Tuesday, January 29, 2013

IOC 3.3 upgrade now available

Version 3.3 of the IOC taxonomy was released on January 28th, 2013.

On January 29th, 2013, Scythebill 9.0.4 was released, including IOC 3.3.  (Sadly, it was released 30 minutes too late to qualify as a "same day" upgrade, at least in Pacific Standard Time.)  No other changes this time around.

Enjoy!

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Scythebill 9.0.3 released!

Scythebill 9.0.3 is now available!

If you're coming to Scythebill 9 from 0.8.6, there's two new big features.

First, Scythebill supports entering "sp." sightings and hybrids.   So, finally there's some way to record that Eurasian x Short-toed Treecreeper you couldn't quite identify, or that Western x Glaucous-winged Gull that no one should ever identify (to just one species).

More interestingly, Scythebill now supports the International Ornithologists’ Union checklist (version 3.2), hereafter known as the "IOC list".  You can enter, or display, or generate reports with either checklist, and it's just a quick flip of the taxonomy chooser at the top of the window to do so.  (EBird exports are always generated with the Clements taxonomy, so you can now use the IOC list to keep your own sightings, but still export to EBird.)


To make this mapping a bit simpler, I've corrected a variety of (seeming) errors in the Clements checklist.

There's also a number of smaller features, like:

  • An "Export..." menu option to get all your data out of Scythebill into one flat file.
  • "Report an issue" and "Open containing" folder menu items
  • "Town" and "park" location types
  • Fixes for window sizing on Windows operating systems
  • A number of performance improvements


If you're coming to this version from an earlier beta, this adds (relative to 9.0.2):

  • A new "Export..." menu option that fully exports all your sightings into a flat file, all data preserved. (Do let me know if the format here suffices, especially for import into other software.)
  • A number of fixes to the mapping to the IOC taxonomy - about 30+ splits properly identified, and 70 odd renamed subspecies that had not been addressed before.
  • An "Open containing window" menu option that will get you to the folder where your Scythebill data is stored, in case you've forgotten.
  • Species entry by scientific name was broken in an earlier revision;  it's now working again.

Saturday, January 5, 2013

Scythebill 9.0.2 released (beta)


Scythebill 9.0.2 is now available for download!  This version - still a beta of Scythebill 9 - includes some fixes and refinements to the IOC support made available in Scythebill 9.0.1.

The most important fix should make Windows users much happier, especially those with small displays.  Scythebill could size itself so that the bottom of its windows were hidden by the Windows taskbar, making some windows difficult-to-impossible to use.

Some of the small features added in this release:

  • Locations can now be classified as "towns" or "parks".
  • In Show Reports, you can get a list of just "sp."s or "hybrids".  This is especially useful when adapting to the IOC list (as this make it easier to find, say, that your Clements Ospreys are IOC Eastern/Western Osprey).
  • Added a "Report an issue..." link to the Help menu.
For a full list of changes, see the Change log.

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

IOC 3.2 support now available (beta)!

Scythebill 9.0.1 is now available for download!  This version - please think of it as a beta - includes two major new features.

First, Scythebill supports entering "sp." sightings and hybrids.   So, finally there's some way to record that Eurasian x Short-toed Treecreeper you couldn't quite identify, or that Western x Glaucous-winged Gull that no one should ever identify (to just one species).

More interestingly, Scythebill now supports the International Ornithologists’ Union checklist (version 3.2), hereafter known as the "IOC list".  You can enter, or display, or generate reports with either checklist, and it's just a quick flip of the taxonomy chooser at the top of the window to do so.  (EBird exports are always generated with the Clements taxonomy, so you can now use the IOC list to keep your own sightings, but still export to EBird.)

More details on both features to come.  For now, please do use the comment area to let me know if you see any problems with either feature, and especially if you find any problems with IOC list entry.  There are some known issues:

  • I've made some modifications to the Clements list to make alignment far simpler.  In (nearly) all such cases, I'm quite confident the modifications correct errors in Clements, but feedback is highly appreciated!
  • There are quite a few subspecies in the IOC list that are not included in Clements (and a handful of newly described species).  In all these cases, you can't enter those subspecies;  if you open "Browse by species" and wander around, you'll see such subspecies struck through like this.  Supporting those subspecies would be quite nasty, so there's no immediate plans to fix this.  I suspect, though, that some of these are just renamed subspecies (which I'll happily fix).
  • In general, flipping back and forth between the two taxonomies works really well.  But there's some issues with this process when entering sightings - sometimes flipping from Clements to IOC and back to Clements doesn't give you quite what you started with (generally, a "sp." comes out the other end.)
And if you're wondering:  yes, the version jumped from 0.8.7 to 9.0.1.   That's intentional.  I think the old versioning scheme made Scythebill look less ready-for-prime-time than was deserved.