The Fred Fish Collection 1.5

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ The Fred Fish Collection 1.5 / ffcollection-1-5-1992-11.iso / ff_disks / 500-599 / ff559.lzh / Addresser / Addresser.DOC < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1991-10-28 | 20KB | 372 lines

**************************************************************************** * * * 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.