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.

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