Database version: 03/2012

Editing: 11/2012

v.4.02  (30/11/2012 Vincent Hiribarren)

Link

• Link to the Project Blog was added to the main page.

Public Database Version

• After editing the database, a public database version was added to the main page.

v.4.01  (21/07/2012 Vincent Hiribarren)

Links

• Links to the Project Website and the Project Blog were added to the main page.

v.4  (25/06/2012 Vincent Hiribarren)

Help and Resources Menu

• The Help and Resources Menu has been completed (User Guide, Designer Notes, Abbreviations, List of Manuscripts, Glossary, Videos, Visualisation Gallery, Licencing and Copyright, Project History (Credits), Project History (Tasks), Ackmowledgements

Markers of Illegality

• Edition of the menu.

Browse Client

• More details about the manuscripts are given now.

Darnton's statistics

• With the permission of Robert Darnton, statistics from Corpus are now displayed in the interface.

Rank Menu

• When restricted by towns or other place groupings, totals were not calculated. This bug is fixed now.

v.3.91  (15/05/2012 Vincent Hiribarren)

Pies

• Bugs for the pies in the "Rank Menu" were fixed.

Queries restricted by places

• It is now possible to restrict queries by places.

v.3.9  (08/05/2012 Vincent Hiribarren)

Map menu

• A new "Map Menu" was created by regrouping different queries found previously in the "Browse Menu" and the "Query Menu".
• Shortcuts to "map this profession/profession group/economic" were added in the respective subsections of the "Browse Menu".

Rank Menu and Pie Charts

• There are now two pies in the Rank Menu. The first one displays the "Top 10" or "Top 20" and the rest of the books/authors/keywords. By clicking on the first pie, we can now access the second one which was the pie available before (showing the proportion between the "Top 10" or "Top 20").

Visualisation Gallery

• Calendar view of STN sales added.
• Group Stacked Bar Chart of STN sales per geographic zone added.
• Dorling Cartogram of STN sales added.
• Modification of the Treemap.
• Improvement of the trade routes.
• Modification of the main menu.

CSV

• Queries will no longer be displayed as CSV because the button "Export to Spreadsheet" was moved from the CSV section to the Table section.

Help Menu

• The "Help Menu" was renamed "Help and Resources".

List of Manuscripts

• A list of manuscripts was added to the "Help and Resources" menu.

User Guide

• User guide updated to take into account the recent modifications of the interface.

Copyright and Citation

• A new "Copyright and Citation" section was added to the "Help and Resources" menu.

Link to the Interface

• Links to the Interface were added on the project website.

v.3.84  (27/04/2012 Vincent Hiribarren)

Visualisation Gallery

• Fixing typos and other bugs.

Keywords

• Added an explanation for uncategorised books: 'Uncategorized, as there are no transactions for this work in the database.'
• Fixed a bug with 'Acoustics'.

Client Types

• 'All other clients' renamed 'Miscellaneous clients'.

Client Notes

• Edited by SB and uploaded by VH.

Help Menu

• 'Parisian keywords' renamed 'Parisian categories'.

Parisian Categories

• Typo fixed 'Uncatagorisable' renamed 'Uncategorisable'.

v.3.83  (14/04/2012 Vincent Hiribarren)

Maps

• Firefox 11.0: bug with maps fixed.

Edition Format

• Hyphens added for in-4° (in-8°) editions

Visualisation Gallery

• Creation of a new visualisation gallery in the Options menu. First visualisation added: Bubbles of Parisian Categories.

Definitions and Tags

• All the keywords have now a definition and a tag.

v.3.82  (08/03/2012 Vincent Hiribarren)

Maps

• The legend of the map is now displayed in the upper left corner of the map. It is now easier to crop screen captures if you want to use them for your presentations and publications.
• The colour of the 0 values is now displayed in the map legend.

Client type and Edition Type

• Client type are now displayed on screen when browsing clients. It is also possible to click on a type which redirects to the Client Type option menu.
• Edition Types are also displayed under each book title.

Option Summary

• The Option summary is now the first item available in the Option menu. In v.3.7. I created this page but the only way to access it was to click on the Options button or on the option warning message.

v.3.81  (28/02/2012 Vincent Hiribarren)

Compare Menu

• The Compare places bug is fixed now.
• It is now possible to use percentages in the Compare menu.
• Please note that the issue mentioned in my previous update was also fixed.

v.3.8  (20/02/2012 Vincent Hiribarren)

Compare Menu

• In the 'Compare' menu, it is now possible to restrict queries for every single item. The idea is for example to compare the sales of the Encyclopedie in C18 France, C18 Swiss Confederation and C18 United Kingdom. It was technically rather complicated to limit queries for each item. Figures are correct but there is still one known bug I will need to fix later. The graph is not scaled properly when associating different categories of territories (for example a town, a C18 territory and a geographic zone). The y axis takes the highest value given in each territory for each item instead of limiting itself to the territory given by the user. This is a minor issue which does not have an impact on the results but can prevent the graph from being clear if the maximum value of the y-axis is too high.

Maps

• One new feature: it is now possible to click on a button to display maps in black and white.
• When zoomed in, the maps now display the cities which are rescaled inversely to the zoom value. It means that crowded places such as Switzerland can be zoomed more efficiently now.

Event Calendar

• One minor tweak. In the case of two 'In' and 'Out' events happening on the same day, the 'In' event will automatically appear before the 'Out' event. It just looks more logical for books.

Export to Spreadsheet

• I have created a new button in the display CSV menu. Click on this button to export the results of your query to your Spreadsheet application such as Open Office Calc. or Excel. Please note that the fields are seperated by a comma. Your application should read UTF-8 characters in order to display diacritical marks. There is a strong case to get rid of the CSV section and put this button next to the table in the display table menu.

v.3.75  (06/02/2012 Vincent Hiribarren)

Reference Mamagement Software

• In the 'Browse Book' section, I have embedded a new button sending information to Reference Management Software (tested on Zotero and Endnote). The idea is to give researchers a tool to record bibliographic data as in JSTOR or Google Scholar. It also means that all the bibliographic data can be read by computers. This could be an important stage in creating an application programming interface (API).

v.3.7  (25/01/2012 Vincent Hiribarren)

Keyword definitions and tags

• It is now possible to see each tag associated with each keyword. Uploaded to the database the tag definitions written by Simon Burrows (even if they do not appear in the interface). A new table was created called "tags". The "tag_code" column was updated in the "keyword definition" table. Impossibility to update totally the new "tag_code" column in the "keywords" table, because some keywords (e.g. "Abortion") do not appear in the "keyword_definition" table.
• It is now possible to see definitions associated with most keywords in the Browse Menu in the "Books by keyword" section. Uploaded to the database the keyword definitions written by Simon Burrows. A new table was created called "keyword_definition". A new "definition" column was created in the "keywords" table and was updated from the table "kewyord definition". Need to fix a few keywords.

Tidying subsections of the menus

• Moved "All Books by Keyword" from the Query to the Rank Menu. In the code, it is still a query.
• Moved "Professions by Place", "Profession Groups by Place" and "Economic Sectors by Place" from the Query to the Browse Menu. In the code, I created "browse_profession_place.php" and a new class "BrowseProfessionPlace". 3 subsections: 1) "everyone" including middlemen and agents 2) trading clients: only those who ordered books (no middlemen, no agents) 3) correspondents: people who sent letters to the STN. Note that for the moment, it is not possible to limit the queries by date.

Compare by Places

• Possibilty to limit "Compare" by places.

Parisian Categories

• "Parisian Keyword" was renamed "Parisian Category" in the interface. The database still uses 'C18keyword'.

Option Summary

• A new page 'Option Summary' was created. You can access it either by clicking on 'Options' (menu) or when you see the following message: 'The figures shown on this page will be based on a subset of the data. See the option summary page for details.'

Other

• Removed the access for UG students.

Backup

• Backups of previous versions (v.3.5 and v.3.6) of the interface were saved.

v.3.6  (11/01/2012 Vincent Hiribarren)

• Fixed a bug to limit searches by town in the Rank menu.
• Fixed a bug in the town maps displayed with a combination of keywords. Now data associated with towns corresponds to the combination of keywords (Query menu, 'Query Places by Keyword')
• To get a full list of all the books associated with a specific keyword, we have now two solutions. (1) In the Browse menu, all the books associated in 'Books by Keyword' or 'Books by Parisian Keyword' are now displayed. (2) In the Query menu, under 'All Books by Keyword' or 'All Books by Parisian Keyword', you can also see the same list. The advantage with this solution is that you can apply the different options in the Query menu (Illegality, Sources...)
• In the 'Query Menu', I have created three new sections 'Professions by Place', 'Professions Groups by Place' and 'Economic Sectors by Place'. It is now possible to know how many persons of a selected profession/profession group/economic sector were trading in a place. Note that for the moment, this option does not work with correspondents.

v.3.55  (12/2011 Vincent Hiribarren)

• Google Book functionality added in the Browse Menu in the "Browse by Title" subsection. Works with the Google Books API (javascript) and the books which already had a valid Google Book URL.

v.3.5  (06/2011 Amyas (Henry) Merivale)

• The database has been redesigned a little bit, so that things are a bit different under the hood.  This is mainly to accommodate the Parisian keyword structure - but while I was at it, I changed things so that keywords, people, and places are all referred to in the computer code by codes rather than names (so you'll notice the URLs are now different.  I've also hunted down and fixed a handful of bugs, and changed the way author totals are calculated - it's a bit more sophisticated now, being based on edition rather than super book, i.e. a sale only counts for an author if his name is on the edition sold (previously it sufficed to be on any edition of the super book).
• The main difference is the incorporation of the Parisian keyword structure.  Now Parisian keywords appear in a nicely structured way in the drop-down menus, and those higher up in the heirarchy include anything underneath them.  So books showing up under 'Histoire', for example, include all the books with any of the keywords under that category.  Simlarly sales totals in the rankings and comparisons include sales for all sub-keywords as well as the keyword itself.  For the ranking results, you see top-level keywords by default, with the option to click through and see the break-down of lower-level keywords.

v.3.4  (08/06/2011 Amyas (Henry) Merivale)

Query

• An option has been added to the book and client transactions query, enabling you to view the results as a calendar.

v.3.32  (07/06/2011 Amyas (Henry) Merivale)

Options

• The illegality restrictions options has been redesigned to it works as expected.
• Edition type options has been implemented.

v.3.31  (15/04/2011 Amyas (Henry) Merivale)

General

• Version 3.31 is what version 3.3 should have been, if it hadn't taken so long to finish.  I've tidied up the display in a few places, and weeded out some bugs.  (Or do I mean weeds?)
• Other than that, the big difference is that the illegality options have now been implemented.  There's also a helpful warning box that tells you when the numbers you're seeing are being limited by your selections in the options page.
• Also, there are more options on the advanced edition search page.

v.3.3  (08/04/2011 Amyas (Henry) Merivale)

General

• The menus have been rearranged.  The 'File' menu (which was never an appropriate name) has been removed.  Links to Options and Database Totals can now be found in the 'Help' menu.  What used to be the 'Compare' menu is now the 'Rank' menu.  There is still a 'Compare' menu, but it's important to realise that this now means something else (see below).
• I've got rid of the last of the popups, because I don't like popups.  The information they provided is now given either on the page itself, or on some other page (in which case, there's a link).  I hope it should be obvious where to find any information you might want.
• Not that you'll notice, but I've also changed things under the hood quite a bit - the reason being that this paves the way for switching from a Windows server to a Linux server in the (I hope) not too distant future.  A Linux server will be better able to cope with lots of requests at once, so it would be nice to change this before we advertise our presence to the general public.

Visualisations

The visualisations have got a lot more exciting since the last version.  We were busily adding pie charts and bar charts and all sorts, when Vincent discovered a new piece of visualisation software called 'd3' - which basically does what Protovis does, only better.  This makes things even more exciting, but also a bit more complicated.  We're in the process of switching all of the things we had started adding with Protovis over to d3 instead, but we haven't yet got all the way.  Anyway, here's what we've got at the moment:

• A bar chart in the totals page (Protovis).
• Some line charts in the new 'Compare' menu (Protovis).  Before you get too excited, though, these don't all work; see below.
• Better maps (d3).  No point in spoiling the suprise; see for yourselves.
• Little maps when browsing by place (d3).
• Pie charts alongside all the tables, for anything up to twenty items (d3).

Browse

• Complete lists of books, authors, and clients now appear, without you having to click on a first letter first.  The lists are pretty long, but I now think that perhaps this is simpler than making everyone click twice.
• The list ordering is now more intelligent - alphabetical, as you would except, but things that start with a '#' or a bracket or something unalphabetical appear in their proper place (i.e. as if the unalphabetical character were not there).
• Professions have been added - but there's not much happening there yet, just the framework for developing this further in due course.
• Little maps have been added to the place information.

Query and Rank

• All rankings (i.e. what used to be called 'comparisons') and queries have been carefully checked for errors.  They now include totals at the bottom, and more helpful information in the 'N.B.' bit.  Any table with twenty or fewer rows also shows a pie chart (see above).
• Other place groupings have been incorporated into the Rankings, with the exception of the new three-way Bourbon France/Swiss/Rest of Europe division.  There's a reason for this, which I won't bother putting down here - but note that this is something for us to discuss.
• All the rankings and queries that were promised in the previous version have now been added - and more: original languages (of translated works) can also be queried and ranked.
• Maps display towns in every place grouping (the place grouping just sets the borders).
• Book and Client Transactions have been added to the Query menu.  This is in part to make up for the loss of popups (see above), but also with a view to improving what was available in the old 'View All Transactions' and 'View All Orders' popups.  You can now limit to a particular time period, and there are plans afoot for offering a very fancy calendar visualisation here (thanks to Vincent and d3), which will replace the old 'Calendar' popups.  In the meantime, I am afraid you'll have to make do without those old calendars.

Compare

There's a new menu for comparisons.  The idea is, you pick any three items you want (books, authors, clients, etc.), and compare how much trade there was for those things in a nice line graph (plotting sales against time).  I only got part-way through developing this, when Vincent discovered the new visualisation software, so now we're going to try and make them work with that.  Because of this, there doesn't seem any point in finishing developing the Protovis version.  Client and Place comparisons don't work at all.  All the other ones seems to be working, but I wouldn't put too much faith in them, as I haven't checked the code very carefully.  I've only left this in as a taste of what is to come.

v.3.11  (21/12/2010 Amyas (Henry) Merivale)

Browse

• When browsing by keyword, you can now select a combination of two keywords.
• Top 5 selling books for each keyword combination or Parisian keyword now appear when browsing by keyword.

v.3.1  (15/12/2010 Amyas (Henry) Merivale)

General

• Things look a bit different, mainly because we've now gone full screen (and some of the layout has changed accordingly).
• Some miscellaneous bugs have been fixed.
• Improved cross-browser support - in particular, the menu now behaves better on Internet Explorer.
• The Options page is no longer a popup window, but a larger full page with more options (as discussed with Simon and Mark).  Note, however, that none of these options actually does anything yet (apart from the option to restrict manuscripts, which was available already) - they're just there to give a feel for how things might look.  This is something we'll need to talk about more before I can really do anything with it.

Search

• An 'Advanced Edition Search' has been added to the search box.  It does what it says on the tin.  It's a fairly basic implementation at the moment, though, and no doubt we'll want to talk more about what we do here in the new year.  In the meantime, the idea was to make version 3 do everything that version 2 could do - which I'm pretty sure it now can.

Maps

• Thanks to Vincent, the maps now look prettier.  No need to describe how here - just have a look for yourself.

v.3.0  (05/11/2010 Amyas (Henry) Merivale)

General

• In honour of the amazing introduction of the maps, the colour scheme has changed (the old one didn't look very good with the coloured maps).  The other reason for the more neutral gray is to make links look better - which I have taken full advantage of by putting them everywhere.  Now pretty much anything that could be a link, is a link, making the interface much easier to navigate.
• A chunk of the work has been done tidying up the HTML, making sure it works consistently on all browsers and will continue to do so (though still more to be done here).  It's working fine on IE8 and 9 beta, but crap on IE7 - I will fix this in due course.  For best results, use Chrome or Safari.  I am increasingly of the view that these are the best two browsers available (though I have high hopes for Firefox 4, which is set to be released early next year).  Things are currently fine in Firefox 3 and Opera, for the most part, but on both of these the zoom on the maps doesn't work properly.
• Queries have been divided into queries and comparisons.  With this new structure comes a new menu, and a whole bunch of new menu items.  I've populated them quite fully, but several of them aren't implemented yet - these take you instead to a holding page that tells you what query will be there in future versions.  I am hoping that this is now pretty much how the structure is going to stay.  The one big thing we're still lacking is custom book sets - I haven't had any clever ideas for that yet.  But apart from that I think the structure now accommodates everything we want.
• As you know, maps are now available.  More than this, results of queries can now be displayed either as maps (where appropriate), the familiar tables, or in CSV format (comma separated values - for ease of importing into Excel).  Annoyingly, Excel won't let you paste this in directly (or at least, I can't figure out how to get it to do this).  The method is: paste it into any old text editor, save the file with a .csv extension, and then open that file in Excel.  Voilá.

Browse

• Illegality markers have been added to edition information, and all http links are now included (not just those to Google Books).
• Skeletal information has been added for authors, and associated keywords now come up when browsing by keyword.
• Full lists of clients and towns are now displayed when browsing by place, without the need for separate popups.
• More generally, the number of popup windows has been reduced, and more information kept within the main page.  Note that some things formerly provided by popups here are now in the Qeury menu - namely sales destinations for each book, and book purchases for each client.  The point of moving them here is that it fits better with the new structure, and that it allows these features to be much more impressive - results can now be restricted by time period, and returned as CSV as well as a table.

Search

• Search menu replaced with a search button (top right).  Books, clients, and places can now all be searched from a single box.  This magical box understands basic and/or logic, and searches all salient fields (all title, author, and keyword fields for books; name and profession fields for clients; all place names for places).

Query

• Query menu has been split into 'Query' and 'Compare'.  In the former are queries for getting information about particular things in the database (e.g. where a particular book was going, what books a particular client was buying); in the latter are queries for comparing things in the database (e.g. the familiar bestsellers tables).
• All query results can now be displayed as either a table (default) or in CSV format.  And where appropriate, results can now be displayed as a map.  Take care not to drool on your keyboard.

v.2.0  (17/08/2010 Amyas (Henry) Merivale)

General

• All new under the hood:  I have designed a "new" database which the interface now interacts with (of course the data is the same).  This radically reduces the number of queries needed to fetch data for displaying, thus speeding up the interface.  It's unlikely you'll actually notice any speed improvement, but the point is that much more data can now be displayed at no extra time cost.
• In general, there is much fuller data on every page (thanks to the above) - indeed, the idea is that everything you could want to know is now on display.  Of course I may well have missed some things of importance, in which case please let me know.
• Popup windows now stay open all the time again.  This means that you might end up with lots of windows on your screen, but we'll see how it goes.
• When going back to pages already visited, you no longer have to resend your form data.  This just means less interference and less pointless button pressing.
• Cross browser support has also been improved - though this is still being tested.

Browse Books

• Books can now be browsed not just by title, but by author, keyword, and parisian keyword.
• Categorisation data now shows up for each book.
• In (assumed printing) added to printing totals.
• Edition data is now better organised and more complete.  Also data for every edition is on display immediately, without you having to ask for each one individually.
• The View All Transactions popup shows transaction cards shorter and fatter (as requested), enabling you to see more of them at once.  You still can't see very many at once - let me know if you'd perhaps like more summary information for each, allowing you to see even more on screen simultaneously, with an option to view fuller information if required.  That's the only other thing I can think of.
• Database Totals have been moved to the File menu (because the Browse menu is now quite big with other things).

Browse Clients and Places

• The View Biographical Details popup in the Clients page now contains all the biographical information in the database.
• Option added to show more than just the top 5 books selling to each place.

Search

• Search Books and Search Clients has been split into separate pages, and there are now more search fields available.

Query

• Queries are essentially the same as before, but with fuller information in the results.  You can also browse through to authors and places at the touch of a button.

v.1.35  (29/06/2010 Amyas (Henry) Merivale)

Browse

• View Clients button added to the place sections of the browse menu, bringing up a popup listing all clients with addresses at that place.

Query

• Added Keyword Sales by Destination query, which shows total sales broken down by place of all works with certain keyword combinations (up to three keywords complexity).
• Added Bestselling Authors query, which shows authors selling the highest numbers of books to different places.  Copies of multi-authored works count once for each author.

v.1.34  (10/04/2010 Amyas (Henry) Merivale)

General

• Fixed an error in the Browse Places section that was preventing data from appearing for some towns.

Query

• Added Book Purchases by Destination query; exactly the same as the Books Sales by Destination query, but showing In totals instead of Outs - Returns.

v.1.33  (09/03/2010 Amyas (Henry) Merivale)

General

• Increased cross-browser support.  Programme now looks and works the same on all major browsers, including Internet Explorer (post version 6).  I have, however, abandoned support for Internet Explorer version 6, the better to focus on other browsers, since hardly anyone is using version 6 any more.  Anyone who tries to use the programme with version 6 will receive a message telling them to upgrade.
• Fixed an error that had crept into the previous version (oops) that was displaying the wrong totals for some place groupings.

v.1.32  (19/02/2010 Amyas (Henry) Merivale)

General

• Added a File menu, containing a link to an Options popup (see 2).
• Added an Options popup, where the user can select to hide transactions data from any of the manuscript types (e.g. the potentially dubious Dossier Durand (commissions).)  This won't stop you from being able to browse all the clients and books as usual, but anywhere you have a figure based on orders or transactions data - i.e. all sales totals, orders and transactions totals, calendar summaries, best seller lists, etc. - this won't now include anything from the hidden manuscripts.  Also note that this affects the orders and transactions numbers in the Totals section; you can therefore use this section to see exactly how many orders and transactions are coming from a particular manuscript (by hiding all the others).
• Added a workaround for the Google Chrome bug that was stopping it from bringing already opened popups to the front of the screen when clicking on the appropriate button.
• Having said that, popup windows (apart from the Options popup, which I thought it would be more convenient to keep open) now close automatically when you click on a different window (making the Google Chrome bug irrelevant except in the case of the Options popup).  This can be turned off again easily if it proves irritating, but I thought I would try it out to see if you prefer things this way.  The main advantage is that it prevents the desktop from becoming too cluttered.  The flipside is that you can't have more than one popup open at a time.  If we're feeling particularly fancy, we could get the best of both worlds by adding an option to let the user decide which they want.

Tables and Totals

• Removed tables from the Tables and Total section (now called 'Database Totals').  I can put them back if they are particularly wanted.  However, the transactions table is now just too big - web browsers can't cope with so much information, and give up rendering the page before they get to the end.

v.1.31  (08/01/2010 Amyas (Henry) Merivale)

General

Interface does all the same things, but now much more efficiently.  Speeds should be noticeably faster.

v.1.3  (06/01/2010 Amyas (Henry) Merivale)

General

• Formatting improved in various places, and made consistent.  Some extra information added in places to make clear exactly what each page is showing; the intention is to have an interface so self-explanatory as to require no help file - since there will be enough to put in the help file about the database itself and the issues surrounding the interpretation of the data.
• Queries involving calculations of total book sales are now about twice as fast.  They still take a few seconds, however, so a 'Please Wait...' notification box has been added to reassure the user.
• Support for multiple browsers added.  The interface now works in Internet Explorer 8, Opera, Safari, Google Chrome, and Firefox.  The display is still buggy in Internet Explorer 6 and 7, but short of making a whole new design for these browsers, there’s not much to be done about this.  A new design, meanwhile, does not seem worth the time, when there is plenty to do on the software itself, and every other browser handles things just fine.  (Have in any case made sure that the content is fully readable even in these older browsers, so that the loss is purely aesthetic.)

Tables and Totals

• Added Tables and Totals section, which displays total numbers of things (books, editions, transactions, etc.) in the database, and has popup buttons for four virtual tables in the database.

Browse Books

• Added Sales Destinations popup, showing sales totals broken down by destination (with the option of which grouping).

Browse Clients

• Added Business Calendar popup, showing client’s acquisition totals broken down by year and month.
• Added Books Traded popup, showing the titles of all the books that client acquired alongside the total number of copies.

Browse Places

• Other place groupings added (Holy Roman Empire, Ecclesiastical Lands, Imperial Free Cities).

v.1.23  (08/12/2009 Amyas (Henry) Merivale)

Browse Books

• Added Sales Calendar popup, showing sales totals broken down by year and month.

Browse Clients

• Changed 'correspondents' to 'clients', to avoid confusion of 'there is no correspondence from this correspondent'.
• View Biographical Details popup added - showing information about named persons.
• Tidied the display in a handful of little ways.

v.1.22  (09/11/2009 Amyas (Henry) Merivale)

Browse Books

• Transactions summary made more detailed and simplified.
• In the transactions popup, copies of a given volume don't show up if zero - since a zero is easily inferred, and lots of zeros take up unnecessary space.

Browse Correspondents

• Orders summary improved.
• View All Orders popup added.

Query

• Queries now use Simon's option 1 for calculating totals - i.e. for each transaction the total = total number of volumes sold / number of volumes in that edition.  This is also the calculation used wherever summary totals appear.  The queries are a bit quicker than before, but they still take time.  At the moment I can't see how to make them any quicker - the fact is, a lot of calculations have to be done to generate the data.

v.1.12  (04/11/2009 Amyas (Henry) Merivale)

Browse Books

• Stocktake numbers removed from summary.
• View transactions popup added.  This brings up all transactions of the book in question (ordered chronologically), showing number of copies (and number of copies of individual volumes, if appropriate), order recipients, agents, etc., and the edition involved.

Known issues:

• Editions are identified by their book code, because I am assuming this is most likely to be of use to Mark at the moment.  Obviously in the public version we will want something else here - maybe publication year.  We can leave this decision for when Mark has identified more editions, and filled in more of the gaps in the editions data.

Simple Search

• 'word1 word2' now defaults to 'word1 and word2'; the boxes treat input basically as you would expect from familiar search engines.
• Title and author separated in the book search.
• Name and profession separated in the correspondent search.

Query

• Sales totals used in the two queries are more realistic, based on the calculation:

  [ Out + Out (free gifts) + Out (profit and loss) + Out (binders) + Out (other) ] - [ In (returns) + In (rétiré) ]

  Also I have abandoned the number_of_copies field from the transactions table, and derived the 'number of copies' figure from the partial sales data instead.  I am taking the maximum number of any volume in the sale, i.e. effectively counting any partial sale as 1.

• The queries now take a long time.  Too long.  I'll have a think about this - I'm confident I can find a way of speeding them up.

Help

• Version history added.