AQS95 F.A.Q. english

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

1. Readme menu
2. Photographs
3. Photographs Directory
4. More types of sundials
5. Adding parameters to choosing tables
6. Report (or list) of sundials
7. Add Documentation
8. Querying and sorting information
9. Province and Region or more
10. Name the pictures
11. Possibility of sort

Question 1: 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).

Question 2: 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.

Question 3: 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.)

Question 4: 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’.

Question 5: 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.

Question 6: 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.

Question 7: 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’.

Question 8: 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).

Question 9: 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)

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.

Question 10: 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.

Question 11: 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.