Desperately wanted .. software to printout a shirtpocket addrbook

  • Thread starter Thread starter Chief Suspect
  • Start date Start date
C

Chief Suspect

I count myself a pretty online searcher, but so far I am hitting dead
ends.

Needed: A software program to accept entries for such basic, basic
information as name, addr, town, zip, phone, mail, maybe one
other misc .. and then print out the result in a BOOKLET format of a
size that will fit in a shirt pocket. I fully realize that this will
call for some printer gymnastics to sort and print entries on both front
and back of such a reduced size printout, and keep the numbering
correct.

There used to be such a program back in the days of DOS. I have it, but
communicating with modern printers does not allow it to do its job. An
early shareware work called The Book (v.4.1p) is a complicated and
overly ergonomic workout to make entries... it takes sooooo long just to
make a single entry, and the printing effort is problematic.

Maybe I am missing something somewhere. Perhaps there is a FREEWARE
effort available that has escaped me.
 
Chief said:
Needed: A software program to accept entries for such basic, basic
information as name, addr, town, zip, phone, mail, maybe one
other misc .. and then print out the result in a BOOKLET format of a
size that will fit in a shirt pocket. I fully realize that this will
call for some printer gymnastics to sort and print entries on both front
and back of such a reduced size printout, and keep the numbering
correct.
Click to expand...

Would a simple text file work to store the info (or a database that can
be exported to a text file)? I just tried this app and printing couldn't
be easier.

Program: Cd-Book
Author: (Ernie Negus)
Install: n.i.
Ware: (Freeware)
ftp://ftp.externet.hu/pub/mirror/sac/utiltext/cdbook.zip
(11 KB) Windows 95, NT 4.0, NT 3.51 (SP5)

From the readme:

Prepare a text file with the contents of the text you wish to print on
the CD Book. Do not include page numbers- the text file should be one
contiguous file. Each line of text should not exceed 78 characters.
For testing purposes, you may use this readme.txt file. Text files
bigger than 20 Kbytes will work, but usually result in a book that is
too thick to fit in a CD case.

Set up your default printer so it is ready to print with standard size
paper. Open the program. Locate the text file and click it. Printing
will begin immediately. Wait for all pages to be printed. Follow the
online instructions to print on the other sides of the paper just
printed. Note that if your paper comes out print side down on the
return feed, you may need to turn each sheet over (but keep its order
the same in the stack) despite the directions given. Click OK to print
the other sides of the paper.

Arrange the paper so that the page numbers located at the bottom of each
section line up to form a book. Page 1 should be in the front and the
last page should be the one with the highest page number. Fold paper in
half on the dotted line. Staple at the fold. Cut excess paper out at
the dotted lines and slip into a CD case.

</Q>

How big are your shirt pockets? Booklet size is about 4-3/4 inches each
way with 1/2 inch margins - the margin could be trimmed down on the free
edge.

Susan
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ftp://ftp.externet.hu/pub/mirror/sac/utiltext/cdbook.zip
Click to expand...
=================

Once again, Susan has come through with a viable product, albeit
with two or three idiosyncracies that call first for experimentation.

First of all .. CDBOOK does work as intended. However, the result
for any particular user may not the same as others obtain. For
instance .. on my Epson CX-4600 printer the pages print out only
one-at-a-time instead of (approx.) half the total pages one
would expect, before need to turn the stack over and continuing the
print job to finish the backsides. That brings up a second
idiosyncracy: with my printer, I need to restack the sheets
and insert them in the feed trough in a certain correct way to
achieve success. A few moments of experimentation with a short
document illustrated to me what was needed.

A big disappointment, however, I must attribute to Windows XP Sp-2;
and that is I am limited in the size of text document I can print.
I have printed documents resulting in 20 pages, but a couple of
attempts to print larger Guttenberg e-text books of 300K got
"subdivide" errors.

Finally, the instructions were somewhat less than helpful, in
that my printer did not automatically printout to the half-way
point. In which case, I learned to examine the FIRST printed
sheet to observe just how many total pages there would be (since
both the first and the last pages would be printed side by side).
From there I had to make certain of manually printing out to the
half-way point in order to judge when to restack the pages and
re-insert for continuing the backside printing. The program in
my printer's case gave no clue when that half-way point was
reached.
 
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