Daynote ,Svenson

MM-lxx     Friday

2000-03-10

A bit cooler, at about 5°C, this morning? But just as wet throughout the day.

I got all the r7v9 stuff out of the way in time. Database changes had to be ready today and before the 15th the programs should be stable and on the same level as the files. So I got there in time (I hope).

Of course there is still work to be done. For example the HCC still needs a few programs for maintenance and translation. To be used today the data must be copied manually from an Access database to the AS/400 file and translating the common description into the local description has to be done manually. Both these action only have to be done once a year and we did them now for testing so if the programs are ready by let's say December all is still well.

And there are a few bugs that must be crushed. They have been left to their own enjoyment because of the need to get r7v9 up but now ...

Someone from Progress has been working here for a few days to get a "proof of concept" ready for demonstration by next Friday. The concept that must be proved is that a subset from TeleSales can be made available on the web. Of course they first claimed it would be easy to do because they have tools to convert programs. After slaving for about a week on the proof of concept (by someone who know the tools and the programs) a fairly minimal order entry screen is ready. Most test and processing is deferred to the server side and not actually adapted yet. Today was the last planned day for the work on it so I stayed extra long.

I have been producing a lot of technical documentation these last few months. Most of it is only intended for my own use and so isn't complete, more a memory scaffold. I write all this documentation directly in HTML (using CuteHTML).

Well while I was working on the GUI project I tried to use MS Word for writing manuals but +I had problems with it. Often Word would let me work and position screen shot reasonably, just to protest the next time I opened the document for editing. Picture had a tendency to move to other places of the document and were sometimes simply dropped. The most common problem was that I finished and saved a document and then, while opening it again Word just informed that "pictures were dropped because they don't fit the page".
I finally got fed up with Word and made the manual with Lotus Word Pro. That went smooth, without problems. But of course the company has standardized on MS products and so non-MS products (except for Netscape) are actively forbidden. <> So once finished I had to convert the manual back to an accepted format. .DOC was a no go because opening it would destroy the content. HTML was acceptable so I used that.

So even though I had a day off from the office I did put in about the same number of office hours as usual. And I had a physically tiring day at midweek (well running up and down stairs if a lot different from sitting behind a screen). I am going to bed early today. and to make sure I do I will defer the posting till tomorrow morning.

Adios