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II. Getting Started.
A. Creating working copies of the programs
The basic set of programs in the Family History System is distributed
on three 5 1/4" diskettes or two 3 1/2" diskette. The diskettes
should be labeled B1, B2 (and B3) for identification purposes during
the installation of the programs. If your diskettes do not have
external labels marked in this way, you may identify the diskettes by
the following:
Place a diskette in the A drive and enter: A>dir A:
the B1 diskette will have a file named: FHSDISK.B1
the B2 diskette will have a file named: FHSDISK.B2
and the B3 diskette will have a file named: FHSDISK.B3
The B1 diskette has an "orientation" procedure that may be started by
placing the diskette in the "A" drive of your PC and entering: A:GO
This 80+ page manual can be printed from files on the diskette by
entering the command: A:GO PRINT MANUAL
The "GO" procedure requires that the B1 diskette be in the "A" drive
of your PC. If you have received the diskettes in a format that is
not compatible with your "A" drive, you may still be able to use this
procedure by employing the DOS ASSIGN command. For example, suppose
you have received the programs on 5 1/4" diskettes but you have a
3 1/2" A drive and a 5 1/4" B drive. If you enter: ASSIGN A B
and place the B1 diskette in the B drive, you may use the GO procedure
to print the manual and install the programs on a hard disk. After
finishing those tasks, you will want to "undo" the reassignment of
drives by simply entering: ASSIGN
which will return all drive assignments to normal.
These "distribution" diskettes contain many files which are not
required during the normal operation of the system. For instructions
on how to create a working copy of the programs, without those
unnecessary files, place the B1 diskette in drive "A" and enter:
A:GO INSTALL
Instructions are provided for installing the programs on either floppy
diskettes or a hard disk. For example, you will be instructed to
enter: A:GO INSTALL 2D B to install the programs on 2 360k disks
or A:GO INSTALL 1D B to install the programs on 1 diskette
with capacity >= 720k
or A:GO INSTALL HD C to install the programs on hard disk
drive "C"
Those running the programs from 360k, 5 1/4" floppy diskettes should
note that two program diskettes are now required (a STARTUP and a
REPORT Program diskette). During an FHS working session it will be
necessary for you to change program diskettes when some options are
selected from the Main Menu.
If you are installing the programs on a hard disk, they will be placed
in a FAMILY sub-directory of the hard disk. If you are reinstalling
the programs, they will simply replace the existing programs in the
FAMILY sub-directory.
4
After installing the programs on diskette(s), you may start the system
by placing the STARTUP program diskette in drive "A" and entering:
A>fhs or A>faminit
If the programs are installed on a hard disk, you will start the
system by entering: C>fhs
or by entering: C>cd \family
and C>faminit
On the PCjr, the BASIC language cartridge must be installed in one of
the cartridge slots when using the "interpreted" or uncompiled version
of the programs.
B. Beginning a Family History System work session
When starting the Family History System, the screen will be cleared
and reformatted with the system's `introductory panel'. This panel,
which shows the `update' of the program diskette that you are using,
will only appear for a few seconds, after which the MAIN MENU of
system options will appear.
1. MAIN MENU Program
Besides being the first functioning panel that you will see when
entering the system, the MAIN MENU provides the only `authorized' and
`safe' means of exiting the system (by pressing F10). You are never
far from the MAIN MENU. It can be reached from any of the programs in
the system by pressing the `F9' key.
The purpose of the MAIN MENU is to permit you to easily select the
system function that you wish to perform. These functions include:
1. F1 - Display/Update/Create Family History System files
2. F2 - Produce Reports
3. F3 - Utility Functions
4. F4 - Set current DATE, TIME and DATE Format
5. F8 - Execute DOS Commands (DOS 3.0 or later)
6. F10- Exit from the system (Return to DOS)
The system functions are selected by pressing the indicated `function
key'. If any other key is pressed, a soft tone is sounded and nothing
else happens. When a `legal' key is pressed, the corresponding func-
tion key designator, next to the function description on the screen,
will be hilited. If you have selected a function, such as F2, that
has several options to choose from, you will be prompted to enter a
character corresponding to the one you wish to select.
When you have fully described the system function you wish to perform,
the program which performs that function will be read from the program
diskette and given control. If the program cannot be read from the
diskette (for example, if the correct program diskette is not in the
`default' drive, or the drive door is open, or the program diskette is
for some other reason unreadable), the message:
"Put Program diskette in default drive..."
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will appear on the bottom line of the screen. If you are able to
determine the reason for the problem and correct it (for example, by
putting the correct program diskette in the appropriate drive), you
may press the `space bar' and the system will make another attempt to
read the program from the diskette. If for any reason you decide not
to continue with the selected option, you may press the `ESC' key and
you will be able to reselect any MAIN MENU option. (The ESCape key is
recognised by most programs in the set as an operator request to
terminate a process that has been started.)
The next paragraph discusses the setting of current date and time.
The section following that discusses some procedures for "customizing"
the system for your configuration. If you are a first time user of
the Family History System, I recommend that you review these sections
before going into any other area of the system.
2. Setting CURRENT DATE, TIME and DATE Format
The setting of the current date, time and default format for entering
dates are the only system functions that are performed within the MAIN
MENU program.
Unless you have a `clock calendar' board on your computer or have
previously set the date and time under the control of DOS or another
program, the current DATE will probably be `01-01-1980'. Because the
current date is used to determine the ages of living persons that
appear on some of the reports and in the file maintenance program, it
is important that it be properly set if any reports are to be
produced. The time is not used by the system and is only included for
your convenience.
If you press the F4 key, you will be prompted to:
Select: 1) Change DATE and TIME 2) Change DATE Format
If you select "2) Change DATE Format", you will be prompted to:
Select: 1) MM-DD-YYYY 2) DD.MM.YYYY 3) YYYY.MM.DD 4) SAVE
If you press "1", "2" or "3" the format for the current date will be
changed accordingly. The format that appears there will be the one
that must be used for entering dates in the file update program.
After you have selected your preferred format, you may press "4" to
SAVE the date format in file FAMILY.DAT so that it will be
"remembered" the next time you begin a FHS working session. If you
simply press the Enter key, the format will be used only for the
remainder of the current working session.
If you select "1) Change DATE and TIME", you will be prompted to:
Enter the current DATE and TIME
and the cursor will appear at the left most character of the displayed
date. You must enter the date in the format displayed. Further, it
must be a valid date and not be before "Jan 1,1980". After entering
the date, the cursor will automatically advance to the first character
of the time. The time must be entered in the form HH:MM:SS. You may
use the 24 hour convention for denoting AM or PM. If you wish to go
back to reenter the date, press the SHIFT+TAB keys at the same time.
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After you have keyed in the date and time to your liking, you may
indicate to the program that you wish to reset the current values by
pressing the RETURN or ENTER key. If an error is found in either the
date or time, a tone will be sounded and you may correct the error.
If for any reason you wish to terminate the option, you may press the
ESC key and you will then be able to reselect any of the MAIN MENU
options.
3. Setting DEFAULT System Parameters
One thing you may wish to do when you first begin a FHS session is to
examine the system defaults for the file names, screen attribute
table, and printer setup table used by the system (Main Menu options
F3-A,B,C). Some reasons for doing this are:
a. To customize the default family file names. For example, you
may want to change the names of the family file datasets from
FAMILY.NAM, FAMILY.ADR and FAMILY.OTH to something like
RUSSELL.NAM, RUSSELL.ADR and RUSSELL.OTH. You can of course
build multiple family files and it is common to use the primary
surname as a dataset prefix to distinguish them. You will also
want to make sure that the "drive identifiers", that is, the two
characters at the beginning of each dataset name ("A:", "B:",
"C:" etc.), are correct for your placement of the datasets.
These adjustments can be made using Main Menu option F3-A.
b. To choose a more satisfactory set of screen attributes (colors
or light/normal/dim brightness) for the display of information
on the screen. Although the system, upon first entry, checks to
see whether the IBM monochrome or a graphics display adapter is
being used and selects a "screen attribute table" accordingly,
if you are using a color monitor you may find the colors used to
be unappealing or difficult to read. Main Menu option F3-B
permits you to adjust these.
c. To choose a printer control table more appropriate for your
equipment. While the original printer table is based upon a
common standard, there are a number of tables for more specific
printers selectable under Main Menu option F3-C. You may also
create a custom printer setup for printers not formally
supported by a prepared setup.
(Please see Sections III-H,I,J for more complete discussions of these
options).
4. CREATING and UPDATING a set of Family files
Data files for the Family History System are initialized and updated
in the system's FILE MAINTENANCE Program which is selected by MAIN
MENU option F1. This program is distinguished by its use of `seg-
mented' displays. Sections III.G and III.F discuss in more detail
the design of these displays and the general rules for updating infor-
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mation on them. In the following discussion I will refer to each of
the formatted segments of the screen as a "view".
The first `view' you are presented in the file update program shows
the Menu of options available in the File Maintenance program. This
view provides the only `legal' means for EXITing the file maintenance
program (by pressing `F9' to request a return to the system's MAIN
MENU display). At that time, all "open" files will be "closed" and
all updates which may have been held in memory by DOS will be
permanently written to your family files. If the program diskette has
been removed from the default drive (for example if a separate data
diskette has been placed in that drive) you will be prompted to
replace the program diskette at the appropriate time. You should not
replace the program diskette before being prompted to do so because
the "open" files may not have been completely updated yet. (You are
never `far' from this list of primary options while in the file
maintenance program. It can be reached from just about any part of
the program by pressing the ESCape key enough times.)
The first option selected whenever the file update program is being
used should be `F1', Open/Close/Create Family Files. (It is automat-
ically selected for you when you enter this program.) When a program
`opens' a file, it is requesting the operating system to permit it to
read information from or write information to the file. Ordinarily
this is done automatically by a program without the user's having to
do anything. In this program however, because the files remain open
for long periods of time to process multiple user requests, and
because a file could potentially become `damaged' if the user were to
change data diskettes or `illegally' exit from the system (for
example, by turning the machine off) while the file is open, I have
chosen to require you to explicitly request that the files be opened
at the beginning of the program as a reminder of the situation that
prevails. All open files will automatically be closed when you return
to the MAIN MENU program. (See section II.C for a discussion about
protecting yourself from loss of information in damaged files.)
When the "Open/Close/Create" option is selected, you will see dis-
played in the upper right viewing area a list of the "datasets" used
to store your family information as well as the options that may be
`function key' selected from this view. You should also note that the
`hilited' border moves from the upper left to the upper right viewing
area. While in this program, the `active' view (the one from which
program options may be selected) is enclosed by a `hilited' border.
(NOTE: The term "dataset" is used here to refer to a named area on a
diskette or hard disk which contains a program or data. I am told
that this term is peculiar to an IBM environment, but it is one that I
find natural and will use frequently in this document. Many people
will use the term "file" for what I am calling a dataset, however I
usually think of a "file" as a collection of logically related infor-
mation and as such it may consist of several datasets. When I speak
of a "Family File" I will mean the entire collection of information
that is stored in the three datasets described here.)
Three datasets are used by the system to store your family history
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information. You might think of these as three card files used to
store different types of information. The first dataset, the NAME
dataset, is used to store basic information concerning an individual,
including the name, sex, birth and death dates of the individual. The
second dataset is used to store the various types of ADDRESSes that
are permitted in the system. The third dataset of OTHER data
contains: birth, death and marriage places; marriage records; health,
education, military and work information; and notes or comments.
Because you may wish to maintain multiple family files, with different
names, or you may wish to place the datasets on one or more separate
data diskettes located on a different drive from the program diskette,
you are permitted to change the file `specifications' displayed before
opening or creating the files. I refer you to your DOS manual for a
description of file naming conventions which you should use. (Please
note that the "A:" before the dataset name describes the drive on
which the program is to look for the dataset. You may change this to
"B:", "C:", etc. if you want the program to look for the datasets on a
drive other than the "A" drive.)
If this is your FIRST time using the system you will want to `CREATE'
or initialize the file by selecting option F3. (If the datasets
already exist, you will be asked to confirm that it is okay to DELETE
the datasets during the process of re-initializing them. Be WARNED
that REinitializing a set of family datasets will result in the LOSS
of ALL DATA currently stored in them.) After the file has been
CREATEd, in future executions of this program you will use F1 to
simply OPEN the files. When the datasets are open you may return to
the view of main options of the file maintenance program by pressing
the ESCape key.
(Before continuing with this section, you may want to read Appendix B
concerning the recording of information on Family Group Worksheets
prior to entry in the system.)
In what follows, I will not attempt to fully describe all the options
available in the file maintenance program, however I will try to
describe the following:
a) ADDING a NAME record to the file;
b) Recording MARRIAGE information;
c) Maintaining ADDRESS information;
d) Listing CHILDREN of an individual or `marriage';
e) `Climbing' the ancestor tree through PARENT relationships;
f) SEARCHing name records.
I hope that you will experiment to become familiar with these and
other parts of the file maintenance program so that you may determine
which options of the program are appropriate for recording the histor-
ical information of your family.
a) ADDING a NAME RECORD to the File
If you are just beginning to enter data into your family file then,
after opening the files and returning to the primary menu of file
maintenance options,you will select option "F2 ADD a Name Record".
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The `current viewing area' will move to the upper right corner of
the screen which will be formatted with labels describing the
information that you may enter into the name record for the first
individual to be added to the system.
You will note that the assigned record ID (on the first line of the
screen) is `1'. Each NAME record that you create will be assigned
an ID number which just indicates the order in which the records
have been entered into the file. These ID numbers are used to
identify records for the purpose of defining relationships between
them (such as parent-child or spousal relationships) but the value
of the ID number itself has no special significance.
When you start to enter information into a Name record, the
blinking cursor appears in the 1st position of the SURNAME field.
Pressing the "TAB" key (to the left of the "Q" on most keyboards)
causes the cursor to advance successively to other updatable fields
on the screen. You will note that pressing the ENTER or RETURN key
will move the cursor to the first position of the first updatable
field on the NEXT line. You must use the TAB key to move to other
fields which are to the right of the cursor on the SAME line.
Section III.F.1 describes other rules for entering information into
the formatted displays used in this program.
Of course the ID # of a parent cannot be entered into a child's
record unless a record has previously been created for the parent.
If the parent's record is added after the child's, then you may go
back and update the child's record with the correct ID number for
the parent to establish the parent-child relationship.
Although the Birth and Death places appear in the view of the name
record information, they are not actually stored in the NAME
record. Because this information is not generally known for
distant ancestors or relatives, I have made this part of a separate
record. If neither location is known, leave the fields blank and
no space will be used on the data diskette. Entry of anything in
either data item will result in the creation of a single 50
character record for storing the information.
I have allowed for recording the times of birth and death in the
NAME record. Although this is also information which is not
generally known about distant ancestors or relatives, in this case
a total of only 4 `characters' are required to store the informa-
tion so relatively little space is lost if these times are unknown
or you decide not to maintain a record of them.
You will note four unlabeled single-character fields to the right
of the birth/death dates and father/mother ID's. These are
"status" fields whose use is described in Appendix C. Among other
things, these may be used to distinguish adoptive parent/child
relationships.
The "Use:" field to the right of the Surname field was added in
February 1987 to handle a "problem" that arises when creating
indexes or printing reports using some of the extended options of
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the system. There you are permitted to request that a woman's
surname be replaced with that of her (most recent) husband, which
seems more appropriate for things like Birthday or Anniversary
lists. However this didn't take into account the situation in
which a woman chooses to continue using her own surname after
marriage. A value of "Y" entered in the "Surname...Use:" field of
a married woman tells those programs that her own surname is always
to be used when building indexes or printing reports.
After all information has been correctly entered, press F1 to
cause a record to be created in the file. The bottom line of the
viewing area will then be replaced with a list of standard
options available when displaying an individual's information.
The displayed Name record information may be modified by pressing
function key F1 twice, and making changes as above. Another record
may be added by pressing the F1 key, then the F2 key and proceeding
as above. Other options will be discussed in the following
sections.
Please note when adding or updating a NAME record, the action of
the F3 key is described as "RESTORE FIELD VALUE". This means that
when you press the F3 key, the field that contains the cursor will
be restored to the last displayed value. This should simplify the
sequential entry of records with repeated values in certain fields.
For example birth or death places, or the Surnames of children in
the same family.
b) Creating a MARRIAGE or FAMILY record.
After name records have been created for each of the participants
in a marriage, the marriage or family record may be created by
pressing the F4 (SPOUSE) key in the view of name record informa-
tion for either spouse (a single marriage record is maintained
for both spouses). The `current viewing area' will shift to the
upper left corner of the screen, which will be formatted with
descriptions of the information stored in a marriage record. If
a marriage has previously been recorded for the spouse whose name
record is displayed, information from the most recent marriage
record will be shown. A new record may be created by pressing the
F1 key, then the F2 key. If no marriage record currently exists
for the displayed spouse, the view will be ready for information to
be entered. If you do not want to enter information at that time,
you may press the ESCape key to return to the Name record viewing
area.
When entering marriage information, to describe the other partner
in the marriage, press the F2 key, type the record ID for that
individual and press the RETURN key. The individual's NAME record
will be retrieved and descriptive information displayed to confirm
that the correct ID # has been entered. If it is incorrect, you
may press the F2 key again to change the value of the spouse ID.
To update the marriage STATUS, Date and Place fields, press the F3
key and use the TAB key to move to the fields that need to be
updated. Although the beginning status field will normally
11
indicate that a marriage was performed, other types of arrangements
may be indicated such as common-law (marriage), communal (living
arrangement), etc; the partners in the relationship will still be
identified as spouses in all reports. The termination status field
may indicate: "wife died", "husband died", "divorced", "annulled",
"agreement", etc. If a relationship is known to have terminated
but the date is unknown, the year of the ending date should be
9999. Please note that it is necessary for you to manually enter
this termination date even when one or both spouses are recorded as
deceased. It is not automatically updated with the death date of a
spouse because that may represent an incorrect assumption on the
part of the program. The report programs will take the death dates
of the spouses into consideration when computing the number of
years married, however an "*" will appear to the right of that
number, if a death date was used to determine it, to call your
attention to the fact that the program has made what may be an
incorrect assumption in computing it.
The PLACE fields that appear after the STATUS/DATE fields are
handled similarly to BIRTH/DEATH place fields. If nothing is
entered in either of the fields, then no space is taken in the file
for them. If any text is entered in either field, then a single 50
character record is created to hold both 22 character fields.
Press the F1 key when all status information has been correctly
entered.
After both spouse ID and status information have been satisfac-
torily entered, pressing the F1 key again will cause the record to
be written to the family file. If either spouse has other spouse
records on file, the record being added will be merged with the
others in reverse order of the beginning dates (so that the most
recent record occurs first). If there is an earlier marriage
record on file for the spouse whose name record is displayed in the
NAME record viewing area, there will be a message at the bottom of
the screen informing you that you may:
Press the PGUP key to display an earlier record
You cannot press the PGDN key to display a later record. If you
wish to back up in a series of marriages, you must press the ESCape
key to return to the NAME record viewing area, then press the F4
key to begin again with the most recent marriage record.
Please note that there are three separate steps to creating a
marriage record:
a. Update the ID for spouse
b. Update the status fields, dates and places
c. Save the information in a file record
No information is placed in the file until the last step is
performed.
You should also be aware that a marriage record need not be created
in order to establish parent/child relationships. Within the FHS
family files, there is no forced connection between parenting and
marriages.
12
Options available to you after the marriage record has been added
are shown on the bottom line of the viewing area and include:
F1 UPDATE (Change, Add or Delete);
F2 SELECT (the spouse to be displayed in Name record viewing
area);
F3 List CHILDren having both spouses as parents;
F4 List RESidence information;
F5 Display/Enter COMments about the family relationship.
Pressing the ESCape key in the view of SPOUSE or MARRIAGE informa-
tion returns you to the Name record viewing area.
c) Maintaining ADDRESS information.
Address information may be recorded in a number of places within an
individual's total information record. It may indicate the indivi-
dual's residence, a family residence (under the spouse record), or
an address related to one of the additional records for education,
health, work or military information. The information which is
stored in an address record includes:
Beginning and ending dates during which the address
information was current;
Address (two 30 character lines);
City (15 character field);
State (4 character abbreviation);
Zip or country (5 character field);
Telephone (3 numeric fields; early phone numbers using
alphabetic prefixes cannot be recorded here.)
Comments may subsequently be recorded concerning information that
is particularly relevant to the address record. (This might include
a physical description of a home.)
Multiple addresses may be recorded of each of the above types.
All addresses under a given type record (name, spouse, health,
etc.) will be `chained' together in reverse order of beginning date
so that the most recent address occurs first. The extended system
offers options for producing lists of latest (residence) addresses
and for creating a MailMerge format file of address information.
The MailMerge file can be used with many database programs for
printing mailing labels. It may also be used with many word
processors for printing form letters.
(NOTE: it has come to my attention that the above described format
for address information is not appropriate for many foreign
addresses, and some domestic U.S. ones as well. I do plan to
make adjustments to this area sometime in the future, but it will
not likely be in the very near future because it will require that
all users go thru a conversion process for their family files.)
d) Listing CHILDREN of an individual or marriage
Pressing the F3 key in the display for the individual's Name
record or for a SPOUSE record results in the listing of children
parented by the individual or by both spouses. The list appears
in a viewing area occupying the bottom half of the screen. Up to
9 children may be listed; if there are more, you may continue the
13
list by pressing the PGDN key.
You may request to select one of the children for display in the
Name record viewing area by pressing the F1 key and using the UP
and DOWN cursor control keys to select the ID number of the desired
child. Another child may be selected by returning to the child
list (as a result of pressing the ESCape key in the view of Name
record information) or by pressing the CTRL+PGDN or CTRL+PGUP key
combinations in the view of Name record information for the pre-
viously selected child.
e) Climbing Ancestor Trees through PARENT relationships.
The file maintenance program was designed so that the user could
easily follow lines of ancestry (or descendancy) from one gene-
ration to another. The previous section described how you might
start with an individual, list his/her children, select one of the
children for display, after which the grandchildren parented by
that child may be listed, a grandchild selected for display, etc.
The family tree may be examined in the `reverse' direction also.
From the display of an individual's Name record information,
pressing the F2 key moves the current viewing area to the upper
left corner of the screen where information about the parents is
displayed. From that view, the parents' children may be displayed
(the full brothers and sisters of the original individual) by
pressing the F3 key, or the Father or Mother may be selected for
display in the Name record viewing area by pressing the F1 or F2
function keys respectively. If a parent is selected for display,
then their parents (one set of grandparents of the original indivi-
dual) may be displayed using the F2 key. Continuing in this way, a
single chain of ancestor relationships may be examined to exhaus-
tion.
To help you remember how far the ancestor chain has been examined,
the `RELATIVE GENERATION LEVEL' of the displayed individual(s) is
shown in the upper right corner of the Name record, parent, spouse
and child displays. The generation level is reset to 0 whenever an
individual is selected for viewing for some reason other than a
parent, child or spouse relationship (for example, by selecting
from a `search list'...see below).
f) SEARCHing the Name Records on file.
The file maintenance program contains a procedure for making
(limited) searches of the Name records on file. This would ordi-
narily be used to determine the record ID for some individual whose
information or family relationships were to be examined or modi-
fied.
The view for initiating searches is displayed by pressing the F4
function key from the view of primary options for the file mainte-
nance program. The viewing area in the upper left corner of the
screen will be cleared and reformatted with fields describing the
criteria for limiting the search. These include:
limits on record ID;
Surname (or portion of a surname...e.g. the first 2 char);
14
Given name (or portion of a Given name);
Range of Birth dates;
Range of Death dates.
The searches on Surname and Given name are sensitive to upper and
lower cases; i.e. neither `brown' nor `BROWN' will match a record
with Surname `Brown' (but a search for `Brown' will match). Also
the range comparisons on dates make the month-day and Year checks
independently. Therefore a search with:
02/00/1930 <= Birth Date <= 02/99/1940
will locate name records with birth dates in the month of February
and between the years 1930, 1940 inclusive.
After the search criteria have been satisfactorily entered, the
search is started by pressing the F1 key. The current viewing area
moves to the lower half of the screen and the search begins. A
reverse-video display in the lower left corner of the screen shows
the record ID for the name record currently being examined. The
search process can be interrupted by pressing the space bar, then
the search may be continued by pressing the PGDN key or you may
select for display one of the record ID's already found by pressing
the F1 key and using the UP and DOWN cursor controls to move the
reverse-video `box' to the correct ID #, and then pressing the
ENTER or RETURN key.
After displaying a name record located through a search, other
members in the `active search list' may be selected for display
by either pressing the ESCape key from the name record viewing
area to return to the search list (if it has not been overlain)
or by pressing the PGDN or PGUP keys in the Name record viewing
area.
A search list becomes inactive when another search begins or when
the ESCape key is pressed in the search list viewing area.
C. Importance of `BACKING UP' your FAMILY Files
As with all `dynamic' files whose creation and maintenance represents
a considerable investment of time, the importance of keeping multiple
backup copies of the files cannot be overemphasized.
All of the information you enter is stored in the three datasets that
make up a FHS family file. Using the "default" names, these are the
FAMILY.NAM, FAMILY.ADR and FAMILY.OTH datasets. These are the only
files that you need "backup" to preserve your data. There is one
other file that you may consider backing up...the FAMILY.DAT file.
That is where any changes that you make to the file name table, the
screen colors, the error tone, the printer tables and the date format
are kept.
The standard DOS COPY utility should be adequate for most users to
create these `backup' files. If one of your family file datasets
exceeds the capacity of your backup device, then you must use the DOS
BACKUP utility (or something equivalent) to create your backup files.
The BACKUP utility will prompt you for additional diskettes if they
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are needed to receive the backup copy of your family information.
The DOS RESTORE utility is required to recover a file from a backup
created with the BACKUP program. Furthermore, the 'backup' files that
you create with the BACKUP utility cannot be used directly by the FHS
programs. The backup files MUST be RESTOREd in order to be used by
the programs. The usual COPY command is used to recover a file from
backups created with the COPY command. The copies created by the COPY
command ARE usable by the programs without having to copy them back to
their original location.
I would recommend always creating a backup copy of the data files
before each extended file maintenance session, especially if your area
is subject to power fluctuations. I would also recommend that you not
reuse a backup diskette until at least two subsequent backups have
been taken.
If portions of a data file do become unreadable, you are cautioned
that when using standard disk utilities to remove the damaged
sections, direct file pointers joining information together within the
files may become unusable. It is best in this case to return to a
backup copy of the files. The "validation" option, Main Menu option
F3-E described in Section VI of this manual, may be able to eliminate
the "pointer errors" but it will not be able to "correct" them.
If it is necessary to restore your family file from a backup copy, you
should always restore all three datasets from the same backup copy.
Attempting to restore just part of a family file will likely result in
some system maintained pointer fields becoming invalid. This can
cause abnormal program termination, spurious messages, or "garbage" or
invalid information in reports. Again the validaton program may be
able to eliminate the problems associated with "bad pointers" if it is
necessary to "partially restore" a file, but you will have to
carefully examine the resulting file to determine whether any informa-
tion will have to be reentered.
If you have an extended update session interrupted by a power failure
or by inadvertantly turning off your PC, it is possible that some of
the updates will not have been written to the file, which could result
in incorrect "pointer fields" connecting records in the family file.
The "pointer validation option" can locate and help eliminate such
file errors as well.
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