---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 09:53:50 -0500
From: Reuben Lee <reuben@law.umab.edu>
Subject: Tractor/sheet labels

    Please allow me to apologize for the tardy reponse to your
email, which was forwarded to me by Pam Bluh for an answer.
    I think that the key is to have an "ideal" label product clearly in
your mind, and to work backward, providing the appropriate support
necessary to achieve the desired result.
     Here we are dedicated to the Se-lin label system marketed by
Gaylord.  We have also been a WordPerfect facility, and those
parameters have set some of the large issues of how we produced
spine labels.
      When I first arrived at Technical Services, spine labels were
produced by hand entry on a Quietwriter 7, produced before IBM
went out of the office typewriter business.  But with foresight, it had
been provided with an ASCII interface.  So my first machine labels
worked by entering a WordPerfect5.1 (for DOS) file, saving the file
as an ASCII text file, and printing (after appropriate initialization) on
the Quietwriter...voila....
      Subsequent to this, we convinced our OCLC cataloguers to
save the spine labels produced by OCLC entry (I believe they are
S1 saves) to disk in ASCII format.  I produced a  set of macros for
WP5.1 that eliminated excess blanks, leading blanks, arranged the
labels in a single row, and saved the result for the Quietwriter.  That
is still the backbone of the system here...add copies are entered
by keystroke, but in a WP5.1 file, OCLC output is machine-vetted
& sent to the printer.
      Fears about the health and safety of the Quietwriter prompted
a look at other methods.  Like you, I had misgivings about using
tractor-fed single strips.  Simple printers are also becoming harder
to find.  I started to fool around with using an old laser printer
(HPIID) that had at one time been outfitted with an outrageous
amount of memory (at similar expense), but was lying unused.
I used 6.1Wordperfect, because it had a beautiful label program,
and, I discovered, by defining Hard Pages while in WP5.1, I could
make the labels "snap" into place when the file was put into 6.1.
I have been using Gaylord 695 labels with the laser II.  Now I must
acknowledge that there are some shortcomings to all this.  The
label backing MUST be produced out of the rear door on the laser II
so that the labels do not flex after they have been softened by the
fuser.  The present limit is about a five-line label using 11pt Arial
Bold as the typeface.  But the vast majority of our labels fall into
this category.
      6.1WP labels also let you run blank labels before or after the
one or two you wish.  I don't do this much..a single label I might
still produce on the keyboard of the Quietwriter.  But I do try to
batch my label production as much as possible, and often this
works out well for the 20 labels to a sheet of the 695 material.
      Our Quietwriter still works well, it has been carefully
maintained, and Lexmark still has supplies and service for it.  It
may last for years unless the supplies start to dry up or GUI
interfaces finally make  ASCII a forgotten animal.  Those who know
tell me that Corel 7 & 8 WordPerfect should work as well as 6.1 for
that part of the program..I used 6.1 because that was what I could
get my hands on when I had the time to do the developement.
       I would be more than happy to help with further details or
opinions..but I must tell you that my time at the present address
soon comes to an end with retirement scheduled for 1November.
E-mail sent to me at 112136,1161@compuserve.com will work for
the foreseeable future, however.  I hope these comments help, and
apologize once again for the delays in answering.

Reuben R. Lee
Marshall Law Library