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****************************************************************************
* *
* Addresser V1.0 Documentation *
* *
* With special thanks to: Leo Schwab (for the "ICONIFY" routine), *
* Geoff Summerhayes (for the help he gave me), *
* the Algoma Amiga User's Group, *
* Everyone on the FidoNET Amiga-Prog echo, *
* and, last but not least, *
* Janna Veihl (someone special) *
* *
* And Greetings to: Don Marks and all the Waterloo Mathies! *
* *
****************************************************************************
Greetings all Amiga users out there! Hope you find this program useful.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE:
Addresser V1.0 is (C) Copyright 1991, Jeff Kelly
All Rights Reserved
This program is copyright 1991 by Jeff Kelly. I hereby give permission
for anyone to freely distribute this program so long as the documentation
file is distributed with it. In no way should the documentation or the
program be modified, or sold for profit. I cannot be held responsible for
damage that occurs as a result of the use/misuse of this program, I have
made every effort to ensure Addresser operates properly.
If you have any problems, suggestions, or would like to send a
shareware donation (suggestion: $10) to either one of the following
two addresses:
Jeff Kelly Jeff Kelly
560 Old Goulais Bay Rd. or P.O. Box 811
Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. Sault Ste. Marie, MI 49783
P6A 5K8
Your name will be placed on the list of people I send upgrades to (and with
some of the ideas I have for this puppy, I can almost guarantee an upgrade).
I am also open to suggestions, if you can think of another feature that
would be perfect for Addresser, please let me know, and I'll do my
best to implement it (Just take it easy on me, I am a relative newcomer
to Amiga programming).
For those of you corporate Amiga types who like this program, I am
looking for employment as a programmer! I'll even waive the shareware fee!
GENERAL INFO:
Addresser is a small name and address filer for Amiga users.
Essentially, it's an electronic equivalent to those nifty little "Rolodex"
card filers (without the knobs on either end). Addresser started as
a weekend project so I can learn to program all those nifty little
intuition features. It then evolved into my attempt to create a "name filer
program to end all name filer programs". What you see here is approximately
3 months of coding.
OPERATION: I have tried to make Addresser as easy to use as possible,
I have even carried over some of my Macintosh programming
experience (i.e. redundancy) over to make Addresser easy to use.
Here's a general overview of Addresser's gadgets, menus, and
features:
Starting Up: Before you start Addresser, make sure you have the
ARP.library installed in your LIBS: directory. Addresser
uses the ARP file requester.
You can start addresser either through the CLI or
Workbench. When addresser is first started, a window
will pop up saying:
No name file available
Create new file?
when you select "Yes" the address file will be created
in the same drive and directory Addresser is in.
Unfortunately, there is no provision to have the address
file placed in a different directory than Addresser.
The "No" selection is there just in case you don't want
Addresser in the directory it currently is in.
After you have everything set up properly, and select
"Yes" in the "Create new file?" window, the main addresser
window will pop up. Since you initially have no names
in the list, there will be no names shown. More on adding
names later on in this file.
Address Fields: These fields are pretty much self-explanatory, they are:
First, - person's first name
Last, - person's last name
Street, - person's street address
City, - city person lives in
Prov/State,- province or state person lives in
(Also includes counties in the U.K.)
Country, - country person's address is in
PC/Zip, - address's Postal Code or Zip Code
Home #, - person's home phone number
Bus. #, - person's business phone number
Note, - short comment pertaining to person
All information placed within these fields are placed
in the address list in alphabetical order according to
the Last name field. If two last name entries are the
same, the First name field is then used for ordering within
the list. If two people with the exact same name is
placed into the list, then the last person you added will
be the first in the list.
Marked: The marked button is a flag that you can use to "Filter"
out certain records in the address list. You'll find later
in this file it is used for printing and merging. When the
marked button is pressed, a check mark will toggle on and
off, when the check mark shows, the record has been
marked.
Buttons:
Add: This will probably be the first thing you want to do.
When the "Add" button is pressed, all previous data shown
will be cleared away and you will be presented with a blank
record for adding a new name. Since the "First" name
string gadget is already activated you can start entering
the new information right away. To move on to the next
field, press return, the cursor will jump to the next field
in the list. When all the information is in, either press
return when in the "Note" field, or select one of the
buttons at the bottom of the window. The new record has
now been inserted into the list.
Remove: Remove is the exact opposite of "Add". It will remove
the record that is currently being shown from the address
list. When you select "Remove" a window will pop up
stating:
Remove <person's name>
from your list?
respond by selecting either Yes or No!
Search: Now we get into the really nifty features. When you
select "Search" a window will pop up displaying the field
you want to search on, which search mode you want, and
the string you want to search for.
The "Search on:" gadget displays the field that will
be compared with the search string for the search. To
change the field you want to search on, simply select the
button beside the field name (the one with the arrow
pointing to a line). A menu of all the field selections
will pop. Simply click on the field you want searched,
and the gadget will display your new selection. (Those
of you who are unfortunate enough to have to use
Microsoft Windows will recognize this menu set up, I felt
it would be more useful than what Commodore does in
AmigaVision with the "Cycle" button)
The search modes are as follows:
Search: Stop and display the first occurrence of
the search string in the list.
Find & Mark: Run through the entire list, and set the
marker on each record that has an
occurrence of the search string.
The "Search String" is a string gadget in which you
enter the string you want to search for. The search
will begin after you either press return when the
string gadget is selected, or press the "Search" button.
The search method that is used in addresser is rather
simplistic. Whatever is typed in the search string will
be compared from the beginning of the search field. So,
if you know only the first three letters in a person's
name, you can type the first three letters into the search
field, and it will find the first occurrence of those three
letters in the list. The search is case insensitive.
Print: Print will bring up a window with some selections for
you to make before printing:
Full List : Prints a list containing all the
fields
Phone List : Prints a list containing the person's
name, and both the home and business
phone number.
Mailing Labels: Prints the person's name, street, city
province or state, country, and postal
or zip code in the proper format for
a tractor-feed, 3.5 by 1 inch mailing
label.
Address Cards : Prints all the fields onto a 3 by 5
inch card.
Draft : Turn on the printer's draft mode
NLQ : Turn on the printer's NLQ mode
Condensed : Turn on the printer's Condensed mode
All : Print all the records in the address
list.
Current : Print only the currently displayed
record. (This selection is disabled
for full list and phone list).
Marked : Print all the marked records in the
address list.
Call: Call is used in conjunction with a modem. When you select
Call, a window will pop up asking you if you want to call
the person's home or business phone number. Simply select
the number you want dialled, pick up the phone's receiver,
and after the modem is finished dialling, press OK.
Note: I have only tested this on my USRobotics Sportster
2400, and may not work for all modems, especially
those which are not HAYES compatible, or do not
like it when a phone on the same line is off the
hook. I also suggest that the baud setting in
preferences's serial section be the maximum rate
your modem can handle. If you know of a better
way for this feature to be implemented, please
let me know, I had some problems with this one.
Merge: Merge is used to create "Mail Merge" files or a straight
ASCII text file containing the records in the address list.
When Merge is selected, it will bring up a window with the
following selections:
ASCII Textfile: Dump all the addresser fields into
an ASCII text file, each field will
be on it's own separate line. This
selection can also be used if you want
to perform a merge using a word
processor other than WordPerfect or
Pro-Write. After the file is created
you can edit the file to suit the
formatting your word processor requires.
WordPerfect : An Amiga WordPerfect merge file will
be created with the fields set up like
so:
<F1> - First Name
<F2> - Last Name
<F3> - Street
<F4> - City
<F5> - Prov/State
<F6> - Country
<F7> - PC/Zip
<F8> - Home #
<F9> - Bus. #
<F10> - Note
Pro-Write : A merge file formatted for Pro-Write
will be created, the field names are
the same as the field labels on the
addresser window.
Merge using:
All : All records will be used to create
the merge file.
Current : Only the current record will be placed
in the merge file.
Marked : Use only the records with set markers
to create the merge file.
Destination
File : You can either type the full path and
file name of the merge file you want
to create, or click on the disk
gadget to bring up the standard ARP
file requester and select the file
name and path from there.
< and >: The < and > buttons are used to move through the address
list. The > button moves forwards alphabetically through
the list, while the < button moves backwards alphabetically
through the list.
A-Z and &: Clicking on one of these buttons will bring up the next
record in which the last name starts with that letter.
The "&" button is used for last names that don't start
with alphabetic characters.
Iconify : Just below the window's "to front" gadget is the Iconify
button. When you click on it, the Addresser window will
be shrunk into an icon. When Addresser is iconified, it
will be using up the least amount of processor time, and
also freeing up some workbench space. To return the
Addresser window, double-click on the icon. Thanks to Leo
Schwab for providing his iconify routine to the Amiga
world.
All but the A-Z and & buttons have menu and keyboard shortcut equivalents
in the "Name" menu.
Menus:
Addresser:
About Addresser: Brings up a window giving the version number
and other pertinent information about Addresser.
Configure: This menu option will display the configuration
window for addresser. Currently there are two
configuration options:
Modem Dial String: The default is ATDT, if you
either have a pulse phone
or use a different dial command
on your modem, select the
gadget and type the new string.
Start Iconified: Will place Addresser in the
"Iconified" mode when it is
first run. Useful if you
have addresser run upon startup.
Iconify: Similar to clicking on the Iconify button, see
above for more details.
Quit: The same as clicking on the window's close
gadget. When you exit out of Addresser, any
changes that have been made will be saved into
your address list file.
Name: All the selections in the name menu are the same as clicking
on the same buttons on the addresser window. Next and Prior
are the same as clicking on the < and > buttons respectively.
I essentially created this menu to provide keyboard shortcuts
for almost all the addresser functions.
Markers:
Set All: This selection will set all the markers in the address
list.
Clear All: This selection will clear all the markers in the address
list.
Show Only: The Show Only selection toggles, when it is selected,
only those files with a set marker will be shown when
you go up and down the list using the < and > buttons.
Bugs:
No real major bugs that I know of. There is a minor quirk that may
bother some people. That quirk happens when the last name field is edited.
If the name is changed, no matter what to, it will stay in the same
location, thus possibly throwing the alphabetical ordering out.
Fortunately, if you exit out of Addresser, and re-run it, the names will
be re-ordered alphabetically.
If you feel there are things I can do to improve Addresser, please
let me know, my addresses are up at the beginning of this file. If your
favorite word processor that does mail merging is not supported, send
me an example merge file so I can get the formatting properly, and I'll
try to have it implemented for the next version. There may also be a
few problems with AmigaDos 2.0 (since it's been programmed using
1.3), if you are using a proportional font, larger than 8 or 9 pixels high
the characters may overwrite some other data on the window. As soon
as I can get AmigaDos 2.0, and some of the updated books, I'll make the
changes necessary. (Here in Sault Ste. Marie, we don't have a REAL
Commodore dealer, and none of the local bookstores know that books for
the Amiga exist.) Heck, I'm even taking suggestions for a better name.
All that I ask if you are making a suggestion or reporting a bug, take it
easy on me, I am a beginner.