On Sun, 24 Feb 2002 15:53:16 -0500 dman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Sun, Feb 24, 2002 at 02:26:58AM -0800, ben wrote: > | On Saturday 23 February 2002 06:53 pm, Bob Underwood wrote: > | [snip] > | > > > | > > | Is the Star Office 5.2 address book reliable enough for mail merges, > or > | > > | has any other word processor (Applixware?) an address book that can be > | > > | used for mail merges? [snip] > > Is a "mail merge" an operation by which a form letter is filled in > with values from a database? If so, the reason such an app is not > readily apparent is because it is rather easy to script such a thing.
exactly... [snip example] > I'm sure someone more familiar with sh/sed/awk could do it with those > tools. The point is that with text-based markup like LaTeX or groff > or DocBook, it is quite easy to come up with a tag system of your own > and a script to fill in the fields from a DB of your choosing. This > could be extended to grab the data from a SQL database or an XML file > or whatever you want. Certainly this script is not robust -- it > assumes the input is valid. The UNIX philosophy is to Do One Thing > and Do It Well. As a user you plug the tools together to get your > work done. Databases already exist. Typesetting tools already exist. > Plug them together for yourself. But then then The Average User would have to learn the tools (read: programming languages). It's been an end-user operation for 20 years (going back to WordStar 2.x) even on a nerdy OS like CP/M. Remember, The Average User doesn't care about The Unix Way, but just wants a system that doesn't crash, get infected with virii, and make him/her learn a lot of "hard" stuff. In this case, all the man wants is a pre-written system that lets him combine his form letter with his (probably flat-file) mailing list. -- +------------------------------------------------------------+ | Ron Johnson, Jr. Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | Jefferson, LA USA http://ronandheather.dhs.org:81 | | | | 484,246 sq mi are needed for 6 billion people to live, 4 ! ! persons per lot, in lots that are 60'x150'. | ! That is ~ California, Texas and Missouri. ! ! Alternatively, France, Spain and The United Kingdom. | +------------------------------------------------------------+
