Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!spool.mu.edu!news.cs.indiana.edu!msi.umn.edu!noc.MR.NET!news.stolaf.edu!news.stolaf.edu!fritchie From: fritchie@sachiko.acc.stolaf.edu (Scott Fritchie) Newsgroups: comp.text.tex Subject: Re: LaTeX macros for POSTNET and FIM bar codes on envelopes Message-ID: Date: 1 Mar 91 06:50:18 GMT References: <00944e15.cdff08a0.5442@CUNYVMS1.GC.CUNY.EDU> Sender: news@news.stolaf.edu Organization: /home/sachiko/fritchie/.organization Lines: 132 In-Reply-To: dlv@CUNYVMS1.GC.CUNY.EDU's message of 28 Feb 91 04:46:50 GMT My posting has little to do with (La)TeX (other that me being a devoted fan and devout user), but there are a couple of items in Dimitri Vulis's recent posting that I would like to comment on. Hopefully it will be of interest to the net community in general. NOTE: 1. This posting is rather long. 2. I'm wearing my asbestos suit in the event of "Wrong newsgroup, silly!" flames. (Where would I post it? ...) In article <00944e15.cdff08a0.5442@CUNYVMS1.GC.CUNY.EDU> dlv@CUNYVMS1.GC.CUNY.EDU (Dimitri Vulis) writes: The vendors of commercial bar code printing programs claim that putting a Postnet code and a facing identification mark on an envelope speeds up delivery, but the post office denies this. My limited tests seem to indicate that there is no speed-up for mail sent locally in New York City, but non-local mail is sometimes delivered a day faster if it has pre-applied bar codes. It will speed up delivery, especially during busy times (Christmas) when hand-written mail makes up a greater percentage of the total mail flow. Each of the USPS's human operators can process one mail piece per second, give or take a couple of tenths. The barcode/optical character recognition machines process an the average of 11 pieces/second. The machines can also automatically sort by carrier route and ZIP+4. In fact, all incoming mail at medium to large facilities goes through the OCR machines first. If it's readable or has a Postnet barcode, it bypassees the human operators entirely. By 1993 the Post Office plans to implement an 11-digit system, where the additional two digits will be used to sequence the mail in route delivery order. A ZIP+4 can only be machine-sorted to an area about the size of one side of a city block or part of an apartment building (for example). The human carrier still needs to spend time before making rounds sorting his/her mail by hand to collect all the Jones' mail in one clump, get the clumps in the proper order, etc. The purpose of the 11 digit ZIP is to eliminate that human sorting. It's time intensive and error-prone. Eleven digits are enough to assign each household, apartment, company division, and whatever else its own unique number. The USPS, I think, is drooling over the opportunity to use such a feature. Unfortunately, to my knowledge no one has come up with a systematic way of assigning those numbers. The USPS has to deal with every state and municipality naming and addressing their streets in willy-nilly fashion, and that chaos is making the 11 digit ZIP process difficult. The Post Office says it will add ZIP+4 codes to a printout of an address list for free. I have not tested this service, but it says one can print out the contents of one's snailing address file, send it to the post office, and get it back with the ZIP+4 codes added, which one can then add to one's file. The Post office also says it would accept a mailing list (between 350 and 50,000 entries) on a floppy disk (in ASCII format with fixed length fields), and update it with ZIP+4 codes for free. (Ask for form 5603, ``Request for ZIP+4 coding of address files on diskettes''.) I'm part of the organization that provides this service. As far as I am aware of, this service is not provided free of charge. (Rah Rah Capitalism! Go Team! :-) I hope I am not in error, though I suppose I could be. ... The service is provided by the National Address Informaion Center. The process can do the following: 1. Address standardization, correcting the address for spelling errors, conversion to uppercase only, proper abbreviations, and proper street, city, and state spellings. The USPS is making this a big priority -- it makes the OCR's job much easier. 2. Carrier route matching. Very useful for bulk mailers as well as the USPS. 3. ZIP+4 matching. Useful for everyone. 4. Secondary matching information. This information can tell you if the address was matched, if it was the finest level of match possible, what type of record was matched (street, apartment, firm, rural route, highway contract route, postmaster, or general delivery), and what sorts of corrections were made, if any. If memory serves correctly, the folks sitting on latest USPS rate commission, aside from raising First Class and other rates, are making the criteria for qualifying for carrier route and ZIP+4 discount rates much, much tougher to qualify for. Organizations sending mail of almost any volume should look into using this service or purchasing software that will do it for them, lest their postage discounts be taken away from them! :-) {\addressfont\noindent Prof.~Chaim R.~Shafarevich\\ Department of Algebraic Masonry\\ Emanuelle University\\ Smalltown, NY 10101 } The public access terminal calls such an address insufficient (indeed, it lacks the street address!), and refuses to give the ZIP+4 code. Experience shows that mail addressed in this manner still gets delivered. The 10101 post office in Smalltown knows where Emanuelle University is. An address must have a "delivery address". Usually it's a street address of some sort (e.g. 101 MAIN ST). A college or university, if small enough, might have "BOBS SCHOOL OF QUANTUM MECHANICS" as its delivery address. However, if the above address were supposed to be: EMANUELLE UNIVERSITY 101 W SMALL WAY SMALLTOWN NY 10101-1001 the delivery address would be "101 W SMALL WAY". The secondary address, "EMANUELLE UNIVERSITY", would not be considered when trying to make a match (unless a 'firm' record type were found). Since the original address doesn't include the required delivery address, the match fails due to insufficient information. Yikes! This went on for much longer than I'd originally anticipated. Feel free to Email me any questions you might have on addressing standards, address parsing, standardization, and/or standardization software. -Scott --- Scott Fritchie, 4810 Underwood Ave., Omaha, NE 68132-2420 USA 402.553.4084 Government Services, American Express's Integrated Marketing Services Play: fritchie@acc.stolaf.edu ..!umn-cs!stolaf!fritchie Work: 402.498.2124 "'Cascade gets dishes virtually spotless.' What does it do? Swap them to hard disk? Swap them to hard water?"