Superbase Proff. ================ This document contains information about a number of features in Superbase Professional and the Forms Editor which could not be fully described in the User Guides. If you have loaded the Readme file by clicking on its icon, the controls for viewing the document are as follows: press the space bar to scroll down the document a page at a time, press Return to scroll down a line, press B to scroll up a page, press U to scroll up a line. If you are in the Superbase Text Editor, use the cursor keys or the scroll bars at the side of the window. RAM disk support (Amiga) ------------------------ Normally if you wish to use the Amiga RAM disk within a program, you need to copy data files into the RAM disk before running the program. With Superbase Professional, this step is unnecessary. You can load data into the RAM disk simply by using the drive identifier RAM: when you open a Superbase file. If the file is not already in the RAM disk, Superbase will copy it to the disk from the current directory, and open it at the same time. Superbase also provides a similar service when you close the file. It asks if you want the file to be copied back to the current directory, i.e. to the floppy or hard disk it was originally copied from. If you click on OK it does the job for you. Should you click on CANCEL the file will not be copied back and you will be asked if you want to erase the copy you have in the RAM disk. Selecting CANCEL will leave the RAM copy intact. (Note that if you open an existing file on RAM disk which has not been put there by Superbase then when you close that file Superbase will not ask you if you wish to copy it back.) As an example, suppose the Address file is stored on the disk in drive DF1: and the current directory is DF1:. To open this file from the RAM disk you would select the Open File option on the Project menu and then enter: RAM:Address You can now work on the file in the normal way -- retrieve data, edit data, remove records, and so on -- with the advantage that file operations using a RAM disk are much faster than they are on a physical disk. Remember to close the file at the end of a session so that any changes you have made can be saved permanently in the directory from which it was copied. This feature also works with other Ram disk facilities where the drive identifier is VD0: or VDK:. Miscellaneous ------------- * If you try to print a line longer than the line length set in Superbase's Printer options, Superbase will output a Carriage Return followed by a Line Feed when it reaches the maximum line length. * Note that Amiga owners can set a printer initialization sequence from within Superbase's Set Options dialog. This allows you to set the features and modes you prefer. The sequence of control codes is sent to the printer each time you perform a printing operation from within Superbase. If a sequence is present Superbase does not send the `Skip over perforation OFF' and `Set page length' codes that are normally sent when the printer is accessed. * The output format parameters BF, UL, IT enable you to set different print styles within a report or in the output from a query. If you wish to set other printing features, you can do so by using the CHR$ function to insert the appropriate printer control codes. With a report which has been generated in the Forms Editor, you will need to insert the control code sequences in the report program. In a query, you can simply enter them in the query fields line. For example, on some Epson printers, the sequence 27, 14 selects enlarged print, and the control code 20 turns it off. To output the data for one field in enlarged print, your query Fields line might look like this: Firstname, Lastname, CHR$(27);CHR$(14);City;CHR$(20), Street Note that some control codes may be inappropriately interpreted by the printer device, in which case you should set Print Raw on the Options requester to bypass the interpretation. * File Names. Avoid using the characters : ? # / ; or the space character. When using a file name as an argument to a command such as OPEN FILE, it must always be inside quotation marks. However, a file name used to extend a field name, e.g. Name.Customers, need not be inside quotes, unless it includes non-alphanumeric characters, i.e. other than a-Z and 0-9. Superbase supplies quotes when necessary during dialog selections, but if you type a command line in directly be sure to observe this rule. * Superbase and the Forms Editor require a large amount of chip memory when printing a form in graphics mode. If your Amiga only has 512K RAM, the graphics print option may not be usable. * The normal New Line sequence on the Amiga is a CHR$(10) (line feed). On most other machines and in Superbase, the default New Line sequence is CHR$(13) CHR$(10) (carriage return, line feed). The CHR$(13) may be suppressed, for example to achieve compatibility with the ED editor, by setting RETURN=OFF in the Tool Types list of the Superbase icon, which may be modified using the Workbench Info option. Forthcoming Features -------------------- Future releases of Superbase Professional for the Amiga will include the following product enhancements: * Communications * Multi-line transaction handling on forms * Improved form printing * Data conversion utility * Additional programming commands * Further performance optimization Certain features of Superbase Professional referred to in the manual have not been included in Version 2.00. These relate to the multi-line transaction handling capability, which requires formula syntax allowing SUM, for example, to be used in form calculations. The EDIT REPLICATE menu option in the Forms Editor will not be enabled until the full transaction handling version of Superbase is released.