Below is an image showing the File menu for the Beyond Category application. The Windows File menu will be similar. Differences will be noted in the menu item descriptions below.
File Menu Items
New DB
Use this menu item to create a new database. Pressing it will bring up a window explaining the details of the two different kinds of database you can create. For most users, only their one personal collection will be cataloged so this menu will be used once. Creating a database automatically opens it for data entry
Open DB
This menu will open your anytime you start the app.
Close DB
This menu will close your database. Generally there is no need to use this. Quitting the app automatically closes the database. Unlike other document processing app, there is no “save” function. Database entries are saved when they are made.
Close Window
Using this menu will close the frontmost open window. This is equivalent to pressing the red dot in the upper left of any Macintosh window or pressing the X in the upper left of any Windows window.
Page Setup
Use this to set the printer settings for the Beyond Category app.
Print Selected Album(s)
This menu will allow printing of entries selected from the list of entries in the Albums window. There are two sub menus for this item:
• Personnel By Track – Personnel will be listed by track. Sequential tracks that have the same personnel will have the players listed after the group of tracks and before the next track where the personnel changes. If all the tracks have the same personnel, then the print will look the same as if the Collective Personnel option was chosen.
• Collective Personnel – All the personnel, regardless of how many tracks they appear on, will be listed at the end of the track list. After the complete personnel listing, any artist that is not on all tracks will have a notation on which specific track they appear on.
Display Selected Album(s)
This menu will allow the display of entries selected from the list of entries in the Albums window in a popup window. This feature is useful to preview the data entry of the albums. “Under the hood”, the display is formatted using HTML. The display window has a popup menu at the bottom that allows for printing or saving the text as a file. The saved file will be in HTML format so can be viewed in any web browser.
There are two sub menus for this item:
• Personnel By Track – Personnel will be listed by track. Sequential tracks that have the same personnel will have the players listed after the group of tracks and before the next track where the personnel changes. If all the tracks have the same personnel, then the print will look the same as if the Collective Personnel option was chosen.
• Collective Personnel – All the personnel, regardless of how many tracks they appear on, will be listed at the end of the track list. After the complete personnel listing, any artist that is not on all tracks will have a notation on which specific track they appear on.
Export List to .tsv
This item will be active if a dynamic list created via the Lists menu is the front most window. The rows in the list will output to a separate line with the content of columns separated by a tab. This format can be easily imported to a spreadsheet.
Export Album…
Any selection from the list of entries in the Albums window can be exported in JSON format to a file selected when this menu is pressed. This file can then be transferred to any other Beyond Category user for import to their database.
Import
This entry will allow for importing JSON or XML files from another catalog application. There are 3 options:
• BC Album – Importing a file generated using the Export Album menu as discussed above.
• Import Discogs.com Album – Selecting this menu will open the Import Discogs window. There, you can enter an id of an album on Discogs.com to load that info into the window. Once the info is downloaded, it can be edited and validated for import into the database.
• Import iTunes Album – If you use iTunes or Apple Music it is possible to create an AppleScript to generate an XML file for the tracks of an album. This may be possible on a Windows version of iTunes, but I’ve not been able to verify this. I have a script that I use and I’m happy to share it but I do not completely understand how it works and I don’t support that end of the process.
• Import Orange CD XML – If you are an Orange CD user and can access the .xml or .oxl file of that application, you can use this menu to read that file and selectively import albums from Orange CD.
DB Maintenance
The sub menus in this item perform tasks related to investigating and fixing problems with a Beyond Category database. It should be rarely used. This menu had 4 sub menus:
• Reindex – Beyond Category uses a relational database and is composed of a data component and an index component. A relational database index can get corrupted for a number of reasons, but most often because of a computer crash while the database is open or a bug in the software. A reindex simply deletes the index and rebuilds it from reading the data component. Unless your database is significantly large or your computer is ancient, this process usually takes under a minute.
• Diagnose – In some circumstances, you may be experiencing a problem using Beyond Category that seems like a bug. In that case, I hope you reach out to me for help. I may ask you to perform a Diagnose on the database using this menu item. It will generate a file with information about the database structure that you can send to me. This file only has useful information for the software developer.
• Dump/Reload – There are some cases where a simple Reindex does not solve a data corruption. In this case, the Dump/Reload can be tried. It can’t be stressed enough that this should be done when you have a secure backup of your database.
• Audit DB – This feature will analyze the database looking for invalid pointer records. If they can be fixed, they will be. If not, those records will be deleted. Records that are deleted have no bearing on the visual data the user will see because without a valid pointer, they never get selected for viewing. But, they can interfere with selection of other valid records. This is a very unusual occurance.
|
Download
Beyond Category Macintosh Version: 8.7 
|
Download
Beyond Category Windows Version: 8.7
|