AQS94
ver.4.2c Last Version 20/01/99
by Mario Arnaldi & Diego Bonata
INTRODUCTION
This paper has been written after a
first test made by some friends all around the world that used AQS95 in these first month.
With their precious help has been possible to face some problems and find some errors of
the program. Nevertheless AQS95 may be perfectly used yet, because the errors found
doesn’t enable it to work correctly.
Here are some FAQ that arose using the program, and
some solution to the problems:
INDEX
Readme menu
Photographs
Photographs Directory
More types of sundials
Adding parameters to choosing tables
Report (or list) of sundials
Add Documentation
Querying and sorting information
Province and Region or more
Name the pictures
Possibility of sort
Q.: I don't know yet what
is the area codes, and how exactly to search for a certain town, but I shall probably find
answers in the ‘read me’ menu.
A.: The zip file of the program must have a
file *.doc with the manual inside, but the same is in the help menu. The area code
catalogue is the code that you give to a sundial. You can find the insert box when you
open 'FIELDS', 'Location', on the right, just over the National catalogue number.
The area code is the same that will give the name to the picture, if you inserted it (see
the manual).
Q.: I have some more
questions about the photographs.
I opened your example – IRELAND.v40, butt I could not see or recall any photo.
A.: You should put all my pictures (you will find them in the zip file named
‘Ireland1.zip’) inside the IRELAND.JPG directory), then it will works. If you
received the not zipped directory IRELAND.JPG you should already able to see them. The
same must be done with your own photos relative to some archive of yours. The extension
*.v40 is for data archive only, when you create a new archive the program will generate
two directories with the same name of the archive plus .JPG and .TXT. All the photos
relative to one archive should be put inside the proper .JPG directory. Texts will be put
in the right directory from the program itself.
Q.: I put all my photos in the directory (name archive).JPG, and
here also I could not see them or call them to the record. You wrote about the name I have
to give each photograph like: Is0101, Is0102, and so on. Where do I have to put these
names? Is it instead of the old name of the photographs like: picture1, picture2 etc?
A.: Yes you must rename them in that way (Is0101 etc.)
Q.: I think it could be added more types of sundials in the type
table.
A.: There are many types of sundials
in the list but of course not all. Surely not the unusual ones, that’s why it has
been added the voice "others". Almost for the moment isn’t possible to add
more specific type of sundials, so if you think that the type of your specific dial is
important to insert, just use the field ‘notes’.
Q.: May the program
be more flexible in adding parameters to choosing tables (Surface type, etc).
A.: No for now. This is the limit of a pre-done list of choices. Because its nature
cannot be complete, and because programming meanings cannot be added new choosing names.
For everything that do not fit in the choices please use the field ‘notes’ or
‘description’ or ‘written’. with the 4.2b
version you will be able to do researches even through the texts.
Q.: I did not find any kind of report (or list) of
sundials, you may create in the database, according to various sorting or crossing...
A.: Yes partially it’s true. In the 4.2b release
you will be able to see the result of a research on the monitor and you will be able to
work and manipulate only on the sundials in the result’s list. To do so just use the
DBASE FILTER button in the ‘customise search’ window opened pushing the FIND
button.
Q.: How may I add Documentation - I mean to enable input of
specific article or other literature of a given sundial?
A.: You have many possibility to do this: 1) go to the window "motto and
notes", there you may insert short notes as you want. There usually you insert
special data that don’t fit in the database but you think are important. 2)go to the
window "description and photo", and you may find two buttons
"description" and "written", click on them and it will be asked to
open a new text, say YES, and will be open a word processor to put longer texts inside,
what you want. When you finished to write, you will read on the button used the red word
"exist" that means that you have put text inside and you may read it every time
you want. The text you have written automatically goes inside the .TXT directory. If you
will add other text to the previous text in the future, just remember to go in the AQS
word processor’s menu and deselect ‘read only’.
Q.: But what I meant, is a different table of literature, relate
to sundials by linkage, so you can - in case of need - make a query or report, by
literature, or vice versa - find many literature linkage to a certain sundial, or group of
sundials.
I am not sure that this is necessarily the best way, but I think it might be comfortable,
when you have the possibility of querying and sorting information by many criteria
variations.
It just a remark for consideration, in a database creation.
A.: It is a big problem to add new fields in the reports because at the beginning
it was thought to consider the highest length of one single record up to 1280 characters,
and now we are to 1253. So the author now will take care to don't waste that little space
remained. He want to use it only for very important fields in the future.
By the way he said that if we use "notes", "description" and
"written" to add what we think important anyway, he will try to add a research
inside them. So in this perspective we must think by our self to use a key way of writing
what we will research (example: using key words in a common place in the text (first or
last I don't know).
Q.: It would be
useful to split more the geographical area, I mean not only Country and Town, but Province
and Region or more.
A.: As you may read up here, to add new
fields is a big problem (almost for now), but there is a way to do what you mean. I
usually adopted this method: I use the ‘Area code’ field to put the code of the
Province (I put the abbreviation of the Province’s name in the first two characters),
than I use the ‘National code’ field for the Region code (I put the abbreviation
of the Region’s name in the first three characters). The field ‘Country’
tells me the Nation, and if you like to put something else, like the Continent, you may
use the Personal code field (Personal code is a personal free code).
Here is an example: Country = Italy (ITA)
National Catalogue N. = [TOS] [0002] = TOS
(Region Tuscany), 0002 (is the progressive number for that Region, it means that is the
second record for that region).
Area Catalogue N. = [FI0] [0003] = FI
(Province of Firenze), 0003 (is the progressive number for that Province, it means that is
the third record for that province).
Town = Fiesole (Name of the town)
Personal code (if you like) = EUROPE, or the
name of the Municipality.
In Italy we have Provinces, In England and in
Ireland they have the Counties, I don't know what's in Israel, or somewhere else. That's
why we used the word ‘AREA’ because it has a general meaning and you can use it
at your best. Using this way of insert records you will be
able to sort your record by Region, or Province, or Municipality, or Continent or
whatever; the same with FIND.
Q.: I still don’t
understand how I should name the pictures of the dials in the archive, so that I can
finally see them with AQS95.
A.: It’s
very easy. Your image of the dial must be named with the same name of the Area catalogue
Number (Area Code) added with a progressive number. Look at the example below:
Let say that the area code of the dial is [SI0]
[0003], well your first picture will be named SI0000301 (without spaces), the last ciphers
"01" means that this is the first photo or the only one. If you have more than
one photo of it just add the ciphers "02", 03", etc. The program will read
them automatically. By the way the 4.2b release of AQS95 will do all this operations by
itself. I mean, you may save your scanned image with the name you like and put it in the
right *.JPG directory, then when you wish to add the photo (or photos) to the record just
push the ‘All JPG’ button in the "Description and photos" folder,
select the file, then click on ‘add image’, that’s it. AQS95 will
automatically change the name of the photo.
Q.: I would like to have more possibility of sort in the archive,
may I?
A.: Yes you can.
You will be able to sort records of the archive as you like and if you will use the method
of registry provinces and regions as showed up here, you will be able to sort by those
codes. In that way you can insert sundial in a casual order and after do the sort to keep
them together.
The author is working to improve every day the
program AQS95, of course is a long job, by the way you may read many of the next ideas
that will be added to AQS95 written in the last page of the manual document.
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