MZFriends 1.3.0

MZFriends is a very simple database program.
This project was made to be an address book, but it can save what you want (e.g. the books in a library, the customers of your shop...).
MZFriends is very simple, easy to use, small, free (see the license provided in the COPYING file) and fast. If you do not have the need of a more complex database and you do not want to waste a lot of disk space in your HD (for both the data and the application), then MZFriends is the program you were looking for.
Compiling:
First of all you need to install "FLTK" and "HelpDialog Widget" libraries from www.fltk.org, then you can compile MZFriends.
Edit the Makefile to fit your libraries paths and then run make and read what it says. It will teach you how to compile the program.
If you are not used to compile programs, you can run the precompiled binary included in the distributed file. It should work on any Linux system with 2.x.x kernel (static ELF).
Installation:
You can perform a multi-user installation: only one copy of MZFriends will be installed on the computer and every user will have only his data file in his home directory. You can have this by using symbolic links.
For example: root creates the directory "/opt/mzfriends/" and extracts the program there. The the user named... "frog" does not need to copy all these files in his own directory. He only needs to create the directory
"mkdir /home/frog/mzfriends"
Now... symbolic links:
"ln -s /opt/mzfriends/* ."
...except for the data file:
"rm MZFriends.dat ; touch MZFriends.dat"
...and the installation is done! You (or root) can build a small script that starts MZFriends from any directory: this is a little example:
#!/bin/sh
cd $HOME/mzfriends
./mzfriends
The user "frog" should put it in "/home/frog/bin/" and give it the right attributes:
"chmod 755 scriptname" (this directory must be in his $PATH and... I suggest to use
"mzfriends" instead of "scriptname" :-). In a multi-user system, root could put it in a public directory contained in the paths of all the users.
WARNING: the program must be run from its directory, indeed the data will be written to the current directory and also the help files must be here. I know that this is not elegant, but you can easily solve out this little problem using scripts under Linux and links under Windows.
Enhancements:
- New interface and new logo :)
- New features in the report window: scroll bar, "Save as..." button and length information.