Status and Future of J-Bird Features (Version 0.5.2)

Data fields associated with observations

• Region
• Trip date
• Trip locality
• Trip keywords
• Trip notes
• Observer name
• Genus
• Species
• Family
• Common name
• Species notes

Database capabilities

• Load master species list. Five functional methods. The goal is to read in data from a variety of sources. Currently, J-Bird can read in
  • a list of World birds from Sibley and Monroe that is maintained by Rolf A. de By,
  • the CINFO list of World birds in either English or French,
  • the Checklist of North American Birds that is available at the website of the American Ornithologists' Union, and
  • a file of comma-separated values (CSV), dBASE file (.DBF), Microsoft Excel spreadsheet (.xls), a table in a web page (HTML table) that contains family, genus, species, and common names, and
  • results of a query to a relational database using an SQL query and Java drivers that are provided by the user.
  
  The database builder is actually a separate application that needs to be run only once.


• Ticking of species. Fully functional. Notes can be associated with both trips and observations of individual species. Numbers of individual observed can also be recorded for each species (but only when ticking from checklists).
  
  
• Checklists. Fully functional (J-Bird 0.4.1). Checklists are subsets of the master species list that can be used to tick species and for preparing summaries. They can be created, edited, and used to tick observed species. Also, they can be included in trip reports and species lists to indicate which species could have been observed but were not seen. Checklists can be organized hierarchically. Each checklist has a parent checklist from which species are selected when creating the checklist. It is possible to include in a checklist species that are not included in the parent checklist.
  
  Checklists can be assigned to either regions or to individual trips as preferred checklists for use when editing ticks on trips or when creating trip reports.
  
  Checklists can be imported from files of comma-separated values (CSV), dBASE (.DBF) files, Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, tables in WWW pages (HTML tables), and from arbitrary relational databases (using drivers and queries that are supplied by the user).



• Pop-up images for life and regional ticks. Fully functional. Can be turned on and off. The image files that are displayed can be changed by editing the options file.
  
  
• Sounds played for life ticks, regional ticks, and trip ticks. Fully functional (J-Bird 0.1.2). J-Bird is installed with sound turned off to avoid difficulties on systems that do not support sound. You can turn on sound by modifying J-Bird preferences. Click Edit -> Preferences. The preferences dialog box can be used to enable sound and to select alternative sound files to be played.
  
  Sound bites that are included with J-Bird were graciously provided by the Borror Laboratory of Bioacoustics at Ohio State University ( http://blb.biosci.ohio-state.edu/). They include:
  • Life tick - Canyon Wren (Catherpes mexicanus)
  • Region tick - Rufous-browed Peppershrike (Cyclarhis gujanensis)
  • Trip tick - Pale-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus guatemalensis)
  • Duplicate tick for trip - Red-cockaded woodpecker (Picoides borealis)
  The sound recordings are (P) Borror Laboratory of Bioacoustics, Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, all rights reserved.
  
  
• Editing capabilities
• Change name of region. Fully functional.
• Delete region and all trips and ticks within it. Fully functional.
• Delete region and move all trips to one other region. Fully functional.
• Edit trip fields, including region. Fully functional.
• Delete a trip and all ticks associated with it. Fully functional.
• Change an observer's name. Fully functional.
• Delete an observer and all of that observer's ticks. Fully functional.
• Modify notes associated with a species observation. Fully functional.



• Dump/restore of raw data files. Fully functional. Data in internal database tables are dumped into files in CSV format. Tables can be restored from CSV files.



• Trip reports. Fully functional (J-Bird Version 0.1.1). Trip reports can be generated that contain locality, key words, notes about trips and species lists. Ticks can be identified by observer. And, species notes can be included in species lists. Trip reports may include unseen species that are on a checklist that is selected to be included in the trip report. Reports are generated in html and can be displayed in a web browser or saved into a file. Reports can be printed from a web browser. The automatic display of reports in a web browser works on Windows Mac OS X, and Linux.



• Species lists. Fully functional (J-Bird 0.1.3). It is possible to generate lists of observed species in the database. Examples include life-lists, region-lists, or lists for specific time periods or months of the year. Lists can be generated without adornment, or they may include one of the following: check-boxes, earliest date observed, most recent date observed, or the number of number of trips on which species were seen. Lists can be saved as web documents (HTML) and as files of comma-separated values (CSV). Latent features that have been written and work but require other unimplemented features before they will be available include: ability to include in lists unseen species from a checklist and the ability to display the sum of all individuals seen of species.



• Species count summaries. Fully functional (J-Bird 0.1.2). It is possible to generate tables that summarize the number of species observed. For example, you can display the number of species observed by each observer in each region. Table rows can be sorted interactively according to values in a selected column. Tables of counts can be saved as comma-delimited files (CSV) or as web documents (HTML).



• Query ticks / export ticks. Mostly functional (J-Bird 0.2.0). Sightings can be queried to produce tables. Queries can be restricted by region, observer, date, month of year. (It is not yet possible to restrict queries by trip locality, trip keywords, or on the basis of text in notes.) All fields that are associated with sightings can be displayed (i.e., date, common name, scientific name, family, observer, notes, region, trip locality, trip keywords, and trip notes). Tables can be displayed on the screen, displayed in a web browser, or saved to files as either comma-separated values (CSV) or as web documents (HTML). In tables that are displayed on the screen, rows can be sorted interactively by values within selected columns.



• Multiple lists of common names. Non-functional. Database table exists and contains the common names that are associated with the master list. No method exists for importing or exporting other common name lists, and no method exists for selecting which list of common name will be used to display names. But, once these capabilities are added, the program is ready to make use of the selected list.



• Transaction processing. Implemented but not thoroughly proofed and tested. Some actions such as ``delete all trips in a region" are completed by several small transactions with the underlying database. Transactions have been structured so that if parts of a transaction fails, the entire action fails. The implementation is a first approximation and may be completely rewritten in the future.

Options

• Switch between common names and scientific names. Fully functional, but slow going from scientific names to common names.



• Sound-file selection and playing. Mostly functional. It is possible to enable and disable playing of sounds for life ticks, region ticks and trip ticks as well as to select sound files that are not distributed with J-Bird. It is not yet possible to play a sound file in response to errors.



• Logging. Fully functional. J-Bird logs messages to a file as well as too a window that can be exposed and hidden at the will of the user. Additionally, pop-up windows appear to report certain errors or warnings. Pop-ups can be suppressed and messages that would have popped up will appear in both the log window and the log file. Information logged about database transactions is not as sophisticated as it might be.

Plans (subject to change without notice)

• Version 0.2.0 - Query/export individual ticks.



• Version 0.3.0 - Checklist building and editing.



• Version 0.4.0 - Species ticking from checklists - including counts.



• Version 0.4.1 - Checklist improvements.


• Ability to search for species in checklists.


• Preferred checklists for regions and trips.


• Import checklists.


• Internal table of species synonyms for imports (populated gradually by the user).


• Version 0.4.2 - Region/observer improvements.


• This release fixed a show-stopping bug in 0.4.1.



• Version 0.4.3 - Region/observer improvements.


• Add a main task panel for manipulating regions.


• Add a main task panel for manipulating observers.


• Trips - Get rid of commit button on the dialogs for creating/editing information about checklists (as for trips).



• Version 0.4.4 - Move J-Bird interface from hybrid AWT/Swing to entirely Swing.


• That means getting rid of the isolated windows for the tree of checklists and for the tree of trips.


• Drop the add/edit ticks main task in favor of ticking from checklists.



• Version 0.4.5 - Improvements to master list builder.


• Convert master list builder from Java AWT to Java Swing.


• Master list builder to uses steps like those used for importing checklists.


• Add capability of building master species lists from Excel spreadsheets.



• Version 0.4.6 - Unplanned - bug fixes.



• Version 0.5.0 - Import ticks.



• Version 0.5.1 - Separate data from software and distribute Mac OS X disk image file.



• Version 0.5.2 - Add keyboard accelerators and improve keyboard navigation.



• Version 0.5.3 - Keyboard navigation on ticking and checklist editing dialogs.



• Version 0.5.4 - Keyboard navigation on imports, although this may not come to pass because it will be difficult to implement key strokes on the clickable table headers.



• Version 1.0.0 - all of the above.


• Ticking - import, manual, export.


• Checklists - build, import, export, use for ticking, available for trip reports and species lists.


• Trip reports.


• Tick imports, queries and exports.


• List queries and exports.


• Species counts queries and exports.



• Version 2.0.0


• Taxonomy editing.



• Rename taxa.



• Reorder taxa using drag and drop.



• Add/remove taxa.



• Undo/redo.



• Query ticks based on text in locality, keywords, notes.


• A browser/editor from which one can do most anything that's possible with J-Bird.