Thanks, Brent, Sami, JM, & Razzak for your responses.
Brent, thank you, your solution was perfect. As you may have guessed I was so
frustrated (to say the least) by the prospect of having to search for and
replace all the foreign characters in my Dos database to get them correct in the
Windows one that I forgot to look at how R:Base could help me with the immediate
problem. Changing the quotes setting was a dead simple solution and one I should
have seen for myself - but that's one of the joys of this list where people help
and encourage one another simply because they can.
Sami, I have been opening tables to view/edit from the Object Manager rather
than from a command at the R:> prompt. I'll try your suggestion later today and
see what happens. I have managed to get the layout constant with the SET LAYOUT
ON setting and also to move columns permanently into a different order by
locking them so it's just the number of lines per cell that's (apparently) not
being saved.
JM, many thanks for your offer. I should be able to do a search and replace
fairly easily but if I get stuck I'll get in touch with you.
Razzak, I knew I could count on help from RBTI & this list - that's why I put my
personal money where your mouth is. You said it was good and it is good. In
fact, I'm delighted. As you know, I was more than a little apprehensive about
going from Dos to Windows - and this character problem was exactly the sort of
thing I was trying to prepare for then.
Now, without hesitation, I would already recommend anyone creating a new
database did so in the Windows version. I suspect that when converting a Dos
database the best solution is to completely re-write it - and that is what
concerned me earlier this year. I've now converted my 3 smaller databases but it
is quite obvious that they are just that - conversions - rather than
up-to-the-minute creations. Perfectly workable but even with a few tweaks the
"thinking" behind the designs of my forms and reports and, probably,
applications, just looks old compared to a fresh approach. That's why I've
chosen to "do it properly" with my main database.
There are some things which are different in Windows that I need to understand
better and some which are different and I simply don't like. There are also a
few things which, at the moment, seem to be problems that I may have to come
back to you (RBTI) or this list about. Overall, however, there are a lot more
plusses than minuses - even if the minuses do bug me at the moment. I expect to
have more time from next month onwards to really get to grips with all the
improvements and changes so I want to wait until I know what I'm talking about
(some hope!) before I ask anyone for more help.
Nevertheless, mine is no monster database, but is ODBC a better way to convert
my data from Dos to Windows? As you can see from the above, Brent has given me a
solution to the import problem and JM has offered a solution to the character
conversion problem if I can't resolve it myself, but if the ASCII-ANSI
conversion was done by ODBC it could save me a lot of time.
Just one other thing, do you think we could have a SET TBREAK ON/OFF command,
please? There used to be time to go and make a cuppa while R:Base worked - now
it's so damn quick I never seem to get time to go and make one! With Brent's
solution, those 30-odd thousand rows were loaded before I hardly had time to
take my hand off the mouse! With TBREAK set on perhaps R:Base could do some
database maintenance, or chat about the weather or something while taking its
time for a few minutes!! Well, you do keep saying "if you can dream it..." <g>.
Thanks & regards, Alastair.
