Finally - Vaporware becomes RealWare! BioBase v2.0 is a reality 27 September 1996 This is version 2.0 of BioBase - the Bibliographic Database for windows 3.x and 95. This file replaces version 1.5 of BioBase which has been available for two years. There are two separate files, one is the 16-bit version of the program (bbase216.zip) and the second is the 32-bit, Win95 only version (bbase232.zip). The program was written with Visual Basic 4.0, and it requires the Visual Basic runtime file to run. The 16-bit version requires VB40016.DLL while the 32-bit version requires VB40032.DLL. The version of the DLL that you use should be the same as the version of BioBase you are using (i.e. if you are using the 16-bit version of BioBase on a Win95 machine, you still need the 16-bit version of the DLL). The Win95 version won't run under Window 3.x, even if you have win32s installed. You will need to have the appropriate runtime file installed *before* you can install BioBase, since the install program is written with Visual Basic as well. Since including the runtime file increased the size of the archive several hundred kilobytes, I decided that it would be better to not force everyone (including people who already have the file) to download the runtime along with the program. The runtime can be found for downloading at many places on the Internet, including, most likely, the place that you found this file. To install the program, unzip the files to a temporary directory and then run the file called "Setup.exe" in the temporary directory. The setup program will ask you to choose a directory for installation and then it will copy the files to their appropriate places on the hard drive. Changes since version 1.5: 1 - Found out why the RTF files produced by BioBase would make WordPerfect for Windows crash and gave users the option to produce files that are compatible with WP. (I don't look at this as a bug in my program, since every other program could open the RTF files fine! It didn't help that WP tech support couldn't help me in 3 years, either! Not that I'm bitter, no sir...but I digress...) 2 - Provided more import/export options, including some CD-ROM/Internet database formats, a user-controlled format and comma-delimited text import/export. This should make sharing information in SDB files much easier and allows importing records to save typing time. NOTE: WHEN IMPORTING FROM ANY OF THE NEW FORMATS, BIOBASE REQUIRES THAT THERE BE TWO (2) BLANK LINES AT THE END OF THE FILE OR ELSE IT WILL GET CAUGHT IN AN ENDLESS LOOP! I know this is a bug and I'm working on it, but this program has gotten such featuritis that I decided it would be better to release this version and not delay it any longer. I hope y'all don't mind. (: 3 - I added the ability of the program to recognize special control characters ("@", "*", "^" or "#") and change the formatting of specific words that are preceded by those characters. You can specify different formatting options for each code as well as which codes to use in the first place. This is useful to have BioBase automatically reformat special words (such as species names or latin phrases) that need to display differently from the text around them. 4 - I added a second author field. Some users had requested that BioBase be able to change the order of initials etc. in the author field to conform to different journal styles. Unfortunately, this is not an option, so I added a second field so that you can type the two main formats you use and tell BioBase to use one or the other depending on which format you need. I know it requires extra typing but until every journal accepts one format for citations, these sorts of things will happen. 5 - The buffer size is now no longer under user control - it defaults to 1 record in memory at a time and it can't be changed. This may seem inefficient, but it was necessary to prevent some problems. 6 - The program allows more user control when searching for duplicate records. You can specify which citations to delete etc... 7 - I attempted to make the program work independently of the resolution of your monitor. For the most part, this works fine, but in some cases (which so far all seem to occur while running under Win95 in 800x600 mode) the resolution does not change correctly, so I've added the ability for you to change the resolution the program displays at manually. 8 - I changed the lengths of several of the fields - specifically, the Abstract, Comments and Keywords fields are all now longer than in previous versions. See the help file for the specifics. 9 - The program now allows you to specify more information about the formatting of the bibliography, especially the author fields. You can change the format of the author fields by clicking the Extra Options button on the Edit Style screen. 10 - The BIOBASE.INI file is now stored in the Windows directory. If you want to keep your old settings, just copy the INI file to the c:\windows or whatever directory you have windows installed in. Unfortunately, the Win 95 version stores the same information in the Registry file, and there is no way to import those values in your old INI to the registry easily. If you are comfortable editing the registry by hand, you can just edit the Registry to make the settings conform to what you used to have. The STL files are still kept in the BioBase directory. 11 - Several bugs were fixed in the search functions that would cause them to ignore matching records under certain conditions. 12 - The status of the report output (whether reports should go to the screen, a file or the printer) was working strangely, since the menu where you were supposed to have one of these items selected defaulted to having all 3 checked! I've fixed this now, and the information is now stored correctly in the INI file 13 - Win 95 native format program. The program works the same as the Win 3.x version, except for differences that are a result of the differences in Windows. For example, the main screen in Win 3.x can only display about 32000 characters, while the same screen in Win 95 can display about twice that many characters, but this difference is entirely a result of the change in Windows versions. 14 - A bug that showed up while displaying Articles in Book format citations was fixed. This bug caused the information in the city and editor fields to be reversed each time the citation was viewed/edited. While this may not seem like a major list of changes, there have been innumerable small changes and improvements going on over the last couple of years, but I didn't see any reason to document every little user interface change or tweaking of code. Besides, 1, 2, 7 and 11 on the list actually took me a *long* time to get them working and get all the bugs worked out. I would also like to extend my thanks to my friends, fellow grad students and Beta testers Karry Kazial and Jerry Hough. Without their help, this program would even more bugs than it currently does! (: Thanks, guys! Well, that's it, try it out and please let me know what you think about it. I can be reached by e-mail at burnett.33@osu.edu. Check the help file for my snail mail and alternate e-mail address.