Life Member Letters Error

[Phil Winkler]

The office recently sent out to each Life Member a copy of the data maintained in the Office for their review and correction, if any. The Office does this annually in a batch since Life/ Honorary and Outstanding Service members don't have a real expiration date.

Many email addresses printed wrong even though the data was correct. In particular, those address containing @b,@i, @u and some others would drop those characters in the displayed address.

The reason for this is that back in 1983 when much of the original code was written for DataEase there was no other use for the @ symbol except for a price display, etc. It was used in combination with the 3 letters above to indicate to turn on bold, @b, or turn off bold, @nb. Therefore, whenever a report is printed DataEase sees those characters as non-printing ones and drops them.

We actually discovered the fix for this many, many years ago, but had not applied it to that report that generates the letter. It has now been fixed there.

The solution, by the way, is to have the computer create PrintEmail which includes two, @@, symbols.. Example member@@bellsouth.net will print as member@bellsouth.net. It just drops the first one.

So, for all of you sending in your corrections rest assured they have gone to the members manual correctly, etc.