AFFILIATES

What's new...

What's New ...

05/01/2010 Version 2.5.4 for Linux.
03/25/2010 Version 2.5.4 for Windows. Networking available and file selection in native.
01/12/2010 Version 2.5.2 for Windows. Bugfix
10/16/2009 Version 2.5.1 for Windows.
08/24/2009 Version 2.5.1 for Linux, Key Code activation.
05/15/2009 Version 2.5.0 for Linux, Implementing Email support.
02/17/2008 Version 2.4.0 for Windows.
02/10/2008 Version 2.4.0 for Linux, better filters support and record card printing.
08/30/2007 Version 2.3.2 for Windows, better printers support.
07/08/2007 Version 2.3.1 for Windows.
06/17/2007 Version 2.3.1 for Linux buxfix in kb shortcuts.
05/29/2007 Version 2.3 for Linux - Adding address labels printing, LSB 3.1 compatibility, buxfix.
09/23/2006 Version 2.2.2 for Windows & Linux small fixe in list adjust on search
09/10/2006 Version 2.2.1 for Windows & Linux Fixes in 'Search'
07/30/2006 Version 2.2 for Windows - Adding portraits ( Expiring the 31st of January 2008 )
07/19/2006 Version 2.2 for Linux - Adding portraits & LSB ( Expiring the 31st of January 2008 )
02/11/2006 Version 2.1 for Windows - Migration to GTK2 ( Expiring the 31st of January 2007 )
01/17/2006 Version 2.1 for Linux - Migration to GTK2 ( Expiring the 31st of January 2007 )
10/12/2005 Version 2.0 for Linux - Migration to GTK2
07/17/2005 Version 1.3 for Windows: Key bindings improvement, bugfix
06/05/2005 Version 1.3 for Linux: Key bindings improvement, bugfix, new GPE (direct Postscript printer output)
11/11/2004 Version 1.2 for MS-Windows
11/01/2004 Version 1.2. First English release for Linux, welcome to you!

A quick overview

What can you expect from this program...

To setup and maintain a database designed for managing associations, clubs ...
An easy graphical interface to create, modify and search your data.
A mailing and labels printer tool.
An archive and initialization tool.
A per affiliate documentation file in text mode.
To produce listings based on filters and flags.
To import or export data via CSV files for Excel, Gnumeric, Kspread ...
To create membership & record cards.
To Import a Jpeg portrait.
To create templates to fill up forms and documents.
Networking support.
Sending of Emails.
Getting some support in case of problem.

Description

This development is made of 3 parts.

AFFILIATES core
The Mailing Printer Scheduler
GPE: a simple graphic text editor

With these programs you can create a small database and some documents (addresses for mailing, member cards, templates, listing ...) that are usually needed for managing a club, a community or any association.

These pieces of software are written in C and based on the Linux OS but have also been ported on MS-Windows , the user interface is based on the GTK libraries in order to give the Linux user his usual environment. Windows users will have to face some small differences which are easy to learn.
For Linux from version 2.3 we use the LSB.

The programs are not using any external database structure and are designed to give the user an easy and direct manipulation approach.

The database structure is full text based and so gives a very easy access way to other programs. No other server ( apache, php, ...) or database (mysql, oracle ...) program is required to run Affiliates. You will be able to import or export data via Excel like (CSV) tables, so you can migrate to another utility if this one doesn't fit your expectations.

The Affiliates software will connect to the Internet for SMTP support.

The Linux version can work in networking and need the NFS feature to be fully deployed (No direct network access is performed by the programs) .

The AFFILIATES Management

The main window is made of three areas:

The commands and menu bar.
A data manipulation (input/output) area. Input fields and Infos flags are available for data creation and modifications. The <Country> and <Profession> labels can be modified by the user via Parameters.
A filter and selection area.

On the command bar you will find several buttons that allow you to:

create a new member entry .
modify the selected member data .
delete the selected member data .
save new/modified/deleted data . This must be performed after each data modification.
cancel the present activity
launch a search by keyword dialog window .
open a member history file .
create a filtered by categories and Info flags listing
edit the selected member address in the GPE editor.
launch the Mailing printer scheduler .
create a member card .
import a portrait
Send an email .
exit the program .

The Menu bar gives you access to the Files manipulations, Parameters, Options and the Actions detailed as in the Command bar.

No deep explanation of all these buttons is here required, plenty of information and warning dialog windows are displayed for most started action.
When the user feels secure enough with the program he can disable those infos via the options menu.

Here follows some important features descriptions of the program.

In the selection area, filters criteria s (Categories) can be created via the parameters menu. 15 categories can be declared, the length of each shouldn't exceed 15 characters.
The way you choose criteria s is completely free. The filter process will display all members whose 'Cat/Remarks' first word will match the clicked category button label.

A 4 info flag toggle buttons set is also available in the data display area. Here also, you can modify each info label as you like in order to fit your own management design.
Those categories and flags have impacts on mailing, listing and export selections.

Each member you will enter in your database will receive an ID number. Four different formats are available and selectable via the options menu.

A free string
The index value
The date + a free string
The date+ the index

Please keep the proposed birth data format as suggested, not doing so could have nasty impact on the member card design.

Via the menu you can start a search process within all the History files database using the powerful GNU Grep facility. Results are displayed by GPE.

Archives facilities are available from the Files menu. You can create or retrieve pieces of archives.

Import/Export of data is provided via the Files Menu. It works with simple CSV type spreadsheet file and the separation symbol must be a ' ; ' .
Data must be placed in the same order then the one of the window fields masks. If you use an automatic ID format (2-4) this value shouldn't be added.

Four Templates for filling up forms with data from a member can be setup from the Parameters menu and invoked from the Files menu.
Please remember the printing concepts for this feature.

Key bindings : Home selects the top of the categories field.
Up

Notes about GPE

GPE is a very simple text editor that will be called by the core program when some text data has to be displayed or printed.
You can use any other editor you like. Just redirect the 'gpe' binary to your favorite editor using ln -s command.
The core program will generally issue text files that are 70 lines x 80 columns matrix formated and an A4 paper format is expected to be used.

For Linux users:
In order to print you have to create a small script named <gpe-prt> that will take a single parameter ( the passed GPE file name). This approach gives you full open door on what way the printing issues are handled.

Here next examples for none and Postscript able printers:

1) Please use the a2ps utility to translate your text to postscript format. (no more needed from version 1.3)

#!/bin/bash
# script gpe-prt
a2ps -q -1 -B --borders=0 -o /tmp/toprt.ps $1
gs-prt /tmp/toprt.ps

2) A script 'prt' called by 'gpe-prt' to send the Postscript doc. to an Epson Stylus Color printer using Ghostscript tool .

#!/bin/bash
# script gs-prt
gs -sDEVICE=stcolor -sOutputFile=/tmp/to.lpr -dNOPAUSE /usr/share/gs/6.53/stcolor.ps $1 -c quit
lpr /tmp/to.lpr

For Windows users a native printer utility is added the to package to ease your printing requests .
The Windows text is UTF8 encoded(this shouldn't disturb low ascii characters set), so if another editor is used, please ensure it can support this.
An .utf8 is used as file name extension in order to open these documents with the right application.
From version 2 the encoding is the usual ISO.

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The Mailing Printer Scheduler

is a sort of timer which can be starting , pausing and stopping the printing job of the mail addresses.
On Linux it is possible to choose 2 formats of output.
- Mode Text.
- Mode Postscript.

As for GPE you need to write a small script mps-txt and mps-ps following the selected mode.
If you use the Postscript mode, calling a2ps is not needed.

For Windows the GPE printer utilities are used.

The addresses are printed at the position you will specified in the parameters menu of the core program.
Each letter you will send to the members will receive the address printed in a place that should fit the transparent window of the mailing envelopes.
Printing addresses on sticky labels can be adjusted and performed via the menu.
Membres having an email address can be excluded from post mailing and labels printing via the menu 'Options'.
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Member & Record cards

The 'Member card' button

send a Member card to the Script mps-ps. These cards have the size of Bank cards and can also be used as badges.
Via the menu Parameters you can give a name to your association that will be displayed on the cards.
For windows a native printing procedure is implemented.

The 'Record card' button send a Record card to the Script mps-ps.
For windows a native printing procedure is implemented.

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Portrait

From the menu you can import a JPEG image of each member. For the best rendering the size ratio of the image should be: width / high = 7/9.
This picture will be converted in a black and white one to fit in the member card.
For Linux, the jpeg library must be present on your system.
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Emails

The 2.5 version introduices the email SMTP protocol, only 'RFC 821' is supported. So, no secured(SSL,etc...) or authentified connections.
The server parametres should be provided via the menu.
Each membre can have an email address in the 'Tel Email' field.
If a membre is selected a unic email will be send, otherwise, all filtred membres will get a copy.
The message text must be written in ASCI mode in a file. Please, use GPE for this purpose.
Membres having an email address can be excluded from post mailing and labels printing via the menu 'Options'.
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Networking setup.

1) Create a NFS server on a master machine node and install Affiliates locally. (Please refer to the NFS Howto's for more details)

2) On each machine you'd like to give access to the master node database you install Affiliates locally as well. You should then create on all these machines a $HOME/affiliates_nfs directory linked to the master machine's affiliates_db one.
This can be achieved by tuning the /etc/fstab and /etc/export files to act so. Please ensure the affiliates_nfs directories are properly mounted before turning the network option on.
Ensure also all access to the server database are granted to the networking parties.

For Windows, install the program on a 'server' machine and give the data place from that server to the other machines via the menu(Parametres).
Activate the networking via the clients machines options menu.
Attention, the data are not protected.

Known Problems and Remedies

Installing the GTK-2 dll can conflict with the GIMP one, you can use the GIMP one or install the here down proposed one in the application directory.(c:\program\affiliates).
LSB3.1 is required for version 2.3+, please ensure the packages LSB3.1 (core C++ desktop) to be installed. The command 'lsb_release' can return the status of the LSB level.
On version 2.2.2 navigation problem with tke keyboard in categories selection, will be fixed on next release, please use the mouse.
No field for the address adjustment, please modify the ' .affiliates.rc ' file manually,add 2 lines with page_up=y and page_lt=x where y is the number of blank lines on top of the address and x the number of blank characters of the left, this will be fixed on next release.

Version 2.2.0 - The selection adjustment on search is wrong if a categorie is activated .(Please activate 'all' before doing a search.) + '.lck' errors... fixed on 2.2.1

For Linux, files in /tmp could belong to another user and disturb some actions.
By security measure when modifying data for a member a flag file having a .lck extension is created. It could happen that these files remain active and so disabling user to open members data. If you come across such situation you can safely delete these ????.lck files after having checked no colleague is actually busy with this member.(this can affect Windows also)

For Ubuntu user, you should go in su mode with the sudo -i command to install with the script install.sh.
If the GTK2 test fails just invoke xhost + before you go in su mode.

For Windows, you can clean up the c:\tmp directory when it looks necessary.
You can create a file < .phdm_gtkrc > example in $HOME to modify the GTK style.

Contact

This work is freely available but not Open Source...
For personal feature or modification request(not free) and Bug report, please send us an email
Up

Download

Version 2.5.4 (GTK2)

For Linux (compiled and linked on Debian Stable IA-32 under LSB 3.1 core C++ & desktop environment. Size: 75kB): download
This should work on other Linux distributions.
You'll need a Key Code to activate this version.
Version expiring the 31st of January 2012.

Version 2.5.4 (GTK2)

For Windows 380kB download

Version expiring the 31st of January 2012.

You'll need also the dll gtk2 for Windows(95,98,2000), if not already installed. (2.3MB): download
You can install the dll generally in the system32 directory or in the same one you used for the program.
For Windows XP or + : gtk2_16_dll_en (5MB)
Please read the attached INFO.

Thank you.