★ APPLICATIONS ★ DIVERS ★ THE PLANTER'S GUIDE|Popular Computing Weekly) ★ |
| The Planter's Guide | Applications Divers |
Green fingers Now that summer is here with the usual dodgy weather, it's time to come in from the garden and put your computer to good use. The Planter's Guide from Phoenix Publishing is a database of plants, complete with soil and light conditions. The program is menu-driven, and the initial menu offers the options of searching for a plant (heather, conifer, shrub or climber) to suit the conditions in your chosen spot, or the conditions to suit your chosen plant. Once the database has found all the plants that will fit the parameters, the user may flip through the selection. The accompanying booklet runs to 130 pages of about ten entries on each page (though a few pages are devoted to very useful information on planting, soil testing and so on) - it is to these entries that the user is referred (don't lose the book, because no on-screen references are made to the plant names). An endearing feature of this friendly and easy-to-use program. is that the authors have not protected the listing from perusal, thus allowing the user to alter the program to taste or save it to disc it is a pity, however, that there is no easy way to add entries to the database Though the program is not as fast as. say Masterfile, it's quite adequate for the browsing gardener, and should prove a very useful addition to the trowel and manure.
Tony Bridge, PopularComputingWeekly860522
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