I have received a number of e-mail messages describing problems with
opening the bibliography files. I guess I did not provide enough
information in the READ ME file. I know I did not go into details
there on error messages that occurred during import into MS-Access. I
hope the information provided below along with the READ ME file on the
WEB site will answer all of the questions you have or provide the
information needed by your computer support people.
1. Opening the text file and getting diacritics, etc. changed to
nonsense characters or entirely lost.
This comes from opening the files in a word processor or database program
without the software converting it from ASCII to ANSI. Dr. Akesson's
name, for example, comes out with a big box instead of the correct
accent at the beginning if opened without undergoing the correct
conversion in MS-Word. Below I describe a couple of ways you might be
able to solve this problem. If your software can't do the correct
conversion then I am sorry but I can't help you any further. The text
files can be successfully opened in MS Word, but if you open the file "as
is" it does look like garbage. I experimented with that program (Word)
and found that you need to tell it that the file it is opening is not a
text file but rather it is an "MS-DOS text" file. To do this you need to
go to FILE then OPEN and then click on the "CONFIRM CONVERSIONS" box that
appears in the lower right hand side of the screen. This then brings up a
list of choices for file types. Select 'MS-DOS TEXT'.
If you are importing the data into a database you need to tell it that it
is an ASCII delimited text file. In MS-Access the sequence is to go to
"Get External Data" - "Import"; tell the program that the file type is
"text"; click on the button marked "Advanced" and tell the program that
the file is "DOS OS/2" rather than ANSI. Other programs should have
similar steps. I know with Paradox that there was a way to change the
preferences for the import process and you may need to re-set those to get
the data in correctly. This may also be true for some of the other
database programs.
2. Some of you have successfully brought the text files up in MS-Access
but wondered about the error messages and possible lost records.
The first field is a reference number but; it is not a complete number
series, ie. there are huge gaps in the numbering sequence. These are
somewhat intentional and do not represent missing records. If you were
to create a new record in the Papyrus version it should be assigned a
number 20969 but there are not 20968 records in the file. The actual
number of records is 17487 in the Papyrus version but may be fewer in the
text version due to duplicate records or records that are eliminated for
other rea Error messages about lost data on import. When the data is
imported in most of the database programs you will lose some data and
possibly even some records because the citations have fields that exceed
the standard 256 field length. A number of the citations in the
bibliography have really huge titles (Lamarck's books come to mind) and I
know in MS-Access the program accepted the records but truncated the
title field. I tried changing that field to a memo field to see if that
would solve the problem. There were also apparently a number of either
blank or duplicate records in the text files that are kicked out on
import. I never could figure out where they are in the text files but
they may have come from a number of duplicate citations that occur in the
bibliography.
3. Finally the issue about requests for other import formats such as one
that End-Note users can use.
I have created an output in REFER format from the original Papyrus
database which I believe End Note can import. I will send this file to
Geoff and he has agreed to add it to the WEB page when he has the time. I
WILL NOT CREATE ANY OTHER OUTPUT FORMATS! I feel that 3 versions of the
data are more than enough. MAC users can get the Alpha version of
Papyrus for free right now from Research Software Design. You could move
the data into that and then use it to create a version that you can bring
up in End Note if the REFER version doesn't work. I can not take the time
to customize a version for each type of software available.
Linda Ward <WARD.LINDA at NMNH.SI.EDU>
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