Address Book
Zebra Systems, Inc.
78-06 Jamaica Avenue
Woodhaven, NY 11421
T/S 2068: $9.95
Why should you buy a dedicated name, address, and telephone number file manager when there are several general purpose programs available to accomplish the same task? Does it have any special features that make it worthy of your ten bucks? Read on and find out the answers to these and other burning questions.
“Address Book” has been developed by Mark Fendrick. Mr. Fendrick is a columnist for at least publications, including ZX Computing and The Computer Shopper.
The above fact does not give him instant credibility as a software developer. It does, however, offer a rare chance at an objective look at a program written by an individual who regularly writes critical reviews of others’ software creations.
I’ll quote a comment from Fendrick’s review of two programs in the January issue of The Computer Shopper.
“…neither of these two programs is extraordinary in and of itself.”
What’s ironic about this comment is that one of the programs Fendrick is evaluating is a mailing list/address book program that offers more features than his own.
Address Book first announces that you have the opportunity to load the machine code portion of your Aerco interface driver. If you don’t have an Aerco Interface, then you may still use the T/S 2040 printer. I do, I did, and it works. I did have to make some modifications to adapt the printer codes to my Prowriter.
Data is entered into 6 fields: 1. Name, 2. Address, 3. City and State, 4. Zip Code, 5. Area Code, and 6. Telephone Number.
Sorting may be done by name, by zip, or by area code. My only criticism is that “name” should have been split into two fields, a first name field and a last name field. As the program is written, data must be entered as “last name, first name” for an alphabetical listing to be useful.
The record and file handling chores are handled with ease. A record can be deleted or edited. When editing, a press of the ENTER key skips a field in which no change is to be made. The file can be searched to find a specific record. The search word does not have to be an exact match. The search routine finds the first record that starts with the characters entered.
Either a screen listing or a hard copy printout of the file is available. These two options can be started at the beginning or at any point in the middle of the file. The hard copy can easily be formatted for the printing of mailing lables. Telephone numbers can be printed or omitted as desired. The number of line feeds required between forms is also specified with this option.
The program continuously reports how many records may still be added to the file. The screen information, however, doesn’t agree with the documentation. While this is a minor flaw, there are some more serious, but correctable, programming flaws.
The FOR…NEXT loop in which the number of line feeds between forms is specified is programmed incorrectly. One more line feed than the user specifies is sent to the printer. One printer code in the program actually calls for a form feed from my Prowriter, instead of a line feed. Another problem, a little harder to trace, is in the screen listing of the file.
After entering several records, if you request a screen listing of the file, the program returns to the menu. This is an ever-present annoyance caused by an ON ERR statement that sends the program back to the menu whenever any error situation is encountered. The error in this routine is an undefined variable. The variable Z$ is defined in the hard copy routine but not in the screen listing routine. Adding the line:
2014 LET Z$ = E$fixes the problem.
The folks at Zebra Systems, Inc., who are distributing this program for Mark Fendrick, have left themselves (and us) a safety valve whereby the program may be stopped (for tracing program errors, no doubt). At the main menu, typing “1” causes the string input prompt to be displayed in the editing area. Typing “zebra” at this input prompt executes an ON ERR RESET command and then STOPs the program. Neat, huh?
Unfortunately, that is the cleverest part of this progrm. A general database will accomplish the same tasks, with greater speed, and with more flexibility. Don’t waste your time with single purpose programs unless they offer some extraordinary features. Address Book does not.