Recent Posts

5351

General Software Discussion / Re: SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

« Last post by superboyac on February 15, 2008, 06:35 PM »

Oh sh--, tomos!  You're doing some really cool stuff there!  You're giving me ideas...
Thanks Pierre, yes, I'm definitely looking forward to merging some databases.  I'm also waiting for more importing features like the one I mentioned for texnotes.  After that, my transition to SQLNotes will pretty much be finalized.

5352

General Software Discussion / Re: SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

« Last post by superboyac on February 13, 2008, 04:23 PM »

Nothing happened. As I said earlier, there is a bug (fixed in the coming release) that silently did not apply the hierarchy if the number of items was more than 500.

-PPLandry (February 13, 2008, 04:10 PM)

Gotcha!  OK, thanks.

If the source is MusicItem, then a " " is being added for each item in that field. Check the field properties which show the number of items in each field. Send me the file if you wish!

-PPLandry (February 13, 2008, 04:10 PM)

OK, I see how it works now.  But is that really the best way to do it?  Have you ever thought about different ways of handling this?  The only reason why I'm making such an issue out of this is because this method kind of ties the user to the initial setup of the grid, even though it's still flexible functionally.  You see, I feel like I'm now using MusicItem as my source only because I made a mistake in the beginning.  I'm thinking, "I'd rather not use MusicItem, but what can I do now?"  You see?  Sure, I'll send you the file.

5353

General Software Discussion / Re: SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

« Last post by superboyac on February 13, 2008, 03:45 PM »

Not really. The grid properties (grid>properties) and the source bar clearly show the fields which specify which items are displayed. It is true that when you create a new grid AND the grid name is not that of an existing field, then a field is created with the same name as the grid. But this is just a convenience and to hide some of the subtilities to beginners. But sooner or later, users must realize that grid names and what is displayed in the grid is not necessarely related.

Renaming field can have consequences on equations, other grids, etc so I'm hesitant to rename fields on grid rename...

How about a prompt on grid rename (only when the grid name = field name) ?

-PPLandry (February 13, 2008, 02:14 PM)

OK, then I am really confused now.  For my music grid, because I have done some renaming and transferring of other grids into it (by using the equation trick you told me about earlier), then I am not understanding how the grid decides to display it's content.  In my other grids that I haven't fiddled with, the Source just has the grid name (which is that convenient checkbox that's created).  However, for my music grid, it first started out as separate grids called "ARS" and "Gene Harris".  THen, I renamed the ARS to "Music" and used your trick to transfer "Gene Harris" into Music.  The trick I am referring to is this: I initially created a new field "MusicItem" for the entries in my Music grid.  But then I realized that convention is to use the normal Item field.  So, I transferred the MusicItem content into Item using the trick where I make the equation "=MusicItem", transfer the content over, then remove the equation from the properties.  Now I just use the Item grid and use the hierarchy appropriately.
Everthing was fine.  THen I don't know what happened, but all the subitems now appear outisde the hierarchy no matter what.
You said something about "subtleties".  What are they?  Because my source for the Music grid says "MusicItem" which doesn't make sense to me because that was the old field I used to use for the data, but now I'm just using the regular Item field.  Furthermore, any new entries in the grid get added to the Item field, and there is nothing in the MusicItem field.  So, I don't understand the rules for how the data gets displayed in the grid.  Again, maybe you need to explain to me the "subtleties".

5354

General Software Discussion / Re: SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

« Last post by superboyac on February 13, 2008, 02:03 PM »

Am I not correct that when a grid is created, a checkbox is automatically created by SQLNotes with the same name as the grid?  And doesn't this checkbox determine what is presented in that grid?

-superboyac (February 13, 2008, 01:23 PM)

You are perfectly right. Excellent!

-PPLandry (February 13, 2008, 01:51 PM)

OK, now if that is correct, don't you see a problem that arises when grids are renamed?  If the name of that checkbox field doesn't change, then things get a little confusing because the user will have to remember what the grid USED to be called instead of what it IS currently called.  Right?

5355

General Software Discussion / Re: SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

« Last post by superboyac on February 13, 2008, 01:23 PM »

I understand the way sqlnotes works with the data and the presentation.  What I'm saying is that something is not working right, or I'm doing something wrong that I don't know about.  Am I not correct that when a grid is created, a checkbox is automatically created by SQLNotes with the same name as the grid?  And doesn't this checkbox determine what is presented in that grid?  If I'm wrong, I need to know, because that's what I understood.  How else would a grid know what data to show out of all the data in the database?

And here's the problem, look at these two screenshots:
   
The one on the left is my random notes grid and I am happy with the way it is displayed.  The one on the right is the Music grid, and somehow all the songs got into the top-level, while they are still in the sub-levels where I want them.  Both of them have the same grid display options (hierarchy=off, context parents=off).  When I first merged the data into my Music grid, in its collapsed state only two artists were showing (Atlanta Rhythm Section, Gene Harris).  Now, all the songs are showing top-level also even though I didn't change any of the grid display options (again, which are the same as the random note grid).  So, that is why i'm confused.  And I'm guessing this all happened when I was fiddling with merging all the data by using those checkbox fields and deleting grids in the grid manager.

What's adding to the confusion is that turning hierarchy on/off doesn't seem to change anything in either of those grids.  I turn it off, refresh...no change.  I turn it on, refresh...no change.  In the case of my random notes grid, turning it on or off, the hierarchy remains intact, with no subitems appearing in top levels.

5356

General Software Discussion / Re: SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

« Last post by superboyac on February 13, 2008, 12:29 PM »

Are you using the latest build?

In fixing the CPU utilisation bug (idle was using from 5-10%, now 0%), this was an unfortunate consequence. It is fixed in the latest build.

-PPLandry (February 12, 2008, 05:27 PM)

OK, it's fixed in the latest build.  But now I'm confused because I'm having a problem similar to the problems I had when I first started using SQLNotes.  When I first started using it to catalog my favorite music artists, I made a separate grid for each artist (One for Atlanta Rhythm Section, and another for Gene Harris).  Then, I figured what's the point of separate grids, so I combined them by renaming one of the grids to "Music" and checking the box for the other artist's grid to be "on" in the "Music" grid.  Then, I deleted the artist grids in the grid manager because I don't need them anymore.
Now, I have a grid display problem.  Initially, it was fine because the hierarchy was set up like the following:
Artist
--Albums
----Songs

But now I go back, and all the songs are at the top-level, as well as the sub-levels.  But the grid options are fine and changing them around doesn't really do anything.  I have both Hierarchy and Context Parents off, which is what I want so the sub-items won't show as top-level items.

I think the problem is this, and I brought it up once before.  If I create a grid, an "on/off" checkbox is automatically created with the same name as the grid.  This is what determines what items will be shown in the grid.  Now, let's say I rename the grid later...does that checkbox field get renamed also?  It doesn't seem like it does.  I renamed "ARS" to "Music", but the ARS field is still there, but there is no "Music" field.  Furthermore, let's say I delete a grid.  Now what happens to that checkbox?  This is not as confusing a problem...the user just has to remember that he once had a grid called whatever it was.  The renaming is where the problem arises.
I think that there needs to be a more sophisticated way to manage those checkboxes so that they are synchronized with renaming grids, deleting grids, combining grids, etc.  I don't know how to do this...I may even be way off in my assumptions here.  But that's what I think I've seen so far.

5357

General Software Discussion / Re: SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

« Last post by superboyac on February 12, 2008, 05:11 PM »

small bug alert (I think):
In the Grid menu, the options for "hierarchy" and "Context parents" are always shown as off.  I thought that before if you selected it, it would turn on/off meaning you can see a box around it if it was on.  I can't tell if it's on or off now.

I'll try using Mantis later, I'm not registered yet.

5358

General Software Discussion / Re: SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

« Last post by superboyac on February 07, 2008, 06:21 PM »

I still think a good feature would be to save grid "states" I should add it to the list (I'll do it at home).

-superboyac (February 06, 2008, 04:37 PM)

"Grid > Save item state" doesn't do what you want ?

-PPLandry (February 06, 2008, 04:38 PM)

Not exactly.  I don't know if I described it before.  Save Item State means more of save "current" item state.  What I'm talking about is this:  let's say you have a big, complex grid.  There are several different "states" of the grids that is useful to me.  If there was an option to save multiple different "named states" of the grid, that would be very useful.

I realize there is some control over this with the filters, but it's a little different.  the filters don't control what's expanded/collapsed, etc.  ANyway, just a suggestion.  i got the idea from another program.

5359

General Software Discussion / Re: SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

« Last post by superboyac on February 06, 2008, 04:37 PM »

Yes, that's exactly right.  it's very useful.  It's quite awesome, actually, I love it.

The old way is fine also, but only if by default all the items appear in the field list regardless of whether or not they are expanded/collapsed or top level/sublevel.  This is a good compromise right now because the user can control what items appear by just changing the grid view.

I still think a good feature would be to save grid "states" I should add it to the list (I'll do it at home).

5360

General Software Discussion / Re: SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

« Last post by superboyac on February 06, 2008, 04:09 PM »

As for the pivot, it works fine here, you may need to right-click on a blank area and do "refresh data" (make sure that when you right-click, you get a context menu with just 2 items. If you get more, you've right-clicked in the wrong place. I need to fix that)

-PPLandry (February 06, 2008, 03:24 PM)

Ah!!  My bad!  I had the grid such that the courses were collapsed.  OK, so the pivot table reads only the data that is showing in the grid, even if there are sublevels that are hidden.

5361

General Software Discussion / Re: SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

« Last post by superboyac on February 06, 2008, 12:02 PM »

Nice!

I'm getting the following error when I try to connect to the mantis database:

I have a firewall at work, I don't know if that's the problem.  I have internet access, but sometimes stuff like this gets blocked.  For example, I can't use irc.


Also, as far as the pivot table added functionality, when it reads items arranged in a hierarchy, it only seems to read down two sublevels.  So, my items that are in sublevels beyond that won't be read.  Take my transcript grid for example:

Degree program
--Year
----Semester
------Class

It will stop reading at Semester, so the classes won't appear.

5362

General Software Discussion / I wish there was a way to trade software licenses.

« Last post by superboyac on February 04, 2008, 04:23 PM »

Ever bought a software and then not ever used it?  If only there was a way to sell "used" software licenses or trade them with people who have software you want.  The problem is, obviously, that it's all virtual and there's no real way to transfer a license without making sure the other person doesn't have it anymore.  Oh well, just wishing.

5363

General Software Discussion / Re: More on Super Flexible File Synchronizer; Updates Anyone?

« Last post by superboyac on February 04, 2008, 11:00 AM »

Anyway, just a little housecleaning would be good.  I wonder how the new interface will be.

-superboyac (January 24, 2008, 04:11 PM)

Hi Superboyac - just noticed this comment. Check out my screenshot of the beta for version 4 in my earlier post in this thread.

-Darwin (February 03, 2008, 04:45 PM)

Hey Darwin!  Yeah, I saw that, but it doesn't show the things I was asking about.  I was talking about some of the subtle checkbox options in the program.  I just felt like they shouldn't be checkboxes...they should be something else.  But the new interface definitely looks good.  Actually, I installed the beta a couple of days ago just to check it out, it's nice.  Also, Tobias (the author) told me that the new version will eventually have the feature to change the settings on multiple profiles simultaneously.  I thought that was important.

5364

General Software Discussion / Re: How much email do you keep…and why?

« Last post by superboyac on February 04, 2008, 10:55 AM »

Right now I'm using pop3 so I download my mails. It's a little troublesome as I'm having trouble migrating my email to another computer. Perhaps I should start clearing my old emails.

-chunkit (February 03, 2008, 01:01 PM)

I'm not sure exactly what problems you're having, but there's another software by fookes (makers of mailbag assistant) called Aid4Mail that is really great for migrating between email clients.  Depending on what you're migrating from/to I know it can be a real pain.  When I was doing it (fortunately) from Pegasus to the Bat, it was easy because the authors of both programs were conscientious enough to accommodate such migration.  But if it involves Outlook, you will probably have to jump through some hoops, and it might not even be possible without aid4mail.  Outlook should be ashamed of this also.  I was really pissed about Outlook when I was trying to migrate my dad's Eudora stuff into Outlook, and there just wasn't an easy way to do it.  I don't understand why Outlook wouldn't make it easy, they stand to lose nothing.

5365

General Software Discussion / Re: How much email do you keep…and why?

« Last post by superboyac on February 02, 2008, 09:02 PM »

I consider emails as part of my personal history.  Do you throw letters away?  And since it's so easy to just keep digital information on a hard drive, I don't see why you wouldn't keep emails.  I've kept all of my emails since 1996.  It's almost like a diary...it's a history of your life.  Your kids can one day read what you were like 30 years ago (that might be good or bad!  depending on the content).  That's why I hate webmail, you don't have as much control as to how to store your emails.

For those of you that cherish this aspect of email, check out the software Mailbag Assistant (by fookes).  It lets you extract emails in a powerful way and you can present them in convenient formats (webpages, text files, etc.).  I've never really used it heavily, but it could be useful in the future, I'm thinking.

5366

General Software Discussion / Re: SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

« Last post by superboyac on January 30, 2008, 06:49 PM »

Just a reminder that I'm waiting for the import features (the texnotes one I mentioned earlier, and the import/export grids between files).  I don't mean to rush, I've just put my involvement on hold because I haven't been able to transfer my data into the program.  As soon as it's possible, everything I have is going inside SQLNotes.

5367

General Software Discussion / Re: SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

« Last post by superboyac on January 28, 2008, 10:45 PM »

I think I am going to have to write a song about SQLNotes.

5368

General Software Discussion / Re: TheBat email client v4 (early alpha) - some observations

« Last post by superboyac on January 25, 2008, 11:15 AM »

as I wrote in previous message, there is a difference between wrapping long URLs in rescipients viewer and URLs wrapped by sender's MUA or sender's MTA

-marek_mikus (January 25, 2008, 06:06 AM)

Right, ok.  I understand that.  Since the bat has no control over that, then I guess there's nothing it can do.  However, I still think my work around is a good idea, where the user can highlight text that spans multiple lines, and a right-click context menu item can open up those multiple lines of text as a hyperlink and merge it.  Again, this is a very common issue in email and I don't think it would be that difficult to implement.

5369

General Software Discussion / Re: TheBat email client v4 (early alpha) - some observations

« Last post by superboyac on January 24, 2008, 07:55 PM »

old Microed used until 3.99 is not paragraph based, as I know, new one should be, must check this, it is implemented early.

-marek_mikus (January 24, 2008, 03:56 PM)

OK, I'll look forward to it.  Right now, I'm using the regular windows editor.  This is another topic, and I already started a thread about it a while back, but what's the big deal/advantage of MicroEd?

how could program detect wrapped link in plaintext? surprise me :-)

-marek_mikus (January 24, 2008, 03:56 PM)

Well, I'm not a programmer, so I'm not sure.  But I'll give it a shot.  If the link was detected as being one line, but wrapped, since the link doesn't have spaces in it, it should easily be able to tell that everything from "http" to the first space after that is part of a link.  Now, maybe it's not possible for it to detect wrapped lines, so it would consider it two separate lines.  But I don't see why it can't detect the difference between two lines and a wrapped line.  Is information like that inherently lost when you send email?  I know that in text editors, it's very easy to tell and preserve multiple lines vs wrapped lines.
But, let's assume the program will never be able to detect a wrapped line.  Then there should be a workaround.  If I highlight the whole multi-line link, there should be a context-menu item like "open selected text as hyperlink with merging".  That way I can force the program to merge the multi-line content into one line even though it can't tell automatically.

Right now, it's frustrating because when that happens you have to copy the lines, paste them into a text editor, manually delete the "return" so it becomes one line, then repaste it into the web browser.  This has been an issue for years with email, let's solve it already.

5370

General Software Discussion / Re: More on Super Flexible File Synchronizer; Updates Anyone?

« Last post by superboyac on January 24, 2008, 04:11 PM »

Guys, keep in mind that any application with such an extensive feature set as SFFS will always have a tradeoff between an easy to use interface and power.  SFFS is pretty overwhelming at first, but it's not meant for the one-click user, it's pretty complex.

My complaint about the interface is that sometimes there are those little check-boxes that shouldn't really be check-boxes because they do more than just turn something on/off.  For example, to pick the directories to include in the backup, there's a checkbox for it, but if you click it from off to on, it will open up a browser window to select the directory, and if you click it from on to off, nothing fancy happens (which is fine).  Some of those aspects of the user interface should be cleaned up a little.  I seem to recall that there are some contradictory options you can run into, like with deleting things to recycle bin or to a folder, but it can get confusing because you can enable both at once (or at least it looks like you can, even though it will work the right way in the end).

Anyway, just a little housecleaning would be good.  I wonder how the new interface will be.

5371

General Software Discussion / Re: TheBat email client v4 (early alpha) - some observations

« Last post by superboyac on January 24, 2008, 03:33 PM »

I know! Fume! This is excactly what's wrong with that!   Do you ever need to press Alt+L in, I don't know, Notepad or Ultraedit? More fume!

-tranglos (January 24, 2008, 11:55 AM)

Exactly!!  This, to me, is the most frustrating feature of the Bat.  There are a couple of quirks with the message editor that I find really annoying.  One is this wrapping issue, I don't know why they don't fix it and I don't understand why it should behave any differently than any other text editor.
The other issue is if you copy a paragraph of text from the Bat and paste it in a regular text editor, even though the paragraph is supposed to be one continuous wrapped line, it appears as multiple lines in the text editor.  That means that the Bat doesn't keep track of wrapped lines and stuff, so if it appears as two lines, it really is two lines.  It's annoying when you have to go back and forth with text between applications.
And what about long hyperlinks (web addresses)?  If it's wrapped, sometimes it doesn't detect and connect the second line, even if you use the context-menu, hyperlink-specific options.  Wasn't this problem solved years ago with most email clients?

Anyway, other than that, I'm happy with the Bat.

5372

General Software Discussion / Re: Plain text editor for writers

« Last post by superboyac on January 23, 2008, 06:33 PM »

I'm not a programmer or a writer, I'm in between.  I know good text editors are a big deal for a lot of people.  Do these editors offer unique features not available in other good text editors?

5373

Official Announcements / Re: JANUARY 2008 GIANT SHAREWARE GIVEAWAY AND DISCOUNT CELEBRATION

« Last post by superboyac on January 23, 2008, 06:29 PM »

This is freakin impressive as hell.  Good job for all those involved in putting this together.  Wow!

5374

General Software Discussion / Re: SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

« Last post by superboyac on January 17, 2008, 04:03 PM »

Thanks Armando, I'll have to mess with that soon.

5375

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: List of disc catalogers

« Last post by superboyac on January 17, 2008, 01:45 PM »

I just wanted to say that I still think Whereisit is the program of choice here.  Even if you take into account freeware vs shareware programs, I still think it's more than worth it.  It has lifetime updates/upgrades and is still under active development.
Now, I haven't tried other programs lately to see if they are better, so for me to say Whereisit is the best may seem unjustified.  But the reason why I can say that is because I have no motivation to look for another program because I don't find anything lacking in WHereisit.  Furthermore, I don't even think I'm using more than 20% of the available features, so it can do even more than what I'm doing with it.  I just don't think you can go wrong with the program.