Enter a colon (':") and a caret (" ") with some number of spaces (The default setting is 10 spaces.). The distance between the colon and the caret is considered a field. Position the cursor somewhere within the field, press a Control-F, and the cursor will jump down to the "Footnote" area of the screen which looks something like: -#OJ : Had there been text of some sort immediately to the left of the colon on the text page, that text will be associated as the name of the field on the Footnote page. Thus if instead of typing just a colon, you had typed "Dear:", the Footnote area of the page would now show: DEAR: Jack is now asking you to enter a rule of some sort which will tell it how to deal with the field called #01, or DEAR This "rule" could be a local format for the entries that will be made in that Field, or a Formula of some sort, or even a constant In this case, we might want to !eave the Footnote blank because we want to pick the DEAR names off of a mailing list As a matter of fact, because the name we want to insert into DEAR will be associated with a field named FIRST.NAME in the mailing list file, we should also go back into the Footnote, and overstrike DEAR: and change it to FIRST NAME. Other fields of the Addressbook file might be included, so that each addressee's city could be within the body of the letter. Again, the place in the form letter where the city is desired would be indicated with a colon and a caret and would be " named" within the Footnote, with the same name as the field in the Addressbook file. Now Addressbook would be "copied" into the form lette r, and all of the informa· tion contained in fields with a common name between the two files would be copied from the one to the other. Fields in Addressbook which did not have counterparts in the form letter would be ignored. F ormletter (actually, one forrnletter for each name in Addressbook) would be printed. Printing has a page of parameters which is shown in Figure 1. Any of these may be changed. When the parameters are properly set Jack will print out each record, each on the top of a new page. A Jack page can take a different form, because a Footnote can also contain a "calc" rule. You can define a field RETAIL and a field called DISCOUNT: 56 Apple Orchard DISCOUNT can be associated with a Footnote which says .35 * RETAIL Finally, a field called WHOLESALE can be defined as RETAIL - DISCOUNT Place a number in RET AJL and the DISCOUNT and WHOLESALE price will appear. This is the basis of Jack 's claim to be a calculator. Calc ulating rules can be more complicated. DISCOUNT, for example, could have a rule which says IF RETAIL> 1000 THEN .6 * RETAIL ELSE IF RETAIL > 500 THEN .¢% * RETAIL ELSE IF RETAIL < 100 THEN .7 *RETAIL ELSE .75 * RETAIL It is important to note, however, that Jack is not VisiCalc. A Business Solutions spokesman agreed with me be telephone that Jack does not do a very good job on "Row and Column" type Templates. A major reason is the lack of a Replicate command. Cale users know that one of the most important parts of a spreadsheet program is the ability to enter a command which says this month is just like last month. And so on for the rest of the year. If you wanted to do something like that with J ack you would have to enter twelve Footnotes (which could be done without retyping with the "copy" comma nd) and then change the reference names in each command to refer to the correct previous rule. This is not something that you will wish to do very often. We have touched upon the information manager section of Jack , and by now you will not be surprised to find that a file format can be set up by entering a field name, a colon, and then adjusting the carat the appropriate number of spaces to the right of the colon. Jack apparently maintains a table of some sort of one field per record for sorting and selecting purposes. This primary field is the first one to be designed into the record. This is not necessarily the first field physically appearing in the file. Thus it is possible to keep the primary sort by zipcode, yet have the last name appear as the first field in each record. Editing a form is as simple as editing a letter. What you see is what you get And, of course, calculated fields may be included as part of the form, simply by enterinq a ''rule''. In Jack's favor, setting up an entry form for an Addressbook type file. as sho.:.m in Figure 2. took about 3 minutes. Once the form is set up, the format should be "Locked" and "Saved", and is then ready for data entry. You can tab from field to field, entering data as appropriate, then "save" the record to disk, and move to enter the next record. Ninety names (or presumably 190 names) go into the address book very quickly. One can "select" to find a record containing partic ular information within any field. The process is as easy as entering a Footnote, equating the field name with some particular contents. Thus LAST NAME = "BA YER" would find all records which have the name BAYER as a last name. (Watch upper/ lower case, though, because Jack does not recognize " BA YER" and " Bayer" as the same string.) If LAST.NAME was the first field entered into the form, Jack will find the selected records fa irly quickly. If not, Jack will have to read through each record to see if LAST NAME = "BA YER" and this could take quite a while. But although I expect to find all of the information in Addressbook useful even· tually, for my own purposes, I would like to have a list with last name, first name, area code, and phone number on a line, fifty lines to a page with appropriate headers and footers. A pretty standard report printout The first thing to do is to set up another file, which I'll call PHONELIST, with the field names FIRST.NAME, LAST.NAME, ACODE and PHONE. Note that these names are the same field names used in Addressbook Now copy Addressbook to Phonelist; Jack will read each record in Addressbook, and transfer the information in the four indicated fields in the appropriate fields in Phonelist If Address· book has 93 records, Phonelist wil also have 93 records. Now to print out the list, in alphabetical order, (with my cousin Andrew, brother Charlie, niece Emily, all with the same last name in Andrew-Charlie· Emily order), 50 to the page. Now I happen to think that this is a perfectly ordinary request to make of Jack. Unfortunately, Jack can't do it Jack can sort on any given field, but cannot do a secondary sort All of the Bayers will be together, butJack doesn't really have a way to make sure that Cha rlie will appear after Andrew and before Emily. Second, Jack wants to start each record on the top of a new page. One record, at least one page. Of course, that's not what I want Business Solutions suggested that one way to solve the problem would be to cheat, telling .Jack that each page was only one line long.
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