XLEnt Software
£19.95
LabelMaker is a useful desktop accessory providing a
quick and easy method of creating, editing and printing labels. It
was originally commissioned for use by XLEnt themselves for
producing address labels, as no other available software met their
needs. You may think £19.95 is a lot to pay for a program to print
labels, but much thought has gone into this product to make it
really usable.
As it's a desktop accessory it's easy to call up from
within other GEM applications (a word processor, for instance). This
makes it eminently suitable for printing one-off labels, or even
direct printing onto an envelope if your printer will allow it.
Address (or other) labels may be up to six lines
long, plus two further lines for additional non-printed data,
comments, etc. Labels can be created and saved to disk as single
items, or added to the program's integral database. Strangely, you
can't delete labels from the database, but this may be done with a
separate text editor or word processor. You can have several
different databases if you wish. The advantage of the database is
that it has useful search facilities, allowing you to retrieve one
or a series of labels matching your search criteria. Also, XLEnt
claim the database format to be compatible with many other word
processor, database, and mailmerge programs, so data could be
interchanged between them. Format details are provided in the
instruction manual.
Included in the package is a printer settings desk
accessory. This can be used independently of LabelMaker and lets you
send appropriate codes to set up your printer to produce a
particular style of characters. As supplied the program allows you
to choose character pitches from Large, Elite, Small, Tiny, and to
use Italic, Bold, and Proportional options. You can also reset the
printer, execute a form feed, and toggle 'skip over perforations'
and the printer's 'out of paper' detector. They're selected by
clicking on buttons in the dialogue box displayed when you invoke
LabelMaker.
These default settings are designed to work with an
Epson FX80 printer, but a couple of extra tables are included for
use with other printers. By using a separate text editor or word
processor you can produce your own printer table. This means the
buttons may be customised with whatever names you chose, and to
produce whatever character styles your printer can handle.
When printing labels you can specify horizontal and
vertical positioning, ensuring each address is aligned with your
label stationery layout. You can also state the number of copies of
each label required. It handles only single strip label sheets, not
the type with several labels in rows across each sheet.
The program also has optional print spooling (using
memory buffering), allowing label printing to continue while you use
the computer for something else.
LabelMaker is a very useful program, made even more
useful by being constantly available as a desk accessory. It could
soon repay its cost in time saved.
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