Sunday, April 12, 2020

Scythebill 14.8.3: eleven small fixes

Scythebill 14.8.3 is now available, with a number of small fixes.  As always, download here, and let me know if you have any problems, either on Facebook or by email.

Font changes

Scythebill now uses a font for Windows and Linux that supports Japanese, Chinese, and Korean characters (as well as some other languages) which were not supported before.  There may be some slight visual changes associated with this;  let me know if anything seems markedly worse.

eBird improvements


Scythebill now uses the latest eBird breeding bird codes.  Most interestingly, "Singing male" is now "Singing bird" - did you know that in most songbird species, females sing too?  Also, there's new "Used nest" and "Wren/woodpecker nest building" codes..

Scythebill had a bad habit of importing some eBird groups as "spuhs" - when the scientific name of the group listed two subspecies (like "Dark-eyed Junco (Slate-colored) - Junco hyemalis hyemalis/carolinensis").  This is fixed.

Scythebill also now gives a much better error message when it gets a "MyEBirdData" import where the dates are formatted strangely.  This most often happens when users edit this CSV file in Excel.  As a reminder, you can always import an entire MyEBirdData file into Scythebill, and Scythebill will automatically exclude the already-imported sightings.

Finally, Scythebill Life List imports were largely failing, starting in 14.8.2.


Other improvements

Scythebill now tries to save window locations when you quit and restart, so if you'd like to keep your windows on one side of your screen or another, Scythebill will try to keep it there.

Scythebill, for at least some users, was showing an error screen when dragging images in from Chrome for photos. (You can attach photos from your disk or a website.)

The File menu looks a bit different in this release.  Most notably, I've moved and renamed the old "New..." and "Open..." menu items;  an occasional user would think that "New..." was the proper way to enter new sightings, which it most definitely is not!  ("New..." creates a new sightings file altogether.)

German translations are a bit better, thanks to advice from a native speaker.

Observado imports should now support the French language.

The Linux installer now asks before putting a shortcut on the desktop.