[Papyrus-L] where to next?

[Dr Andrew Wilson]

Bill Shepherd asked:

> How are you handling Biblioscape's need to put everything in a "folder"?
This seems to me to be an instance of the software wanting you to  work the
way it works, rather than the other way around. I also read on their web
site that it was not advisable to import all your Papyrus references into
one big folder.

It seems that Biblioscape does not NEED to put everything in a folder - you
can switch off the folder option during import. I got into the office this
morning to find that my 72000 records imported apparently successfully,
though haven't checked their integrity yet; they are all sitting in some
non-folder kind of Biblioscape space and seem quite happy there. Search
performance seems adequate.
I think (though I haven't fully explored this yet) that Biblioscape folders
are partially equivalent to Papyrus groups - you can save search results
there, and it appears that references can be in more than one folder. The
Help file says that this does not duplicate the record - it just creates a
linking entry in a folders table. Sounds like groups to me.

> Another big disadvantage to Biblioscape is its apparent inability to use
multiple languages in titles, except through cumbersome workarounds.

Biblioscape has an Insert Symbol option which works exactly like Papyrus
F10, except it allows you access to more characters.
Using the Windows Character Map application you can paste in letters at
least from extended Latin alphabets. Again, much like Papyrus and F10,
really, except you get access to a larger ranger of characters than DOS
allowed you. So I can now add the proper letters for various Polish names,
or the a with tilde in Portuguese. However, Biblioscape doesn't seem to
support the full Unicode range of characters.
The language handling is not ideal, but it's better than the situation with
Papyrus.
To answer Bill's other question about why we don't switch to Macs, in my
case the answer is:

1. I need to use GIS software that does not run on Macs.

2. I can''t afford it. I got a new PC last year.

3. I loathe the Macintosh operating system, but that's a personal issue. Not
that I'm overfond of Windows 2000 either ...





--

Dr Andrew Wilson
University Lecturer in Roman Archaeology
Institute of Archaeology
36 Beaumont St
Oxford
OX1 2PG

Tel: +44 (0)1865 278247
Fax: +44 (0)1865 278254

e-mail: andrew.wilson at archaeology.ox.ac.uk
Web page: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~corp0057/




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