SubForms and Photographs in LO Base

users
#1

Hi All

I can REALLY use some help!!

I'm using LO 3.40 on Linux Mint 9 KDE.

I'm trying to re-set-up my Members Database on this platform with a SubForm to record eMails and Photographs. I had this working, (without the SubForm), in OO Base but it will not open in LO so am trying to re-create it.

Will the SubForm be a part of the main Form or will it come up over the top of the Main Form with a button? If the latter how do you do this Button?

The main question however is 'How do you do SubForms?' I have gone through all the Forums and Googled for details and the more I dig the more confused I get!! AND nothing seems to work and different "answers" seem to contradict each other.

Can anyone give me straight forward step-by-step instructions please? I have my main 'Contacts Table' and an 'eMail Table' and a Main Form called 'Contacts'. I have set the Master Key called "ID" to be the link. But that's as far as I get.

Photographic question - I have read that LO keeps all it's records in memory when you open it so if you have large records this slows the whole thing down (just what is happening to me!!). Each of my records has three graphics, a 'Status Marker' and two thumbnail Photos. Then I came across an article to "LINK" to the photos on the Database rather than to include them, (which is the default).

This seems like a good direction to go in because it will cut down the size of each record and would give me the added benefit of automatically being able to update the photos on-the-fly by just over-writing the photo in the folder with a new one which the DB will fetch next time you open it!!

But again same situation as above. All the answers I find on the net seem contradictery.

Again has anyone got clear step-by-step instructions for this.

Also are there any downsides to doing this?

Thanks in advance

Ian Whitfield
South Africa.////

#2

In news:4E087ECC.1040703@telkomsa.net,
Ian Whitfield <whitfield@telkomsa.net> typed:

Hi All

I can REALLY use some help!!

I'm using LO 3.40 on Linux Mint 9 KDE.

I'm trying to re-set-up my Members Database on this
platform with a SubForm to record eMails and Photographs. I had this
working, (without the SubForm), in OO Base but it will not open in LO so
am
trying to re-create it.

Will the SubForm be a part of the main Form or will it
come up over the top of the Main Form with a button? If the latter how do
you do this Button?
The main question however is 'How do you do SubForms?' I
have gone through all the Forums and Googled for details and the
more I dig the more confused I get!! AND nothing seems to work and
different "answers" seem to contradict each other.

Can anyone give me straight forward step-by-step
instructions please? I have my main 'Contacts Table' and
an 'eMail Table' and a Main Form called 'Contacts'. I have set the Master
Key called "ID"
to be the link. But that's as far as I get.

Photographic question - I have read that LO keeps all
it's records in memory when you open it so if you have
large records this slows the whole thing down (just what is happening to
me!!). Each
of my records has three graphics, a 'Status Marker' and two thumbnail
Photos. Then I came across an article to "LINK" to the photos on the
Database rather than to include them, (which is the default).

This seems like a good direction to go in because it will
cut down the size of each record and would give me the added benefit
of automatically being able to update the photos
on-the-fly by just over-writing the photo in the folder with a new one
which the DB will
fetch next time you open it!!

But again same situation as above. All the answers I find
on the net seem contradictery.

Again has anyone got clear step-by-step instructions for
this.
Also are there any downsides to doing this?

Thanks in advance

Ian Whitfield
South Africa.////

AFAIK, 3.4 is NOT recommended for production use yet? Use caution here.

#3

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AFAIK, 3.4 is NOT recommended for production use yet? Use caution here.

I'm confused as to why 3.4 is labeled as "Final" on the site, but it's
"not recommended for production use". What gives? Is this "final"
really an RC?

- --
Steven Shelton

#4

Because it's the development branch.

Davide

#5

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I'm confused as to why 3.4 is labeled as "Final" on the site, but
it's "not recommended for production use". What gives? Is this
"final" really an RC?

Because it's the development branch.

Oh, so we're moving to "even-numbered releases are development,
odd-numbered releases are stable"? Is that it?

If so, something probably needs to be said about this on the website
to clarify it for end users.

- --
Steven Shelton

#6

________________________________
From: Steven Shelton <steven@sheltonlegal.net>
To: users@global.libreoffice.org
Sent: Thu, 30 June, 2011 15:19:56
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: SubForms and Photographs in LO Base

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On 6/30/2011 11:12 AM, Davide Dozza wrote:

I'm confused as to why 3.4 is labeled as "Final" on the site, but
it's "not recommended for production use". What gives? Is this
"final" really an RC?

Because it's the development branch.

Oh, so we're moving to "even-numbered releases are development,
odd-numbered releases are stable"? Is that it?

If so, something probably needs to be said about this on the website
to clarify it for end users.

Steven Shelton

Hi :slight_smile:
There is a yellow warning triangle and exclamation mark ! beside the 3.4.x
series/branch. Also it firmly says "For early adopters only". The 3.3.x
series/branch has a big friendly green tick and words saying that it is the
stable branch. It could be a little bit clearer but i'm not sure how lol :wink:
Don't worry, lots of people miss those details too.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#7

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There is a yellow warning triangle and exclamation mark ! beside
the 3.4.x series/branch. Also it firmly says "For early adopters
only". The 3.3.x series/branch has a big friendly green tick and
words saying that it is the stable branch. It could be a little
bit clearer but i'm not sure how lol :wink: Don't worry, lots of
people miss those details too.

Well, yes, but "early adopters" doesn't imply "unfinished developer
version". It merely implies "people who want the latest one first
without subsequent bug fixes." The word "final" implies "production
ready". I didn't install 3.4 because the warnings made me look at the
release notes, which led me to believe there are known bugs that would
cause serious problems for my office, but what if I hadn't gotten it
from the website? What if someone had given it to me on a CD merely
labeled "3.4 Final"?

There needs to be some clearer information on the site, and if the
even-numbered release are "development" branches, then there should be
a warning for users when they install those versions, as well.

- --
Steven Shelton

#8

Its easy

The adopter with the triangle is in the vessel with the pestle and the stable which is able is the program that is true.

Please Please forgive me!

John B

#9

Hi :slight_smile:
[pointedly ignores the medieval Trekkie reference]

The 3.4.1 will be much better. Honest. And it's due to be released quite
soon. The 3.4.0 has been widely condemned as having been released toooo
hastily. Oddly, most people have been enjoying using it without any problems
but there are an unlucky few that have been forced back to the 3.3.3. I stayed
with the 3.3.2 more by luck than anything.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#10

Hi :slight_smile:
Good points. I hadn't thought of that but then i often rename installer files to
help me keep track of which is the most recently downloaded and hopefully make
the name a bit more meaningful to me. Perhaps some sort of pop-up or splash
screen or something during install?
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#11

Hi :slight_smile:
The 3.4.1 is due for release in the next few days
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleasePlan#3.4_release
It fixes a lot of the quirks and bugs of the 3.4.0.

Many OpenSource projects have 1 very stable branch for people that don't want to
upgrade often and would like to stick with 1 version for a year or more without
touching the machine. Corporate users, people with low bandwidth or people that
don't need all the extra latest new features. Ubuntu has it's LTS (long term
support), Debian has "stable" as does sliTaz and others. It's a bit like going
to see a movie a few weeks after it's been released or wearing comfortable
clothes rather than the latest fashion.

The 3.4.0 is not a great example of a development release because it was very
buggy but that does sometimes happen with development branch in most projects.
It's the risk you take if you want to try all the latest features and see the
direction the stable branch might be going in later.

Please wait a few days and see how the 3.4.1 looks or else return to the 3.3.3,
or use the guide to install both version on your machine so that you can compare
the differences.
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Installing_in_parallel

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#12

Hi Ian,

I'm trying to re-set-up my Members Database on this platform with a
SubForm to record eMails and Photographs. I had this working, (without
the SubForm), in OO Base but it will not open in LO so am trying to
re-create it.

Re your original file, what exactly do you mean, it will not open ? Do
you get an error message when trying to open it ?

Will the SubForm be a part of the main Form or will it come up over the
top of the Main Form with a button? If the latter how do you do this
Button?

Generally, the subform will be part of the main form. It can be
contained in a section of the document that, in theory at least, can be
made to be hidden depending on a condition set in the main form, i.e. so
it is only revealed when a certain condition is met. I have
unfortunately never managed to achieve this and conditional fields
appear to be hosed in at least some versions of LibreOffice at the
moment (judging by a recent bug report I read on freedesktop bugzilla).

The main question however is 'How do you do SubForms?' I have gone
through all the Forums and Googled for details and the more I dig the
more confused I get!! AND nothing seems to work and different "answers"
seem to contradict each other.

Can anyone give me straight forward step-by-step instructions please? I
have my main 'Contacts Table' and an 'eMail Table' and a Main Form
called 'Contacts'. I have set the Master Key called "ID" to be the link.
But that's as far as I get.

Did you manage to get this working in the end ? Tom Cloyd had a thread
running in this mailing list about how to get subforms working - did you
read that ?

This seems like a good direction to go in because it will cut down the
size of each record and would give me the added benefit of automatically
being able to update the photos on-the-fly by just over-writing the
photo in the folder with a new one which the DB will fetch next time you
open it!!

In the past, this problem has been managed by using a VARCHAR field to
store the complete path to the image file, and then writing a macro
associated to a button on your form that took that path and used the
file system to display the image in whatever image display software was
configured as default on the system.

You might like to read this thread to get you on your way :

http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=73329

However, with the release of OOo 3.2.1, it finally became possible to
bind an image control to a text field, and this text field was then
parsed to display the image pointed to by the value of the text field :

http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Base/New_features_in_3_1#Image_controls:_can_be_bound_to_text_database_columns.2C_interpreting_their_content_as_relative_link_to_the_image

I have never tried this feature, so have no idea whether it works in the
current versions of LibreOffice.

Alex

#13

I had similar things working in OOo Base, and they simply did not work the next time I tried them. If you have a similar problem, well, it seems that a bug has been introduced. I never did bother to figure out the problem, but rather, I punted while I decide what path is the least amount of work.