How to Install Belmaati TNs on your PDA ======================================== by billo << >> Plain text version of this document: http://bordeauxwine.org/pdahowto.txt This document published with Grutatxt, a program which totally rules. http://www.triptico.com/software/grutatxt.html +--------------------+------------+----------------+----------------------------------------+ |Version | Date | Author | Changes Made | +--------------------+------------+----------------+----------------------------------------+ | 1 |29-jul-2004 | billo | initial version | +--------------------+------------+----------------+----------------------------------------+ | | | | | +--------------------+------------+----------------+----------------------------------------+ Summary ------- If any of you have tried the "Parker in your Palm" product from eRobertParker.com, you know how helpful it is to have a large TN database at your fingertips... in a restaurant or a wine merchant, where a book is cumbersome or computer is unavailable. PIYP is cool, had over 40,000 notes or something back to 1992, but it has a few drawbacks: 1. It is the opinion of one man. (Or mostly one man, though I think Rovani's percentage of these is rather low...) 2. It only works on Palm OS. 3. It costs money. I have a notion to bring the diversity and depth of the TNs of our community to a free TN database that would work in any PDA (pocket PC, palm, sharp Zaurus, whatever). This document is your guide for getting this data onto your PDA, whether it's a Palm, PocketPC, Zaurus or whatever. High-Level Design ----------------- We want the TN database to be open, so the base format needs to be something importable into all software. For now, we've chosen CSV (comma-separated) format. This is not the best or most modern format, but it is easily importable into very popular software (like Excel or Access or FileMaker) and is also easy for people to write software with. Step one: get the files ----------------------- The files right now are located at http://bordeauxwine.org/pda.csv and http://bordeauxwine.org/dospda.csv The only difference between these files is that one is the "DOS" version, meaning it's the one you should get if you are an unfortunate soul who has to run Microsoft Windows. Users of other systems (Unix, Linux, Macintosh, etc.) should choose the first link. Depending on your browser, simply clicking on these links might not do what you expect. If you don't get a "save file..." dialogue box, then right click on the link and choose "Save link as..." or "Download file as..." or the equivalent thing on your browser. Step two: decide what you want to do ------------------------------------ So, how do you want to use this great data? Do you want to have it at your finger tips on your home or office PC? Or do you want to keep it in your PDA so you can whip it out in restaurants? Whatever you decide, the important thing is to understand what kind of application you will use, and what the search capabilites are of that app. This will lead you to the appropriate import method. Option: view the TNs in excel ----------------------------- This is probably the easiest option. Excel has some fairly powerful data sorting and searching capabilities. To view the db in excel, get the csv file (make sure you choose DOS or non-DOS format correctly), and select File->Open... This will bring up a file chooser box. It's likely that the pda.csv will not be initially visible in this window. You need to change the options so that "All Document" types are visible. Then you can navigate to where you save the pda.csv file, and open it. Excel should automatically recognize the columns and convert to excel. Then you can save as .xls format and use that going forward. One thing to keep in mind: the csv file will be updated periodically, so don't make changes to the notes that you don't mind losing the next time you import. Also, if you are not an expert at this sort of thing, write down the exact steps you used to import the data, so you can repeat it painlessly next time. If you are lazy, I have preconverted the notes to xls format here: http://bordeauxwine.org/pda.xls Note that this file may be slightly out of date compared to the CSV files, since this is a manual conversion step, and I am very lazy. Option: Access import --------------------- [looking for volunteer to do this and write it up in detail.] Option: Palm Documents-to-go ---------------------------- DataViz (http://www.dataviz.com/) has an application that lets you read excel files on Palm devices. You basically need to import into excel, then use the DTG desktop application to send the excel file to your PDA. [looking for volunteer to do this and write it up in detail.] Option: PocketPC Excel ---------------------- From EricP: Given the screen size issues with PDAs I do a few things to be able to see as much as possible on my ipaq. - Select the entire spreadsheet and change the font to size 8. If you've got great eyes, try 7. - Change the date column format to Month-Year. - I shrink the title column to a couple letters. This info is almost 100% duplicate info. There are some places where you may want to double check the title for second wine type things so I dont remove this column. - I shrink the country column to 1 letter so I can look at it later on my PDA if I need to, which I think will be rare. - Shrink the vintage column to fit 4 numbers. - Shrink the region column slighly by double clicking - Lastly I sort the sheet by YEAR, PRODUCER making scrolling lookups easy. Option: [Looking for more options] ---------------------------------- Think up something clever and let us know! Help ---- If you need help, please contact me by private message through the belmaati.com boards. I have huge gamma-ray powered spam filters, and chances are any email you send me will be incinerated at the outer perimeter of my defenses. Sorry, but that's what the Internet has come to. So if you send me email, and I don't answer, it's not because I don't like you. I most certainly do like you very much. Once you get me a private message on the boards, I can add you to my cleared list for email, and then we can be pals. billo@billo.com (Go ahead spammers. Spam that. It will do you no good, and I won't even feel it. Muhahaha.)