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Received: (from jhs@localhost) by vector.eikon.e-technik.tu-muenchen.de (8.6.11/8.6.9) id XAA16044 for hackers@freebsd.org; Tue, 25 Jul 1995 23:52:51 +0200
Date: Tue, 25 Jul 1995 23:52:51 +0200
From: Julian Howard Stacey <jhs@vector.eikon.e-technik.tu-muenchen.de>
Message-Id: <199507252152.XAA16044@vector.eikon.e-technik.tu-muenchen.de>
To: hackers@freebsd.org
Subject: mailmerge functionality - suggestions welcome
Sender: hackers-owner@freebsd.org
Precedence: bulk

Hi Hackers,

Before I reinvent the wheel, I'd welcome suggestions ...
What would be our best tools to achieve the following

I want to send out a load of letters & faxes, & need a `mailmerge' type of
functionality. What I have is something like this:
	}{
	Acme Inc
		Mr Fred Customer
		Some street 
		some place
		Tel 1234
		Fax 5678
		My supplier number 1234abcd
		\" Last contacted them 7/95, they only buy cheap, 
	}{
	Foo Bar & Associates
		Mrs Jane Dough
		Some Avenue
		Metropolis
		Tel 87643
		Fax They have one but I dont know the number
		Email: broken@unknown.host.com
				10 Long line of ..........
				chatty extra text/notes
	}{

I need tools to iterate through a (tidied up) version (& maybe even sort
it), splitting each line in a set of transient seperate mini files:
	adr1  adr2  adr3  adr4  company   fax   name1  name2  reference
and calling a ./doit shell, that will invoke my existing BSD makefiles,
that in turn invokes nroff &/or make + sendfax, with stuff like
	.so var/name1
and
	FAX_TO_NAME  ="`cat var/name1`"

I could use an /etc/passwd `:' delimited type format, & parse it with awk,
but that's too unwieldy to maintain with vi,
as each of the blocks above would compact to a single long (too long) line.

I'm quite happy to edit the input format, & write some C,
but before I go reinventing the wheel .... Any suggestions of tools ?

Thanks

Julian S.  jhs@freebsd.org