
Documentation for DataCard, 13th October 1989

IN USE:
=======

This is a card index type database program, which holds 8 lines by 50
characters of textual information, with a TITLE and 6 KEYWORDS.

The cards can be searched in 3 ways:

1.  By clicking on the Record: writable icon and pressing <Return> you can
move straight to any existing card.

2.  By clicking the 'MENU' button in the card window a menu presents you
with various menu options.  By moving to the 'Find card' arrow, you may
enter the title of the card into the writable icon, and pressing return will
attempt to find a card with that title.

3.  Also from the menu options, by clicking on the 'Keywords' option, you
open the keywords window.  This may not be up-to-date if you have edited the
cards, so by pressing the MENU button in this window gives you the option to
'Update' the keywords.  The frequency of the keywords are also shown.  It is
not feasible to have the keywords update automatically as this process
becomes time consuming.  You are limited to only 100 DIFFERENT keywords.
This should be adequate, but is easily changed if required.  (By me not
you!).  By clicking on the appropriate keyword, the database will search for
the NEXT card with that keyword.

No searches are possible on the main body of text, I feel that this is not
necessary, and also not a good discipline in the construction of a database.
The whole point of pupils picking out keywords is to speed up the search and
not find irrelevant cards from wildcard searches.  Remember, keywords can
be added after the data has been entered, and edited afterwards anyway!  It
is not necessary to structure your database before you start, but hopefully
they will start to see the limitations in this for themselves.

Also from the Keywords Menu, is the save option, to save the keywords and
their frequencies to DataPlot, and get a graph plotted.  Unfortunately due
to the limitations of DataPlot, only the first 10 items will get imported.
However the whole of the data is exported, or saved, (say to a file), and
this is compatible with Minerva's GraphBox, so that larger graphs can be
plotted if required.  I know that GraphBox is a mite expensive at 70:00, but
it is considerably more sophisticated, and if you want DataPlot to be the
same you will have to be prepared to pay the same for it.  Also, what's the
point in me duplicating somebody else's program, the whole point of RISC_OS
is to share jobs between tasks, so that they can work together!


LOADING and SAVING
==================

All standard RISC_OS transfers but with the additional 'FILING' feature.
This is now available in the menu rather than on the 'easy to find' icon.
Clicking on this option opens the data directory.

The cards can be saved and loaded as usual through the desktop filer, The
file_type for DataCard currently stands as &024, when the software is
released, I shall ask Acorn to reserve me a commercial number rather than
just a User type.  Remember that files created NOW may not get loaded when
the software is officially released.


MORE MENU OPTIONS
=================

Add card - This creates an new blank card after the last card in the
database for you to fill in.  Please not that cards cannot at the moment be
deleted.

Forwards - Moves to the next card, or creates a new blank card if you are
currently at the last card.  Same applies to clicking on the forward
pointing arrow icon.

Backwards - Moves back one card.  Same applies to clicking on the backwards
pointing icon.

Reformat - Due to the current limitations of the text editing in the main
body, a reformat command is necessary.  This is something that may get
changed in a version 2.  Although when entering text, word wrapping is
catered for, if many characters are deleted, the text will not automatically
shuffle itself up to fill in the gaps at the end of the row.  This is where
Reformat comes in.  By clicking on reformat the text shuffles itself
together, in a reasonably intelligent manner.  There are some interesting
features in the way that it does this and I leave you to comment on them and
let me know what you think.


PRINTING
========

Much enhanced over DataPlot!  Clicking on the print option in the menu
prints the current settings, by default that's the CURRENT CARD, in LARGE.
By moving over the arrow of print, you can change the settings.  You may
choose a range of cards, and three different sizes.  On a standard form you
can get:

1 LARGE card, 2 MEDIUM cards or 4 SMALL cards.

You must have already installed a printer driver, I think there are bugs in
the printer driver, although not too noticeable.  If you try to escape while
printing, all goes well, except possibly the escape condition is still
enabled.  Other packages from Acorn suffer this fate as well, so I presume
that it is not my fault. I could cancel the escape condition myself, but
have chosen not to do so. If you get this problem, type <f12> to get the OS
* prompt and then press RETURN to go back to the desktop, this cures
everything.

It is no good trying to drop a data_file onto the printer driver, as this
will, if you wish, printout the data as ascii text, but not as a card.  I
may work on this.  It's a matter of deciding the default settings for
printing an arbitrary data file.


BUGS:
=====

Mostly ironed out, I hope! I know about most of them, maybe you can comment
on any that you find!  I hope it doesn't crash on you to often.  Most of the
features have now been implemented. (?)

The data transfer to other packages uses <Wimp$Scrap>, I know it's rather
clumsy, but what do you expect for the price (?)  I may use the
RAM_Transfer in future releases.

The program includes an error handler for times when: the disc is full, bad
path names etc., ie. errors outside the control of the programmer.  When
these occur the error is reported, and by clicking on the OK icon, control
should be passed back to the user without any major hiccup.  I hope that you
do not get into a recursive problem when the error box will not cancel. It
should also be pointed out that; in pre-release versions, 'untrapped' errors
contain error numbers and line numbers of where they occurred.  This is so
that beta-testers can report back to me, PRECISELY what the error was, where
it occurred plus how and when it occurred.  Such verbosity will be removed
in official releases.


FEATURES ?
==========

The text handling is something to be played with!

The Title field must be entered in capitals only.  This occurs automatically
anyway.  This makes searching easier and doesn't allow pupils to mix cases
when searching.  A case-insensitive search would be too slow.

Keywords, like the Title, these can only be entered in LOWER case, for much
the same reasons as above.  Lower case was chosen in order to be compatible
with DataPick files.  It's all to do with sprites having lower case names.
I'm sorry if any of the keywords happen to be proper nouns, but that's just
tough.

If you try to quit after making some modifications, it may do so without
warning you first.  This will happen if you edit a keyword with the CapsLock
button off, or you edit a Title icon with the CapsLock on.  Fairly trivial
cases, but worth pointing out, I doubt you will ever lose much data.  Don't
expect the modified icon in the 'File' window to get updated until you have
done a 'filing' operation.  This maybe moving to another card, saving the
data, updating the keywords etc.  I can't see anyone worrying about this.

This is almost finished, but I would be grateful of any feedback so that
SMALL changes can be implemented.



Yours, Gary Atkinson.

Kudlian Soft

Version no. 1.01 out to Warwickshire Trial Schools 11/09/89
Version no. 1.02 out to MESU 25/09/89
Version no. 1.03 out to Warwickshire Trial Schools ?
Version no. 1.04 - BETT demo?
