p The Address Book Desk Accessory q version 1.40 A Shareware Program by Robert M. Balay Having trouble keeping up with your friends' addresses? I've got just the thing for you! After scratching out most of the space in my own personal address book, I decided to write a program to keep track of addresses for me. But before I had a chance to sit down at the keyboard and hack one out, a couple of people beat me to the punch. Now I've got to admit, I sat down and tried to use their programs. I really did! But they were so awkward to use, that I just continued to use my old Bates list-finder (Model "A" - The Bates MFG Co., Hackettstown, N.J.). Unfortunately, I just wasn't able to continue with the scratched out addresses and I didn't feel like going to the store, buying a replacement insert, and writing down every address all over again. So, I thought, wouldn't it be a great idea to have the list finder on the computer! And so, The Address Book was born. Version 1.0 was a basic, color only, prototype. The slider bar was really imprecise (just like the real thing), with no up/down arrows. Plus, when the 'close window' symbol was clicked while in one of the sections, the program would quit as soon as the user left the section. This was a bit confusing for some users. Version 1.1 corrected these problems. Arrows were added for more precise control over the slider bar, and the 'close window' symbol was covered up while in a section. Support for dialing the telephone number via modem was also added. Version 1.2 added monochrome (high resolution) support, since I also use a monochrome monitor occasionally. As fate would have it, there was a major bug in the program that caused the same name to be written to the address book file several times. Version 1.21 corrected that problem, and the result was a fully operational program. Version 1.3 incorporates several new features, including the option of pressing a key in order to move the selector directly to the section you want, and a repeat function for the stepping through the sections by pressing the right mouse button. The dial feature was also fixed, so that you no longer have to select dial twice before you get a response. Version 1.35 included a new format with 2 lines for addresses. This version was distributed to the first registered users along with a conversion program and a program to print out the contents of the entire address book. Version 1.40 is the shareware version desk accessory. It includes the print-out program from within the desk accessory by pressing Control-P. The desk accessory also sorts the names within the section before displaying them. In addition, the desk accessory also uses smaller data files for the actual address book pictures. Thus, less disk space is wasted by the big Degas pictures that were previously used. Since I upgraded from a 1040ST to a Mega ST2 after writing the original address book, I had to make some other minor changes to the program to get it to work properly on the new machine. The effects that these changes will have on the older machines is unknown. However, the dial function doesn't want to operate properly on my Mega, and I've yet to figure out why. With a little determination, this will be corrected in the future! pWhat The Address Book Doesq The Address Book is an address filing program that utilizes the list- finder metaphor as a user interface. This makes The Address Book infinitely easier to use than most mailing list programs that offer the capability to search for a given name. It stores the name, address, and phone number of up to 22 people in 23 sections (466 total addresses). Addresses are indexed by name within each alphabetical section. Each address may be printed, with or without the phone number, in a format suitable for mailing labels. And, the capability to dial a telephone number, using the modem, is available. The user never has to deal with remembering the name of the address book file, because the program always uses the same file. This removes some of the complication found in other mailing list programs. pHow To Use The Address Bookq The overall operation of the program is easy. You probably won't even need these instructions. But, just in case something is unclear... * To Load - Click on The Address Book entry in the Desk menu. The program does not operate in low res. * To Select a Section Drag the window scroller bar to the desired section. The character should be centered in the scroller box. or Clicking on the up/down arrows causes the scroller bar to move up one section, or down one section. or Clicking on the filled portion of the scroller bar (paging) causes the scroller bar to move up or down 5 sections at a time. and Once you have clicked on one of the arrows, pressing the right mouse button will cause the scroller bar to continue moving in the selected direction, one step at a time, until the mouse button is released. (Not necessary on machines with the new TOS ROMs, since they auto-repeat while clicking on the arrows.) or You may also move directly to the section you want by pressing the appropriate letter key. * To Open the Book - Click on the 'full window' symbol in the upper right hand corner of the window. Names previously entered in that section will appear, followed by blank lines, representing the amount of space remaining in that section. Or, you can press the [Return] key to open the book at the selected section. * To Enter a New Address - Click on any one of the empty lines. A dialog box will appear with the words 'New Entry' where you will enter the name. Use the [Esc] key to clear the line and enter the name information. Use the [Tab] key to move to the successive lines. Pressing the up arrow will move you back to the preceding line, if you so desire. (Normal dialog box editing). When you are done entering the address, you can either press the [Return] key, or use the mouse and click on the [Ok] button within the dialog box. Once the address has been entered, the new name will be displayed in the section. * To Call Up an Address - Place the pointer on the name you want, and click the left mouse button. A dialog box will appear (the same one you used to enter the information) with the address and telephone information. You may then make a change by moving to the line you want to change (down arrow, or [Tab] keys, or use the mouse to point to the line where you want the cursor), move the cursor to the part of the line you want to change ([Esc] key to clear the line and start at the beginning, or left arrow to move the cursor to the item within the line that you want to change), and enter any new information or corrections. Press [Return] or click on the [Ok] button to enter any changes, or when you're done looking at the address. * To Delete an Address - Call up the address, using the procedure described above, and click on the [Delete] button in the dialog box. * To Print an Address - Call up the address, using the procedure described above, and click on the [Print] button in the dialog box. The dialog box will go away and a new dialog box will show up in its place. In the center of the 'print' dialog box, is a box which says, "Include Phone # In Output". If you are printing mailing labels, chances are, you will not want this. But if you are printing out a reference copy, you can click on this box to have the phone number printed out with the address. When this option is active, a check mark will appear next to text within the box. There is also a box for including the second address line in the output. This works the same way as the "include phone number" option. You will also be prompted for the number of copies you want to print. The default is one copy. If you wish to print out multiple copies for mailing labels, you can enter any number from 1 to 999(!). Ensure that your printer is turned on before attempting to print. If the printer is not on, the program may abort. * To Dial a Phone Number - Call up the address, using the procedure described above. Click on the [Dial] button in the dialog box. The dialog box will disappear and another dialog box will appear with a dial string in it. For example "ATDT 800-234-5678__" If the number is long distance, you will have to move the cursor back to the space before the area code and enter a '1'. Use the left arrow key to move the cursor. When you type the '1', the rest of the string will move over. If you are not using a Hayes compatible modem, you may have to change "ATDT" to whatever your modem requires as a dial command. Or, if you do not have touch-tone capability, you may have to change "ATDT" to "ATDP", for pulse dialing. Ensure that the modem is connected and turned on before attempting to use the dial feature. Also note that the modem will stay on line for as long as it is programmed to wait for a carrier tone, so don't be too surprised when it drops off-line in the middle of your conversation! The default setting for the dialer is 1200 baud. You may be able to override this, however, by using the RS-232 configuration desk accessory to set the baud rate on your serial port. (This has never been tested by me.) pNoteq Due to the differences in ROMs between the Mega ST (on which this program was developed) and older machines, this feature may not work properly. * Exiting From a Section First clear any dialog boxes from the screen by pressing [Return] until they go away. Then, either press [Return], or place the tip of the pointer in the [EXIT] box at the bottom left of the section and hold the left mouse button until the pointer turns into a bee (if any changes were made, the section will be saved to the disk file, which may take a while) or the book closes, revealing the section selector. * Leaving The Address Book From the section selector, click on the 'close window' symbol in the upper left corner of the window. or Press the [Undo] key and you will be prompted as to whether you actually want to leave or not. The desktop palette will be restored, and the program will exit to the desktop, or the calling program. pMore Notes About The Address Bookq The names and addresses are stored in a file called, ADRBOOK.FIL. If the program is unable to find this file, it will create a new file for you. If you move the program to a new folder, or new disk, don't forget to move the address file with it. The section selector screens are stored in the files TAB1.DAT (medium res) and TAB2.DAT (high res). If you don't plan on using one of the resolutions, you may delete one of these files and save a few K of disk space. For example, if you own a color monitor and won't be using high resolution, you can delete the file TAB2.DAT. Additionally, these files must be maintained on the same drive, in the root directory, as ADRBK140.ACC. So don't forget to move these files, if you copy to a new disk, as well. Whenever a change is made to the address file, a backup file containing the old information is created. This file is called, ADRBOOK.BAK. If for some reason the address file is corrupted, or you want to restore the book to it's condition before changes were made, you can either copy the back up file to a new file called, ADRBOOK.FIL, or rename the back up file to ADRBOOK.FIL. Deleting the ADRBOOK.BAK file will not have any effect on the operation of the program. pAcknowledgments:q This program was written using the Personal Pascal compiler, version 2.02. Portions of this program are copyright (C) 1986 by CCD and OSS - Used by permission, OSS. Screen blitting routines used in the program were taken from ST Log, issue #15, June 1987, by David Plotkin. Graphics screens were developed using Degas Elite, by Tom Hudson (Batteries Included division of Electronic Arts) ============================================================================= Planned Future upgrades for registered users: 1.41+ A dial routine that actually works... 1.5+ Less stack overhead for memory conservation ============================================================================= This program is user supported Shareware. If you like the utility of this program, then your support is solicited! For $15.00, you can be a registered owner of this program, which means that you're entitled to full support and upgrades for a nominal charge (postage and disk costs). The Pascal source code is available for $30.00, if you want to modify the program to your own specifications, or just want to see how it's done. If you don't like the program, give your copy to a friend. All of the files included in this ARC file should be passed along intact! The files included are: ADRBK140.ACC, TAB1.DAT, TAB2.DAT, and TABOOK14.DOC. If you do not have all of these files, please let me know. Bug reports are solicited, as well. A lot of time and effort went into this package in order to bring it to you. I do it for the enjoyment of programming, but I am working my way through college and every little bit helps. $15.00 is a drop in the bucket, when you consider the price of some commercial software. You get it without the fancy packaging and no middlemen take a cut. Many commercial software developers are leaving the ST community, saying that ST users are pirates and thieves, and that they can't make a decent profit. I happen to believe otherwise. I know a lot of ST users and not a one of them has even a single bootleg copy, myself included. But that doesn't help matters any. The commercial software publishers are abandoning us at an alarming rate for whatever reason. In the future, we may all be orphans, like the TI-99 users! In this event, the only people making new software will be the users of the machine. People like myself don't care if the commercial software developers go to the Apple or IBM market, because we can always write whatever software we need. But, if we're going to make it available to those of you who don't program, it is only reasonable that we expect you to help us out with a small contribution. In my case, it's for a good cause. I've done some small public domain programs for free, without expecting a contribution. But, this one has taken a considerable amount of work to be a finished product; one that I hope you'll enjoy using. Help me out and I'll always be willing to do the same for you. Register by sending $15.00 check or money order to: Robert Balay Rt. 1 Box 228 Morrisville, NC. 27560 You can leave bug reports, requests for support, or comments about the program to me at the following places: CompuServe ID: 74716,101 GEnie ID: RBALAY