FUN WITH CRDFIL ******************************************************************************* Listen my children and I shall weave you a tale of magic and mystery. Long, long ago, in the year 1987, there dwelt in the magical kingdom of Compuserve, a wise and wonderous wizard who was known as Tony, Son of Ander. He was known all over the kingdom for his knowledge, and his willingness to help all who needed it. All week long he had been plying his trade known only by the strange and mystical word, Sysop. As the weekend approached, the wizard reasoned within himself, "What shall I do to occupy my time? The weekend is nigh and I must keep my self alert." He considered several possibilities but each in turn was dismissed as not worthy of his great intellect and talent. Finally he decided to create a new bit of magic just to see if he could do it, and he named it CRDFIL. When he had completed the work he dismissed as just another weekend project, hardly even worth mentioning in the Wizard's Journal. But he thought others in the land of Compuserve might get some small pleasure from it so he made the magic known to the citizens of the land. Thus , by this small means, began the great legend of CRDFIL. Imagine the surprise of the wizard when others thought his magic wonderous to behold. And so the wizard added other bits of magic to be known as CRDFIL.CHK, CRDFIL.PR1, AND CRDFIL.PR3. (By the way - whatever happened to PR2?) There were others in the land, knights of the LCD, who added to the legend and so it continued to grow. There was Sir Bob the Craft, who revised and extended the wizards work on CRDFIL.PR1, and named it CRDFIL.PR4. Then there was Sir Charles Lewis, who devised a way to edit the end product of CRDFIL.BA and even dared to alter the original magic of the wizard to make it possible to edit during its use. He named his contribution CRDFIL.EDT. There was Randy, Duke of Hess, who contributed some wizardries of his own and called them CRDSRT.BA and CRDLDR.BA. Most recently Tony, Son of Ander, sought to improve on his own works and created CRDTMP.BA., a most marvelous contribution which makes creation of the magic templates even easier to accomplish. Meanwhile, far off in a distant village there dwelt an humble peasant lad known only as George. He marvelled at the wizard's work. And he sought to learn some of the tricks from Randy, Duke of Hess. At about this time the Sheriff of Washington, whose initials are I.R.S., came to collect the hated tribute called Income Tax. The little peasant lad devised several magic templates to help him to defend himself against the evil Sheriff. Based on a filing system he already had in use, he called the templates, Tax0, Tax2, Tax3, Tax5, Tax7, and Tax8. TAX0 was for income, and included source (name), file number assigned, amount, income tax withheld, state tax withheld, and social security tax withheld. -- 6 Name: 0 File No.: 80 Amt.: 160 IRS: 240 OK: 253 FICA: 266 -- TAX2 was for other taxes paid such as property tax, license tags, personal property, etc. -- 4 Name: 40 File No.: 120 Type: 200 Amt.: 220 -- TAX3 was for payments in which interest was included and had provision for noting whether or not the debt was or was not for a credit card. -- 5 Name: 40 Acct. No.: 120 File No.: 200 Amt.: 218 Card?: 232 -- TAX5 was for other deductible expenses except for automobile usage. (See TAX7) -- 3 Name: 40 File No.: 120 Amt.: 200 -- TAX7 was for automobile expenses and again provided a notation as to whether or not a credit card was used. -- 5 Name: 40 Acct. No.: 120 File No.: 200 Amt.: 218 Card?: 232 -- And TAX8 was for contributions to Church and charities. 3 Name: 40 File No.: 120 Amt.: 200 -- "Why," said the peasant, "this is marvelous! I must have more." Among the tasks the peasant had was to teach a Sunday School class at his local church. So, he devised a magic template to keep track of his class members, their spouses, addresses, phone numbers, birthdays, and other information. By using the Duke of Hess's CRDSRT.BA and CRDLDR.BA, he was able to sort and resort the files to obtain any information he wanted, such as who had a birthday in 08/, or 09/. He named this template CLASS. -- 14 Last: 0 First: 19 Wife: 40 Tel: 59 Add: 80 City: 120 ZIP: 139 Memb: 160 Assoc: 179 Church Memb: 200 Birthday: 219 Officer: 240 Group: 259 Position: 280 -- By now, the poor peasant, emboldened by success and completely addicted to CRDFIL, worked all day at his keboard, and stayed up late into the night, trying to come up with new and better ways to use the magic templates. His next two attempts were named ADRESS and DATES. With the former he set up a complete adress file of everybody he knew, and some - on his Christmas Card list - he could not even remember. With the latter, he recorded every important date such as his anniversary and his wife's birthday. And again using the Duke of Hess's CRDSRT and CRDLDR he was able to sort them in any manner he chose, first determining what important dates fell within a given month, and second, what addresses to use for sending cards. And by then using the wizard's CRDFIL.PR3, or Sir Bob's CRDFIL.PR4, he was able to print out the list for easy reference. -- ADRESS -- 10 Name: 0 First: 40 Spouse: 61 Address: 80 City: 120 State: 160 ZIP: 171 Telephone: 200 Children: 240 : 287 -- DATES -- 5 Last: 0 First: 20 Event: 80 Date: 160 Parents: 240 -- Next he devised a way to delete cards if they were no longer needed and advised Sir Charles of a change in CRDFIL.EDT which would accomplish this. He also worked with Randy, Duke of Hess, to improve CRDSRT.BA to handle the number of prompts and great files he was creating. However, even this did not satisfy his addiction to CRDFIL and so he surged on. His next attempt was to create a magic template to keep track of his debts which were numerous and burdensome. He called this template DEBTS. It kept track of the name, address, and phone number of the business, an abitrary file number, credit card number if necessary, and the amount of the current bill. By using Sir Charles' CRDFIL.EDT the amount could be changed to 0 when the bill was paid, and/or new amounts entered as the bills came in or the amounts changed for any reason. -- 10 NAME: 0 FILE #: 40 ACCT #: 80 ADD: 120 : 163 CITY: 200 STATE: 220 ZIP: 240 CARD? (Y/N): 280 AMOUNT: 300 -- All these late hours with no sleep caused the peasant to require the use of the local physician and apothecary (drug store). So he got up early one morning and created MED to keep track of his medical insurance. -- 5 NAME: 0 DATE: 80 AMOUNT: 160 SENT: 240 REC'D: 259 -- By now the poor, ill, peasant was even inventing new magic templates in his sleep such as the one to list the pushbuttons on his horse drawn buggy's radio. He didn't even bother to give this one a name. -- 5 AM/FM: 40 Button: 120 Station: 200 Frequency: 219 City: 280 -- His last project was to compile a listing of cross references for an article he was trying to write for the local newspaper hoping to make enough to get himself out of debt. Again, the template was nameless. -- 5 TYPE OF SOURCE: 0 TITLE: 80 AUTHOR: 120 PAGE: 160 OTHER: 200 -- And so we leave our peasant, George, shut up in his little alcove, hunched over a keyboard, watching a little black square dance across a small rectangular screen, shunned by his wife, children, and grandchildren. He is oblivious to all around him. So total is his addiction, that time no longer means anything. Only the continuing search for new and better and informative CRDFIL's. ******************************************************************************* Post script. I am using CRDFIL.BA with Charles Lewis's edit additions plus the additions noted in CRDFIL.NOT. I have also added the capability to search in the isplay portion of CRDFIL by individual fields, rather than by the whole card. This was borrowed from Charles' CRDFIL.EDT. I find the programs I use the most are, of course, CRDFIL.BA, CRDFIL.PR3 and PR4, CRDSRT.BA, CRDLDR.BA (which I have amended to run CRDSRT as soon as SRTCRD is loaded), and CRDFIL.EDT. I have just today downloaded Tony's new CRDTMP.BA and I will most likely be using it as frequently as the others. I would like to thank each and everyone who has made this great series possible with special thanks to Tony for conceiving it, and to Randy for all the tutoring he has given me along the way. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. And I do hope the various templates contained here will help you, or give you some ideas for templates of your own. BY GEORGE! George E Sherman 72300,3203