ASP Advantage 1994 2nd Q2

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Public Address COPYRIGHT NOTICE Copyright 1991, 1992, 1993 Chris M. Davies, all rights reserved. No part of this manual or program may be reproduced in any way without the advance written permission from the author. You may make backup copies of Public Address or make copies of the complete unregistered program and documentation on disk to share with your friends or colleagues. If you wish to distribute Public Address as a vendor, please read the file entitled VENDOR.DOC. If you use Public Address for more than 30 days you are required to register. Public Address is marketed as Shareware. It is not free or in the public domain. Please read the file entitled ASP.DOC. TRADEMARKS Brand and product names mentioned in this manual are the trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. This manual was last updated on June 10, 1993. This manual and program were written by Chris M. Davies Paradise Programming P.O. Box 1231 Shelton, WA 98584 Compuserve 70322,231 1 LIMITATION OF LIABILITY The information presented in this manual has been reviewed for accuracy and is as complete as possible at the time of printing. However, there may be changes made to the software subsequent to the printing of the manual. Please look for any file named READ.ME that would be in the directory Public Address resides. This software has been tested as thoroughly as possible for reliability, accuracy, and stability. Also, I have no control over how this software is being used on your machine. Therefore, Chris M. Davies assumes no liability for damages incurred directly or indirectly from the use of this manual and/or software. This software is provided to you "as is," without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties for merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. INTRODUCTION Public Address is a data base program designed to hold information on people. It is like a computerized Rolodex, but better. It will do most anything anyone would need, and it is very fast. The idea behind Public Address is simple, computer programs do not have to be hard to learn or complicated to use, they also do not have to take up two or three megabytes of your hard disk. When writing Public Address I kept this in mind, so although Public Address has a wealth of features which are easy to use, it will still run on a 360k diskette. Although quite capable of running on a 360k diskette, I would strongly recommend that Public Address be installed on your hard drive, if you have one. Running Public Address on a hard drive will allow you to search through thousands records in very little time. That type of speed is not attained when using a floppy disk. 2 SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS 1) IBM compatible computer. 2) DOS version 3.2 or higher. 3) 384k of RAM base memory. 4) A single floppy drive. A hard drive is preferred for greater speed and record capacity. 5) CGA, EGA, VGA, SVGA monitor. Public Address even supports Tandy 16 color. 6) Dot-matrix or HP compatible laser printer is needed to print. 7) A Hayes compatible modem if you wish to use the dial feature. PROGRAM DESCRIPTION Public Address is an easy to operate Address Data Base. Public Address was designed to be inexpensive and useful for most businesses or at home. It requires very little learning time and is extremely compact. It will work on a single floppy system or notebook computers where disk space is at a premium. Public Address features non-case sensitive searches on whole or partial words. You can search on as little as one character. It will search eight fields: 1) Group 2) Business 3) Name 4) City 5) Zip 6) Birthday Month 7) Country 8) Ride Share Public Address will print Labels, Envelopes, Phone book, Report, and WordPerfect Secondary Merge File on the above fields. It can be used on any dot-matrix or laser printer. If you are going to print envelopes on your laser printer, your printer must be Hewlett Packard compatible, (uses the PCL printer language). You can even choose the fonts that are in your printer from the program as long as your laser speaks the PCL-5 language. If it does not, I have included a place so you can enter the printer code yourself. Public Address will print up to five lines per label. Everything that is printed or displayed is left justified, no big gaps between fields on your labels. You can have your return address printed on every envelope. You can have up to six different return address stored for you to choose from. 3 Public Address has fields for: Group, Title, First Name, Last Name, Business, Address, City, State, Zip+4, Country, Birthday, Telephone Number, Fax number, and one-hundred sixty characters for memo space. There is no limitation to the amount of groups, records or input files you may have. Password protection is provided and you can also dial your phone. You can configure Public Address to sort by Name or Zip-code and it can automatically delete duplicates. You can turn automatic sorting off so you will not be bothered waiting for it when you get a couple thousand records. Just resort once a week or however often you want. I offer custom programming to anyone who has nonstandard labels to print, at a very reasonable price. The phone book is printed by either NAME or BUSINESS and is on standard size paper. It is indented to allow for binding holes to be punched. The phone book is automatically sorted when printed. Public Address' phone book includes last name, first name, business, city, state, dot- leaders and the phone number. Anything that can be sent to the printer can also be sent to a file. Example: You would like to edit the phone book. All you need to do is go to the configuration menu and chose T (Printer port). There should be a string that reads LPT1. This is where your output goes. LPT1 is your printer port. Give this a VALID DOS name such as PHONE.BOK and then print the phone book from the PRINT MENU. The whole phone book will go to a file in the current directory and you can load this ASCII file into your favorite Shareware text editor or word processor and edit it. I use another Shareware program called 4BOOK that will take the file I created and turn it into a book. For information on 4BOOK write to: Korenthal Associates, Inc 230 West 13th St. New York, NY 10011 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS COPYRIGHT NOTICE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 TRADEMARKS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 LIMITATION OF LIABILITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 PROGRAM DESCRIPTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 A QUICK START TO GET YOU GOING! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 WHY YOU NEED PUBLIC ADDRESS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 IN THE BEGINNING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 ABOUT DATA BASES PROGRAMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 THE MAIN MENU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 SEARCH MENU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 DISPLAY SCREEN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 PRINT MENU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 ADDRESS EDITOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 PRODUCT INFO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 CONFIGURATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 TIPS, TRICKS, AND TECHNICAL THINGS . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 5 Paradise Programming____________________________________________ A QUICK START TO GET YOU GOING! This section is for people who are familiar with computers and just want to get going on Public Address. I am assuming you are familiar with installing software and have already installed Public Address to a directory on your hard drive. If you are not familiar with installing software please see the section entitled "In The Beginning" later in this manual. Also please read all documents with the extension DOC. By now you should have all the files that came on the disk in a directory on your hard drive or are just running from a floppy. Go to that directory or drive and type PA and press enter. The program will start and create two files, one named PA.CFG and one named FRIENDS.PAF. PA.CFG is your configuration file. It tells Public Address how you want it to work for you. More on that in a minute. FRIENDS.PAF is the file in which all your information you enter into the program, will be stored. The file extension PAF identifies it as a Public Address File. Ok, by now you should be looking at the main menu. Notice on top of the screen information will be displayed for you on how many records you have, the label number, what input file you are currently using and who the program is registered to. Your name will be here when you decide to register. Notice that you already have one record. It is information on me. I thought I would throw this one in to help get you started. Type 4 and lets go to the Address Editor. You have three choices here. 1 Previous Menu, 2 Add, and 3 Edit or Delete. Let's type 2 and Add a record. We will then see the screen you will enter all your addresses and information in. Let's take a closer look. On the very top it will tell you how many records have been entered and on the bottom is a quick reference on how to get around. It says you can use Tab and Shift-Tab to move. In reality you can use your Arrow keys, the Enter key, the Tab key, Home, and End. The exception is when you get to the bottom of the screen and press Enter. The Enter key will then write the record. You can also write the record by pressing the Esc key at anytime and in any field. There is also a T at the very bottom right-hand corner. This indicates you are in Typeover mode. If you press your Insert key it will turn into an I. Lets enter a record. Type Christmas in the Group field, enter some information on your best friend or a relative in the rest of the fields. Note: You must have something in either the Last Name field or the Business field. If you do not Public Address will assume you are done and exit the input screen. 6 ___________________________________________________Public Address Once you have all the information entered, press Esc once. Notice that everything is still where you typed it and Total Records Added now equals 1. The cursor will be placed back in the Group fields. Go ahead and put this person in your Vacation group too. After all, they are a good friend. Just type Vacation and press Esc again. Let's add another record and we will call it quits for now. The cursor should still be in the group field. Just press enter or tab and the cursor will move to the Title field. Now hold your Ctrl key down and simultaneously press End (Ctrl-End) and all the fields from the cursor down should be clear. Type the second record in and when you get done press Esc twice. The first time will write the record and the second time will exit the screen. Go ahead and press the Esc key again and exit the Address Editor menu. Now we can do a little configuration so Public Address will know what kind of system you have. Type 6 and the configuration screen comes up. I will go through all the option later so lets just get the ones that are really important for now. You will need to select P (Printer type) if you have a laser printer and then just type L. Most printers are connected to LPT1, but if yours is not, you better change this too. Now type L to setup the label you would like to print on. If you have selected a laser printer as your printer type from above you will be shown the labels for a laser printer. If you have selected a Dot-matrix printer as your printer type from above you will be shown the labels for a Dot-matrix printer. Just enter the label # for the label you want. Example: 4145 to print on a label that is 15/16" x 3 1/2". This is the most common label size for dot-matrix printers. Everything else should do for now. Press Esc or X and exit back to the MAIN MENU. Type 2 and you will see the Search Menu. You can Search on any one of the fields listed, but just for this Demo lets search on the Group field. Press 2 and you should see three groups listed to the right side of the screen. What we are going to do is type ALL and press enter, but you could choose one of the groups by typing the first letter or two and pressing enter. Well, unless one of the records you entered has a last name that is before mine you will see a record on me. Go ahead and press enter a couple times and see all the records. When you get to where it says at the bottom of the screen "There are no more records to see!" you can press enter one more time and it will take you back to the Search Menu. Press Esc to exit the Search Menu. 7 Paradise Programming____________________________________________ Press 3 and go to the Print Menu. Turn on your printer! Now type 2 to print. The menu now looks just like the one at the search menu. All the same choices. Select any field you want and then type in the required response. Let's say you want to print a label for my address so you can register this wonderful program {grin}. Type 2 for group, now type P for Programmer and press enter. It will start printing a label just the way you like it. Well, that is about it for a quick introduction to Public Address. It will do much more and I encourage you to read the rest of the Manual to get the full benefit of the program. Have fun! 8 ___________________________________________________Public Address WHY YOU NEED PUBLIC ADDRESS RIDE MATCH FOR CAR POOLING Starting with version 3.06h I added a special feature that will help employers to match their employees up for car pooling. After you have everyone's address in your business entered into Public Address you can search on option #9 (Ride Share) from either the search menu or the print menu and it will find the people who are the most likely to be able to car pool together. As more and more cars are on the freeways and byways and as the price for parking is not getting any less expensive this is really getting to be a must for any large employer. AROUND THE HOME I use Public Address to remind me of birthdays and anniversaries. All you need to do is print from the birthday field and take your labels to the store and get the cards. You can do the same thing for Christmas or any other holiday. I also take preprinted labels with me on vacation. Preprinted labels can be put on post cards and a couple words entered and I am ready! Also, Public Address may be useful for any clubs or support groups in which you participate. The phone book is worth its weight in gold. You will never have to write another phone number in the back of your phone book. REAL ESTATE If you have clients looking for a particular house or piece of property, just input their information in a record and put them in a group that describes the kind of house or property they are looking for. Example: 3BR 5ACRES or WATERFRONT could be a group name. There is no limit to the amount of group names you may have. Up to forty group names can be displayed on the screen. Public Address would also work well to keep track of rental property. INDUSTRIAL If you restock parts or just need to replace them occasionally, you will never need to dig through that old stack of requisitions again. You can list all the parts you use under group names. For example, if you need a new motor, all you will need to do is, bring up the group name MOTOR, and a list of all the suppliers 9 Paradise Programming____________________________________________ that you receive your motors from will be displayed. This would also work well in a warehouse. SHAREWARE AUTHORS You can create a group name for every program you write. Enter all the names under that group who have registered. When an update comes out, just send that group to the printer and your newsletter is on its way. You can also keep track of the disk size and any other information you need in the memo spaces. 10 ___________________________________________________Public Address IN THE BEGINNING When you receive Public Address, you should back it up by making a copy. Just place the disk containing the program and all the files that came with it in drive A of your system. From your DOS prompt, type (DISKCOPY A: A:) without the brackets of course. Just insert a blank diskette in drive A when it tells you to put the target disk in. To install Public Address just place the disk you received into your A or B disk drive, make that drive current, and type INSTALL and press enter. Follow the instructions on the screen. The program should come with the following files: 1) PA.EXE The main program file. 2) TESTPRT.COM A utility to check your printer status. 3) MANUAL.DOC This manual. 4) VENDOR.DOC Information to shareware vendors. 5) REGISTER.DOC Registration information and order Form! 6) ASP.DOC Information about Shareware & The Association of Shareware Professionals. 7) ADISCTRL This controls how the program accepts data. 8) MAIL51.WPM A WordPerfect 5.1 macro to convert merge codes. 9) MAIL50.WPM A WordPerfect 5.0 macro to convert merge codes. 10) LH51.WPM A WordPerfect 5.1 macro to help create a merge letter. 11) LH50.WPM A WordPerfect 5.0 macro to help create a merge letter. 12) MERGE.WPM A WordPerfect macro to merge the file's MAIL1 and MAIL2. 13) FILE_ID.DIZ Program information file for BBSes. 14) INSTALL.COM The install program. To print all the documentation, go to the directory Public Address resides and at the DOS prompt type PRINT *.DOC. Make sure your printer is on and has paper. The only files that are absolutely needed to run Public Address are PA.EXE, ADISCTRL and TESTPRT.COM. With these files in a directory or on a separate disk, you can start Public Address by typing PA and pressing ENTER. A message on the screen will inform you the program is checking the configuration at this time. If it does not find a file named PA.CFG in the current directory, it will create one and put the default values in. If you have never used Public Address before, it will also create a file named FRIENDS.PAF. This file will be your input file. Public Address will always remember the last input file you used and load it next time you start the program providing your PA.CFG file is in 11 Paradise Programming____________________________________________ the current directory or drive. You can change input files from the configuration screen in the program. 12 ___________________________________________________Public Address ABOUT DATA BASES PROGRAMS A Data Base program is a program that will store information for you and allow easy access to the information later. You will usually be offered a choice how you want the information displayed, such as labels, envelopes, phone book, report, or you can also have it displayed to the screen. A Data Base program will let you find this information by searching on most fields. Before we get started, there are some words that are commonly used when talking about a Data Base. FILES: A file is a collection of information with a physical name on disk. You can compare it to one of the drawers in a filing cabinet. A valid DOS filename will have eight characters or less with a three-letter extension or less, separated by a period. There are certain letters that are not allowed in a file name and you should check your DOS manual for that list. An example of a valid file name would be: ADDRESS.PAF Notice that I only used seven letters in the name with three letters for the extension. The name and the extension have to be separated by a period. The input file for a data base program is commonly referred to as "The data base." I will be referring to this file as the input file because you input your information to it and it inputs the information to the program. RECORDS: A record is the information in a file. You can compare it to a file folder in the filing cabinet drawer. A record will hold information on one person. You can have more than one record on each person and you can have as many records as your disk will hold. FIELDS: A field is a part of a record that holds one piece of information. Public Address has fourteen fields. They are: Group (10), Title (20), First Name (20), Last Name (20), Business (40), Address (40), City (20), State or Province (20), Zip+4 (20), Country (40), Birthday (08), Phone # (20), Fax # (20), and Memo (160). The number in the brackets ( ) represents the number of characters in that field. Fields are searched when you want to view information or print. The fields you can search are: Group, Last Name, Business, City, Zip, Country, and Birthday month. 13 Paradise Programming____________________________________________ THE MAIN MENU P) Password. P is not listed on the Main Menu, but is an option for you to create a password or to quit using one. Just type P, and follow the directions. DO NOT FORGET YOUR PASSWORD! 1) EXIT TO DOS. This will take you out of the program, back to your DOS prompt. If you press your Escape key you will be ask if you really want to exit. You can then either press it again or press enter and you will be exited to your DOS prompt. If you press N for NO you will remain in the program. Every time you run the program ten times you will be reminded to Backup your records. You will just see a message on the screen that ask you "Have you backed up your records lately?" You don't have to press any keys or anything. If you have a menuing program that takes you directly back to the menu after you exit the program you may miss this message. Please remember to backup all your important file regularly. The easiest way to do that with Public Address is to just issue the DOS command COPY *.PAF A: when you are in the Public Address directory and you have a blank formatted disk in your "A" drive. 2) SEARCH MENU. Search menu will enable you to search for information on a record in the input file. You can search and display information on the screen, dial the phone, print a single label or envelope or tag a record to merge with another input file. See SEARCH MENU later in this manual. 3) PRINT MENU. Print menu will enable you to print labels, envelopes, phone book, report, and a mail merge file. See PRINT MENU later in this manual. 4) ADDRESS EDITOR. Address editor will enable you to Add, Edit, or Delete records. See ADDRESS EDITOR later in this manual. 5) PRODUCT INFO. This option provides you with all the information necessary to reach me in case you have problems, need special programming or want to register. See PRODUCT INFO later in this manual. 6) CONFIGURATION. 14 ___________________________________________________Public Address This is one of the most important options on the main menu. You should select this option first when you receive Public Address. You will need to enter information so Public Address will know how to work for you. Please see CONFIGURATION later in this manual. 15 Paradise Programming____________________________________________ SEARCH MENU The Search Menu is for searching and displaying information on the screen or printing one record at a time. The following choices are available from this menu: 1) Previous Menu. Moves you back one screen to the Main Menu. 2) GROUP. Group will ask for the group name to search on. All the groups you have in your input file (up to forty) will be listed on the right-hand side of your screen. Type the group name in either upper or lower case letters. You can even type in part of the word. Example: You have three groups; one is named PA10, another is named PA20, and the last one is named PA21. If you typed PA and press enter, you would see all the records in all three groups. If you were to type PA2, you would see all the records in the group's PA20, and PA21. Now, if you where to type PA21, the only group you would see is the one by that name. The more letters you enter, the more exact the search will be. This works for all searches in all the fields with the exception of the Birthday field. You can have more than forty groups, but only forty will be displayed on the screen. If you have some people who are not in a group, just press ENTER and it will start displaying them one at a time on the screen. See (DISPLAY SCREEN). If you wish to see all of the records you have in your input file, type ALL in the group name to be searched and Public Address will display all the entries, one at a time. If no records are found, the following message will appear on the bottom of the screen: "THERE ARE NO MORE RECORDS TO SEE, HIT ENTER TO CONTINUE". This means you have looked through the input file and have either viewed all the records in that group or there are no records to view. If you could not find a record you know is there, you should check your spelling and make sure you entered it correctly. 3) LAST NAME. When you select 3 from the Search Menu, it will ask you for the person's last name. You must enter the person's last name or at least the first letter or two. Just as with GROUP from above. 4) CITY. City works exactly as Name. See Name above. 5) ZIP. Zip works exactly as Name. See Name above. 6) BIRTHDAY. When you select Birthday, Public Address will ask you for the person's birthday month. It must be as you entered it in the input file. An 16 ___________________________________________________Public Address example would be 08 for August or 01 for January. Public Address will then display every record with a birthday in that month, one at a time on the screen. The birthday month is the first two characters in the birthday field. 7) BUSINESS. Business works exactly as Name. See Name above. 8) COUNTRY. Country works exactly as Name. See Name above. 9) RIDE SHARE. Ride share works like Name from above. The only exception is you are ask for the phone prefix and the zip code. You must also enter ALL the information and NOT just the first few numbers. The phone prefix is the first three digits of the phone number field. By searching on both the phone prefix and the zip code a search can be narrowed and a better match made for prospective car-poolers. If people are going to be car- pooling from a great distance you can always search on the zip code from above. 17 Paradise Programming____________________________________________ DISPLAY SCREEN With the Display Screen, you can view the information on your monitor without having to print it. You can also dial your phone, and print single labels or envelopes from this menu. You can also tag a record for merging into another input file. Just scroll through the records tagging the ones you want merged with another input file. Once they are all tagged go to the configuration screen, choose the new input file and when you exit the configuration screen you will be ask if you want the tagged records merged with the new input file. Choose Y for Yes and all the tagged records will be merged. Every time you start a new search the tagged records are reset to zero. The Display Screen will show one record at a time listing all the information in the record. To see the next record press ENTER. To exit, type 1 and you will be back at the SEARCH MENU. If you would like to dial the person on the phone, make sure your modem is on and type 2. After the phone starts to ring, you will need to pick your receiver up from your phone and press enter on the computer. Public Address is not a communication program. It only acts like an auto-dialer. In order to print a single label or envelope, turn on your printer and type 3. You will be asked how many labels to print. Just enter the number and press enter. NOTE! You must be setup to print ONLY single labels or envelopes in order to print from the Display Screen. You must also have your output going to a printer and not a file. MAKE SURE YOUR PRINTER IS ON AND READY! I have a record on myself in my input file. When I need some return address labels I just print them from the Display screen. I search on my name and when my record is on the screen I type 3 and tell how many I want and it does the rest. 18 ___________________________________________________Public Address PRINT MENU The Print Menu is for printing only. If you wish to view your records, go to the Search Menu first. The following choices are available from this menu: 1) PREVIOUS MENU. Previous Menu, moves you back one screen to the Main Menu. 2) PRINT. If you choose PRINT, Public Address will ask if you want to print 2) GROUP, 3) NAME, 4) CITY, 5) ZIP, 6) BIRTHDAY, 7) BUSINESS, 8) COUNTRY 9) RIDE SHARE. Choosing one of these is just like choosing one on the SEARCH MENU except it will print the labels, envelopes, or file instead of displaying them. Most of your printing will be done from here. When you are setup to print labels, envelopes, or a WordPerfect Secondary Merge file, you will choose this option. If you are printing a WordPerfect Secondary Merge file you will be prompted for a file name. If you do not enter a name, Public Address will print to a file named MAIL2. You can use a path and file name of up to 50 characters. 3) PHONE BOOK. If you choose PHONE BOOK from the menu, Public Address will print a phone book for you alphabetically, last name, first name, business name, city, state, dot leaders and the phone numbers as you have entered them in the input file. It does this for the whole input file. It will not print someone's name twice even if you have them in two or more groups unless they have two different phone numbers. If you have chosen to have your phone book sorted by business, the business name will be on the left side of the page instead of the person's last name. 4) REPORT. If you choose REPORT, Public Address will ask if you want a report for 2) GROUP, 3) NAME, 4) CITY, 5) ZIP, 6) BIRTHDAY, 7) BUSINESS, 8) COUNTRY 9) RIDE SHARE. Choosing one of these is just like choosing one on the SEARCH MENU, except it will print a report instead of displaying them. Type in the appropriate response and a report will be sent to your printer. The report contains all of the information you have in your input file and formats it in report form. 19 Paradise Programming____________________________________________ ADDRESS EDITOR When you select 4 on the Main Menu, it will take you to a menu which will ask you 1) Previous Menu, 2) Add, 3) Edit or Delete. Select 2 and the screen you will see is the Input Record Screen. The default for Public Address when doing any editing is typeover. This is indicated by a T on the bottom right corner of the screen. You must press your Insert key if you want to be in the insert mode, indicated by an I on the bottom right corner of the screen. When you are in the input record screen, enter the information into the appropriate place, tab to the next field and repeat the process. The LAST NAME and/or BUSINESS NAME is required for each record. If you do not have a last name or a business name, it will not write your record and will drop you out of the Input Record Screen back to the ADDRESS EDITOR Menu! When you are finished with the record, press ESC. The record will be written to disk, the counter at the top of the screen will increment one and the cursor will return to the group field again. All the data you entered will remain in the same fields so you can enter the same person in more than one group, all you will need to do is change the group name and press ESC. If you want to clear all the fields, just hold down the Ctrl key and press the End key (Ctrl-End). This will clear all the fields so you can enter the next record. When you get all your records entered, just press ESC twice. This will take you back to the ADDRESS EDITOR Menu. There are lots of ways to get around in the Input Record Screen. I suggest you try using your Arrow keys, Enter, Tab, Shift-Tab, Home, and End. If you select 3 from the ADDRESS EDITOR menu, Public Address will take you to a screen which will ask what to look for: 2) GROUP, 3) NAME, 4) CITY, 5) ZIP, 6) BIRTHDAY, 7) BUSINESS, 8) COUNTRY 9) RIDE SHARE. After you choose one, type in the response, press ENTER and you will see the first record you are searching for. If you want to edit the record, select 2 and the cursor will be placed in the group box of the Edit screen. The information in the record will be displayed above the box. You do not have to change all the fields, just the field you want updated. Example: You want to give someone a new address, TAB to the address field and type in the new address and press Esc. The record is then updated and you are returned to the menu with the same record displayed on the screen. You can edit as many fields as you need. To clear a field just put an asterisk (*) in that field, if you want to delete someone from your list, select 3 on the menu. Use caution when you do this. Once a record is deleted, it is permanently removed from your file. Do not forget you may have someone in more than one group. You will need to delete them from every group. If you choose 4 on the menu you can add 20 ___________________________________________________Public Address the record to another group. Note: This will not delete the person from any group, it will create another record for that person and change the group name. Once you have seen all the records that were being searched, you will get a screen which informs you the input file is being resorted, unless you have turned auto sorting off. Once the file is resorted, you will be returned to the ADDRESS EDITOR menu. PRODUCT INFO When you select 5 from the MAIN MENU, you will see a couple different screens depending if you are registered or not. Basically, the screens will tell you how to order Public Address or how to get in contact with me for questions you may have. There is a 1-800 number to call FOR ORDERS ONLY! Please do not call this number for information on the program. All they know is how much the program cost and how to send your order as fast as possible. If you need information on the program, please write me or send E-mail on CompuServe. I have also included my phone number. Please call between 5pm and 10pm any day except Mondays, Pacific Time zone. I will answer all letters from registered users as well as people evaluating Public Address. Any suggestions on improving Public Address would be appreciated. I really do listen! For the complete list of benefits for registering Public Address, please read the file entitled REGISTER.DOC. 21 Paradise Programming____________________________________________ CONFIGURATION When you select number 6 from the MAIN MENU you will see the CONFIGURATION SCREEN. You will have the following choices. X) EXIT AND SAVE. Will take you out of the Configuration Screen and update the PA.CFG file. Esc will do the same thing. If you changed the input file and have tagged records you will be ask if you want to merge them with the new input file. Just answer Y for Yes or N for No. S) PRIMARY SORT FIELD. This is how your input file will be sorted. Valid choices are either Name or Zip-code. Enter N or Z in this place. When you enter N the primary sort field will be last name, the secondary sort field will be first name. When you enter Z the primary sort field will be Zip, the secondary sort field will be last name, the third sort field will be first name. P) PRINTER TYPE. This is for the type of printer you will be using with Public Address. Valid choices are Laser or Dot-matrix. Just put L or D in this place. NOTE: You can have separate configurations for each of your printer-types. You can save different printer ports, fonts, return addresses, and label numbers. H) PHONE TYPE. This is for the type of phone you have. Valid entries would be either Tone or Pulse. You can put either T or P in this space. B) PHONE BOOK SORT. This has nothing to do with the Primary Sort Field from above. This will dictate the kind of phone book you choose. The phone book can either be listed by Name or Business. Valid entries would be N or B. C) COM PORT. This is the COMmunication port you are using on your system. All you need to do is enter the COM port number. Valid COM port numbers would be 1, 2, 3, or 4. Most people would use either 1 or 2. This entry is not needed if you are not going to use the Dial feature. T) PRINTER PORT. This is where all your output will go. You can designate any port you have your printer connected. Valid ports would 22 ___________________________________________________Public Address be LPT1 through LPT3 or COM1 through COM4. You can also enter any VALID DOS NAME, and all your output will go to that file. Be careful! If you enter a file name that already exist that file will be overwritten. You can also enter path names up to 50 character's total. An example: C:\ADDRESS\LABELS.TXT You must remember to change this file name every time you print or the previous file will be overwritten. The data IS NOT appended to the end of the file. The path must already exist. You can save different printer ports for each printer type you have. F) FONT If you have a Laser printer that is HP 3 compatible you're in for a real treat. I have included an area that will now let you choose the fonts you would like to use. Even if your printer is not HP 3 compatible it will be a lot easier for you to control. Read on! Laser printer users: First of all, P from above (Printer Type) has to be set to L for Laser. Now if you choose F you will be presented with a menu that will allow you to choose a font that is compatible with most Laser printers that are HP 3 compatible. That means they will use the PCL 5 printer language. If your printer does not, you can choose L -User definable and enter your own printer code for the font you want. There quite easy, just read the following section for Dot-matrix printers on how to do it. Everyone else can just choose one of the fonts from the list and will be returned to the configuration screen. The font you choose will be saved to your laser printer configuration. Dot-matrix printer users: You should have P from above (Printer Type) set to D for Dot-matrix. You will now be placed in a screen that will allow you to enter your own Printer code for the fonts in your printer. Here is how: hold the Alt key down and at the same time enter the three digit code from your printer manual for the font you want. Example: Lets say your printer manual says the printer code for a proportional font is 026 011 016. Now what you would do, is hold the Alt key, type 026 and then release the Alt key. Then push it down again, type 011 and release the Alt key again. Then hold it down one more time, type 016 and release it, then just press the Esc key to exit and accept the entry. Special note: In order to enter the escape sequence 027 you will need to place the / (forward slash) in its place. So a sequence may look something like this when you get done / ₧ . You see these characters cannot be typed from the keyboard. This is why you need to enter them in this fashion. Some 23 Paradise Programming____________________________________________ codes can be entered normally by just putting the letters in. From my understanding, to set an IBM Proprinter X24 compatible printer up to print proportional fonts you need to enter /P1. Letter quality would be /E. So, you can see that some control codes can be entered using the standard keys on the key board. Be sure to read you printer manual first. Good luck! I) INPUT FILE PATH. The first part of this is your path to your input files. If it is blank you can enter the path you want to store your input files or just leave it blank and the current directory will be chosen. It is best to just let the program take care of this for you and just press enter. The current path will be entered and you will be offered all the current Public Address Files to the right of the screen. If you do store your files someplace else, you can enter the full path. An example would be C:\PA\FILES. This path must already exist or else you will get a message telling you it does not and the current path will be selected for you. The next step is to select one of the files from the right. This is your input file. (The file Public Address accesses to store or find your records). You can have as many input files as you want, but you can only use one at a time. This is where you put the full file name. You can use up to 8 characters. If you enter Illegal DOS file name characters they will be converted to the - (dash) character. I try to protect people from themselves as much as possible. Do not use an extension on the filename. The default is PAF and can not be changed. If the file you enter does not exist, Public Address will create it. You can use different input files for different people, such as work and home or maybe different clubs. Remember . . . the phone book prints the whole input file. You might not want your friend's phone number showing up on the company phone book. R) RETURN ADDRESS. Here, you enter the return address you want on your envelopes. EVERY ENVELOPE YOU PRINT WILL HAVE THIS RETURN ADDRESS! If you have preprinted envelopes or if you do not want a return address printed on every envelope, Select a return address number that is blank. If you decide to use this feature, just type your name, business name, and address, up to five lines and 40 characters on each line and press ENTER at the end of each line. Public Address will take care of the rest. You can 24 ___________________________________________________Public Address edit your return address at any time just by selecting R on the CONFIGURATION menu. To clear the fields, do everything you would for editing them except, press the Delete key in the field you want to delete. Public Address will now support up to six return addresses. To enter a new one just press S for select and you will see 1 or 2 screens with numbers on the left side. Just choose one of the numbers and you will be returned to the screen with the envelope on it and asked if you would like to edit this return address. Note: if you selected a number that already had a return address you will be return directly to the configuration screen. D) DYNAMIC MENU'S. I have had a lot of request to change some of the field names. For whatever reason, I do not know, but your request is my command (if possible). Dynamic menus are menus that you get to rename to whatever you want. Instead of searching on Name maybe you would want to call it Part # and search on that. It would be handy for our neighbors up north in Canada. They have Provinces instead of States. When you choose D you will see three columns. The first column is the Defaults. The second column is what they are now. It should be the same if you are using Public Address for the first time. The third column is blank. You will only need to change the field name you want to change. Let's go to the state field. Now Enter Province in that field and press Esc. Now everywhere in the program that State used to appear, Province will be there now. E) SORT EVERY TIME. This is for people who really do not care if their data is sorted or not. You can get a little bit more speed out of the program when using the Address Editor when this is set to No. Valid selections are either Yes or No. Note: If it is set to No you may get duplicate labels printed under certain circumstances. It would be a good idea to sort your records before doing any major print jobs to avoid duplicates. You can sort everything by selecting Yes and when you exit the configuration screen your input file will be resorted at that time. L) LABELS NUMBER. This is where you format which label or envelope you would like to print on. EVERY TIME YOU WANT TO PRINT ON A DIFFERENT LABEL OR ENVELOPE SIZE YOU WILL NEED TO COME HERE! If you have selected "L" for laser printer, from printer type above, you will see the laser label selection. Otherwise you will see the Dot-matrix label selection. All 25 Paradise Programming____________________________________________ you need to do is choose a label format you like and type in the appropriate label number. These label numbers are Avery label numbers. If you have Avery labels already, get the number from the box. In order to print envelopes with a laser printer, your printer must be Hewlett Packard compatible. It has to understand the PCL language. When printing envelopes be sure to select envelopes on your printer menu too. Example: I have a Hewlett Packard 3P. I press the ON LINE button to take the printer OFF LINE. Then I press the MENU button once and SIZE appears in the window. I then press the + button until COM10 appears in the Window. I then press ENTER to select it and press ON LINE one more time to put the printer back on line. If you choose envelopes, you will notice an extension at the end of the description that is either PRO or FIX. What this means, is you can print either PROportional fonts or FIXed fonts. You will need to access the internal fonts from your printer for this. If you are only printing envelopes, you can either set this up on the menu from your printer or you can use Fonts on the configuration menu to set up your printer from Public Address. See FONTS from above. Public Address automatically sets your printer to landscape for printing envelopes and resets it when done. If you have a Dot-matrix printer. Enter the appropriate four digit number for the label you want to print and press ENTER. The envelopes Public Address prints for dot-matrix printer are tractor feed. If you choose to print envelopes, you will also be prompted to enter the line spacing between the last line on your envelope being printed (The country field on the sending address) and the first line on the next envelope being printed (your name on your return address). This number will be somewhere around 28 for most envelopes. To get an idea, figure six lines per inch or about 6 lines per 25.5 Centimeters. The easiest way to figure this is to measure from the top of one envelope to the top of the next. So let's say it is seven inches or 178 Centimeters. The formula would be 7 x 6 - 14 = 28 (envelope spacing). This is seven inches times six lines per inch minus fourteen equals what you should enter for envelope spacing. You may want to experiment with this before printing envelopes. Once you have it, you will never have to change it again unless you change envelope size. The 14 is the amount of lines Public Address prints on an envelope: Return address = 5, Sending address = 5, and 4 lines in between. You could also adapt this to work with large shipping label. Just set it up to print with no return address and adjust the spacing 26 ___________________________________________________Public Address accordingly. The label number will be saved to your laser or dot-matrix printer configuration. O) OUTPUT TO WP FILE. Turning this option to Yes will allow you to print a mail merge file to be used with WordPerfect. You will be prompted for a file name when you print. If you do not enter a filename, MAIL2 is the default. This file will be written to the current directory. You will need to convert this file to work with WordPerfect. To do this; I have included two WordPerfect macros. One is called MAIL51.WPM (for WP51) and the other is MAIL50.WPM (for WP50). These macros will assume that the file MAIL2 is in a directory named PA. You can always edit it to suit your needs. To use them, copy the files named MAIL51.WPM or MAIL51.WPM to your WordPerfect Directory. COPY C:\PA\*.WPM C:\WP51 or COPY C:\PA\*.WPM C:\WP50 should do the trick for most people. To use them just type (Alt-F10) and when it ask for the macro name type MAIL51 if you are using Word Perfect 5.1 or MAIL50 if you are using Word Perfect 5.0. The file Public Address creates will then be compatible with WordPerfect. I have also included two other files: LH51.WPM and LH50.WPM. These will help you get a start on your primary file for a merge. LH stands for Letter Head. I have also included one last file to help you, MERGE.WPM. This file will do the merge for you. It will depend on you having the primary file named MAIL1 in your default directory for WordPerfect and MAIL2 in the PA directory on drive C. You can always merge the letter in the regular way (check your WordPerfect Manual). What MAIL51.WPM does is retrieve MAIL2 from the C:\PA directory (CTRL-F5, 1, 2) and convert the old merge codes (CTRL-F9, 3) and exit with save (F7 Save document? Yes C:\PA\MAIL2, Replace? Yes, Exit WP? No). What MAIL50.WPM does is retrieve MAIL2 from the C:\PA directory (CTRL-F5, 1, 2) and go to the end of the file (Home Home Down Arrow) and exit with save (F7 Save document? Yes C:\PA\MAIL2, Replace? Yes, Exit WP? No). This file needs to be retrieved in this manner and saved before it will work with WordPerfect. This is necessary because WordPerfect will write what is referred to as header information in a file to identify it as a WordPerfect file. This header information will tell WordPerfect what fonts and what printer you are using among other things. 27 Paradise Programming____________________________________________ The secondary merge file will contain nine fields for you to choose from for your merges. I tried to include most everything you would need. I hope I did not miss anything. The mail merge fields are: Field-1 Title First-Name Last-Name Field-2 Business Field-3 Address Field-4 City, State Zip-code Field-5 Country Field-6 First Name Field-7 Title Last-Name Field-8 Phone Number Field-9 Fax Number Lets do a merge! Alright, Start Public Address and go to the configuration screen by pressing 6 from the main menu. Type O for output to WP file and type Y for yes. Now press X to exit and save. Go to the print menu by pressing your 3 key and now press 2 to print a group. When it ask for a group name just type ALL and press enter. You will now be ask for a filename, just press enter again and except the default (MAIL2). You can now exit Public Address by pressing you Escape key a couple times. I will assume you are using Word Perfect 5.1. If you are using 5.0 just substitute 50 for every time I say to type 51. Now start Word Perfect and without doing anything else first, hold your Alt key down and press the F10 key (Alt- F10). Word Perfect will ask you for a macro name. Type MAIL51 and press enter. This will make the file you just created with Public Address compatible with Word Perfect. Now start another macro (Alt-F10) and type LH51. You will see the start of a letter. It will have most of the merge codes you will need for the average business letter already. Just for this example and to see how this merge works lets just save the letter just the way it is. Press F7 and when it ask for a filename type MAIL1. When it ask to exit Word Perfect press N for no. Now start another macro (Alt-F10) and type MERGE and press enter. MAIL1 and MAIL2 will start merging and will be displayed on your screen when they are done. Writing Macros for Word Perfect that will work on someone else's computer is not an exact science. If you run into any problems you may need to edit the macros to better suit your needs. Please, if you don't understand macros and how 28 ___________________________________________________Public Address they work you should find someone who does or read you Word Perfect Manual. U) DELETE DUPLICATES. Public Address has always tried to protect people from themselves. Some how people always manage to get more than one record into there file for the same person. I have always had the program look for duplicates and just not write the second one it found. This way you wouldn't end up printing more than one label or sending more than one letter to the same person. This is the only routine in Public Address that will get rid of a record in your input file. It looks at the complete record. If the complete record is IDENTICAL, it will not write the second record it finds (delete it). You can now turn this feature off. Off is the default and you will have to turn it on if you want it. 29 Paradise Programming____________________________________________ TIPS, TRICKS, AND TECHNICAL THINGS Printing I tried to make Public Address work with a variety of computers and printers. Public Address has error checking for printers, but because of the wide variety of printers on the market, it would be impossible to cover them all. This is why it is important that you set up your printer AND TURN IT ON when you print with Public Address. If you do not have your printer on when Public Address sends either a printer code or data to the printer, you will get a message that tells you to check your printer. Make sure your printer is on and has paper. If you do not check your printer, you will get a DOS message that will look like this: Write fault error writing to device LPT1 Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail? All you need to do is turn your printer on, make sure it has paper and press R for Retry. Setting up your printer only involves making sure that it is on and has paper or labels. Fonts to use You will need to ensure your printer is set to print 10 characters per inch with 12 point characters (the standard size for ASCII characters). The only exceptions to this would be if you are printing single labels, a report, or envelopes. In these situations you can use proportional printing, but you must still use 12 point characters. Everything is dependent on this size font. If you do not use this size, you may have unpredictable output. Most printers require no setup because these are already the default settings. When selecting fonts in the configuration screen be sure to take this into consideration. You should also not have your printer setup to print more than 60 lines per page. Undo If you ever start entering something in a field and decide you have made a mistake all you need to do is hold the Ctrl key down and press A (Ctrl-A). This will only work as long as you did not use your arrow keys first. Also, in the configuration screen. 30 ___________________________________________________Public Address If you are unsure what needs to be in a field and just want everything to go back to the defaults, delete the field you want and it will automatically go to the defaults. SHARE.EXE There seems to be a compatibility problem with SHARE.EXE. For those of you who are not familiar with SHARE.EXE, it comes with DOS. If you have it loaded in upper memory and plan on using Public Address to print more than one print job after starting it, you will be out of luck. It will print the first time just fine. The second time it drops you back out to DOS. It took me more than a week to find the culprit of this one and it turned out to be my compiler. Microsoft takes responsibility for the compiler and there does not seem to be much I can do about it other than upgrade my compiler to the next version at a cost of $500. Well, maybe next time. I have had some problems with the same thing using Public Address under OS/2 2.0. Sequential Files I have had a few people ask me if I can make the access of the files go forward and backwards. Well, no. I guess I could if I really wanted to, but I feel this would limit the program in other ways. The way it's done now is called sequential file access. This simply means a record is read from disk processed and put back, then the next record is read, processed and put back. No more than one record is ever in the computers' memory. This enables the program to have unlimited records, and run on computers that do not have a lot of memory. Postscript Printers Public Address will not print using a postscript printer. I have heard there are programs out that will allow a postscript printer to work with regular DOS programs. Sorry! Faster Searching Public Address will be plenty fast for most people with its searches, but for the real speed demons out there here is another trick. When searching on something, enter as few characters as possible. It will not be a big difference, but it will make a difference. 31 Paradise Programming____________________________________________ Also, make sure you are running Public Address from your hard drive. Label sizes If you add up the characters in the title field, First Name field, and Last Name field. You will find they add up to 60 characters in all. Well it's quite obvious this will not fit on a label if you do decide to use all the characters in all the fields. If the label will only hold forty characters that is all you are going to get. The rest of the characters will not carry over to the next label. They will just not be printed. Run time Errors Once in a while something could go wrong. It should not, but you never know. If for whatever reason you get a run time error when you try to start Public Address and cannot get it to start. Try deleting the PA.CFG file. Chances are, this file got corrupted some way. You will need to go back to the configuration screen and reenter everything, but at least it will get you going again. If you should have problems. Try to make the program do it again, just to make sure you did everything ok. If you can duplicate it, write everything down what you did to make it happen and also what happened. I will also need to know what kind of system you have including the DOS version. Just type VER at the DOS prompt to find out. I will also want the kind of printer your trying to print with if it's a printing problem. Also if you can print out a copy of your AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files and send them to me it would help. The more information you give me the better the chance I have of figuring it out. For you that are interested. Public Address was written entirely using COBOL with the exception of one file (TESTPRN.COM) which was written in assembly. 32 INDEX Delete Phone book . . . . . . 22 a field . . . . . . . 20 Undo . . . . . . . . . . . 30 a record . . . 14, 20, 21 Duplicates . . . . . . 29 Dial . . . . . . . 14, 18, 22 Files Backup . . . . . . . . 14 input . . . . . . 11, 13 printing to . . . 4, 23 program . . . . . . . 11 Fonts . . . . . . . . . 23, 30 Label number . . . . . . . 26 Macros LH50.WPM . . . . . . . 27 LH51.WPM . . . . . . . 27 MAIL51.WPM . . . . . . 27 MERGE.WPM . . . . . . 27 Menus Dynamic . . . . . . . 25 Editor . . . . . . 14, 20 Main . . . . . . . . . 14 Print . . . . . . 14, 19 Search . . . . . . 14, 16 Password . . . . . . . . . 14 Ports COMmunication . . . . 22 Printer . . . . . . . 22 Print A file . . . . . . 4, 23 envelopes . . . . 18, 19 labels . . . . . . 18, 19 Phone book . . . . . . 19 Report . . . . . . . . 19 Printer code . . . . . . . 23 Printer Type Dot-matrix . . . . . . 22 Laser . . . . . . . . 22 Records Delete . . . . 6, 14, 20 edit . . . . . . . 14, 20 merge . . . . . . 14, 18 Ride share . . . . . . 17, 19 Run time Errors . . . . . . 32 Screens Configuration . . 14, 22 Information . . . 14, 21 Sort Input file . . . . . . 22 33