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1987-05-14
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Grocery Listing Program
Version 1.2
-by-
Synergy Software of Nebraska
904 Lariat Circle
Papillion, NE 68046
Synergy Software of Nebraska (SSoN) is distributing GROCERY under
the Public Domain concept. This program may be freely distri-
buted to all interested individuals without further authorization
or request from SSoN. If you are interested in other programs
developed by SSoN, you can write to the above address for
information.
Since GROCERY is being distributed without any charge or
obligation by the user, Synergy Software of Nebraska disclaims
all responsibilities for its purpose or its effectiveness. (In
other words, "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.")
If you like the program and would like to have a copy of the
source code, you can send us $10 to the above address. We will
send you a copy. The program was written in Turbo Pascal.
This program has been developed to run with only color display
systems. Later versions will work with monochrome displays.
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Into the fire pit:
There are those who grocery shop on a regular basis that
often know precisely what they want to get, where to find it, and
how many (or much) to buy. Of course, there are those, like
myself, who dread the local Food-4-Less, Piggly-Wiggly, and
Helter-Skelter food chains; who make illogical and often unsup-
ported reasons why it is better to buy a dozen items at the 7-
eleven store just down the street for the price of the monthly
car payment rather than beat the hords of food shoppers at the
BIG ones; and who look for building maps at the entrance in case
of getting lost "somewhere" between isles 7 and 8 while seeking
the location of a jar of Jif.
Well, despite my efforts, the day came when my wife gave me
the grocery list and simply stated: "Go to it." It was in the
two hours after this SEE (Significantly Emotional Event), while
wearing out my shoe soles in search of a that infintesimally
small, but ever so important, spice that I decided to write this
program.
The Program's Afoot:
Within a day of previously described misadventure I had the
workings of the program complete. At last! Not only did I have
a program that I could use at the store, but I could finally
prove to my wife that a computer DOES have useful purposes. I
can honestly say now that having the program completed, with
several modifications as time goes on, for nearly a year that my
wife consistently and faithfully uses it every time she goes to
her favorite grocery store.
The Inner'ds:
Since there is a built-in help screen (my wife would not
have had much luck running the program without being able to
first find the F1 key), this document will be short. It will
only cover a general description of what the program does.
First of all, GROCERY is a data base program. It contains
the grocery items you buy on a regular (or even an irregular)
basis, along with the normal amount of each item. When you
execute GROCERY, it will display the items by isle.
1) enter new grocery items,
2) delete existing grocery items,
3) select grocery items to be printed, and
4) print the final grocery list (or entire data base).
The program will handle up to 30 isles and each isle may
have up to 36 items. The display shows the items three isles at
a time; 18 items per isle. There are two "windows", a top and
bottom, that can be switched between which enables you to view
all 36 items (18 in the top window, 18 in the bottom window).
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Items are selected (or cleared) by placing the item cursor
(a inverted color window) over the item you are interested in and
pressing the RETURN key. Once you have selected the items you
wish to include in the grocery list, the F3 function key sends
the list to the printer (LPT1:).
Of course the difficult part about running the program is in
having to enter ALL of the items into the data base at the
beginning. The nice thing is that once you have the items
entered (and organized in the fashion you desire), printing the
grocery list is a snap; and the print-out is organized by isle.
All you have to do is go through the grocery store, checking the
items by the isle.
Isles in the program are numbered 1 to 30; however, I have
added a feature that allows you to change the name of the isle.
Thus, you can rename one of the isles "Produce" and another
"Meats". This also simplifies the shopping procedures.
Key Points:
A) The function keys:
F1: This key brings up the first (of two) help screens.
These screens provide a synopsis of the keys that are
available within the program. To go to the second help
screen page, strike the F1 key again. Any other key
returns the main screen.
F2: This key saves the present data base to the file:
GROCERY.DB. The data saved includes the items as well
as the selection settings. Thus, you can select items
to be printed, save them to file, and when you reload
the program, the selection settings are still there.
F3: This key prints out the final grocery listing. All
print-out is organized by isle and the specific sequence
of items in the isles.
F5: This key prints the entire data base. This is good for
checking the data base against the grocery store; just
print out the data base and take it with you the next
time you go shopping.
F7: This key resets all selected grocery items. It is meant
primarily to clear the selection settings so that you
can start from scratch with the next grocery list. If
you select this option, GROCERY will give you one last
chance to abort the action: with the ESC key.
F9: This key sets the display to the TOP window. As men-
tioned above, there are two windows required to display
all 36 items for each isle: TOP and BTM (Bottom). This
key and F10 are available to switch between the two.
F10:This key sets the display to the BTM (Bottom) window.
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See the F9 key above for more information.
B) Cursor Movement Keys:
The 4 Arrow Keys:
These keys are the primary keys to move the item cursor
around the display area of the screen. The item cursor is
used to select or clear items for the grocery listing, to
point to items to be deleted, or to point to locations where
an item is to inserted in the list.
In addition to the F9 and F10 keys described above, the
arrow keys also can cause the display to switch between the
TOP and BTM windows. If the cursor is placed over the last
item in the TOP window (and there are items that extend into
the BTM window), the down arrow will cause the program to
display the bottom window. Likewise, if the cursor is at
the first item on the BTM window and the up arrow is
pressed, the program will display the top window, placing
the cursor at the end of the top window's list.
The left and right arrows "wrap" around through the
three isles displayed. To display the next three isles, use
the page up and page down keys (described below).
Home and End:
In addition the the arrow keys described above, the
Home and End keys also move the cursor. The Home key moves
the item cursor to the first item on that particular isle.
If the BTM window is displayed, the window is not switched.
The End key moves the cursor to the end of the list.
C) Paging:
GROCERY only displays three isles of data at one time.
Each of these three isle displays are called pages. Since
there are 30 isles in all and three isles are displayed per
page, there are a total of 10 pages. To move from page to
page, the PgUp and PgDn keys are used. PgUp moves back to
the previous page; PgDn moves to the next. For quick
"jumps", holding the CTRL key down and striking the PgUp or
PgDn key will send you to the first page or the last page,
respectively.
D) Other keys:
RETURN: This key is used to toggles the item pointed to by
the item cursor between selected and cleared. If an item is
clear, and the RETURN key is pressed, GROCERY will ask you
for the quantity. If you don't wish to change the quantity
as shown, press the RETURN key again; otherwise, you may
type in a value between 1 and 99.
INS: This key allows you to insert new items into the data
base. To insert a new item, place the item cursor at the
location you wish it to be and press the INS key. GROCERY
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will ask you to enter the item. Type in the name and hit
RETURN. The item will be inserted.
DEL: This key deletes an existing item from the data base.
Place the cursor over the item to be deleted and hit DEL.
GROCERY will ask you to verify the delete. If you are sure,
type "Y".
CTRL-HOME: As discussed above, it is possible to change the
name of the isle which, by default, is simply numbered from
1 to 30. Text descriptors are often more informative of
what the isle contains, rather than just a number. To
change the name, hold down the CTRL key and press Home. The
item cursor will jump to the screen location displaying the
isle number. Now, just type in the name. To clear the name
from the display, press CTRL-Home and hit RETURN.
ESC: Finally, to exit the program, use the ESC key.
GROCERY will ask you to verify this is what you wish to do.
It is not necessary to save the data base to file before
exiting the program. GROCERY will do this automatically if
you have updated any of the data.
That's it! I hope you enjoy and use this program. It has been a
great value to my family.
Happy hunting...
Synergy Software of Nebraska
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