bird@ihwpt.ATT.COM (joe walters) (03/10/87)
Many of the questions I see on the net have been answered in Open-Apple
in the last year or so. The problem with using it as a source of information
is the large amount of data that has to be sifted through in order to
find the answer. I feel that the following goes a long way towards
solving that problem:
The November 1986 (Page 2, Col 2) of Open-Apple described a computerized
index to Open-Apple that is available at an introductory price of $5 (add $3
for overseas shipping). The $5 disk is an index to all of the 1985
Open-Apple's. To order:
T-Squared Enterprises
1015 S Ridge Ave
Arlington Heights, IL 60005
I ordered it and am well pleased with it. Twice already it has saved me hours
of looking through teeny-tiny print for the article I needed to refresh my
memory.
Each article has 8 fields:
AND/OR: For searches, gives relationship between following 7 fields.
TITLE: Title of the article.
AUTHOR: Hopefully obvious.
SOURCE: Open-Apple issue, volume, and page number.
SUBJECT: Short description of the article.
MAJOR: This and the following two fields are used to
MINOR: categorize the article. Code letter(s) are
ADD: used for this purpose.
1. The only field that must have an entry is the first. OR is the most
common entry.
2. A null field matches the associated field in every indexed entry.
3. The symbols *, +, and ? are used for OR, AND, and Wild Card within a
field. In addition, "()" can be used to group within a field. As you can
see, very complex searches can be constructed.
The information that comes with the disk says that they can put up to three
years of indexing per disk. However, the ordering information was unclear as
to what I would get by ordering either the single yearly disk or the four
quarterly update disks. This caused me to call Mr. Terry Tuft (T-Squared, get
it?) and put the question to him. His answer:
1. The $5 introductory offer will get you the 1985 index.
2. An additional $8.95 will get you the 1986 index (Due out in Early
March). This disk will have 1985 on it if you bought the 1985
introductory offer. If not, it will only have 1986 on it.
3. The $17.95 for quarterly update starts with the current quarter and
continues for three more disks. Previous data is available if you also
buy it using option #2 and optionally option #1 in that order.
As you can see the scheme is simple. You have to buy each years data. Once it
has been purchased, it will be included with all subsequent disks you buy, up
to the capacity of the disk.
J.L. Walters
ihnp4!ihesa!bird