Monday, December 5, 2016

Scythebill 13.4 - "Ornitho" imports and more

Scythebill 13.4 is now available!  As always, download here, and let me know if you have any problems, either on Google+Facebook, or by email.   This release adds support for importing from the "Ornitho" platform (for European bird reports), as well as some small (but much desired) features and bug fixes.

Ornitho imports

The "Ornitho" platform encompasses a number of websites across Europe - Germany, Poland, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, and parts of France and Spain.  Scythebill now supports imports from this platform - the seventh different import format supported by Scythebill!

From the import screen, click the new "Import from Ornitho..." button, and choose a "TXT" format that you've extracted from Ornitho.  (Unlike with HBW, there are no limits on the number of sightings that can be imported in one go.)

Before importing, it is strongly recommended to set the "Species name in IOC" preference to your local language.  This will significantly improve the accuracy of your imports.

This support is early, and there may be glitches - especially since I've only been able to test against German and Swiss imports.  Let me know if you run into any problems!

More information in checklist spreadsheets

In Browse by location, you can use "Save as spreadsheet" to save checklists for field entry.  A new option - "Include one sighting?" - will add a new column to those spreadsheets, which will tell you where you've already seen a species.  This makes it possible - with a single checklist spreadsheet for a location - to figure out what species are potential lifers, which species have been seen in that location, and which species have been seen elsewhere.

"Sp." counts in Show Reports

The Show reports screen will now show, as a separate tally, the total number of "sp."'s that match that report.  This will - hopefully - allay some concerns users had when switching to IOC and seeing their species totals decline!

Faster data entry - a new shortcut

A new keyboard shortcut in Enter sightings lets you navigate between the detail rows of a table when entering sightings.   If you've got the cursor in a detail row - like entering a number - just press Control-Alt-Up/Down (or Command-Option-Up/Down on a Mac) and you'll move to the previous or next row, with the cursor in the very same field (like the number field) of that row.

This lets you rapidly edit sighting data, since you can edit one field for an entire visit without tediously opening each row in turn.

Other fixes

Report printing did not work for IOC reports with a location with a checklist.

Scythebill's CSVs have - until now - had issues when being opened in Excel.  In particular, if you had note fields containing double-quotes ("), those rows might not read correctly.  This should be fixed now - do let me know if you run into problems with other spreadsheet software.

Scythebill CSV files should do a better job of "round-tripping" - exporting, then importing back - for some locations.  In particular, Puerto Rico did not round-trip correctly (it was imported as a North American state, instead of into the West Indies).