Geek Help?

[purejuice]

I want to make an updatable computer document of botanical info. It would be plants used by Pueblo indians, Navajo and Apache, both Mescalero and Chiricua. Each entry would have perhaps seven or eight components I'd like to have on a horizontal layout listed under column headings, such as Spanish name, Native name, usage, and so on.

I want it to be alphabetical, and I want the software to do the alphabetizing such that the laboriously entered info in the eight or so horizontal cells, ie., usage, Spanish name, etc., moves with the name of the plant as alphabetized by the computer. Excel does not do this reliably, or I don't know how to.

I think Excel, with all its math capabilities, may be way too complicated to learn for this simple problem.

What program (for Mac) should I be using? I am unable to get whatever that faux Excel freeware for Mac is to work for me, to get it out of read only mode, etc. The tutorials on all of them are useless. I'm looking for something that's the lowest tech solution. Got any suggestions? Thanks.

Comments

[tuscendi.livejournal.com]

Great! You're most welcome. I've whined long and loud about the loss of WordPerfect for DOS, which was such a good workhorse, capable of doing the daily drudgery while at the same time having great power to do the fancy stuff (what macros we had!) and so elegant and so lightweight. But the truth is I couldn't live without Tables. And I've never been able to make friends with Excel.

If I could say one more thing it would be to caution you to think hard about the number of components you're going to want to have.

Eight is already stretching it, because there's only so much space across the page (and do use "landscape" instead of "portrait" page orientation for your Table.).

One final thing about Tables is that if you fill a table with a monstrous amount of data, the program will start balking. There are limitations, though I couldn't say exactly what they are. I've had 80 page tables that still worked but were getting creaky. If that's going to happen, then think database instead.

If you suspect you might want to add more plant characteristics, then you might as well forget tables and construct a database to begin with. The nice thing about a database is that you can add and subtract components all you like as you go along. You can also redesign the configuration of the fields all you like, to make sense of your categories and priorities within each. The data moves with the field, so to speak.

If you make a database, simplify and abbreviate both your labels (field names) and data much as possible. That was you can see all the data in one plant record on one screen without scrolling, and you'll be able to print each plant record out on one page. You don't want a lot of digital clutter wasting a lot of screen real estate or paper.

Okay, now I shut up and go to sleep. Good luck and enjoy the project.

[orso-amoroso.livejournal.com]

wp5.1 users unite!

the transition from 5.1 to 6x was such a tremendous fail.