certain other days.  The suppression logic was re-programmed for this release.

C.  VERSION 1.2.1
This release adds the following functionality and/or bug fixes:

*  A typo in the commemoration of the holy fathers of the 4th Oecumenical Council has been fixed.  Prior 
versions returned a reference to the city of Nicaea.

*  Some minor formatting changes were made to certain captions.

*  When there is only one Sunday between Nativity and Theophany, the service for the Sunday following 
Nativity (commemorating Ss. Joseph the betrothed, David the King, and James the brother of God) is 
suppressed in favor of the service of the Sunday before Theophany.  In other words, the Sunday after 
Nativity is only celebrated as such only in years when it falls prior to December 30.  Earlier releases 
of DISMISSAL did not make this computation correctly.

D. VERSION 1.2.2
This release adds the following functionality and/or bug fixes:

*  In prior releases a coding error prevented the patronal commemoration variable from being reset to null 
if the patronal commemoration was switched during a session.  The result was that the wrong patronal 
commemoration could show up in the small dismissal.  This error did not affect the great dismissal and did 
not occur if the patron was manually entered or if the application was restarted prior to selection of the 
new patronal commemoration.  This problem has been fixed in this release.


IV.  PURPOSE
The rules governing the construction of the dismissals of the divine services of the Eastern Orthodox Church 
are complex.  The interplay of the various days, dates, and seasons can be quite confusing and requires 
serious study if the dismissals are to be meaningful.  Given the many competing priorities of parish life, 
a priest may not have the time to sit down and contemplate these rules in detail before every service, 
especially if more than one service is served serially.  Accordingly, the form of the dismissal may end up 
"spontaneously generated" to the best of the priest's ability and the faithful may hear, for instance, the 
precious chains of Peter invoked for their intercessions, which at a minimum could be confusing, if not troubling.

Even if a priest has all the time in the world, pulling the disparate elements together onto one page may 
prove difficult.  He may be left standing on the solea taxing his memory as he tries to decipher the notes 
he jotted on the page or thumbing through multiple books as he tries to make sense of the web of commemorations 
and invocations that is to end our corporate worship.

DISMISSAL is designed to generate the dismissal proper for a variety of the divine services for any given day 
of the year.  This application was developed by Dcn. David B. Keim (dkeim@nc.rr.com) in Microsoft Visual Basic 
6.0 as a project for the St. Stephen's Course in Orthodox Theology.

This application automates the rules for the construction of the dismissals set forth in The Liturgikon: 
The Book of Divine Services for the Priest and Deacon (Antakya Press, 1989), as such rules have been 
supplemented and amplified by the materials published by the St. Raphael Clergy Brotherhood of the Diocese of 
Wichita and Mid-America (Antiochian Archdiocese), as well as in the weekly Typikon Notes that at one time were 
published by the Brotherhood.

Although Bishop BASIL, ruling hierarch of the Diocese of Wichita and Mid-America, gave the author of this 
application his blessing to move forward with this project, neither His Grace nor the St. Raphael Clergy 
Brotherhood is in any way responsible for the content or operation of the application and has not endorsed 
it or its use.  The inevitable errors that will be found are solely the responsibility of the author and not 
that of any other person.


V.  DESCRIPTION & METHODOLOGY
DISMISSAL guides the user step-by-step through two screens in order to solicit information required to generate 
the variable material included in the service dismissals.  This variable material is combined with the fixed 
material of the form of dismissal proper to the service and the day.  The result is output to a specially 
formatted Microsoft Word document or, at the user's option, to an unformatted text file, which is then opened 
in Microsoft Notepad.

The formatted MS Word document output is orientated in two-column, landscape mode.  The variable material is 
in bold for ease of recognition by the priest.  Once printed, the document can be conveniently folded and 
inserted into any standard size liturgy book.

If the user selects the text file option but does not have MS Notepad in the path a runtime error will be 
generated.  However, the dismissal will be saved in a file called "dismissal.txt" that will be located in 
the application's folder.  It can be manually opened for editing or manipulation by any application that 
opens *.txt files.

The output is labeled with the day, date, and service being served in order to minimize the opportunity to 
use the wrong dismissal for a service.  Some seasonal designations are also included in the label (e.g., 
forefeasts, feasts, and afterfeasts of 1st and 2nd class commemorations).  

The application appends the appropriate closing prayer or dialogue to the output following the dismissal 
proper.  The user can designate whether or not a bishop will be present or presiding, thus determining 
whether the standard or hierarchical form of the closing prayer is called.  During the Paschal season, 
the prayer is replaced with the Paschal dialogue between the celebrant and the faithful.

The application first determines the date of Pascha for the year selected by the user when designating the 
date of the service.  The application uses a variant of Oudin's Algorithm to compute Pascha and should be 
accurate for all years from 1583 through 4099.  From this, the application determines if the date of the 
service selected is Pascha-dependent (e.g., lenten, Holy Week, Bright Week, etc.).

Currently, the application only supports the following services: Vespers (Daily and Great), Orthros (Daily 
and Festal/Sunday), Liturgy of St. Basil, Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, and Liturgy of the Presanctified 
Gifts.  Support for special and occasional services may be added in a later release.

The current release does not permit the user to apply any formatting at runtime or to direct the output to 
a destination other than Microsoft Word or Notepad.  Once the respective output is created, however, it may 
be easily edited as the user desires.

The general rules for the inclusion of the saints of the day are as follows:

*  All saints and commemorations ranked 5th class/two-glories and above are mentioned 
   in the dismissal unless suppressed by operation of some other rule.  Because of the 
   difficulty in getting an exhaustive and authoritative list of 5th class/two-glory 
   commemorations, the Menaion published by Sophia Press was chosen as a primary resource.

*  Sunday's characteristic phrase ("... He who rose again from the dead ...") is not 
   included at Great Vespers on Saturday night.  This characteristic phrase begins to be 
   used at the Midnight Office Sunday morning.

*  When Sundays fall during 1st class festal periods, the festal characteristic phrase is 
   combined with the Sunday characteristic phrase.  When Sundays coincide with a 1st class
   feast, the Sunday characteristic phrase is suppressed in favor of the feast.

*  1st and 2nd class feasts suppress the commemoration of lesser-ranked commemorations of 
   the day.

*  Daily Vespers and Daily Orthros use the small dismissal with the daily commemoration 
   proper to the day of the week.

*  Great Vespers, Festal/Sunday Orthros, and the liturgies use the great dismissal (with 
   the appropriate liturgical commemoration included in the case of the liturgies).

*  As much as possible, the program will not permit redundant commemorations -- e.g., at 
   the liturgy for Jan. 1, St. Basil is suppressed at the liturgical commemoration (even 
   though his liturgy is served) in favor of his being included as the saint of the day. 
   This works for all commemorations that are automatically included in the dismissal 
   forms; however, the user will have to manually edit out the patronal commemoration on 
   that patron's feastday (if the patron is ranked 5th class/two-glory or above).

VI.  ERRORS
Kindly bring any errors found in the running of this application to the attention of Dcn. David B. Keim.