5.0 USING THE PROGRAM 5.1 The Main screen BlueBook has only two "screens": the Main screen, which shows ONE record in full, and the List screen, which displays the Key lines of up to 16 at a time. (Each record has a KEY line which is the basic "title" and searching field, plus room for other information.) The record shown on the Main screen is the CURRENT RECORD. This simply means it is the one BlueBook returns to if you cancel out of the List screen. The Main screen has all controls relevant to handling that single record, plus a "File" menu for handling the database as a whole, and the "eXit" button - just click, or type the [C]apital letter in each button. For a full explanation of screen layouts, run the program and click Help, then Screen. ---------------------------------------------------------- BlueBook uses only the left mouse button, and there are no double-clicks (although some buttons do have to be clicked twice, for confirmation). ---------------------------------------------------------- 5.2 The List screen Each time you search the database, you generate a List, ie. a group of records that answer to your request. The List screen displays the Key lines of those records, 16 per "page". Use it to work with SETS of records at a time. You can delete records, include or exclude them from the List, alter the dates of one or more Listed records, sort, etc; or simply browse. At any one time, it is possible to see only whatever portion of a database is currently on the List. But that can easily be the whole if you want: the Get command lets you List ALL records very quickly. There's no performance penalty in listing more records. A much smaller subset is often perfectly adequate, though. Use the current List freely, and regenerate it without hesitation. It doesn't matter WHAT'S on the List, so long as it includes the records you want! Whenever you add a record to the database, it is appended to the current List. The Main screen's information line and List position indicator panel carry over to the List screen, as do the DOS and Help buttons. The List position indicator (top) shows the number of the items currently on the LIST, and identifies (by position number in the List) the currently highlighted item. The information line (bottom) shows the total number of records in the DATABASE (left) and the actual absolute record number of the current record (right). 5.3 Choosing records and switching between screens To get from the Main screen to the List screen, click the List button or type "L", or hit Esc. To get back, either Esc from the List screen, or click Main/type M, or jump to another record. To jump by mouse, click a record to highlight it in white (*), then click it again. The main screen appears with the chosen record displayed in full, making that the new current record. To jump by keyboard, use the normal navigation keys (PgDn/PgUp, Home/End, etc.) to find the record you want. Highlight it with the arrow keys as a prospective current record. Then hit , or U (for jUmp). ---------------------------------------------------------- * - in this manual we assume you haven't changed the default colours ---------------------------------------------------------- 5.4 Record layout - the fields BlueBook is an informal free-text database with ONE simple, fixed, all-purpose record layout. If you need to alter this, or create your own data structures, then you need another product (but see note below). With luck, you won't need to. The record layout is more a strength than a weakness because it's designed to be both easy AND flexible in day-to-day use. You have (i) a GROUP or TOPIC field (20 characters, unlabelled) (ii) a KEY line (48 characters) (iii) a DATE field (iv) four NOTE lines (62 characters each, with word wrap) (iv) three SUPPlementary fields (20 characters each). The last, labelled SUPP 1-3, are intended primarily for telephone numbers, etc. But how you use ANY of these fields is entirely over to you, as are the conventions you choose for EACH database. By default, the Topic field is unlabelled on-screen. But you can change that, and all other field labels, by entering new labels in the appropriate section of the BLUEBOOK.INI file (either manually or via BBIni.Exe). Each record occupies precisely 512 bytes on disk: half a kilobyte, split between the files ".BBI" (58 bytes of key data), and ".BBD" (454 bytes, the remainder). ---------------------------------------------------------- NOTE: Records do not NEED to be infinitely flexible or extensible. They are intended to be brief text notes or "headers". If the data you want to store exceeds one record's capacity, you can either create another JOINED record, or offload the extra information to an external file, or run a relevant application, OR create a whole new dependant database (see 7.7). The Exec command allows you to review external files directly from a record (by running BBView or some viewer program/batch file), or actively update them using a DOS editor (you can update "offline" in Windows using NotePad, etc); or, in fact, run ANY DOS application. You are free to set this up how you like, Lego-style, for EACH record, and you are not restricted to text: using an appropriate program, you can access ANY data type. If you have PKZip/PKUnZip, you can keep any numnber of small files packed away in compressed archives using BBPull.Bat (supplied - see "Zipping.Doc"). ----------------------------------------------------------