CompuServe Messages

Hi, Alain– The "review" that follows was written over a year ago; things (especially price) may have changed since then! After I sent a copy to Jim, he gave me some minor corrections and clarifications, still over a year ago, which I have edited in using [brackets]. My free ROCKDB.ARC in this forum's library includes a database of 300+ minerals with properties. Lanny is working up a database of all 3500+ recognized minerals, to be offered as shareware for a low price (see his recent message in this section). Aleph Enterprises offers a more complete database with manager for ~$500 (last time I checked). These are all mainly for identification, though they might be coupled to a catalog database, perhaps to MINLOG (I am none too sure of this in Aleph's). –Doug #107491 S12/Geology 17-Sep-93 21:49:30 Sb: Collectn catalog softwar Fm: Doug Mitchell 70621,702 Hi, folks– At the Colorado Gem&Mineral show today, I met Jim Beaver of Beaver Software Development, Inc. of Marietta, GA. His program, MINLOG, is not the large mineral database we have spoken of. But one lead leads to another, and I now have an address for MINCAT, which Jim described as a competitor to Aleph Enterprises' MINERAL which we have mentioned here. MINLOG is a Windows program that looks easy to use as a mineral or gemstone collection cataloger. Unlike a generalized database program, the user is not required to do any setting up of fields or reports, so it does appear worthwhile for many users whose needs are not too exotic. It requires Microsoft Windows 3.1 and at least 4 meg of RAM, using about 8 meg of hard disk space, though the manual has instructions for reducing this. More RAM will make MINLOG work faster, a good idea for slow machines. MINLOG is sold for $295 [$230, still last year], including any sales tax and shipping. To make a new entry, you type in a catalog number, more or less anything you choose, move to the mineral field (moving among fields, like many other operations, follows Windows standards; in other words, just click the field or press tab), start typing the mineral name, and after only a few letters, it will finish it for you or offer you a list of mineral names, in which you will start near what you typed. This makes spelling errors obsolete as long as the mineral is on MINLOG's list of about 600 minerals (more may be added later), with names standardized using Fleischer. As soon as a mineral is chosen, the Dana classification [approximate] and chemical composition, and crystal system will appear automatically if it was on that list. The composition is not a proper chemical formula, but something like "Hydrous Cu Carbonate". Move on to the location field. Again, after a few letters, MINLOG will try to fill in the locale details, including mine, city, state/province and nation, [oops, only state, province or nation are auto-filled] using known locales from Sinkankas' site list books. As with the mineral data, you can type anything in any of these fields if the database does not contain your mineral or site. There are other fields for size, cost data, where you got it and when, what you sold it for and to whom (a feature dealers should love; it will report on profits for each type) and so on. There is a field for a description and an "other notes" field, either or both of which could be used for individualized information (fluorescence for us FMS members, historical info for history buffs, etc.). The description has room for 4 lines of text, and the other notes has room for one line. This limits your flexibility, but helps you keep reports neat. The last field is for special keywords, listed in the manual but not (yet) offered in a list that can tell a lot of things compactly, like where among 16 (18? [50-60]) places it is stored, what specific sort of twin crystal it is, and other things. The specimens can be ranked for importance, so you know which ones to take to a bragging contest. There is alternate data entry form with different fields for gem stones which I paid less attention to; there were fields for color [oops, not color], cut, grade, and so on. The gemstone form links to an ownership history form where you can list a number (5, as I recall) [7] of previous owners. […] There are a large number of different sorts and reports built into MINLOG; you just press a "report" button, choose one from a list (it shows only a coded name you would need the manual to interpret, though Jim indicates he is likely to change it to offer a description of the report also [I think my notes say Jim has done this]), and you are placed into a print preview mode showing what will print if you press the "print" button, which can be zoomed and paged as with many other applications' print previews. Some of these predefined reports (88) are labels; there are 330 predefined reports in all [available from a pick list]. One can select specimens for certain elements, locales, and so on using these reports, though this is not really good enough in such matters to serve more than crudely as a mineral identification tool such as we have been talking about. MINLOG's predefined reports allow one to do without defining of reports for many purposes, a plus particularly for databasing novices. If they do not serve all your purposes, by purchasing Crystal Reports (by Crystal Services, a Vancouver company, for approx. $130) you can generate your own reports, or Jim will make customized reports for a price. MINLOG is "smart" about locality fields which you leave empty; many database programs make it hard or impossible to avoid cluttering a report with stray commas or unwanted space when fields are left empty. [Jim offers two free customized label reports with the package.] The databases this makes should be usable in Paradox [3.5], since Jim developed this with Borland's Object Vision, which has a lot in common with Paradox. The manual appeared at a brief glance to be easy to follow and comprehensive. Users who need a generalized database program for other uses, and are comfortable with defining their own fields and reports, may not need MINLOG, but even so the automatic fill-in feature makes it something that would be handy for data entry, and the ready reports would save some work. Anyone who does not understand what I mean by "reports" and "fields" may want to read the document which introduces database concepts with attention to mineral collecting, in my ROCKDB.ARC, which is free aside from downloading connect time, in this forum's library. [A demo version is available, for $5.] –Doug