ProfitPress Mega CDROM2 …eeware (MSDOS)(1992)(Eng)/ProfitPress-MegaCDROM2.B6I/MISC/HANDICAP/NAMES302.ZIP/NAMES.DOC

Text File | 1990-07-17 | 28.5 KB | 544 lines

e                             NAMES

                    Another Sound Alternative
                              From
                          Kansys, Inc.
                        1016 Ohio Street
                       Lawrence, KS  66044

                   Telephone:  [phone]

                           Version 3.0
                           July, 1990



     "NAMES" is an easy-to-use program which is designed to help
you keep track of names, addresses, phone numbers and identifying
information.  Because of its menu structure and editor, which were
designed with speech synthesis in mind, the program will be
especially useful to blind computer users employing screen review
programs.  While "NAMES" will work with any screen review program,
we highly recommend the use of PROVOX, from Kansys, Inc., as
"NAMES" Version 3.0 has been optimize to work especially well with
PROVOX.  Please contact us at the above address or telephone number
for more information on PROVOX.

                            FEATURES

     "NAMES" is designed to keep track of lists of names,
addresses, and telephone numbers--both home and work and
identifying information called "Tags."  Information can then either
be displayed to your computer screen/speech synthesizer or printed
to paper, labels and/or envelopes.

     The program is easy-to-use, in part, because all "fields" or
pieces of requested information have been pre-defined for you.  In
addition, as you move around the editor screen, the fields will
identify themselves, one at a time.    You only have to start
typing in information.  Except for a unique Key for each entry, all
fields are optional, unless you intend to print labels.  Then, the
Key, Name, City, State and Zip are required.  "NAMES" holds all
information in your computer's memory while you are entering data
and/or editing entries.  The program will automatically use as much
memory as your computer has for data storage.  This means that the
size of your lists are only limited by the amount of computer
memory you have.  We have successfully used the program with lists
of over 1500 entries.

     Entries can be identified with one or more "Tags."  Each entry
can have up to nine tags.  Tags can then be used to search for
information for later display or printing.  This is one of the
features which makes "NAMES" so powerful.  While many people
believe that an expensive and complicated database program is
necessary to maintain lists of names and addresses, you can
accomplish this task with "NAMES" by using Tags.

     Once data has been entered and edited, it can be stored to
disk for later retrieval.  More than one list can be retrieved into
memory at a time making it possible to combine lists.  By combining
lists, using tags and marking entries, "NAMES" can accomplish most,
if not all of your information storage and retrieval needs.

                      DEMONSTRATION VERSION

     Starting with Version 3.0, a demonstration version of the
"NAMES" program has been made available.  This version is fully
functional except that you can not save entries to disk as a normal
"NAMES" file.  You can however enter and manipulate data and save
and print it as mailing labels.  This should allow most prospective
users to get a feel for how the program works.

                         GETTING STARTED

     The disk you received contains four files:  "NAMES.EXE"
"NAMES.HLP", "NAMES.DOC" and "SAMPLE.NMS."  In addition, the disk
also contains two shareware programs from Kansys, Inc., RALPH THE
READER and WATCHDOG along with their documentation files.  The
"NAMES" program can be run from either a floppy disk, or from a
hard disk, should your computer have one.  Either transfer
"NAMES.EXE" and "NAMES.HLP" to your hard disk or make a backup copy
on another floppy disk for daily use.  Please note that if you run
the program from a floppy disk, it is possible for a data file to
exceed the remaining space on the floppy disk, when you attempt to
save the file.

     To run the program from either floppy or a hard disk, you only
need type "NAMES."  If you use a fixed disk, make sure that you
have changed to the directory that "NAMES" is in, or that directory
is on your path.  Also be sure that "NAMES.EXE" and "NAMES.HLP" are
located in the same sub-directory.  If you have questions on any
of this, consult your DOS manual.  Please also note that the quote
marks " " around the program name NAMES, and other filenames, are
there for display purposes and are not to be typed.  When the
program is run from the DOS command line, one or more data files
can  be loaded at the same time.  Do so by typing the filename(s)
on the same line as "NAMES" and separate each with a space.  You
can also use drive and path specifications when loading the program
and/or data files as well as the DOS wild card characters question
mark, "?" and star, "*".  If you use the ".NMS" extension to name
your NAMES files, you need not type it when loading files.  the
program will assume it and fill it in.

     Once the program executes you will be presented with an
opening message containing the program name and version, date and
time and the first choice from the program's Main Menu.  This
choice is H Help, however, before this Menu is explained, the NAMES
Control Panel will first be described.

                        THE CONTROL PANEL

     "NAMES" will always use the top five lines of the screen to
display its "Control Panel."  This area will give you vital
information about the program, its status and commands.  This
information will always appear in the same place, making it easy
to find with your screen review program.

     Below is a list of the five lines of the control panel and
what they contain:

     Line 1:  The title of the program as well as the time and
date,
     Line 2:  The command line which contains the "NAMES" prompt,
(->) and any commands entered from the keyboard,
     Line 3:  The choices of the current menu,
     Line 4:  Any messages the program displays,
     Line 5:  Statistics pertaining to the program and your
computer.

     These statistics are as follows:  New--the number of new items
entered in the current session, Old--the number of old items
entered in previous sessions and retrieved from disk, Sum--the
total of new and old items, Mrk--the number of items which are
marked, Lbl--the number of items which have been saved to a label
file during the current session, Sve--the number of items which
have been saved to a ".NMS" file during the current session,
Mem--the amount of computer memory occupied by the new and old
items, and Rem--the amount of computer memory available for data
entry.

     In addition to consistent placement within the control panel,
choices are easy to find because the selection on which the cursor
is located is always highlighted.  Thus, if your screen review
program allows for either locating the cursor or finding
highlighted text, you can easily determine where you are within
the "NAMES" menu structure.

                            MAIN MENU

     As mentioned earlier, there is one menu which is the Main Menu
for the program.  You will enter and exit all functions from this
menu.  Each of its choices is displayed across the top of the
screen on line 3 in a menu similar to Lotus 1-2-3 and other
programs, however, there is one main difference.  The menu has been
designed to work well with speech synthesis.  The choices are:  H
Help, L Load, E Edit, F Find, D Drop, M Mail, S Save, Z Zoom and
Q Quit.  You can make a choice in one of two ways, by pressing the
right or left arrow keys until the desired choice is reached or by
pressing the first letter of the desired command.  As you can see
from the Menu, the appropriate letter is listed before each
command.  Once the desired choice is reached, press the "Return"
or "Enter" key to execute your choice.  Navigating through "NAMES"
will always involve making choices via the arrow keys, letter keys
and/or function keys.  As you become familiar with the program, and
if your screen review program supports the interruption of speech
with any keystroke, as PROVOX does, moving around the program will
become very rapid.

                              HELP

     In addition to ample prompting, which is available throughout
the program, more detailed help is available in two places:  from
the Main Menu and from within the Editor.  To get help from the
Main Menu, choose H Help.  You can then read up to 18 screens of
information describing the operation of the program.  These screens
are presented one at a time to you.  Once you are in Help, your
command choices are: N to display the Next screen of information,
P to display the Previous screen of information, Q to Quit the Help
system or S followed by a number to display the screen number you
choose.  You must also press the "carriage return" or "enter" key
after each of these commands.  When you exit Help, you will be back
at the Main Menu.

     There is also a Help facility in the Editor.  To get this
help, just press the F1 key.  Then by pressing the space bar, you
will be presented with information on each Editor command, one at
a time.  To exit this Help Mode, just press the Escape key.

                          ENTERING DATA

     To enter new data, choose E Edit   from the Main Menu.  You
will hear the choices from the menu line spoken.  They are F1 Help,
Mark Off, Ins Off.  You will then be prompted for the first key to
enter.  your cursor is in the correct position to enter the data
for the first Key.  The "Key" is used by "NAMES" to identify the
name/address combination about to be entered.  The "Key" is never
printed to a label.  It is only used by you and the program to
identify, search and/or edit items.  The program also uses the Keys
to store and sort all entries alphabetically.  Each name/address
entry must have a unique key, which can be of any length.  Spaces
are permitted, however, the key cannot start with a space.  The
program automatically converts the letters in each key to capital
letters, so do not use case to uniquely identify a Key.  If you
enter a key which is identical to one you have previously used,
"NAMES" will ask you if you wish to replace the previously used
Key, when you are finished entering data.  If you answer Y for Yes,
the newly entered data will automatically replace any existing data
under the same Key.  If you answer N for No, a dollar sign ($) will
be appended to the end of the key, (see below.)  When combining two
separate lists into one by loading them into memory, "NAMES" will
append a dollar sign, ($) to any key which is not unique.  If the
same key is used again, two dollar signs, ($$) will be appended to
the key.  This process will be repeated with another dollar sign
($) being added each time  the key is re-used.  We suggest that you
use another method for making each potential duplicate key unique,
such as adding a number to the end, for example, "SMITH" "SMITH1"
"SMITH2" etc.  This will make future retrieval easier.  It is also
possible to Find and mark all dollar sign keys for editing at a
later time.

     As mentioned earlier, in the Features section, all of the
fields in "NAMES" have been pre-defined, so you only need to enter
data.  As you make an entry into a field, and hit the "return" or
"enter" key, you will automatically be given the prompt for the
next field, (see below for more information on the specific fields
and their uses.)  It is also possible to move to any field on the
screen, simply by using the up and down arrow keys.

     While in the Editor, the following commands are available to
you:
F1 Enters you into the Help system for the Editor,
F2 marks an item which is not marked and unmarks any item which has been
previously marked, (see the section on marks for more information
on this feature,)
F3 if any items have been previously marked, F3 retrieves the  previous
one to the screen,
F4 If any items have been previously marked, F4 retrieves the next one
to the screen,
F5 drops the current screen from your computer's memory,
F6 prints the address of the current screen to an envelope,
F7 undoes any changes you have made to the current screen, (i.e.) it
restores the current entry as it was before you started making
changes,
Pagedown displays the next screen if any, (screens are retrieved in Key
order,)
Pageup displays the previous screen if any,
Arrow Keys move the cursor to the left or right one position, or up or
down one field, as you would normally expect them too,
Control-Left Arrow moves the cursor one word to the left,
Control-Right Arrow moves the cursor one word to the right,
Insert or Ins toggles between insert and strikeover modes,
Backspace deletes one character to the left of the cursor,
Delete deletes one character at the cursor,
Home moves the cursor to the left most position of the current field,
Home Home moves the cursor to the first position in the first field on
the current screen,
Home Home Home moves the cursor to the first position of the first field
on a blank new screen, (a quick way to terminate data entry on the
current screen and start a new one,)
End moves the cursor to the right most position of the current field,
End End moves the cursor to the first position of the first blank field
on the current screen, (a quick way to continue where you
previously left off,)
Enter or Carriage return clears the current field to the right of the
cursor and advances the cursor to the first position in the next
field,
Tab advances the cursor to the next field without changing contents of
the current field,
Shift-Tab moves the cursor back one field without changing the contents
of the current field,
Escape exits the Editor.

     The Editor is where you will do most of your work in "NAMES."
You can use any of the above commands to freely move about the
screen.  While you can use your arrow keys to go anywhere, only
line 7 through 25 and columns 19 through 80 are available for
editing.  The other areas are protected.  When you first enter the
Editor, you will be presented with a blank entry screen whether or
not you have loaded a previously saved list.  A press of the
Pagedown or Pageup key will then present you with the first or last
entry of any file(s) you loaded.  Further, if you have marked one
or more items through the F Find command, you will be presented
with the first marked entry.  You can then scroll through all
entries with the Pagedown and Pageup keys or the F3 and F4 keys,
if you have more then one marked item.  Further, you can use F2 and
F5 to mark and unmark items and/or drop them from memory.  Feel
free to experiment with the "SAMPLE.NMS" file that came with your
program.  This is a large list of publicly available names compiled
from a number of lists.  The file contains a variety of different
kinds of Tags.

     The purpose of each field on the data entry screen in the
Editor should be self explanatory.  If you are going to print
labels, then Name: City, State: and Zip, Postal Code: fields are
mandatory.  If labels are not necessary, then the only mandatory
entry is the Key itself.  The Name should be entered as you would
want it to print on a label, if that is your intention, for
example, Ms. Jane Smith.  Address: and Address: are two address
lines.  The City followed by a coma a space and the two digit State
or Province abbreviation should be entered in the City, State:
field.  The Zip code, either 7 or 11 digits, or the Canadian Postal
Code should be entered in the Zip, Postal Code: field.  The Home
Phone and Work Phone entries are of course for home and work
telephone numbers.  The program does not care about what format you
use for phone number entry.  At this time, the program is set up
to print on 1, 2, or 3 across labels on either 8.5 or 11 inch wide
stock.  When printing labels, the City, State and Zip fields will
all be placed on one line so it is advisable to use the two
character state or provincial abbreviations to save space.

     After the Work Phone: field, there is space for nine "Tags."
Much of the hidden power of "NAMES" lies in the use of Tags.  A tag
is any comment which can be appended to a name/address entry.
There are two ways to think of tags.  First, they can be unique
comments for each entry, such as:  "Uncle Joe is fat so don't give
him candy for his Birthday."  Secondly, Tags can serve like Keys,
as a way of identifying entries, with one main difference, more
than one entry can have the same tag.  For example, if you are
secretary of your local frog watching club and President of your
local NFB or ACB chapter, and keep membership lists for both, you
could enter a Tag of frog by each Club members' entry and do the
same with your fellow NFB or ACB members.  You can even have
everyone in the same master list because you can use the proper tag
to retrieve the corresponding members at a later time.

     Other examples of types of Tags include, relative, friend,
Birthday, computer type, etc.  Let your imagination be your guide.
Later, when you learn how to retrieve by Tags, you will have ideas
of your own.

     There are two other fields, Created: and Changed:.  They are
present to help you keep track of when you made and modified
entries to your lists.  While you can manually edit these fields,
they are normally handled by the program itself and should be
accurate as long as your computer has a clock/calendar or you enter
the time and date correctly.

     Once all Tags have been entered, press the pagedown key or
Home Home Home to end data entry for the current screen.  Finally,
a blank data entry screen will be presented.  Once data entry is
complete, press Escape.  The program will exit the Editor and take
you to the Main Menu.  Use the left and right arrows to review
choices or press the first letter of the desired command.

                       PRINTING ENVELOPES

     It is possible to print an individual address on an envelope
from within "NAMES."  To do so, choose E Editor, F Find, or Z Zoom
and locate the item you wish to print.  Press F6 for Envelope.  You
will be prompted to "prepare printer" and press return when
everything is ready.  The program assumes that your printer is
hooked up to lpt1.  It moves down two lines before printing and the
address is positioned 40 spaces from the left margin.

                         QUICK SEARCHES

     The occasion will come when you need to look up a quick name
or address from a "NAMES" file.  This is possible with the Z Zoom
command, first introduced in Version 3.0.  From the Main Menu,
simply press Z for Zoom, or use your right or left arrows to get
there and press Return.  Then type in the key for which you are
looking.  "NAMES" uses a Key Pattern to look up the name, (see
below for information on Key Patterns) so you can type only part
of the Key and be assured that you will probably find it.  You are
then placed in the Editor with the first marked entry on the
screen.  If your Zoom search has yielded more then one match,
simply press the Pagedown key to get to subsequent entries.

                      SEARCHING AND MARKING

     With "NAMES" it is possible to search and extract information
in a variety of ways, using Keys and Tags.  You do so from the F
Find selection which is located on the Main Menu.  Once this
selection has been made, ten possible choices are available.  These
choices are made with either function keys or up and down arrows.
Once you have reached the selection you want, press the Enter key
and you will be prompted for any needed information, if
appropriate.  Choices F1 through F8 will mark appropriate items for
later browsing or changing in the Editor or for label or report
printing from the M Mail menu as well as for custom list creation
using the D Drop and/or S Save choices.  The F9 choice will clear
all marks, giving you a fresh start and F10 will flip all marks,
that is unmark all marked items and mark all unmarked items.  Below
is an explanation of the first eight choices.

F1:  Mark a specific key  (each letter must match exactly except that
all lower case letters are automatically converted to upper case,
so capitalization does not matter)
F2:  Find and mark a Key Pattern:  (a key pattern matches the letter(s)
you provide exactly, but assumes a * wildcard afterward.  For
example, If you give the letter a as your Key Pattern,  the
computer assumes A* and marks all Keys  beginning with the letter
a.
F3:  Find and mark a specific Tag:  (This choice works similarly as that
for finding and marking Keys.)
F4:  Find and mark a Tag Pattern:  (This choice works similarly to that
for finding and marking Key Patterns.  If, for example, you have
entered your friends' Birthdays in the form month/day, (e.g.) 12/25
for December 25th, you can get a list of all friends with Birthdays
in December by entering 12 as your Tag Pattern.)
F5:  Find and mark items with missing fields:  (This choice will mark
all items which do not have a Name, City, State and/or Zip.  These
fields are needed for label printing.)
F6:  Find and mark items with longest fields:  (This choice will search
all items and mark those that have the longest field.  The length
of the longest field and the number marked that have this length
field will be reported.)
F7:  Find and mark items with dollar Keys:  (This choice marks all items
which have had Dollar signs appended to their keys by the program
to avoid duplication.)
F8:  Find and mark all new items:  (This choice allows for easy editing
and/or browsing of your most recent entries.)

     Once you have executed a "FInd" you will be notified as to how
many items have been marked and then you will be taken back to the
first choice in the Find menu.  To look at your marked items, hit
Escape to exit Find and E to enter the Editor.

     Much of the power of "NAMES" lies in the use of Marks.
Briefly, Marks allow you to work with groups of items within a
larger list.  They are not saved to disk.  They are only present
in your computer's memory for the current session.  You can also
use marks, or their absence, to save pre-selected items to a file.
Using marks, you could for example create a number of smaller lists
from a larger list, using other criteria such as tags or keys, or
you could mark all good items in a list, save them to a file and
discard the unmarked "bad" items by not saving them.

                         DROPPING ITEMS

     The next item on the Main Menu is D Drop.  This is used for
dropping items, purging them from your computer's memory.  As
before, use up and down arrow keys or function keys to make your
choice.  Once you have made this choice, press Enter.  These
choices are to drop all items, drop marked items only or drop
unmarked items only.  Using these choices along with other features
of "NAMES," such as marks, Tags, Keys, mailing labels and Save, any
number of custom lists can be created and manipulated.  The D Drop
option can also be used to clear out your computer's memory prior
to loading a new list from disk.

                   CREATING LABELS AND REPORTS

     To create mailing labels or other reports, choose M Mail from
the Main Menu.  The program will first ask for the name of the file
in which it will store your data.  The program will also tell you
that if you wish to send the report or labels directly to your
printer, "Type PRN for the filename."  If the file does not exist,
you will be asked to type "Y" to create it or "N" not to create it
and if it already exists, you will be asked to type "Y" or "N" to
overwrite or not to overwrite it.  If you choose "N" in either
instance, you will be back at the Main Menu.  Standard DOS file
naming conventions apply here, that is you are allowed up to eight
characters, a period (.) and a three character extension.  We
suggest using a standard extension for your label or report files
such as "lbl" or "rpt."  If you do not specify an extension,
"NAMES" will automatically use the .LBL extension.  The next step
is to choose the type of data to be used.  As before, use arrow or
function keys to make your choice, which includes all items, marked
items or unmarked items.

     Finally, a list of label and report formats is presented.
While the program says "printed on Paper" fan-fold label stock of
the appropriate size can be substituted.  If paper is used, it is
a simple matter to photocopy the results onto the proper size
labels at a later time.

     The "NAMES" program creates a label or report file which must
be printed separately, once you have exited the program unless you
have chosen the "PRN" option.  For the exact details on how to do
this, see the PRINTING section near the end of this document.

                           SAVING DATA

     Once you have Entered and Edited your data, it is necessary
to save it for future use.  This is done by selecting S Save from
the Main Menu.  You will be prompted:  "Save Data to What File."
Standard DOS file naming conventions apply here, that is you are
allowed up to eight characters, a period (.) and a three character
extension.  We suggest using a standard extension for your "NAMES":
files such as "NMS" or "LST."  If you do not specify an extension,
the program will automatically use the ".NMS" extension.

     If this is the first time you have used this filename, "NAMES"
will prompt:  "File XXXXXXXX.NMS Does Not Yet exist.  Type Y to
create it."  If you wish to overwrite an existing file, "NAMES"
will also ask you to verify your choice with a "Y."  Here again,
you have the opportunity to choose all items, marked items or
unmarked items, in the standard way.  The program will verify that
it is saving and give a count of the number of items saved.  When
saving data, loading data or writing label or report files, device
names and paths can be specified.  If nothing is specified, the
program assumes the current drive and/or sub-directory.

                       EXITING THE PROGRAM

     To exit from "NAMES" choose Q Quit from the Main Menu.  The
program will say:  "Exit from NAMES?  Type Y for yes."  Pressing
any other key will return you to the "NAMES"  Main Menu.  You can
also exit the program by repeatedly pressing the Escape key until
you get the "Exit from NAMES" question.  Finally, the program will
prompt you before you exit, if you have made changes to your data
but have not saved these changes.  If you wish to save your changes
do so at this point, because once you ave exited "NAMES" your
changes are gone forever.

                   PRINTING LABELS AND REPORTS

     To print labels and/or reports, the appropriate file must
first be created in the M Mail section of "NAMES," unless you chose
the "PRN option.  See the above section for exact instructions.

     Your Labels and reports are stored in a standard DOS text
file.  This file can be printed either with the standard DOS
"PRINT" command or via another program.  The file is set up to
print out onto the size paper or label stock you chose in the M
Mail section of "NAMES."  Your addresses are automatically put into
zip code order when the label file is saved.  The numbers progress
from low to high going across each row from left to right, with the
lowest zip code appearing in the upper left-hand corner and the
highest appearing in the lower right corner unless a one across
format was chosen.  In that case the lowest zip code will be at the
top of the list and the highest at the bottom.

     To print from DOS, simply type "PRINT" (filename) return.  Put
a space between the command and the filename.  The "PRINT" command
assumes that your printer is hooked up to LPT1 called "PRN."  Since
LPT1 is used for a parallel printer, you will have to redirect the
output of LPT1 to COM1 or to whatever COM port your serial printer
is attached.  You do so by using the mode command.  Please consult
your computer's owners manual or your DOS manual as the "PRINT"
command varies from version to version of PC/MS-DOS

     The instructions in the above paragraph, concerning the
definition of the "PRN" device, also hold true when you use the
"PRN" printing option from the M Mail Menu.

                        WHERE TO GET HELP

     We, at Kansys, Inc., think that you will find "NAMES" to be
an easy-to-use and powerful program.  If you do have any questions,
suggestions or would like to know about other Kansys, Inc.
products, please write or call David Andrews at [phone]
during working hours or [phone] evenings and weekends.  We
hope you enjoy using the program!!!