Release notes for J-Bird 0.5.2

Release date: 5 April 2007

Version 0.5.2.

    Keyboard navigation has been improved.  Shortcuts and Mnemonics have 
    been added.  Some home-made components have been rewritten to provide 
    keyboard navigation. And, keys can be used to cancel or commit most 
    dialogs that appear.  Keyboard navigation is summarized in Appendix E 
    of the user guide.

Bug fixes and minor improvements:

    - The installer for MS Windows can download and install Java
      on non-Vista computers that lack Java.

    - Both common names and scientific names can be displayed in trip
      reports and while ticking species on trips and checklists.

    - When importing ticks or checklists and imported species are
      absent from the master list, it is possible to skip the process
      of trying to locate synonyms for them.

    - When importing ticks or checklists and attempting to find
      synonyms for unknown species, values of create-synonym checkboxes
      are no longer carried forward.

    - Fixed bug: failed to delete a checklist that was referenced as
      a preferred checklist by a region or trip.

    - Fixed bug: if while importing checklists from a file one wished to
      backup to the beginning of the process, edit the file outside of 
      J-Bird, and then resume the process, the newly edited data file
      was ignored.

    - Fixed bug: when using the user interface to restore J-Bird from 
      dumped CSV files, the program failed if no suitable restore file
      was available.

    - Fixed bug: when browsing regions or observers, if one double-clicked
      on en entry to change its name but then decided not to change the name,
      an error message appeared.

    - Fixed bug: dialogs for editing checklists and trip ticks appeared too
      low on the screen on Windows XP.

Windows XP users: it is strongly recommended that you use Java Virtual
machine version 1.5.0 or 1.4.2_13 or newer. 

Windows Vista users: you must use a beta Java Virtual Machine 1.6.0 or newer.

HAZARDS FOR UPGRADERS

The following issue has not changed since J-Bird 0.5.1.
      If you are upgrading from version 0.5.0 or earlier, J-Bird should 
      move its data from the software directory to its new home when you 
      launch it for the first time.  It may take a moment, but it should 
      work.  If it does not, you may be able to find help in the the user 
      guide appendix "Debugging problems after upgrading from J-Bird 0.5.0 
      or earlier" http://j-bird.sourceforge.net/uapdxd.html.

KNOWN ISSUES AT TIME OF RELEASE:

The following issue has not changed since J-Bird 0.5.1.

If are upgrading from J-Bird 0.5.0 or earlier and if you compile J-Bird for 
yourself and run it using ant, just once you need to run the command 
"ant run-separate" after rebuilding J-Bird and before running it for the 
first time.  That command separates your data from the software.

The following issue has not changed since J-Bird 0.4.4.

On some Linux window managers (fluxbox 0.9.12 or less but not Gnome, KDE 
or Xfce), the Windows menu fails to bring dialogs other than the J-Bird 
log to the front.

The following issue has not changed since J-Bird 0.4.1.

MS Windows users who use shortcuts to launch J-Bird will need to rebuild
their shortcuts after upgrading from any version that is 0.4.0 or older.
The easy way to rebuild is to double-click on the CreateIcons program in the
J-Bird directory. Instructions for manually creating shortcuts are in the 
user's guide http://j-bird.sourceforge.net/uupgrade.html#below.

The following issue has not changed since J-Bird 0.4.1.

If you compile J-Bird from source code and run it yourself, you need
to do some extra work before running J-Bird after upgrading from version 
0.4.0 or earlier.  Briefly, the database schema has been modified, and the Mckoi
database engine has been upgraded.  Details and instructions are available
in the Changelog and in the hacking web page.

The following issue has not changed since J-Bird 0.4.0.

Mac OS X users: an inconsequential exception occurs if you have the option
of selecting a checklist from which to tick species and accept the default
without clicking in the chooser from which you can select a checklist. Why 
the exception occurs is somewhat mysterious. It does not occur on Linux and
Windows. Again, the exception is inconsequential (because it occurs in the
tree that you have dismissed).

HAZARDS FOR UPGRADERS FROM VERSIONS 0.1.2 OR EARLIER (no change
here since release 0.1.3):
 
The code in J-Bird that generates files of comma-separated values (CSV)
was changed in version 0.1.3 to make the CSV files produced and read 
by J-Bird conform with those produced and read by Microsoft Excel.  A 
bug was also fixed.  The bug should affect you only if you dumped your tables 
to CSV files and if there was in the interior of some text (region 
name, locality, keywords, or notes) a double quotation mark followed by 
a comma (e.g., Hey, "Dude", how's it going?). The effect of the bug 
is that J-Bird will misread data from CSV files that were dumped 
by any version older than 0.1.3 if the data contain within a field a 
quotation mark followed by a comma. 
 
If you keep "backups" of your data by dumping all database tables to
CSV files using the File menu, be sure to dump all tables to  CSV 
immediately after upgrading to be sure that your dumped CSV files are 
without the old bug.