Quote:Thanks for the clarification. Checked pg. 382 in my manual and recalled that I had indeed read the reference at least twice but simply spaced it out because I was stumped on its relevance and ramifications.
Do you have a suggestion for how it could be stated more plainly?
Quote:As I understood it (per my notes), unlike Q&A, everytime the user previewed or printed a report a copy would automatically be saved, whether or not it was wanted. I was stumped with how to get all our potential application "customers" to periodically give their system an enema. Just one more thing for them to remember and overlook so I decided to move on until I got to this point in the design.
Overlooking the offensive language - it is not a "copy", but is the original report. Q&A used a "closed" report format that was unusable in any other program, and hence had not reason to retain reports.
Quote:I have to agree with Spenser and cbt_sj that saving should be offered as an option rather than the default because its not realistic to expect our "SOHO" (small office / home office) users to purge these files on their own, and NONE of them have "system or database administrators" to rely on.
I am looking into it. Though I have to say that in my experience, SOHO users are well acquainted with file deletion, perhaps too much so.
Quote:I'm also aware that you've introduced several (?) manual revisions but have refrained from printing any of them out since I haven't had the time or inclination to print out some 700 to 800 sheets and transfer all my notes each time another version appears.
They are available in print form as well. They can be ordered from:
https://www.lantica.com/order_form.html Quote:I partially agree with Spenser: "I think Sesame is an incredible program and I, personally, want it to succeed beyond everyone's expectations. To do that, however, I think it must be responsive to the people who use it."
I wouldn't know it from your posts.
We are, among commercial software products, the only company I am aware of that gives the end users direct connection to the developers. As such, Sesame has more than 200 features that are in place based on user suggestions. Many more than that if we count the features in 2.0. There is hardly a week that goes by that I don't implement one or more features that were suggested here on the forum.
Quote:Where Q&A achieved its fame by including a database manager, word processor and report printer all within one seamlessly integrated package, Sesame still has only the database manager, thereby limiting its simplicity of use and consequently its appeal. Well, there's always version 2, or 3, or 4. One can hope.
Q&A did achieve a portion of its fame from providing the user with a single application that could move data between DB, word processor, and report writer. So called "Office Suites" are still very popular today. But Q&A also met its downfall through some of those same decisions. Because it used a "closed" printing system and file format, as opposed to using the printing system provided by the OS (not that they had much of a choice in DOS!) Q&A was and is unable to print to many (if not most) of the printers that have been released since its developmental demise. Nor could any of the results of its Report Writer be used in any other application or program, or be adapted for print by recent printers. Even on day one, in large businesses, where reports must contain introductory material, paragraphs of summation, multiple charts, graphs, and whatnot, be electronically stored and retrieved, typeset, and archived - Q&A was completely out of the running. In fact the only way to use Q&A reports in a non-homogeneous environment is to produce an ASCII or postscript report, and, by hand, remove the extraneous page formatting. While producing documents in a closed format that cannot be retained was a defacto norm on DOS, the practice was retained well afterwards by many software companies in that it helped them retain marketshare. But even as we speak, Microsoft (and many others) are converting their systems to use XML.
As to creating a "seamless" word processor for Sesame, If I can get paid to do it, I will. The problem is cost versus return. We are not competing in a market against Q&A's word processor. We competing against MSWord and WordPerfect. Many of our customers now, and all of our customers in the future, would expect that any word processor included be a full featured WYSIWYG word processor. The cost to produce such a word processor is simply too high. If we produce anything less, we will simply be asked, "why can't I just use my word processor?" The fact is that most computer users already have a favorite word processor and odds are that Sesame will work with it quite handily. That means that the business user has no need to train employees on a new word processor.
As to simplicity:
Erika, while preparing her class on Sesame integration, counted the number of steps in both Q&A and Sesame/MSWord to perform a simple merge letter. For both setup and generation, either program produces roughly the same number of steps. Given that there are several orders of maginitude more MSWord users than Q&A Write users, and thereby significantly more people familiar with MSWord, I cannot justify (to Lantica marketing) the several hundred thousand dollars it would cost to build a competing word processor.
As to the simplicity of Report Writers:
I know of none that are actually all that simple or easy to use (Sesame and Q&A included). The task itself precludes a WSYIWYG approach. Most GUI based report writers (like Sesame, Access, Crystal) use a system of "layers" which is hardly representational of final outcome. Earlier report writers (like Q&A) use a cryptic miniature language which must be memorized. I have seen some experimental report writers that use a layout similar to a page layout system like MSPublisher. But even those fail to represent the repetition of records in a satisfying way.
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