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From: ronkko@cc.helsinki.fi
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.applications
Subject: SBase Professional 4: questions and answers
Message-ID: <1991May25.102224.1@cc.helsinki.fi>
Date: 25 May 91 08:22:24 GMT
Sender: news@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Uutis Ankka)
Organization: University of Helsinki
Lines: 105

Here is some questions concerning the new Superbase Professional 4, and also
the answers I got from a member of the Superbase programming team (Thank you, 
Tim! :-). I supppose this data is useful also for other people, so I posted 
it here... 

*****************************************************************************
> 1) Is this SBPor 4 still dongle protected?

No. Protection is now by program registration. Your name,
organisation and serial number are encrypted into the program during
installation. These details are then displayed on the copyright and
about banners.

> 2) Is the upgrade price same for v. 2.0 and 3.0 owners? Because I have 
> already upgraded once from 2.0 to 3.0, I would naturally be pleased to see 
> some benefit from that investment:
 
I don't know the exact numbers, but it is cheaper to upgrade from
V3.0x than from 2.0x. In the past, upgrade prices have generally
reflected the difference in retail price. Thus I would expect 2.03
users to pay the 3.0 price + the upgrade fee (or maybe a little
less).

> 3) Is it OK if I fax my upgrade order, instead of mailing? Or is it even 
> possible to email my order? (That would be the most convenient way! But of 
> course if you need necessarily my signature that is out of question...)

I believe the upgrade requires the return of the original disks as
proof of purchase. It's a little hard to get disks through a fax
machine (although I'm sure some will try :-)

> 4) Does it support HAM or even Dynamic HiRes pictures? Because the latter 
> format enables as realistic digitized pictures as Amiga can handle without 
> additional hardware, I really hope you ad this support if it is still 
>  missing. It would be extremely useful for realistic photography databases! 
> (And it should be possible, because there are already utilities, which can 
> show Dynamic HiRes pictures on screen and also multitask nicely with other 
> programs, e.g. Shazam from Fred Fish Disk 449.)

In theory, (i.e. it says so in the spec), although it is currently
broken. I know it's a fine distinction (and quite academic) but in
there and broken is different to not in there (As far as we are
concerned, it converts it from adding new functionality to fixing a
bug, which gives it a better chance of getting through internal
politics!)

> 5) Is it possible to have multiple fonts (also proportional ones!) and 
> individual text formatting within a text field (e.g. some words of a text 
> string plain, others italics, etc.)? 

No. Fields may be any font or style, but they are constrained to that
single font/style combination. There's nothing to stop you putting
tag codes in there and interpreting those tags later (we had a client
did just this in Windows, and produced as a result a regular monthly
commercial satellite TV guide from SB data files).

((This means that SBase is still unsuitable for bibliographic database, at least
for scientific use, where you need some typographical info to show latin words,
genes, isotopes etc. :-( ))

> 6) Is there PostScript support? (If there is not, please ad it soon! 
> Compugraphic Outline font support would be also nice:-)

1st part, no. 2nd part: we will support any font technology that is
supported by the OS. I don't believe that the Intellifont/Bullet
technology used by Gold disk has a long future (speculation). Beyond
this I am not prepared to say :-)

> 6) Is there any way to create by default an icon for a database, so that you 
> don't have first to load Superbase to open certain database?

Icons can be added to files with the following extensions: SBF (data
files), SBV (form files) SBP (program files). Make sure the icon is
of type "Project" and that its default tool is SBpro4. Creating such
icons is easy under 2.0, but just a little harder under 1.3.

> 7) Does it fully support overscan (also under Amigados 1.3)? (At least the 
> forms editor of 3.0 did not use the horizontal overscan area).

Yes. However it will only use the overscan area that has been set in
Preferences.

> 8) Is the new file requester (which was mentioned in the brochures) fully 
> Amiga-style and interactive? (The separate path selection of 3.0 was 
> extremely impractical and MSDOSish!).

It's brilliant! (I wrote it :-)) Basically it splits into 2 lists;
files in one and directories/volumes/assigns in the other. It is
fully asynchronous, i.e. you don't have to wait for it to finish
reading the directory before selecting / changing (although that's
only really a problem if you're restricted to floppies).

..

Tim.
************************************************************************ 


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  Reijo Ronkko     University of Helsinki, Dept. of General Microbiology,
                   Mannerheimintie 172, 00300 Helsinki, FINLAND
                   Fax +358-0-4735426
  
                   Ronkko@cc.helsinki.fi
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