EMu 4.0.02

Support for RTL languages

Support for right-to-left (RTL) languages has been added to EMu. Arabic and Hebrew scripts are now supported, as are two additional left-to-right (LTR) languages, Greek and French (Canadian). The user interface has been modified to reverse the display of all controls and images when using RTL languages. Dynamic switching between RTL and LTR languages is supported.

A complete description of the support for RTL languages may be found in the Right To Left Language Support documentation.

Export Schedules Facility

The Export Schedules facility enables data to be exported on a regular basis. Data can be scheduled to be exported on anything from a daily to an annual basis. The export occurs outside working hours (generally early in the morning) and the results are stored on the EMu server. A user may then view the results and save / view the export files produced. The exported data may be processed by a filter to create the output format required (e.g. XML, CSV). The creation of a scheduled export is very similar to defining a report. A set of fields may be selected and the records may be sorted. A TexQL statement may be defined to limit the records exported.

The Export Properties dialogue box is shown below:

The Export Schedules facility provides two new modules:

• Schedules Module
  Schedules module holds one record per Scheduled Export containing the definition of the export.
  
• Exports Module
  Exports module holds one record per set of export files produced. When a Scheduled Export is run a new exports record is created containing the output of the export process.
  

A complete description of the Export Schedules facility can be found in the Export Schedules documentation.

Append values using the Import Facility

A complete description of the Import facility extensions can be found in the Appending data using the EMu Import Facility documentation.

Arc Explorer Report Viewer

A new report type supporting ESRI's ArcExplorer (a freely distributable GIS viewer) allows latitude / longitude points to be plotted on maps. The ArcExplorer viewer allows layers to be defined and enabled / disabled within the viewer. Data points may have associated metadata which is displayed when a point is selected.

A complete description of the Arc Explorer report type can be found in The ArcExplorer Report documentation.

Improved time to save records

• Global edits
• Data imports
• Bulk update tools (e.g. locations, condition checks, etc.)
• Single record insertions / edits

Alpha channel support in images

The generation of thumbnail and other resolution images has been enhanced to ensure the alpha channel (or transparency plane) is maintained in generated images. For image formats that do not support transparency (e.g. JPEG), the colour defined in the alpha channel is used as the background colour for derived images.

Improved attaching and importing of multimedia

When adding multimedia, either by attaching an image to a Multimedia module record or by importing a set of images, a link is created to the original image. The link is used to generate the thumbnail and resolutions for the image. Using a link removes the need to copy an image into the EMu cache before saving it to the EMu server, hence saving time and disk space on the local computer.

Generate Resolution settings saved

The settings of the Generate Resolution dialogue box found in the Multimedia module are now saved between invocations and across sessions. The last set of values entered is always displayed when the dialogue box is next displayed.

Option to suppress module compaction

The size of the Audit and Statistics modules will grow over time as more records are added to them. Since both modules have a very small / non-existent number of record changes it is not necessary to compact these tables as part of the weekly maintenance schedule. A new option COMPACT="no" may be added to a module's emuoptions file (stored in the module directory on the EMu server) to skip the compaction of the module when maintenance is performed.

Tasks tab added to Locations module

The standard EMu Tasks tab has been added to the Locations module. The addition allows location based activities to be defined along with the accompanying notifications. For example, a task may be specified requiring a location to be checked after a given time period.

User's group added to status bar

The group to which the current user belongs has been added to the EMu status bar. The status bar now displays the user name, group and service used by the EMu client, along with the current mode and any messages.

Abort connection to incorrect client

The EMu login process has been enhanced to allow the login process to be terminated and the login dialogue redisplayed if an incorrect service is specified. The enhancement is useful for clients who run multiple clients on the one EMu server.

Adjust precision of single latitude / longitude centroids

EMu 4.0.01 saw the introduction of a new set of rules, provided by the EMu Natural History Special Interest Group, regarding the implied precision when calculating centroid values. The rules indicated that for all centroid values calculated an extra digit of precision should be applied to the resultant latitude / longitude point. A number of clients have indicated that implying extra precision where only a single latitude / longitude pair is specified provides a "false" level of accuracy. The centroid calculator has been changed to no longer imply extra precision where a single latitude / longitude pair is specified.

About box information

A Copy to Clipboard button has been added to the EMu About dialogue box. The button is used to place a copy of the EMu connection and settings information onto the Windows clipboard. Once on the clipboard the information may be pasted into emails, etc. to help with issue diagnosis.

A sample of the information generated is displayed below:

[Client Information]
Client Version: 4.0.01 (1003291)
Application Name: KE EMu (Art)
Application Path: C:\Projects\EMu\Clients\Art\emu.exe
Cache Path: C:\Documents and Settings\bern\Local Settings\Application Data\KESoftware\Cache

[Server Information]
Server Version: 4.0.01 (1003291)
Server Path: /home/ke/emu/artdemo
Server Media Path: /home/ke/emu/artdemo/multimedia

[Texpress Information]
Texpress Version: 8.2.8
TexAPI Version: 3.1.018
Uname: SunOS kedoo 5.10 Generic_118855-36 i86pc i386 i86pc

[Connection Information]
Host: kedoo
User: emu
Group: Admin
Service: 20136

[Language Information]
Prompt Language: 0
Data Language: 0
Language List: 0;1
Language Delimiter: ;:;

Improved auditserver processing

The EMu auditserver facility handles the processing of all audit trail information. If a large number of records is modified in a small period of time, the server may not be able to process records at the rate at which they are created. In this case it falls behind and catches up when the system load is lighter. The auditserver has been optimised to allow for faster processing of audit trail records. It is about ten times faster than previous version. To take advantage of this improvement the EMu server must have the XML::Parser::Expat and File::FcntlLock perl packages installed.

Audit operation statistics gathered weekly and monthly

The audit operations statistics (for every user in every table for every operation and the number of times the user has performed the operation) are now gathered on a weekly and monthly basis as well as the previous daily basis. The new statistics allow weekly and monthly reports to be produced detailing the operations performed by each user on all modules.

References tab added to Conservation Module

A new References tab has been added to the Conservation module. The proposed change was discussed on emuusers.org and submitted for implementation. The tab allows users to enter as many references as necessary to support whatever Conservation activity is being recorded. It contains four fields:

• Reference: Attachment field to Bibliography module.
• Kind: Controlled by Lookup List (values to be determined by individual institutions). Would contain values that describe the kind of reference source, such as Background Info, Object Function.
• Page/Figure/Plate: Text field. Would contain citation-level information such as fig. 1, p. 24. This field gives the user the option not to create a Citation record in the Bibliography module.
• Caption/Text: Text field. Allows the users to copy the cited text if appropriate.

If an existing Multimedia record has a new file attached to it with the same name as an existing file but with a different file extension, then both the old and new files will be removed when the record is saved.

The old file is now removed and the new file kept in the Multimedia repository.

The first time the Narrative or Summary tab is visited in the Narratives module the narrative text is displayed correctly. On the second and subsequent visits the narrative text is not displayed and the HTML editor cannot be activated.

The narratives text is displayed correctly on all visits to the Narratives and Summary tabs. The HTML editor can be activated.

The copying and pasting of records from List mode may copy empty virtual fields, even if they contain values, where some of the records selected do not contain attachments.

The contents of all virtual fields are now copied correctly when records are copied from List mode.

The fifoserver may generate an error where the data returned contains a format specifier (e.g. %n). In this case an empty value is returned rather than the correct value.

The correct data is returned from the fifoserver even when the data contains a format specifier.

The calculation of the earliest and latest date ranges for circa dates where the date is BC and a month and day are specified is incorrect. For example, the date 2000BC/12/1 generates an earliest and latest date of -2000. The correct earliest and latest date is -2000/12/1.

The correct circa date ranges are generated for BC dates where a month and day are specified.

The master version of an image may be fetched when running a report where the multimedia column in the report is in an attached record. For example, if a Loans report contains multimedia for each Catalogue record attached, the images displayed will use the master image, even if a smaller resolution is specified in the report definition.

The "best fit" image based on the resolution specified in the report definition is now used rather than the master image.

The keyboard shortcut, CTRL+SHIFT+END does not select all records from the current record to the last record in List and Contact Sheet modes. Only the current and last records are selected.

All records from the current record to the last record are now selected.

If a record has multiple attachments on the Multimedia tab and one of the attached records does not have any media associated with it (that is, a Multimedia record without any file, URL or reference), the thumbnail of the previous attachment will be displayed for the empty attachment rather than a blank thumbnail.

A blank thumbnail is now displayed where an attached Multimedia record does not contain any file, URL or reference.

The attachment of an image containing invalid EXIF Interop data in the Multimedia module may result in the client hanging.

The EXIF parsing has had more checks added to ensure that invalid EXIF tags do not cause the client to hang.

The Extended data is not displayed in the Groups module when thumbnails are displayed in Details mode.

The Extended data is now displayed correctly.

The attach media drop down button on the Multimedia tab in the Multimedia module may appear as a single button rather than a drop down list containing File, URL and Reference for clients who have modified the standard Multimedia module (that is, sub-classed it).

The attach media drop down button now displays correctly.

The contents of a multi-column grid may lose their row associations where the grid contains more than one virtual column for the same attachment. The row associations are affected by the Move, Sort, Delete, Insert, Clear, Paste and Insert Paste operations available when right-clicking the grid. The issue may also occur when using drag and drop to rearrange rows within the grid.

The row associations are maintained correctly for all row based operations.

The auditserver may produce duplicate audit records if the previous instance of the server was shutdown at an "inopportune" time while processing data. The problem only arises where the auditserver was processing records and the offset of the records processed was not saved correctly when terminated.

Duplicate records are no longer produced.

The dialogue box displayed when generating a crystal report that prompts for a parameter may display broken images for the OK and Cancel buttons. The only means of closing the dialogue box is to click on the X in the top right of the form.

The OK and Cancel buttons now display correctly.

The bibliography information for Bibliography records that have three or more links via Published In may not be updated correctly when one of the link records is modified. For example, if a citation record links to an article record which in turn links to a Journal record and the journal information is modified, the article record is updated correctly, however the journal information in the citation record may not be updated.

All bibliography information is updated correctly regardless of the number of links in the record.

The error Column operation performed before row has been accessed may appear when deleting a Multimedia record from the Multimedia repository.

The error no longer appears when deleting a record.

The Conservation tab in both the Loans and Events modules may not display a list of all conservation records associated with the current Loans or Events record. The problem occurs for clients who use the "new" version of the Conservation module.

All associated conservation records are displayed correctly in Loans and Events records.

A Grid Range Index error may appear when dragging and dropping rows in a grid where the dragged row is empty and it is dropped on the Insertion row at the bottom of the grid.

The error no longer appears when dragging empty rows in a grid to the Insertion row.

The error Column operation performed before row has been accessed may appear after sorting records in either List or Contact Sheet modes. The error occurs sporadically.

The error no longer appears after sorting records.

The last record displayed in List mode may be duplicated in the grid. The records retrieved are correct but not displayed correctly. The issue only arises if a false match is found in the matching records (very rare).

The correct data is displayed for all records in List mode, even if false matches occur.

An Access Violation error message may appear when selecting a Thesaurus record where Valid is set to No. The error appears after the dialogue box displaying The term term is not valid for selection and so is being discarded is dismissed.

The error message no longer appears when selecting invalid Thesaurus records.

The username and service displayed in the status bar at the bottom of the client form may appear centred in the bar rather than on the right hand side. The issue only occurs if Shortcuts is enabled.

The username and service are always displayed on the right hand side of the status bar.

The form window may appear truncated on the right when opening a module that was last viewed maximised and the Save Last Position and Save Last Size options are enabled.

The module form is now displayed correctly.

The Modified time on the Reports Properties dialogue box may be an hour ahead of the current time. The issue only occurs when the client computer does not have daylight savings enabled.

The correct Modified time is displayed regardless of the daylight setting on the client computer.

The red background colour used by the Column Colour Registry entry, e.g.:
Group|Default|Table|eparties|Column Colour|NamLast|red
will appear as a white background on screens with 16 bits or less colour depth.

The red colour has been adjusted to still appear red on screens with 16 bits or less colour depth.

The Caption in a module form may have duplicate mode indicators appended to the module name, e.g.
Parties (1) - Search (1) - Search
The issue arises when switching between Prompt languages where the Caption for the module form has not been translated.

The correct module form Caption is now displayed.

The default Page View displays all prompts in English regardless of the Prompt language selected.

Language specific prompts are now displayed based on the Prompt language selected.

The auditserver may produce duplicate audit records if the previous instance was terminated while copying audit XML records. The copying only occurs after all existing records are processed, so the issue arises rarely.

Duplicate audit records are no longer produced if auditserver is terminated while copying audit XML records.

The Security, Audit and Admin tabs may not be displayed in the correct order for clients who use a modified version of the Multimedia module.

The Security, Audit and Admin tabs are now displayed in the correct order.

If a record containing calculated values (e.g. feet to metres, etc.) is dittoed into a new record and the calculated values are cleared, the Orig flag (which is used to determine which value is the one entered by hand and therefore which values are calculated) is not cleared when the record is saved.

The Orig flag is now cleared if all values for calculated fields are removed.

The font used to display data may not be set correctly where the selected font does not include a character for the current code page. In particular single value fields may exhibit the problem.

Only fonts containing characters for the current code page may be selected.

A deleted record may reappear in the Catalogue and Taxonomy modules if the background loads were not running when the deletion occurred and outstanding updates are required to the deleted record.

The background loads have been altered to ignore updates to deleted records.

The error Column operation performed before row has been accessed may occur if the first matching record is discarded while in Details mode. The same error may occur if you choose to delete the record.

The error no longer occurs when discarding / deleting the first record in Details mode.

The weekly and monthly statistics generated for operation by table by user may produce incorrect values for the number of operations performed.

The correct number of operations is now computed and stored.

The emuregdelete utility does not delete entries containing the owner of the Registry entry correctly (e.g. emu:System|Paths|ServerMediaPath|). The inclusion of the owner is intended to allow the deletion to be limited to entries owned by a given userid.

The correct Registry entries are deleted based on the userid supplied.

The time taken to move between matching records in Details mode may deteriorate the longer a module window is used. The issue occurs if the window is cached and is used often. Each use of the cached form results in slower times moving between records, particularly if the module has a lot of tab switching involved (e.g. Catalogue module).

The time required to move between records in Details mode no longer deteriorates for cached module forms.

The View Attachments button displayed next to a grid control may not be enabled where a grid contains a single attachment. The issue only arises if the attachment list is computed by the client, rather than being stored in the record (rare).

The View Attachment button is now enabled for a single attachment in a grid control.

The weekly maintenance may fail on modules with a small number of records where the size of the record contents vary greatly (e.g. Groups module). Only the affected module(s) are left off-line, all other modules are operational. The issue was caused by an incorrect configuration being generated.

The weekly maintenance now completes correctly for modules where the record size varies greatly.

Collection Events and Site records containing invalid latitude and / or longitude values may display an invalid value error message even after the value has been corrected. The issue only affects natural history clients who upgraded to the common Lat / Long tab where records already contained invalid values (due to the initial data migration).

The record may now be saved when the invalid value is corrected.

The Close button on the Summary dialogue box, displayed after sorting records, may not close the form. The X button in the top right hand corner of the form may be used successfully.

The Close button now functions correctly.

The tool bar may not have the correct length when Shortcuts are enabled and the Save Last Size option is disabled. The right hand end of the tool bar will be truncated.

The tool bar now displays correctly.

If saving a record fails because a mandatory field has not been filled, the error message form may be hidden behind the module form. The issue only arises if the module switched tabs to focus on the field that is not filled. In this case, the module form cannot be selected as the hidden error message has focus. It appears the client has frozen.

The mandatory error message is now displayed on top of the module form, even if tabs are switched to display the offending field.

The conversion of longitude values between DMS (Degrees / Minutes / Seconds), DM (Degrees / Minutes) and decimal may not occur in the Collection Events module when importing data via the Import facility or via texload.

The conversion of longitude values always occurs when using the Import facility or texload.

Some video and audio file formats may not be playable within the EMu client on Windows Vista and Windows 7. Launching an external viewer will result in the media playing correctly.

All video and audit file formats registered with Vista and Windows 7 now play correctly.

Audit Trail records may be duplicated for clients who installed a pre-release version of EMu 4.0.01 and then upgraded to the official release at a later date. The duplicates occur as the pre-release version installed an audit processing plugin and the official release installed another audit processing plugin. As the pre-release plugin was not removed, each audit record was processed twice.

The pre-release plugin is removed as part of the EMu 4.0.02 installation.

The Summary dialogue box may be hidden behind the sorted module where a sort was performed and a summary requested while in Details mode.

The Summary dialogue box is placed on top of the sorted module when displayed.

The Reports Properties dialogue box may not display the name of the report file, its size and modified time.

The correct Report Properties information is now displayed.

The Import Identifier and System Identifier fields are dittoed when either the ditto all or ditto tab command is selected. As these fields relate to the creation of the record via the Import facility they should not be dittoed.

The Import Identifier and System Identifier are no longer dittoed.

In very rare circumstances an active form my become hidden behind an inactive form (e.g. the Save form hidden behind the module form). The issue only occurs if EMu is made the active application (via ALT+TAB) while a form was being created.

The active form is always placed on top of the inactive form.

A user may be able to see records that should be hidden by Record Level Security (RLS). The issue only occurs where the base security system has been augmented with column specific values via the Security Registry entry, e.g.:
Group|Molluscs| Table|ecollectionevents|Security|Display|SecDepartment=Molluscs
The same issue may cause the Summary of sorted records to be slow.

Users can no longer view hidden records where the base security system has been adjusted.

The thumbnail image displayed in Details mode when view Thumbnail is enabled may not appear on the far right side of the form. The Issue only arises if Save Last Size and Save Last Position are enabled and the module form is not the default size.

The thumbnail image is always displayed on the right hand side of the form.

Multimedia files larger than 2 Gb are not handled correctly. Any file over 2 Gb will result in a zero sized media file being produced.

Multimedia files over 2 Gb are now handled correctly.

A List out of bounds error may occur when deleting a row from the Latitude / Longitude List gird. The issue only occurs if none of the existing Latitude / Longitude entries has Preferred set to Yes.

The error message no longer appears.

An Access Violation error may be listed in the Import report when importing records into the Taxonomy module. The affected records are not imported.

The error message no longer appears and the records are created correctly.

If a user double clicks on a group name while using the Group Retrieve dialogue box, all records in the module are retrieved, rather than the records in the group. The issue only arises for static groups.

Double clicking on a static group now retrieves the record in the group only.

The Import facility may create multiple versions of the same attachment record where the data contains non-ASCII characters. The issue only occurs for clients who have their base EMu language encoding set to UTF-8 (that is langcode=utf8).

A single version of the same attachment record is created where the data contains non-ASCII characters.

The error message AlsoSearch column column does not exist may appear when defining an AlsoSearch Registry entry where the columns to search are virtual columns that refer to the initial AlsoSearch column.

For example, the Registry entry:

Group|Default|Table|ethesaurus|Also Search|TerTerm| RelRelatedTerms

indicates the column RelRelatedTerms should also be searched when TerTerm is searched. The RelRelatedTerms column is a virtual column pointing to the TerTerm column in the Thesaurus module. So when RelRelatedTerms is searched it looks up TerTerms, which causes RelRelatedTerms to be also searched again. EMu detects the loop and displays the error message.

The error message is no longer displayed when the Also Search loop is detected.

If a number of records are attached to a control in Query mode (that is, is displayed in the control), the attached records cannot be cleared by using the DEL key or backspacing over the control contents.

The DEL and backspace key can now be used to clear attached records in Query mode.

The Publish on Internet and Publish on Intranet fields have associated flag fields used by some web based searches to check whether a record may be viewed on the web. In some instances the flag fields may be out of sync with the Publish on fields (that is, the field has a value of Yes and the flag is set to N). The field and its associated flag value should always be in sync.

Checks have been added so that when a record is saved the Publish On fields and their associated flag values are synchronised to ensure they always reflect the same state.

The emulogger facility allows the standard configuration file (etc/logger) to be replaced with a localised version in local/etc/logger. A better mechanism would allow the local configuration to override entries in the base file rather than replace the configuration file completely. Such a set up provides a useful means of adding new services without the need to update the local configuration file.

The local configuration file now augments the entries in the base configuration file, rather than replacing them.

The Field Help module does not contain records for reference columns, that is column names ending in Ref, Ref_tab and Ref_nesttab. These columns are not accessible from within the EMu client, however the columns may be used for other purposes (e.g. web page design).

Reference fields have been added to the Field Help module.

The Summary and Extended data calculated for the Groups module does not generate values suitable for multilingual systems.

The Summary and Extended data generated is now multilingual.

An error message is displayed when invalid characters are found in EXIF data fields, forcing the EXIF data to be discarded. In most cases it would be better to skip the invalid character(s) and insert the EXIF data.

Invalid characters in EXIF data are converted to a '?' character allowing the data to be extracted rather than discarded.

A very large hierarchy (e.g. the taxonomic hierarchy) may cause Lookup List searches to deteriorate when retrieving values from the hierarchy. The issue only occurs where the hierarchy contains many levels with a large number of terms at each level.

The Lookup List values for hierarchies are clustered together eliminating the deterioration in search times.

The Image Display Registry entry only looks for images stored in the etc/images directory on the EMu server. The local/etc/images directory should be checked first to allow sites to provide localised images.

The local/etc/images directory is checked before etc/images for images.

If a number of TWAIN devices are registered on the EMu client machine, moving from record to record in the Multimedia module may be slow. Each twain device is queried as each record is displayed causing a long delay if multiple devices are registered.

The Multimedia module now checks for the existence of TWAIN devices when the module is invoked rather than between each record displayed.

The Open and Save buttons on the Reports Properties dialogue box may cause confusion as to their purpose. The buttons should be renamed to better indicate their functionality.

The Open button has been renamed to Download and the Save button renamed to Upload. The Download dialogue box title has been changed to Download Report to Edit and the Upload dialogue box title changed to Update Report to EMu.

Many modules contain date and date ranges in their Summary and Extended data calculations. The formatting of the date(s) depends on the date order (DMY, MDY, YMD) used by the EMu server, however in some instances partial dates may not format correctly causing "invalid" dates to be displayed.

Partial dates are not formatted correctly.