12014. Importing affiliate data copied from SFI’s Genealogy page using Gerian failed on the Basics tab, with a wrong-header complaint. Later in the month, this was investigated and resolved, as part of Gerian v1.4, after identifying what was new in the heading, its ending with character 160 (hex A0) instead of space.

12040. Wanting accelerator characters on menus and buttons underlined on a new Windows 7 system—as an old-time Windows user—and not recalling the steps for it, a quick web search came to the rescue. The settings appear here in Windows Explorer: Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Ease of Access Center\Make the keyboard easier to use

12051. Our outing to Academy Press to assist with configuring Printwiser database server software on a new Windows 10 machine was successful. The Adaptive Server Anywhere database server Windows service for Printwiser was created successfully on the server for Estimating, and the client computer connection issues that came up due to firewall restrictions were resolved. Printwiser works fine on Windows 10.

12073. Due to the difficulty encountered in transferring the HIDDEN records in a database on another machine to the main Gerian database days before and which was still pending—having to edit the log SQL file to omit or compute generated values first—we considered building an automated system to transfer HIDDEN records between databases via text files, much like that for writing and reading estimates to/from files in Printwiser. Necessity is the mother of inventions after all.

We began implementing the first step in this, creating a database function to transfer a range of HIDDEN records (and related clues/word lists and prizes won) to a string that could then be written to a text file. After getting the first draft of the function working, in the next two days we created and tested the database function to convert the string produced by that first function back to database records, though with newly-generated primary key values. They are now both (to-string and from-string functions) ready to be called from the client side of Gerian. Calling it from Interactive SQL, we used the new HIDDEN to string function to extract the two HIDDEN records in the database in one machine, to be loaded later on the primary Gerian database. Saved as an mtt (Microsoftware table text) file, the records were imported into the main Gerian database days later using Gerian 1.4.

12143. Continued the new Gerian 1.4 revision with work on the client-side of the new HIDDEN import and export feature, setting up the form window based on one from Printwiser. This form was later linked to the Import and Export commands on the File menu for the HIDDEN List. The next feature implemented was automatically reformatting the HIDDEN List, to customize it, based on settings in a report formatting file (rff). We corrected an issue from the v1.3 revision involving using shortcuts while entering new HIDDEN game results. Next day, after building the first executable file for Gerian 1.4, we put to use the new features, like automatic application of a format file to the HIDDEN List to customize its look.

12191. Looked into free PDF to Word converters as requested by a client; downloaded, installed and checked out Wondershare and Able2Extract, seeing that the free versions of these could handle no more than 3 pages. The search ended after downloading and testing Soda PDF Desktop 14 7-day trial version that wasn’t so limited. The client however chose to send us the pdf document to convert using Soda and send back.

12224. We visited NRC to discuss with EPPMS users on outstanding issues that presently needed to be addressed. Also met with senior departmental and other key people to discuss our technical support service.

12261. Concluded the Gerian v1.4 revision by adding three new items to the Settings form, a checkbox for the HIDDEN window resize option that was implemented November 2021, another for the new Microsoftware table text (mtt) import/export option, and input box for specifing the auto-format file for the HIDDEN List. Few days later, the last version 1.4 revision for Gerian this month was done, implementing the Affiliate Rank List so users could update the list of ranks by themselves, when they changed.