Dear Lew (and all dp users),
Nice to hear about a DP2.6 Y version on its way … (and even more for a DPWin
version)!
The problem with the underline and italics is that nowadays we actually need
both. But if we have to choose, I would prefer italics (in biology and
scientific references it is quite important).
Maybe it is the moment to ADD italics as a third font-style (additional to bold
<F6> in text edit, underline <F8> in text edit). I know this would imply a
special color scheme to visualise them (and the range of combinations possible
would increase from 5 to 9 …). Maybe <F4> in text edit can be used for keyboard
input of italics (the WP4.2 tags are <178> <179>).
If this is too complicated, one could also leave the option to translate the
underline marks into italics or not at a higher level (at database STR or dp
startup level). (the same way as it has been solved in DPSpool…)
Suggestion for default settings: [ctrl-F3, 2]
1 - Menu Color: B H
2 - Editing Color: H A
3 - Bold Color: B P
4 - Underline Color: C O
5 - Italics Color: B D
6 - Bold & Underline: C P
7 - Bold & Italics: B L
8 - Italics & Underline: C D
9 - Bold, Italics & Underline: C L
Note: The only missing “font-style/variant” is smallcaps. But as you probably
know this is well supported in RTF but is not so ‘regular’ in HTML (only
through styles… the ‘shortest’ HTML-output looks like: <span
style=font-variant:small-caps> </span> ).
(the total number of color combinations will be 17!, although SmallCaps is
mostly a stand-alone or combined only with Bold; the <F2> in text edit can be
used fpr keyboard input of smallcaps) (no WP4.2 tags known to me, but <144>
<145> are used in my Printcodes)
Remark:
I do not use DP2.6X because I am working in a special multilingual codepage,
where the translation from DOS (CP 437) to ISO Latin 1 is not appropriate.
Please note that CP 437 (US), CP 850 (Multilingual) and CP 852 (Slavic) are
quite different e.g. in character code 252: the n-superscript in CP 437, the
2-superscript in CP 850 and r-hacek in CP 852.
In Europe the euro symbol € is needed as currency output char(238) in CP 437,
so CP850 changed into CP858, by dropping the dotless-i; CP 852 is still without
euro symbol… (char(238) is t-cedilla). The ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1) does not hold
the euro symbol, it is adapted to the ISO 8859-15 or Latin 9 that holds the
euro symbol as char(164)…
In HTML pages the euro symbol can be encoded using SGML character references as
€ or using Unicode €
I would also suggest to make the ;;W translation of each character
adaptable/programmable by the user: I would hope for a similar interface as the
Printer Map interface [Ctrl-F3; 6] but allowing 4 bytes in the output (this is
the maximum length for a character in UTF-8), or 9 bytes for HTML-code using
Unicode [e.g. male symbol: ♂ and female ♀), or 10 bytes for SGML
character references (longest I found 10 bytes ϑ same as ϑ in
ISO Latin 1 the longest are 8 characters long e.g. ± same as ±)
Of course, it would be even more flexible to have the ;;U (for UTF-8) and ;;W
(for HTML-code) as separate output format suffixes, each using their own
translation table…
Please note that the Microsoft CP 1252 ("Windows Latin-1") is not the same as
the Official ISO Latin-1. In real ISO Latin-1, character codes in the range
127-159 are undefined. Microsoft has assigned these undefined codes to glyphs
listed on their codepage CP 1252.
It is recommended to use Unicode UTF-8 for encoding symbols that are not in the
7-bit ASCII set, as it is the same across all platforms and operating systems
that support it.
For XML UTF-8 is the standard encoding!
__________________________________________
Just as it might be a lucky moment for us all…
Some (old) wishes (suggestions are for DP2.6, I use DP2.6f for the moment, but
I checked my problems using DP2.6X):
1) Is it possible to fix the bug that during reports the “Please Wait” and
“Network Busy” messages would restore the cursor position on the screen
properly?
2) A second problem (memory allocation bug?) to fix: when using a calculated
(virtual) field for retrieving a record through a record link using [F5], the
first multiline alphanumeric memo type field (not even used in the calculation)
gets corrupted… [Probably I have to document this in more detail].
3) Maybe the record counter during search (now resetting at 65k) could be
adapted.
4) suggestion: show fieldnames (as in search) in the Edit/Create import list
[Ctrl-F5, 7]
5) suggestion: allow inverse indexing (showing highest first) in a panellink
and in subreports as it is possible in the main report (sort direction:
backward) and probably also in a Related Records Window (could be indicated by
using a negative value for the link description in the STE format)
6) hoping for some trigonomial functions, the most needed are: sin[number] for
sinus with number in radians and atn[number] for arctangent in radians
7) the solution for the complex calculations in my database [now using up many
panellinks]: a lookup through an existing index (indicated by a panelnumber and
a filenumber) not with a fixed panellink but using variables,…
suggestion: lookup[panelnumber;indexnumber;indexvalue;n] (a negative
indexnumber would inverse the query – see (5)-); n indicates the field to
return (similar to user.field[n]); an other way could be
FIND[P1F4P2F3;indexvalue] where P2 is the panelnumber P1F4 is the panellink
using indexnumber and F3 corresponds with n) –the latter format is not quite
DP-like-
8) trespassing the 78 character limit for SUBFIELD and SUBSTRING (at least when
used in report variables).
9) for SUBFIELD: syntax for using linefeed, bold, underline (and italic!) codes
for parsing
10) a function to be used inside a formula allowing to put text to bold,
underline (and italic). suggestion: functions cat.b[ ], cat.u[ ] (and cat.i[ ])
same as cat.c[ ] but resulting text will be bold, underlined resp. in italics.
And why not: a cat.n[ ] to strip off all these codes and leaving only linefeeds…
11) for template search on a memo field: a way to look for linefeed, bold,
underlined, (italics,) … [might be the same solution as for (9)!]
I hope I contributed something…
Danny
Danny Meirte
curator Herpetology
Royal Museum for Central Africa <http://www.africamuseum.be/>
Department of African Zoology
Vertebrate Section
Leuvensesteenweg 13
3080 Tervuren, Belgium
Tel.: +32 2 769 56 29 Fax : +32 2 769 56 42 or +32 2 767 02
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