Re: Non-Working feature and workaround?

[Rick Penticoff <rpenticoff@nospam.moscow.com>]

On 04:55 PM 12/31/00, Aldo Lauria Santiago wrote:

>Has anyone on the list edited the list of journals that provides the 
>"authority list" for the  "Journal title" Field of IBIDEM?  The help 
>manual claims that this list is auto-updated--and should thus include all 
>the journal titles that I have previously entered, but this function does 
>not work.  The list of journals I get seems like a stock list that came 
>with the program but is not dynamic.  The authority lists for Author, 
>Keywords, etc. do include the records from previous entries.

You can generate a dynamic authority list for the Journal field, but you 
have to do it through Win-Ibidem's Maintain menus.  In order to generate a 
dynamic list you have to designate the Journal field as an Index field and 
click Yes on the Lookup option.  Here are the steps:

File | Maintain Database | Close database if one is open.  Highlight your 
database name, then click the Maintain button.  Choose "Edit Properties," 
then click on Okay.  Click on the Index Keys tab, then the Add Key 
button.  Fill in the boxes as desired.  When you're all done, you'll have 
two Lookup lists for Journal entries: the static one shipped with 
Win-Ibidem (on the left side) and your new dynamic one (on the right side).

Note: it's possible that adding a number of new Indexible fields will slow 
things down when performing a search.  Also, it's possible to edit 
Win-Ibidem's static Journal list: it's the jourconv.tbl file in your 
default nbwin directory.


>The company should note this problem for a future fix.  It would be great 
>also to have instructions on how to manually alter these files.  A useful 
>new feature would be to allow users to add the Authority List option to 
>any other field.  For example, I have added a field to all my databases 
>that lists the status of my work with that item; the options I usually 
>enter are: YES, NO, RETURN, and SCAN.  It would be great to have these 
>options available for selection from a drop down menu.

If all four of these options are already part of your Ibidem records, then 
you could generate a drop-down list in exactly the same way as 
above.  You'll also find out immediately if you have any unwanted entries 
in this field since creating a drop-down list from an Index Key picks up 
ANY text from all records entered into that field.

Using Index Keys as Lookup tables doesn't offer Ibidem users as much power 
and flexibility as jp takala's IGET xpl program for NB4, but it's better 
than nothing.

Rick Penticoff