jcard
Version 1.0
June 1998
(c) 1998 Christopher R. Merlo
d-man@dreamt.org

What is jcard?
==============
I'm a tape trader.  I love getting new material in the mail.  But I
hate having to decipher someone else's handwriting on the liner (also
known as the J-Card) that comes with the cassette.  More importantly,
the people with whom I trade hate *my* handwriting!

For a while, there was a great solution for me.  Someone wrote a great
program for Micro$oft GUIs called CaseLinr that works great.  You type
in all the information about a particular tape, hit "Print," and
voila!  You have a neat, typed, and (most importantly) easy-to-read
cassette liner!

Thankfully, I soon discovered Linux.  I have since been determined
never to use another Micro$oft product again -- especially the GUIs
masquerading as operating systems.  (OK, I still boot into D0S to play
Carmageddon.  So sue me.)  Try as I might, however, I haven't found a
Linux version of CaseLinr.

So, in the true spirit of the world of Linux, I wrote one.  Thank you
for downloading jcard.  Please send me some e-mail and let me know
what you think of it.

How does it work?
=================
First, you need the following resources on your system:

o Perl, version 5.003 or later
o LaTeX 2e
o dvips, version 5.58f

LaTeX and dvips are usually in your path, and can be run simply by
typing something as mundane as "latex file.tex".  Perl, on the other
hand, tends to be somewhere different on each system.  :)  You can
find out where your version of Perl is by typing "where perl".  Make
sure that the path on the first line of the file jcard is exactly the
same as what you see when you type "where perl".

Running jcard
=============
Make sure that jcard is executable (type "chmod 755 jcard" if it's
not).  To run it, simply type "jcard" and press enter.  You will be
prompted to type in what you have to, and then jcard will create a
PostScript file that you can print out, fold around the liner that
came with your cassette, and show off to your friends and parents.

Comments?  Suggestions?
=======================
If you like jcard, please let me know.  I love warm, fuzzy e-mail.  If
there is anything about jcard that you don't like, please do one of
the following:

o Send me e-mail, so that I know what to work on for version 2.
o Change it!  It's just a Perl script.  If you don't know Perl, get
  "Programming Perl" (affectionately known as "The Camel Book") by Larry
  Wall et al., published by O'Reilly & Associates.  ISBN 1-56592-149-6.

Thanks
======
Rogerio Brito, for inspiring me to write this program, and you, for
using jcard.

Copyright
=========
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU Public License as published by the Free
Software Foundation; either version 2 of the license, or (at your
option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass. Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.