“Do one thing, and do it well”. We’ve all heard it, and this little program tries to live by that rule. You may not agree that it does it well, but it certainly only does one thing - maintain membership lists. My wife is the membership secretary for a couple of local organizations, and needs to maintain and print membership lists. When none of the other programs we tried seemed to quite fit the bill for her, I decided to write the exact program that she wanted; simple and to the point. What she wanted was a program that would let her do fast data entry, and print membership lists with specs like, “I need names and addresses, about 20 to a page”. Hopefully this program met the specs…
The program is a piece of cake to use, but I will write a user guide if interest warrants. For now, here is all you need to know:
1) This package consists of four files: ‘ISAM’, ‘Membership Minder’, ‘Demo File‘ and ‘Read Me first’ (this file). You can trash this file when you are done reading it, but leave everything else in the same folder. Yes I know this is a non-System 7 way of doing things, but the heck with it.
2) When you’re trying out the program for the first time, double-click on the ‘Demo File’. You will see a message that the index is being re-built; this is entirely normal. When you take a trip back to the Finder you’ll find that two new files have been created: ‘Demo File.IDX’ and ‘Mbr Preferences’. Again this is normal - do not trash them. The program will keep on re-creating them every time you run it and things are generally cooler if you leave them around. If you double click the program instead you’ll see a message asking you to select a file via “Open” or “New”. Just follow the instructions, and all will be sweetness and light thereafter.
3) The program assumes that you want everything to print in Geneva. If, like me, you consider Geneva to be only a short step up from San Francisco (the font, not the city), you should pay a visit to the “Design” menu before you try printing anything. Once you’ve told the program how you like your reports, it will remember them until the end of time or until you trash the ‘Mbr Preferences’ file, whichever comes first.
4) Note that using the “Find” Dialog affects the order that records are presented. You can search by last name, first name or member number. If you search on the last name then “Next” and “Previous” will present records in order by the last name; if you search on the first name, then they’ll be presented in first name order, and so on. Note that when you have two last names that are the same, the program uses the member’s initials for secondary ordering, so Jeff Smith will turn up before Norm Smith. Similarly when you’re using the first name as a key, Andrew Jackson would turn up before Andrew Kirby. A non-obvious feature of the find dialog box is that you can specify a name exactly by using a “\” character. If you want to find “Norm Smith” without having to see Jeff first then enter “Smith\n” in the last name field in the find dialog.
5) You don’t have to select “Edit” from the “Member” menu to change a record - just click on any data field (the cursor will turn into the standard editing I-Beam whenever the cursor is over a data-field).
6) Check out what happens if you hold down the option key when there are OK and Cancel buttons showing. If the highlight moves (it usually will) then pressing option-return will be the same as clicking Cancel. The only time the highlight won’t move is on a couple of dialogs that you’ll only see if the printer driver is having problems (e.g. “There is no GoofyWriter attached to this Macintosh”). (I think) I know how to do it there too, but I got lazy.
7) If you select an item from the print menu with the shift key held down, you will get the design dialog first
8) When you’re done horsing around with the demo file, close it and select ‘New’ to create your own file. You’ll see a dummy member inserted. You can’t delete it as the program insists on there being at least one member in a file, but you can either change it to a real name and address, or insert another record and then delete the dummy.
9) Where appropriate, the program will Capitalize All Initial Letters for you. Try typing in the name and address fields without using the shift key.
10) The program will accept dates in just about any conceivable format- 4 27 52 is just as good as 27 Apr 52. It will reformat them afterwards to the format it prefers tho'.
11) Check “Edit Defaults” on the “Edit” Menu. You'll probably find that most of your new members don’t live in Stroudsburg PA, so you'll want to change the defaults that the program plugs in when you’re insering a new member. If you do have a lot of names in Stroudsburg, then drop in some time, I’m in the book.
12) Try out “Clone” on the “Member” menu - it’s ideal when you have married couples to enter in the same list. How come no-one else though of this?
13) No - “Import” and “Export” don’t do anything even once you’ve enabled them with ResEdit. If I get enough response, then I’ll write the code.
Legal Notes
----------
This program is free but it is not in the public domain (see copyright notice in the “About” box). As it is free, you may get back exactly what I got paid for it if you have any problems with it, i.e zip, nada, zilch, rien, nichts. If you have any problems with it let me know, and equally if you have suggestions for improvements or enhancements drop me a line (but please see the note on “feature-itis” below).
Not-so legal notes
----------------
This program was developed and tested on an LC-II 4/40 running under System 7.01. Since the mouse broke on my old Plus, I have nowhere else to test it. It should work on about anything from a 512KE on up, but I can't say for certain. If you have any problems, please let me know your configuration.
To contact me:
Address EMail to:
A.Kirby1 on Genie
Address USMail to
Andrew Kirby
1017 Chipperfield Drive
Stroudsburg PA, 18360
Feel free to suggest any enhancements you’d like to see, but please bear in mind that the overriding principle when designing this program was simplicity of use. Nice as a “Print all records where the zip code is > 10 and < 12345 or phone-no starts with 1” type function might be, it just isn’t in the spirit of the program. The program is lean and mean; I don’t want it to get large and in-charge. I know that this documentation is minimal to say the least - let me know what you think should be documented better.
Verging on illegal note
--------------------
This program was developed using my own object-oriented program shell ('XA' - eXtensible Application). XA is all my own work, and does not contain a single line cribbed from either MacApp or the Think Class Libraries. If you or your organization need a pretty good Mac programmer who comes armed with a 15,000 line skeleton application which includes all of the good stuff you see in this program (and more), call me any time - I’m in the book. If you need a guy who knows both mainframes and Macs, then I bet you I’m the only one around.
Friendly note
------------
Have fun, and remember you have a friend in Pennsylvania.
