Software of the Month Club 1996 May

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ Software of the Month Club 1996 May / Software of the Month Club 1996 May.iso / mac / ISO9660 / DOS / GI / GENE313 / GIM06.DOC < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1994-07-17 | 23.5 KB | 478 lines | [TEXT/hscd]

CHAPTER 6 THE SETUP AREA Preferences: Getting Things Set Up INTRODUCING THE SETUP AREA... This is the area to use when you want to tell GIM about your screen, your mouse and your printer. This is also the area for configuring alternate characters, your backup thresholds, your swap path, and your background check values. All of these terms will be explained below. And finally, it's one place to go to get statistics about your folder, such as sizes for each of the files in your folder, disk cache sizes for GIM's internal cache, and available disk and RAM sizes. All of these items will be explained and discussed below, in the following order: - setting thresholds for backup reminders - defining alternate characters for foreign languages - configuring your mouse, if you have one - setting GIM for 25 or 43/50 lines on your display - configuring your printer, and your print device - specifying a "swap path" - setting thresholds for the background check - interpreting the lines on the Setup Area screen, including: - available RAM - cache size - overlay size - available and total disk size - file size CLARIFICATION: THERE ARE REALLY TWO SETUP AREAS... Before we begin, we really should point out that there are actually two setup areas, not just one. One of the two Setup Areas is available by pressing F7 from the Folder Area. The other is available by pressing F7 from the Multi Area. At first glance, you may look at them and suppose that they are the same thing. With a couple of exceptions, discussed below, they are nearly identical; however, the Multi Area Setup Area includes a few additional functions that aren't available from the Folder Area Setup Area. For the most part, they can be thought of as the same thing, and we treat them as the same thing in this documentation. BACKUP LIMIT... This section only applies to the Setup Area underneath the Multi Area; the features described here are not available in the Setup Area underneath the Folder Area. Folder backups are discussed in chapter 3. You may want to review the section in that chapter entitled "Folder Backups". GIM maintains three numbers -- called the backup threshold, the backup increment, and the backup need -- for each folder. Every time you make a change to a folder, the backup need for that folder is incremented by a specific amount. When you do major things, like add persons and families, the backup need is increased by more than when you do minor things, such as edit dates or places. Still, every change you make adds to the backup need. When the backup need exceeds the backup threshold, GIM reminds you that it is time to perform a backup. Thereafter, every time the backup need grows by another multiple of the backup increment, you are reminded again. This reminder becomes more and more persistent, and by the time backup need exceeds the value of the backup threshold by a significant amount, you are required to press a key to acknowledge the need to make a backup. The default value for the backup threshold is 1000. The default value for the backup increment is 100. The backup need is reset to 0 whenever you do a folder backup. However, these values can be changed. Blaine likes the defaults; Brian likes to have backup threshold set to 500, which has the effect of reminding him twice as often to do a backup. You'll want to pick values that suit your preferences. You can set the backup threshold by pressing F1 from the Setup Area. (Remember, you can only do this from the Setup Area that resides under the Multi Area.) When you do so, you'll see a screen that looks like this: Backup threshold: 1000 Backup incremental reminder: 100 Backup limit: 1000 Backup (current value): 0 You'll also see a box which asks you for a new value for the backup threshold, and which suggests a value of 1000. To set this to 2000, type 2000 and press return. Similarly, you can set the backup increment by pressing shift-F1 from the Setup Area. You cannot set the backup limit; that value is displayed for your information only, and represents the next point at which GIM will pester you to perform a backup. You also cannot set the "backup (current value)", which is what we've been calling the backup need. That value is also presented for your information only. ALTERNATE CHARACTERS FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES... Some genealogy programs will only allow you to use the first 128 out of 256 characters in your PC character set. There are many reasons why this is, but the two principal ones are, first of all, that those characters are the only ones that are common to all DOS and MS-Windows code pages (see your DOS manual under "Code Pages" for details); and second of all, that some implementations of the GEDCOM standard only allow these characters (see chapter 14 of this documentation for details about the GEDCOM standard). While this allows for a great deal of commonality between and among genealogical software products, it also prohibits you from using any diacritics (umlauts, accents, etc.) in your place names and person names. For example, you can't use "Haßloch", "Fürstenfeldbruck", or "Århus" as a place names, and you can't use "Söderström" as a last name -- and we've seen all of these in our family histories. As a solution to this, GIM allows the use of the full 256 character set, and it makes special allowances for GEDCOM data transfers, which are described more fully in chapter 14 of this documentation. However, you should be aware that these allowances were made with the United States code page (437) in mind; if you are using a different code page, you should either restrict yourself to the first 128 characters in your code page, or be extremely careful (and get some guidelines from us) when doing GEDCOM data transfers. Having said that, GIM makes it easy to use these foreign language characters, even though they aren't readily available on your keyboard. To use them, first you need to tie them to alternate letters and numbers -- more on how to do this in a moment. For example, Brian has the u-umlaut (ü) tied to alt-u, and he has the U-umlaut (Ü) tied to alt-U. When Brian wants to enter a u-umlaut into any place name, surname, note, or wherever, he can type alt-u, and GIM will insert a ü in its place. To tie foreign characters to alt-characters, press F2 from the Setup Area. Read the instructions on the screen. Use the up and down arrows to select the alt-character that you want to tie. Then use the left and right arrows to pick the foreign language character that you want to tie to the alt-character. These bindings are remembered from one GIM session to the next. The alt-characters that can be tied are the upper and lower case letters and the numbers. All the foreign language characters can be tied to them, including the Greek letters; however, we have left out the box-drawing characters and the other math symbols for simplicity. Note: if you should press an alt-character and see the "" character as a result, then that alt-character is not defined. When this happens, you'll want to bring up this alt-character screen from the Setup Area. MOUSE SUPPORT... GIM supports a mouse in many of its areas if you have one. Mouse support augments the functionality of the keyboard in many cases, although anything that you can do with a mouse you can do with the keyboard. If you don't have a mouse, GIM already knows that and won't bother to display a mouse character. However, if you do have a mouse, the mouse character is displayed in the upper right corner of the display in all areas of GIM. You may not want the mouse to be displayed. You may find it useless or annoying. If so, you can tell GIM to disregard it completely by pressing F3 from the Setup Area. If GIM finds a mouse driver, it will ask you if you want GIM to disregard it. You can answer yes or no. If you choose not to ignore the mouse, you will next be asked if you want to change the character used by the mouse. The mouse uses the "·" character by default, by you can instruct it to use any character you please, including a space. You can change the color of the mouse in each area by setting colors, as discussed in chapter 3. 25 VS. 43/50 LINE SCREEN MODE... On EGA, VGA, or better monitors, GIM supports 43/50 line displays as an alternative to the 25 line displays which are the default. At this time, many of the area screens offer some advantage in 43/50 line mode. For example, the Family Area (see chapter 8) is able to display 32 children in 50 line mode, instead of the usual 7 at a time in 25 line mode. However, a few of the screens haven't yet been adapted for use in 43/50 line mode. We suggest that you choose either 25 or 43/50 line mode depending on your personal preference. Blaine prefers 50 line mode and Brian prefers 25 line mode. To change to 43/50 line mode, press F4 from the Setup Area. PRINTERS AND PRINT DEVICES... We'll discuss print devices first, since that will go pretty quickly; we'll discuss the weightier problem of printers after that. As you're probably already aware, the DOS operating system supports a number of print devices, called PRN, LPT1, LPT2, and so on. These represent parallel ports, which are sockets in the back of your computer to which you can attach one or more printers. If you have more than one printer, you can direct GIM to print to any of them by selecting a print device. This is done by pressing F6 from the Setup Area. The default is PRN (which is the same as LPT1), but you can select anything you like. In fact, you can enter the name of a disk file. This will send printer output -- escape codes and all -- to that file. (You shouldn't really need to do this, but the option exists, anyway.) Now, to the subject of printer selection: When you press F5 from the Setup Area, you will see a list of printers. Use the up and down arrow keys to view the entire list. If your printer, or one close to it, is listed, use the arrow keys to move the screen pointer to that printer, and press F10 to exit the printer selection area. From then on, you will be able to print forms from the Forms Area and lists from the GIM LISTS Area using the correct escape codes and other features of that printer. However, if your printer ISN'T listed there, here's what to do: One of the hardest things for any software product to do is to support all the zillions of printers out there. Each one has escape codes that are different from the others. Some older printers won't print graphics characters (foreign language characters and box-drawing characters). Printing to laser printers is in many ways fundamentally different from printing to dot-matrix printers. And the list goes on. In an effort to support every possible printer, GIM provides a "printer resource file" called GIMPRN.GIM. In that file, in programmer-readable form, is a list of printers and a list of escape codes for each one. When you select a printer from the Setup Area, GIM reads this printer resource file. The list of printers that it finds in that file is the list that appears on the printer selection display. If your printer isn't listed, you may be able to add it to the GIMPRN.GIM file if you know your printer's escape codes. We've tried to make that file pretty self-explanatory, so that if you know what you're doing, you should be able to modify it in a fairly straightforward manner. If you do so, we would appreciate it if you would send your additions to us, so that they can be included in future releases of the printer resource file. It is our intention to include every possible printer in that file, and we appreciate your help in reaching that goal. If your printer isn't listed, and you aren't successful in adding your printer to that file on your own, please contact us. If you'll send us information about the escape codes from your printer's user's manual, we'll be happy to add those escape codes to the resource file and send you an update. THE SWAP PATH... The swap path is a directory somewhere on your system where GIM can make and delete temporary files. It's something of a misnomer, especially if you work with UNIX and are familiar with the UNIX swap space. Probably, it would have been better named something like the temporary directory. We recommend that this be on a RAM (virtual) disk if you have one on your system, although this isn't absolutely necessary. It's okay if the swap path specifies a directory on a hard drive, but if you do so, there are two consequences: First, GIM will slow down somewhat, unless you use a disk cache. Reads and writes to virtual disks are much faster than reads and writes to even the fastest hard drives, and you may notice the difference, especially when building lists in the GIM LISTS area (see chapter 11), and when doing GEDCOM data transfers (see chapter 14). Second, if GIM halts abnormally (say, for example, due to a power failure), you may find leftover temporary files in the swap directory. GIM does a good job of cleaning up after itself when it shuts down, but if it doesn't get the chance to do so, those files will take up unnecessary space on your drive. A virtual disk solves this problem. The directory of your swap path should have about 300 KB free, and you should rarely need even this much. The swap path defaults to the directory where your GIM executables are stored. You can change this by pressing F7 from the Setup Area. THE BACKGROUND CHECK... This section only applies to the Setup Area underneath the Multi Area; the feature described here is not available in the Setup Area underneath the Folder Area. This is a feature that was implemented primarily for the benefit of our beta-testers (that is, our pre-release product evaluators). By default, this feature is turned on, but unless you encounter data integrity problems with GIM, you will probably want to turn it off. By now you are familiar with the data consistency check that GIM performs when you do a backup. (See chapter 3 for details.) The background check performs this same consistency check in the background, while it is waiting for you to press keys. If GIM is actively working on other things, no checking is performed, but during the periods where it is waiting for input from you, it quietly checks for consistency errors, and sounds an alarm when it finds one. If you should hear an alarm without a note explaining the reason, it may have come from the background check. To find out, exit GIM, and examine two files called DELTA.TMP and DELTA.LOG. If they contain error or warning messages, immediately perform a backup (see chapter 3) or a folder check (see chapter 15) to find out the details. If there is a problem, restore your last backup and start over, or try to fix the folder data (see chapter 16), or contact us for help. However, like we say, this feature is probably something you'll want to turn off. To do so, press control-F1 from the Setup Area. When you do so, you'll be asked for a number. This number represents the number of seconds of inactivity before background checking begins. The default is 1000; to turn off this feature, set this number to 0. On the other hand, if you are extremely concerned about keeping the data within the folder in perfect condition, then choose a lower number. Blaine prefers a delay of 60 seconds of typing inactivity before the background check kicks in. When the background check is active, any key press will put it to sleep until the next period of keyboard inactivity. READING THE SETUP AREA DISPLAY... The first line of the Setup Area display shows the current setting of the screen mode. This value is either 25 line mode, or 43/50 line mode. The next line shows the value of the background check. It either reads a number of seconds, or "disabled". The next line shows available RAM. (For computer experts, this is RAM available to the heap, as opposed to being available for other things like the conventional memory cache). Optimally, this should be at least 64KB from the Multi Area, or 80KB from the Folder Area. If it's a little less from this, then there's no problem. If it's much less than this (less than 32KB), then something's wrong; please bring this to our attention. The next line shows conventional memory disk cache size. GIM maintains two internal caches of records from the component files (person, family, notes, and dates) of your folder. One is in conventional memory. The other only exists if EMS memory is present and available. This line of the setup screen shows numbers of persons, families, etc., that are kept in the conventional memory disk cache. This line should show roughly 110 persons, about 35 families, about 120 notes, and about 75 dates. If they are extremely small numbers (less than 10), there's a problem; please bring this to our attention. Note: both of these caches use a write-through algorithm, which ensures that no data will be lost in the event of a power failure. The next line shows relative performance of the conventional (standard) memory disk cache, and the optional (EMS) memory disk cache. Larger percentages are better, but small numbers aren't necessarily bad. In particular, if the EMS memory number is over 50%, don't be surprised if the conventional memory number is less than 10%. Both numbers will start out somewhat small, and one or both will grow as the cache is exercised. The next line shows the overlay size multiple. GIM is a heavily overlaid program, using Borland's Turbo Pascal built- in overlay manager. The buffer management techniques used by Borland's overlay manager are very advanced, and always guarantee optimal performance with the available memory. The number displayed on the Setup Area screen is a multiple of the smallest overlay buffer necessary for Borland's overlay manager to do its job. You should expect to see a value of about 250% here. You may see values a little higher or a little lower than this. A value of 100% is less than ideal, and if you see 100% here, try to free up some more RAM in conventional memory. However, even with a value of 100%, GIM will function very well. The next line shows total disk space and available disk space for the current disk drive. The next line shows the value of the swap path directory, which is discussed above. The next line shows the value of the mouse. On the left-hand side, mouse operation will be shown as either "enabled" or "disabled". On the right hand side, the current value of the mouse character is displayed. All of this will be displayed even if you have no mouse driver installed, but in that case, this information is irrelevant. The next line shows the name of your printer (for example, "HP_DeskJet_500") and the value of the print device (for example, LPT1). The next line shows the value of the backup thresholds. It is displayed as "aaaa/bbbb (+ccc)", where "aaaa" is the backup need, "bbbb" is the backup threshold, and "ccc" is the backup increment, as discussed above. This line is only displayed on the Multi Area setup screen, not on the Folder Area setup screen. The final line shows the sizes of the component (person, family, notes, dates) files in your folder. The numbers are numbers of records in each file. For example, if the number "1234" appears next to "person", then you have 1234 persons represented in your folder. Some of them may be empty, so the actual value of non-empty persons in your folder may be less than this value. This line is only displayed on the Multi Area setup screen, not on the Folder Area setup screen.