Things you need to know before starting

Terms and phrases

Before using Huge Base you need to know some terms and phrases, like FIELD and RECORD. To find out what they all mean, read the JARGON document. When you've done that, carry on reading this document. This section explains little things that you need to know before starting.

Menus

Huge Base uses a pop-up menu system. When you see options on top of each other, you can select one of them. If you do not want to select any of them, simply click on any other part of the screen. The menu will then disappear and your action will be cancelled.

Keyboard shortcuts

Most buttons have a character which is a different colour from normal and is enhanced by underlining. This is the hot key. If you press this highlighted letter, the button will be pressed, without any mouse action. These are keyboard shortcuts. There will never be two occurrences of the same letter in the same menu. This makes each letter unique to the button that will be activated.

Entering text

When typing on screen, you can press the following operation keys :-

• ESCAPE - Aborts the typing.
• F1 - Clears the entry completely.
• F2 - Restores the entry to what it was when you started editing it.
• F3 - Moves cursor to the end of the string.
• F4 - Moves cursor to the beginning of the string.

When typing text, no other operations can perform until you end the typing. This is to ensure that you finish what you are doing. No buttons can be used when in the typing process.

 When you are viewing a record, either in normal VIEW mode or in SEARCH mode, you can press RETURN. This will take the editing cursor to the first field on the screen. This is doing the same as clicking in the field with the mouse pointer to edit it.

Using the Workbench without quitting

You can press CONTROL + F (for flip) together to flip between the Workbench screen and Huge Base.

Record selection

Each record in your database can be selected individually. A record is either selected or not selected. This is indicated by a SEL sign located to the bottom right of the screen. When it is lit up in a white colour, this means that the current record that you are viewing is selected. When the SEL indicator is BLACK, this means that the current record is NOT selected. For information about selecting records, read through this document.

Aborting

You can press ESCAPE to abort a function you are currently performing. E.g. If you a placing a field on the screen, press ESCAPE and it will abort. Remember, when you are editing a record, to abort you can press ESCAPE. A message will say EDIT FINISHED. Another way to stop editing the current record is to press RETURN until you get to the last field, Huge Base will automatically finish editing.

Pagination

There are 10 different pages in Huge Base. Use the left and right cursor keys to move up and down pages. The pages do not hold different databases, they simply are for separate screens for the same database.

Messages

There is a message box located at the very bottom of the screen which displays messages. All messages and comments that Huge Base wants you to know about are displayed here. E.g. If an operation has failed or completed, a message will appear in the message box. Also, messages which need to be confirmed with a YES or NO are displayed here.

The Huge Base status box

Located to the very top of the Huge Base screen is a status box. This tells you the current status of the database in memory. Shown are the number of records, the number of selected records, the number of fields, the page number and the current record number being displayed. Sometimes the current record will display one of the following text messages : -

• [None] - This means there are no records in memory at all.
• [Crit-X] - This means that you are in search mode and you are viewing one of the 50 search criteria records. The X
• stands for the current search criteria record number, e.g. [Crit-21].
• [Fields] - This means that you are now selecting fields by typing in their priorities.

When nothing at all appears in the status box, this means there is something on the screen that isn't anything to do with a record at all. E.g. This happens when you are viewing the registration screen or a listing of fields. Also, descriptor messages appear in the status box whenever possible. Descriptor messages can be turned off using the preferences if you wish.

Fields

There are a limit of 100 fields. Each field is independent, no fields connect in any way. Fields can be on separate pages, but they form the same database as a whole.

Records

There are a limit of 60,000 records. (That's sixty thousand). The data in each record is stored in serial format, each field of data directly follows another. This saves a lot of memory and disk space.

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