Informer Card Database
by Robert Armes

Informer is a new and powerful full feature card database. An example database file containing some of the elements of the Periodic Table is included as !Informer.Elements. This can be loaded by running the Informer application and dragging the file !Informer.Elements onto the icon bar icon (the !Informer directory can be opened by double-clicking on the !Informer icon whilst holding down Shift). Note: make sure the disc containing your database file is NOT write protected.

When run, this application installs itself on the icon bar: click on the icon bar icon to set up a new database. Enter a name for the database (up to 23 characters), and then a field definition window will be opened. There are six different field types:
Integer:   Standard Basic integer variable
String:    Can contain any ASCII characters, length between 1 and 255
Real:      Standard Basic non-integer numeric variable
Date:      A date format of the form DD/MM/YY
Telephone: Can only contain digits and spaces
Currency:  A numeric field with 2 decimal places

Up to 40 fields can be defined for each record. Once all the fields have been defined, click on the FINISHED icon and a save box will pop up; amend the name if required and drag the icon to a directory. Then you will be left with a tool box window and the main file window that displays the present record card.

Text can be entered into the fields in the normal manner, with additional key presses defined as follows:
Cursor Up:        Move Caret up to the field above
Cursor Down:      Move Caret down to the field below
Return:           Move Caret down to the next field
Ctrl Cursor Up:   Move Caret to the field at the top
Ctrl Cursor Down: Move Caret to the field at the bottom
Page Up:          Advance to the next record
Page Down:        Move back to previous record
Insert:           Add a record at the end of the database

The icons on the tool box window have the following meanings (from left to right):
Move to first record in the database
Move back a record in the database
Move forward a record in the database
Move to the last record in the database
Insert a new (blank) record at the end of the database
Delete the current record from the database (confirmation required)
Toggle between displaying all records or just marked records


Various options are also available from the menu.

Info: Displays information on the currently displayed file.

Field: Allows the way information is displayed within fields to be altered (e.g. Left Align, Centred, Right Align) (also available by pressing F2).

Save  Force: This forces the database to save out the current contents of the buffer (also available by pressing F3).

Save  Auto  n: This forces the database to automatically save the current contents of the buffer every n minutes.

Goto: Allows you to go directly to a record, either by entering a record number or by entering a search string and specifying which string to search on.

Print: This window controls the layout of the output to the printer. At the top of the window there are four options:
All:     Print all records
Current: Print only the currently displayed record
Marked:  Print only the records that are marked
From:    Print all records between 2 limits

Below these is a window to select the order in which the fields will be printed, each field must either have a unique order between 1 and the number of fields or be left blank (i.e. do not print).

Below this is the option to set the orientation of the fields, either horizontally or vertically, and just below these options is a box that shows the width of the current print options.

The 'Setup' button allows various other options to be changed:
Print the record number of each record when printed
Include the field headings for each field
Send a Carriage Return and Line Feed to the printer at the end of each line
Send Form Feed after each record
Do not use the printer drivers
Select Bold and Underline for field names or entries (only available through the printer drivers)

The 'To file ' button allows you the save the printer output to a file, for inclusion in your own documents.

The 'Print' button prints either to the printer drivers (if installed and not disabled in the Setup) or it prints direct to 'Printer:' (if there is no printer driver installed).

Search  Mark: Allows you to search and mark records according to some conditions.

You can search all the records or it can be limited to just the records already marked, or those that are not marked.

Below these options is another window that shows the current search conditions. To change the current conditions select the required field and then the button of the required comparison from the 10 defined below:
'='  matches exactly
'!=' does not match exactly
'<'  is less than
'<=' is less than or equal to
'=>' is greater than or equal to
'>'  is greater than
'Contains' contains the expression somewhere
'Not Contains' does not contain the expression anywhere
'Starts with' starts with the expression
'Ends with' ends with the expression

Enter the expression to be matched in the 'Value:' box and press Return, and it will appear in the window above.

The 'Clear All' button will clear all of the comparison options.
The 'Clear Entry' button will clear the currently highlighted comparison option.
Click the 'Start Search' button to start the search.

Search  Replace: The operation allows you to specify a string to be searched for and replaced within a certain field. Enter the values in the boxes and click on 'GO'.

N.B. If the replace string is longer than the search string then it may happen that the new entry is too long to fit in the allocated space. In this case an error box will tell you in which record this occurred and clicking 'OK' will continue the Search and Replace.

Sort: This allows you to sort the records into an order by various fields. Again the window contains another window which displays the current sort parameters. The type of sort on each field can be set to Ascending or Descending and a precedence assigned to each field between 1 and the maximum number of fields, where 1 is the highest precedence. Two different types of sort are implemented, Quicksort and Bubblesort. The default is Quicksort since in general it is very much faster than Bubblesort, but Bubblesort can be very efficient if the records are already very well sorted, e.g if you just add another record to a very large already sorted database.


Please note the following:
The database files created are stored on disc and only the currently required section is loaded into memory at any one time. Therefore the file is left 'Open' and must remain so until the user has finished using it. Therefore you must NOT use the command *CLOSE which will close all presently open files. If you do, or another application does, Informer will report the fact and will ask you if you want to re-open it.