TITLE INFORMATION: BANAL 0.10 - or BANAL's Absolutely Not A Ledger 
AUTHOR INFORMATION: Matthew Rice - matt@starnix.com 
AFFILIATION INFORMATION: Starnix Inc. 
DATE INFORMATION: August 2000 

    This file serves as the announcement that goes to the
    comp.os.linux.announce newsgroups as well as a message to
    the banal mailing list banal@starnix.com.

    NOTE: THIS IS THE LAST RELEASE GOING TO SUNSITE.  FOR MORE UP TO
          DATE INFO, GO TO:
                http://www.starnix.com/banal/

What is BANAL?

    BANAL is a bookkeeping/practice management system that allows you to
    create and track invoices, clients, projects, suppliers and expenses.
    BANAL is a client/server application so you can keep one set of books
    on your system while allowing everyone access.

    BIG NOTE: This is the last release in this series.  We are about to
              add a suite of tables and functionality to do support and
              sales tracking.  The next release will include significant
              changes to the table schema as well as optional SQL support.

What is new in this release?

    This release is a minor update with an easy install for Linux folk:

        o  there's a quickstart (based on Jay Copeland's) at:
                http://www.starnix.com/banal/quickstart.html
        o  the documentation is now online at:
                http://www.starnix.com/banal/banal.html
        o  a noarch RPM for RedHat 6.x (should work on any distro)
        o  added an 'admin stop' command and a SysV-init script to
                cleanly shutdown the server
        o  a new report called worksummary (see bk help report for info)
        o  new script "bk-renumber" to put an invoice into your naming
                scheme
        o  new script "bk-replace" to replace an arbitrary field in a
                form with a new value
        o  fixed PostScript invoice so that they will work on Level 1
                printers (the min function is a ghostscript-ism)
        o  invoice charge items are now sorted by id for reproducability

What can it do?

    For this release, BANAL can store your information, list (and allow
    searching of) information and print expense cheques, generate invoices,
    quotations, income and expense statements.  You can also make and use
    recurring and memorized transactions to ease the burden of creating them
    manually.  There are also commands to tell which invoices, projects and
    clients are "expired" and to automatically invoice finished projects and
    WIP.  More reports will be added.

How do I obtain the distribution through http?

    You can get the distribution from the BANAL website.  This release
    may be downloaded now from:
        http://www.starnix.com/banal/dl/banal-0.10.tgz

    The RPMs are also in the download directory at:
        http://www.starnix.com/banal/dl/

How do I obtain the distribution through ftp?

    You can't right now.

How do I subscribe to the mailing list?

    Simply send an e-mail to majordomo@starnix.com with the body of
    the message (NOT the subject) saying: subscribe banal

    You should receive confirmation shortly.  Send your questions and
    comments to: banal@starnix.com

Attention users of versions before 0.07!!!

    There have been significant changes to the table layout.
    Before you decide that you can use this new version please review
    the CHANGES file.  Some stuff will be broken (not the data entry).

    I just haven't had the time to write an update script.  It should
    be fairly straight forward, though.  Especially using the 'import'
    function.  If you write one please consider sending it to me for
    inclusion in the next release.

How easy to use is it?

    Currently, there is only a command line client (bk).  The client
    takes a subcommand to invoke some action.  There are only three
    types of subcommands: list, edit and print (print now includes
    statement, expired and runbatch).

    By type of subcommand, I mean that to edit an invoice you type: 
        bk invoice

    While to edit an expense you type: 
        bk expense

    Once you've learned a subcommand, you've learned all of the
    subcommands for that type.

How good is the documentation?

    It should be adequate enough to get you started - the server running
    and you running some simple commands.  Let me know if this is not
    the case and I'll clarify the text.  The documentation is not for
    me (I know the system) so your feedback is essential.

What is the copyright?

    Starnix Inc. holds the copyright (I am doing it under
    their time), however, it is very unrestricted (read: do what you
    want but don't think of suing them).  There is a more detailed
    COPYRIGHT file included with the distribution.  This is akin to
    Berkeley licensing or the Perl Artistic License.

Who should I contact ?

    Right now the only person (or group) to contact is: 
        matt@starnix.com

    Alternatively, you may subscribe to the BANAL mailing list (see
    above) and ask questions there.