Updates

Version 2.17

• For Scottish counties, a field has ben added to record if the individual spoke Gaelic.
• The Rooms field is now cleared by defualt and only requested when the schedule number changes.
• Printing now outputs the number of rooms, and whether the person spoke Gaelic.

Version 2.16

• Missing index problem when printing a sorted name index has been corrected.
• A new Export function has been added to the 'All Districts' menu. This can create a text file containing a sorted name index which can be used as input to any word processor if there is a need for more specialised print formatting, than that provided by the print function.

Version 2.15

• The code that suggests the sex of people has been refined to work better when people have multiple forenames. It now works on the first name rather than the combined forename field.
• The suggested sex of individuals is now cleared after entering each new person.
• The suggested items which appear above entries on the input form as you type them in can sometime take a number of keystrokes to appear when you kinow its likely to be the next one but the first part is identical to the previous entry. The freqently occurs for occupations e.g. 'Farm servant' 'Farmer' 'Farmers son'. In order to alleviate this another box appears below the input box when this happens containing up to the next four entries. These can be selected using function keys F1 to F4.
• The code that does the suggestion has now been added to the 'relation to head of household' field.

Version 2.14

• This is the first version that specifically treats Scottish counties slightly differently. The option to record page numbers is disabled and hidden, and folio numbers are now labelled as page numbers. The major descriptive fields are changed to use the names appearing on the Scottish census. But as there are more descriptive fields they can not all be recorded separately, but users will find that they can use other similar ones that won't have a value for that enumeration district.
• Some create options were only active if defined in the main option screen, now have the options on the create screen selectable.
• The ability to delete records via the name index screen has been provided.
• A new field has been added to mark the first entry in a household. This will be of particular value for the 1841 where the alternative schedule number does not appear on the actual census page.
• The code which choses filenames for each enumeration district constructs them from the piece number and enumeration district number. However if either of these fields conatined a '.' then this caused major problems as it conflicted with the Windows file naming convention. So if a '.' or a '\' is present they are ignored.
• The separate street index fields now only appear if one is being used. It is now strongly recommended that you do not use this feature in new projects as the facility can be provided via the name index, and support for it will be dropped in later releases.
• The book number field only appears on the Create form for England/Wales.
• The Dbase indexes are now only created as required, and deleted when enumeration districts are closed. This reduces the number of files, and helps eliminate errors which might occur if Windows crashes whilst TranCens is running.
• A few options on the user preferences only became active if TranCens was shutdown. this has now been resolved.
• The user preferences screen can now be opened from the input form.
• The space bar can now be used to indicate that no relationship to head of household is available.
• The occupied and rooms field are now cleared when the schedule number changes.
• If the relationship is Wife then the sex is set to female.
• After entering an empty property, focus is set to the schedule number field.
• The sum of males and females is now correct rather than being the number of entries on the page which can include those for empty properties.

Version 2.13

• On the Options screen, Person Fields tag, a bug which set the size of the Age field to one character, when the Defaults button was pressed, has been corrected.
• The suggested sex label is now either Male or Female rather than the previous single chacter code. This makes it much easier to spot mistakes.
• The logic for determining the suggested sex has been improved so that the suggestion is now more likely to be what is intended.
• The suggested marital condition may now be Married or Single rather than the previous single character code. This makes it much easier to spot mistakes.
• The PF key hints bar is now hidden when you leave the Sex field.
• The suggested relation to head of household is now Son or Daughter according to sex, if they have the same surname.
• An improved method is used to automatically move from field to field. Previously this only occurred if the next logical field on the form was being used.
• Form resizing has been corrected so that an extra space no longer appears beneath the As Enumerated in certain circumstances.
• The suggested ocupation for anybody aged 4-11 is Scholar.
• The as-enumerated grid now shows what is likely to be expected when either the folio number, its qualifier or the page number changes. E.g. when the folio changes, it shows the first page for that folio. When the page number changes, if there are no names for the current contents of the folio field, the appropriate folio is found and adjusted accordingly.
• The hints now match what is likely to happen next if an edit or an insert has been performed. E.g. the hints for an append will now be those of the last record, rather than the one just edited.
• The delete key can now be used as a shortcut to delete a record in the as-enumerated grid, as well as using the navigation bar.
• The page number field now appears before the folio number on the input form, as that should logically be increased/decreased before changing the folio number. The End key now focuses on the Page field if it is present, rather than the Folio number.

Version 2.12

• The letter S is now accepted as well as U to indicate unmarried on the input form.
• Forenames and street names are reformatted immediately upon exiting the relevant input fields, as well as when the new record is written away. This makes it easier to see that the formatting is what is expected.
• Street names are now remembered, and made available via Function Keys when they are being recorded. Previously this only seems to have taken place when a separate street index was being maintained.
• The as-enumerated view on the input form now resolves down to the page number level(where appropriate), not just the folio number. If Folio qualifiers have been used these are also used for this purpose.
• An option has been provided to hide the button bar on the input form, and thus provide more space for the as-enumerated box.
• Menu option added to show/hide the input box part of the input form.
• Added a new NOTE field, which can be used for short addtional notes against an individual person. Sometimes an additional disability e.g. Cripple is provided and this can be recorded here. The new field only becomes fully visible when required. To save space in the input area, a single character field, labelled N will show the Note field when it contains any character.
• When cancelling an edit on the input form, the forename field is now cleared along with the other fields.
• On the Input Form, if the Page Up or Page Down keys are pressed when the focus is outside the As Enumerated grid, the grid is position to the Top or Bottom respectively, as well as focussing on that area.
• When either the Schedule, House number, or Road field, the Relationship to head of household suggestion field is set to Head, as the first person in a household is normally the Head.
• After inputting a Head of household, the related suggestion box is set to Wife ready for the next record, as this is the most likely next one. The suggested condition is set to Married and the sex to Female.
• If enumeration districts are copied into a database created by an older version of TranCens there may be less fields present in the Index.dbf file. The copy still takes place, but a warning is displayed as the new fields in the index.dbf will not be copied.
• When inputting, the As enumerated grid tends to scroll up and down, as searches are made by the hinting software. Code has been added to prevent this.
• When inserting a record, rather than appending, the hints are now set to the value of the record after which the insert is being performed.
• If a Street index is not being recorded, the Street Index button is disabled on the input form.
• The maximum number of characters that can be typed into a field on the input form is now the size of that field in the underlying database table.
• The forename is used to predict the sex of the person, and this is used in the suggestion field.
• The problem of the As enumerated scrolling whilst data is entered has been corrected, and you can now see the previous record that was entered.
• The suggested marital condition of the Head is set to Married and for anything else but Wife it is set to Single, as these are the most likely conditions to be found.
• The individual input fields on the input form are now dynamically arranged according to whether they have been selected.
• If the Sex is being recorded on the input form, the record total is given for each sex which provides another check at the end of each page/folio.
• The suggested county code for new records on the input form is now the current county, if the place name matching does not find a match.
• When printing, a status message is now provided to explain what is happening when it is going to take some time.
• A problem with copying files created with TranCens 2.10/2.11 which reported Index not found, and failed to copy the data, has been corrected.

Version 2.11

• Book number fields are no longer created in the name index when they are not required.
• Failure to set the last updated date when US English has been set for date formatting has been corrected.
• Enhancements to mouse free operation on the Input Form have been added.
  • The Page Up and Page Down keys have always been available as well as the scroll bar for moving up and down the As Enumerated, but only when the input focus was on the grid. These keys will now select the grid wherever they are pressed on the form, and thus they can be used instead of the mouse on the scroll bar.
  • Within the As Enumerated grid, the Backspace key can now be used to specify a record for editing as well as via the navigation bar, and the Insert key used to specify that a new record is to be inserted.
  • When the Folio number is changed the previous values which appear above the input fields are set to those of the last record on the previous folio. These were previously set to inappropriate values if editing was performed when checking the previous folio.
  • A new menu Options/Hide input when checking has been provided on the Input Form. If it is selected then, when checking, if the cursor is placed within the As Enumerated grid, (or Page Up/Down is pressed), then the input fields and the PF Key hints at the bottom of the screen are hidden, giving all the space to the As Enumerated grid. This lets you see more on the screen at once to make it easier to check. You switch back to seeing the input fields etc. by pressing the End key (for changing the folio), or the Home key for setting the address. This option is remembered for subsequent runs of TranCens.
• If the forename was not being recorded, and a later release of the BDE than that supplied with TranCens was installed, DBase7 format tables were created instead of DBase4. This has now been corrected.
• The Details screen now sets itself to the first page when it is opened, rather than whichever page was last displayed.
• The Create screen is now focussed on the Year field whenever it is opened, rather than the last field that has been used.

Version 2.10

• The main index screen now has a Show menu option which gives control over the fields displayed in the main index grid. This make it much easier to spot inconsistencies between enumeration districts, and allows project managers to more easily get the whole picture.
• The option to specify individual page printing has been removed, as selective page printing is not a function of the print driver, but has to be programmed into evrything that calls it.
• On the Input screen, if the navigation bar on the current folio grid is used to insert a record (using the + image), the file position after the insert is now on the new record inserted. This means that if more than one record needs inserting they can just be inserted one after the other. Previously it required a click in the grid before each insert to position the insert point.
• Version 2.09 added the functionality to create DBase indexes whenever TranCens needed them, rather than relying on them always being present. The copy function in this release will only create indexes on the output file if requested in Advanced Options. This reduces the amount of dat that needs to be copied around as the .MDX files are not present. It also makes it easier to any special work required via other database systems.
  N.B. A consequence of this change is that files copied by 2.10 must be checked by somebody using at least version 2.09.

Version 2.09

• SQL queries are used for some of the searching required during input. The temporary files that are used for this appear to be created in the directory that is first opened by the BDE. If you open up a database on floppy to start with, the temporaray files were created on the floppy, and this gave an error if you had removed it, and the only way round it was to restart TranCens. Code has now been added to force the temporary files into the directory used for the primary database.
• If printing was carried out for a complete piece, or complete database, and the first enumeration district contained fields missing form others an error ocurred in the initial copy phase. this has now been corrected.
• If multiple EDs were being copied at once, and they previously existed in the destination database, and an 'All' reply was given to the warning, then the first ED was missed from the copy. This has been corrected.
• The progress bar on the Copy screen now behaves correctly.
• A vertical line is now printed to separate multiple columns on an 'As enumerated' print.
• Changed the way the date is formatted when updating the last changed date. It is hoped that this will alleviate the problem of errors when Windows has been reconfigured to use different data formatting styles.
• An old style of sequence number index was used when forenames were NOT being transcribed. This caused some inconsistencies, and the correct index key is now being created. Any data with the old style of index will be changed to the proper style when a copy is performed.
• On the Name index screen, the Apply and OK buttons are now only visible when 'Bulk editing' has been enabled.
• The 'last modified' field in the main index is now updated when changes are made via the name index, or to the description.
• The SURNAME and FORENAME indexes are now only created on demand by the input screen. This reduces the amount of data which needs to be transferred on COPY. Code has been put in place now to create all indices on demand where needed. This will make it possible to remove the creation of indices when an ED is created in a later release and thus the .mdx files will not be present after a copy operation. The delayed removal is to prevent the need for all users to upgrade to this release.
• If multiple entries were made to the name index, after a bulk editing session, the entries were modifiable without selecting 'bulk editing'. This has now been corrected.
• An error 'Expression expected but ) found' message appeared when a brand new enumeration district was created. This no longer occurs.
• The Confirm action on the print screen has been enhanced so that if you reply no, the print screen is left up and you can try other layout arrangements to see how it will affewct the number of pages used. Previously there was no retry facility.
• On a print of a multi-piece name index, a letter is used to indicate the piece number and the coding used is printed at the bottom of each page. The code letter chosen previously was rather haphazard, but is now allocated sequentially.
• When printing a name index there is a field to specify the number of folios to print per line. Previously this may have been decreased by the program if it meant that more columns could be fitted on the page. This adjustment is no longer made, and the number of folios per line in a column is now fully under the user's control.
• The error message that appears when trying to create a new database, where a directory does not exist, has been changed to 'Use the Choose button to create directories' to explain the corrective action required.
• The main index was created with one field named 'SUB_DISTRICT' but the BDE shortened this to 'SUB_DISTRI'. This caused problems with later versions of the BDE which didn't shorten it and other parts of the code were still looking for 'SUB_DISTRI'. 'SUB_DISTRI' is now used as the field name in all cases. The place where this inconsistency appeared in teh code has been changed to silently ignore the error which will allow older files to be copied.
• In a multi piece index print, a period '.' is now inserted between the code letter and the folio number.
• The print screen is now disabled, which prevents attempted changes, whilst printing takes place, and the cursor is now reset back to an hourglass after the standard Windows printer dialogue box.
• The spurious errors which could be reported after cancelling a print on the WIndows printer dialogue screen have been removed.
• Duplicate folio numbers which could appear in a print of the name index, ahve now been eliminated.
• Extra space at the end of a column line in a print of the name index has now been eliminated.

Version 2.08

• The default print order of 'As Enumerated' was actually giving the physical record order of the data, which was not always the same as enumerated. This has been corrected.
• The index name used when switching to 'As Enumerated' order when printing, was incorrectly spelt resulting in 'Index not found' errors. This has been corrected.

Version 2.07

• The title is now visible over the house name/number field when first opening the input screen.
• More descriptive title on street name field.
• Wider fields in name index screen when an index as opposed to a transcript is being produced.
• Error in print module corrected if there was no forename field present.
• Cursor set to hourglass when resequencing.
• The window formatting did not turn out as expected when Windows was configured to use large fonts. This manifested itself as scroll bars on the edges of some screens and poor positioning of some fields within windows. The extreme case was where some became invisible. This has all now been corrected.
• Major rewrite of the print module. You can now print full transcripts, and select which transcribed fields to print.
• Workround implemented for occasional problem whereby an 'Invalid Operation' error occurred when openeing the input form. When this happened, opening it again worked.
• When using page numbers, the page number is now correctly updated when the folio changes on the input form.
• The error which prevented Copying from working when the database was not the primary or the secondary has been corrected. It appeared to work but actually copied to the primary or alternate instead of teh destination database.
• The error which failed to update the filename suffix in the main index when renaming an enumeration district via the copy facility has been corrected.
• When the input form is opened the grid in the lower half will now always show the current folio. Previously it was left it could show all folios if that was the last operation when another district was closed in that manner.
• The hint on the All Folios/This Folio button is now adjusted according to the text on the button.

Version 2.06

• Corrected problem which did not display BDE version in the About box.
• Previous version silently ignored database fields that were not supported by the current version of the program. A warning is now given if an unknown field is found, but it is still ignored. This could happen if a new field was introduced in a leter version of the program and data produced by it was sent to somebody with an older version. Support is still required to produce warnings about new fields in the main index.dbf
• Enabled editing on the Name Index screen. If multiple changes are required, such as when you forget to change the folio number, then editing via the input screen can be time consuming. This lets you make such changes in a relatively easy manner. However many of the formatting checks do not performed when making changes in this way, and you must make sure that everything is correct yourself, including the case in the character fields.
• The input screens now creates indexes for the Occupation and Place name fields if these are being transcribed. These are used to suggest values for these fields in a similar way to that provided for Surname and Forename. It should prove particularly useful for long Occupation names. The Place name prediction also suggests the corresponding county as well.
• Added the ability to specify a book number when creating a new Enumeration District. these are required for the 1841 census for England & Wales.
• Added the ability to specify an OS Grid Reference when creating a new Enumeration District. The value specified does not appear on the census at all, but if provided should be taken from the centre of the area covered by the ED. This value should be of particular interest when performing full transcripts. A number of data mapping programs are starting to become available, and this should provide the information to easily analyse the data according to location.
• Corrected a problem with editing on the data entry screen whereby the 'as enumerated' grid pointer was not reset back to the record being edited after completion of the edit.
• Removed the visible scrolling of the 'as enumerated' grid on completion of editing etc. This speeds things up considerably when there are a large number of entries.
• The record count in the 'as enumerated' grid is now updated when records are deleted.
• When records are inserted as opposed to appended on the input form, household details are now pre filled in as it's ikely that they are near what is required. After input, the grid pointer now returns to where it was before, rather than the end of the grid.
• The Street Index screen now shows the Folio qualifier e.g. 26A and has the option to choose any available field to display.
• When editing records from the input screen, when a separate street index is being kept, an entrywas always created in the street index, and if the street name was blank, that appeared in the street index. Street Index entries are no longer incorrectly created when editing records from the input screen.
• When copying files, the piece number field in the output table is no longer that on the input field, but is that stored in the description. This enables incorrect piece numbers to be easily fixed.
• If a table prepared by an old version of TranCens was being copied, some of the new mandatory fields such as sequence number were not being filled in. This has now been corrected.
• On the input screen the check to see if a forename has been entered is now performed before the surname chack rather than vice-versa. This means that you are prompted for missing fields in the same order as they appear on the screen.
• If you are recording house number/name and the field is blank, this is now errored. The normal shortcuts of using the space bar etc. to indicate a null field have ben implemented.
• The cursor on the main form is not set to an hourglass whilst it is disabled, e.g. when the input form is open. This will help indicate that the options on it are not available whilst the subsidiary forms are open.
• When copying files the contents of the Folio qualifier field are folded to upper case, as they may inadvertantly have been set to lower case when bulk editing.
• On the input form, the default size of the forename and surname fields in the 'as enumerated' grid has been increased when just an index is being produced.
• The input form no longer erroneously offer the Show/Street menu option when just a separate street index has been requested.
• Enhanced the logic for deciding whether to offer a Create database or Open database dialogue when the program starts up.
• The Forename and Surname indexes used to provide suggestion for these fields as you type in the name are now created when the input form is opened if they do not already exist. This will enable them to be removed from the Create code in a later release and thus reduce the size of files when they are complete e.g. for putting on floppy.
• The checking on the input form which is performed when a separate street index is being maintained to prevent duplicate entries has been changed. The new method used does not use SQL queries and so there are no longer any constraints on the characters that can appear in the street name. Previously errors occured if a single quote ' was used.