When v6.5++ for Windows was released I took the plunge and upgraded from v6.0a
for Dos. I have converted three of my four databases now but have decided to
re-write the bigger-by-far last one to take better advantage of new commands and
to improve the database structure.
I have one problem which bugs me and probably is me being stupid: how can I get
the default cell row size in the data browser/editor to be one? It really
aggravates me having to change it from 2 each time!
The other problem is to do with converting data between Dos and Windows: I have
many instances of European names with characters outside the normal US/UK
standards. These are various French accents, German special characters, etc. In
the Dos version these are all displayed "correctly". In the Windows version they
are changed to something else entirely. The real problem, though, is that I
decided to export the data from the Dos database and import it into the new
Windows one in order to be able to keep the Dos version active while I created
and tested the Windows one. Bad decision! R:Base either hangs or crashes when
importing the file of over 30,000 rows with these names in. I used BACKUP DATA
to export the data to a file and simply RUN the file to import it into the new
table. The new table was created by backing up the structure and importing that
so I know it's correct.
In order to try and discover what was causing the problem I SET ECHO ON and
found that I was getting repeated END statements even though the data was only
partly loaded. Luckily, I managed to see whereabouts the loading had got to
after a few attempts. The problem appears to be with some Danish characters
which R:Base for Windows is seeing as single quotes. Naturally, R:Base sees
these as end of text quotes - or something - and gets upset.
I can probably find a way to edit all of them - but it will take time - and I
guess that I could convert the database in R:Base first and then export the data
to see if that improves things. I could also try LOAD AS ASCII but, before I set
off on any of those routes, does anybody have any experience and/or hints how I
can overcome the problem?
Thanks in advance,
Regards, Alastair.
