The Cat Pedigree System
Version 2
An East Coast Software
Product
Software License and
Warranty
The software, which accompanies this license, is the property of East Coast Software and is protected by copyright law.
You may:
(1) use one copy of the software on a single computer;
(2) make one copy of the software for archival purposes or copy the software onto the hard disk of your computer and retain the original for archival purposes;
(3) transfer the software on a permanent basis to another person, provided that you retain no copies of the software and the transferee agrees to the terms of this license.
You may not:
(1) copy the documentation which accompanies the software;
(2) sublicense, rent or lease any portion of the software;
(3) reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble , modify, or make any attempt to discover the source code of the software.
Limited Warranty:
East Coast Software warrants that the media on which the software is distributed will be free from defects for a period of thirty days from the date of delivery of the software to you. Your sole remedy in the event of a breech of this warranty will be that East Coast Software will, at its option, replace any defective media returned to East Coast Software within the warranty period or refund the money you paid for the software. East Coast Software does not warrant that the software will meet your requirements or that operation of the software will be uninterrupted or that the software will be error-free.
Disclaimer of damages:
East Coast Software will not be liable for any consequential losses,
including lost profits or lost data arising out of the use or inability to use
the software. In no case will East Coast Software’s liability exceed the
purchase price of the software.
Table
of Contents
Getting
your own logo and name/title on the pedigree
Choose
what to print on the pedigree
Getting
Started
The Cat Pedigree System (CPS) from East Coast
Software allows you to store information and photographs or scanned images of
your cats and to print one of four different types of pedigree – two each of 4-
and 5-generation pedigrees one with photos of the cats parents, the other
without the photos. The number of cats it will hold is unlimited – limited only
by the size of your hard disk.
When
you first start CPS you will be presented with a selection window where you
will be required to select at least one breed from the list displayed. The list
presented is compiled from the GCCF breeds guide. After this you will have a
window with a menu bar along the top. This menu bar contains File, Cat,
Maintenance, Tools and Help menu headings. When you click on any of these
headings, further, drop-down menus will appear.
Tip: Always start
with the oldest generation you have details for and work towards the kittens.
This way all parents will be entered by choosing them from the drop-down lists
of sires and dams. You only ever need enter a cats name once. This will ensure
that you do not enter a cat as two different cats – the same cat with two
different spellings. You know it is the same cat but the computer will treat
them as two different cats.
Click on Maintenance, Your details and fill in the
form there. If you do not want some parts of these details to appear on your
pedigrees, you can leave out your name and address, your phone number and/or
your email address by going to Tools, What to print on pedigree. It is,
therefore, better to fill in these details then choose later what bits to print
on the pedigree.
You can replace the East Coast Software logo that
appears in the top right hand corner of the pedigree with one of your own if
you have one.
You can also insert a title/name image
across the top of the pedigree if you have one.
Importing old data
If you have data from a previous version of the Cat
Pedigree System, you can convert it to the new system.
NOTE: You must do this BEFORE you add any cats to
the new system.
Choose File, Restore data FROM storage with your old
data available. Choose the relevant
source for the data from the restore form and click OK. Do not interrupt the process. If you have many cats stored, the process
may take a while. You will be told when
the process is complete.
This new version stores the championship title(s) of
cats in a separate entry field to the name and amalgamates the two to print on
the pedigree. This means that names can
be maintained in alphabetic order and yet still have the titles of any
champions. Previous versions stored the
titles inside the name field. When you have
imported data from a previous version, you will need to edit each champion cat
to remove any champion title from its name and put it in its champion title
field. For example, a cat previously
called “Sh Ch Toberdoney of Calderside” should be edited to be “Toberdoney of
Calderside” and its champion title entered as “Sh Ch”. This will make no obvious difference to the
printed pedigree but will make finding any cat in the seeker much quicker – you
will not have to wade through all the Sh Chs to find the one you want, it will
be where it should be alphabetically.
You need to check through
all your cats to see that the conversion process has worked correctly. This is easy to do since all of the cat data
is on the one form. Choose Cat |
Details, click on the top cat in the list at the left hand side of the form and
press the down arrow on your keyboard to move down the list, checking the
details for each cat in turn. If you
come across one whose details you want to change, just click the Edit button
and change the details.
NOTE: If your computer
fails to complete the conversion process, you will have to uninstall the Cat
Pedigree System, install it again and start the conversion process afresh.
Uninstalling
This software can be removed from your computer
using the standard windows ‘Add/Remove Software’ feature. To do this click ‘Start’, ‘Settings’ and
‘Control Panel.’ Double-click on the
icon for ‘Add/Remove Programs’ and find the Cat Pedigree System (CPS) in the
list. Click on this to highlight it and
then click the ‘Add/Remove’ pushbutton.
This will safely remove the application from your hard disk.
Cat details – Page 1
When you choose Cat then Details, you get a
five-page form where all details about your cats can be entered, altered or
deleted.
On the first page you can enter your cats by
clicking the Add button. All of the
details fields are unavailable until the Add or Edit button is clicked.
Add a cat
Adding a cat is from the Add button on the cat
details form.
Tip: Always start from the oldest cats in the
pedigree – those highest up the generations and work towards the kittens. This way, cat names are only ever entered
once, they are chosen as sires or dams from drop-down lists ever after that.
Do not try to enter sires and dams of a cat by
typing their names in the drop-downs. That does not work. Enter them as individual cats then choose
them as sires and dams from the drop-down lists. That is the reason for the tip above.
First, if you deal with more than one breed, make
sure the correct breed is chosen from the drop-down list of breeds in the top
right corner of the form.
When you choose to add a cat, the cat’s details
entry areas will be emptied and freed so that new details can be added. Give it
its full name and, if it is a champion, click on the champion check box.
Champions are shown in red. You can click on the check box again to remove its
champion status. When a cat is assigned as a champion, another field, champion
title, will be revealed. This is for
entries such as “Ch”, “Sh Ch” or “Eng, NZ Ch” etc. Do NOT put these designations in front of the name of the
cat. The system will do that for you
and still maintain the alphabetic order of the cats’ names. This is a great advantage if there are many
“Sh Ch” cats in your system. Think
about it; to find “Sh Ch Tobermoray”, you would have to enter “Sh Ch T” before
you got to the first cat with a name starting with “T”.
Pick its parents from the drop-down lists of sires
and dams. You cannot enter sires and
dams by typing in the drop-down list.
Enter them as cats in their own right and they will connect provided you
type the name correctly. This is why it
is MUCH better to start with the oldest cats and work towards the kittens,
picking sire and dam names from the drop-down lists. If you are breeding
variants and the sire/dam is entered as a different breed to the cat you are
entering you will need to select the correct breed for the sire/dam before
their name will appear in the drop down list. When you select the breeds you
are working with you should select all of the breeds that you wish to include
in your pedigrees. The selected list can be altered using the ‘Maintenance’ /
‘Manage Breed List’ / ‘Select Breed’ menu option.
The sex of each cat is selected from a drop down
list. The default text used in this list is ‘Male’ and ‘Female’. These
descriptions can be changed using the ‘Maintenance’ / ‘Options’ menu selection.
Date fields can be filled in 3 different ways. When
you tab into the field you can just type in the date. If you click on the up or
down arrow next to the date, it will default to today’s date and you can spin
it up or down by clicking on the arrows. If you click with your right mouse
button on the date field, a perpetual calendar will appear. You can choose the
year and month by clicking the arrow buttons and when you are at the month you
require, click on the date required and it will be written into the date field.
When you have entered all the data you want, click
the Save button. If you click the Cancel button, any data you have entered on
the form will be discarded.
There is no limit to the number of cats you can enter – except for the
amount of hard disk storage space you have.
Editing details of a cat
As with Add, when you click the Edit button on the
cat details form, the entry areas will become free and you can alter any
details. Why may you need to edit the details of a cat? Perhaps you spelled its
name wrongly, you maybe entered the cat before you had all of its data
available. The form used to edit the details is the same one as for adding a
cat and is used in the same way.
Editing a cat’s name or its details will not
“disconnect” it from the family tree.
Delete a cat
Clicking this button on the cat details form will
allow you to delete any cat provided it is not entered as a parent to any
other cat. It does not make sense to delete a cat that is a parent. Editing
is the alternative to use in that case. If you are adamant that you want a
parent cat deleted, this can be done if you first edit any of its offspring to
remove it as a parent.
Page
2. Notes
The large area on page 2 of
the form is where free-form notes about any aspect of the cat can be entered –
what its feeding regime is; when inoculations were given; when and with whom it
has been bred etc. There is no limit to these notes. Do not press return
(enter) to get a new line, the text will wrap automatically, unless you want to
start a new paragraph or insert some white space between items.
Page 3. Pedigree
The pedigree of the chosen cat is displayed on the
third page of the cat details form.
There is only room to display three generations on the screen. You can wander up the generations of the
pedigree by clicking on any displayed ancestor. The clicked on ancestor will become “the cat” and the display
will move up three generations from it.
You can choose to print from four different kinds of
pedigree. If you put your mouse pointer
on the four different radio buttons on the left hand side of the pedigree
screen, you can read, on the status message at the bottom of the screen, which
pedigree each of the radio buttons will give you. The letters give an inkling of the types of pedigree. G4 means 4-generation whilst G5 means
5-generation. The P after two of the
pedigree types means that photos of the cat’s parents will appear on the
pedigree. This does, of course, only
happen if you have stored photos for the parents of the cat.
Your details on the pedigree
When you choose Your Details, you will get a form to
enter your name, address, telephone number and email address. Enter your name
as you want it to appear on the pedigree form against the “Bred by” heading. It
will be entered automatically as you add each new cat. You can alter it if the breeder was not you.
You can alter these values at any time and they will
be remembered until you alter them again.
The details you enter here will, by default, be
printed around the periphery of the pedigree. You can choose to not print your
name and address, your telephone number or your email address by choosing
Maintenance, What to print on the pedigree and clicking the relevant check
boxes.
Getting your own logo and
name/title on the pedigree
There are two areas where you can further
personalize your pedigrees. In the top
right hand corner of your pedigree the logo of East Coast Software will appear
by default. If you have a logo of your
own, you can replace the default one with it.
Choose Maintenance, Your own logo, Get your own logo, from the main
menu. You can use a photo if you wish.
Note: It will be constrained to 1.25” by 1.25” or the
maximum of its width or height will be limited to 1.25”. This means that if you have a tall, narrow
photo or a short, wide photo, the longest dimension will be limited to 1.25”
and the other reduced to maintain the aspect ratio.
Getting the logo is exactly the same as getting your
cats’ photos. You have to know where it
is stored on your hard disk and it must be in one of the following formats:
JPG, BMP, GIF or WMF.
You can insert a name or title above the wording,
“Certificate of pedigree for…” but, once again, it will be constrained to approximately
5” by 0.4”. Bear this in mind if you
choose to design one for yourself.
If either your logo or your name/title do not suit
you, you can delete them via the maintenance menu. The logo will revert to the one for East Coast Software. The name/title will merely disappear. See
the preview below for logo and title.
Choose what to print on the
pedigree
To decide what you want to print around the
periphery of the pedigree, choose Maintenance, What to print on pedigree. You will have a form with several check
boxes that are all, by default, ticked.
You can un-tick whichever ones you do not want to appear on the
pedigree. Your choice will be
remembered and will be in force until you go back to this form and change your
choices.
The choices presented are self-explanatory except,
perhaps for one. The one labelled,
“Signed declaration” is the sentence at the bottom left of the pedigree stating
that what is printed represents the truth with a space for a signature.
Preview.
When you choose the type of pedigree by clicking the
required radio button and then click the print button, you will get a print
form.
This form has a couple of check boxes on it. One is to switch on or off the print preview
facility. The other is to print to a
file. If the preview check box is
checked, yet another form will open when you click the OK button on the print
form. This is the preview form. It will show you what your print will look
like.
As you move your mouse pointer over the preview, the
pointer will change to a magnifying glass.
In this format, successive mouse clicks will zoom out and in on the
preview. Along the top of the preview
form there are some tool buttons. You
only need to know about the printer icon and the door icon. Clicking the door icon will exit the preview
without printing. Clicking the printer
icon will exit the preview to your normal printer control form. The other buttons are to generate preview
files but these are no good to anyone, as they need the system to be able to
view them.
E-mailing pedigrees
You can send a pedigree by
email to a prospective buyer of your birds. To do this, choose the Send as an
Attachment icon on the toolbar. This will generate a PVW file. The prospective
buyer must either have the Cage Bird System or must go to the East Coast
Software website at www.EastCoastSoftware.co.uk and download the free
preview file viewer utility in order to view the PVW file. The PVW file cannot
be viewed by any other means.
Page 4. Photo
The fourth page of the cat details form shows any
images you have imported for the cat or allows you to import a photo or scanned
image of the cat.
The image will appear in the central square on the
form. To import an image, click the Get
Photo button.
This opens another form that shows you what
photos/images exist in the folder where you have installed the Cat Pedigree
System. If you have photos on your hard
disk in another folder, the browse button allows you to navigate your hard
disk(s) to find them. You have to know
where you have stored them. Only photos
with extensions of BMP, JPG, GIF and WMF can be stored. If your photos are not in one of these
formats, you must use a graphics editor to convert them to one of these
formats. Probably the best, cheapest in
terms of hard disk space used, formats is JPG.
The file names of the photos in the folder you have
navigated to will appear in the box at the bottom left of this form. Click on any one to see which it is in the
viewer at the top of the form. When you
have the photo you want, click the OK button and it will be copied into the
cat’s details. You can change the photo
for another one at any time. If you
cannot find the photo, click the Cancel button and no image will be stored.
Storing photographs of your cats has serious
consequences for the system backup routine.
Backup is normally to floppy disks but it will not take many photographs
to make the file where they are stored too big to go on a floppy. At that point, the photograph file will not
be backed up if your backup is to a normal 1.44MB floppy. You must consider whether you want to
install a higher density medium such as a Zip , Jaz or magneto-optical drive to
store your backups on. The system will
NOT backup to a CD-R but may to a CD-RW.
Page
5. Shows
The fifth page of the cat details form displays details of any shows that this cat has been entered into.
Page 6. Mating
The fifth page of the cat
details form shows a list of mating records for any selected male cat. If you
select a female cat this page will not appear.
Click the ‘Delete’ button to
remove the record of a mating. Click the ‘Mating Cert.’ Button to generate a
mating certificate and automatically add a record of the details to the
displayed list. To display the full details for any mating select the mating in
the displayed list and click the ‘right’ mouse button on the selected mating.
When the ‘Mating Cert.’
Button is selected the form below is displayed. Into which the details of the
female are entered together with details of fees and any arrangements.
On clicking the ‘Print’
button a mating certificate is generated which includes the pedigree history of
the selected male cat.
Breeds
Choose ‘Maintenance’, ‘Manage Breed List’, ‘Modify’
then ‘Breed’ and you will get a form where you can Add, Edit and Delete
breeds. The initial entries provided
are taken from GCCF breed lists.
The breeds selected from this form are those that
will populate the drop-down list of breeds on the cat details form. When you start CPS for the first time, you
must select at least one breed before you can enter any cats.
If you try to delete a breed into which you have
already entered some cats, you will not be allowed to. It will be OK to delete a breed immediately
after adding it. You may Edit the breed
name without losing access to cats already entered – you may have misspelled
it. Deleting a breed will also delete all the colours associated with the
breed. As there are many colours associated with breeds in the GCCF lists this
is not recommended as entering them again could be very time consuming.
Only enter breed names for those cats that you want
to add details and print pedigrees for. The number of breeds is unlimited –
limited only by storage space on your hard disk.
If you deal with more than one breed of cat, the
system will always start up with the breed that you were working with last time
you shut down. If you want to work on a
different breed, select Cats, Details and change the breed in the drop-down
list. The breed currently selected is
displayed in the title bar of the main start up window.
Colours
Choose ‘Maintenance’,
‘Manage Breed List’, ‘Modify’ then ‘Colour’’ and you will get a form where you
can Add, Edit and Delete breed colours.
The initial entries provided are taken from GCCF breed lists. Select the
breed you want to enter/modify colours for and then use the ‘Add’, ‘Edit’ and
delete buttons provided. If you enter a new breed you must enter the colours
and codes associated with it before you can select them from the drop down
lists on the cat details page.
Cats in system
This will show you the numbers of cats you have
entered into the system, separated into the breeds you have entered.
It is merely for display and you cannot alter any of
the displayed information.
Summary
The summary form allows you
to select cats that meet selection criteria set by selecting the radio buttons
and drop down list selections provided. The full details of any cat in the list
can then be displayed by double clicking on that cat.
Progeny
This form will show you all of the progeny of any
cat.
Choose the cat by clicking on it in the top
table. The table below will show the
names and sex of the first-generation offspring of the chosen cat.
You can wander down the generations by right
clicking on any of a cat’s progeny in the bottom table. This will put the clicked-on cat into the
top list and show its progeny in the table below. To display the full details
of any cat listed simply double click on that cat.
Shows
Details of shows attended
can be entered here together with the names of cats entered in these shows.
These details include any honours these dogs obtained e.g Sh Ch and the name of
the judge. The entry of honours is also used to update the championship status
information displayed on the pedigree.
The show classes used when
entering cats into a show are entered from the Maintenance / Show Classes menu
selection. These have to be entered before any show cats can be added into the
list.
Options
This feature allows you to
change some standard descriptions that are used throughout the software. These
are for the descriptions given to male and female gender and the collective
name used for your establishment. The latter is set to ‘cattery’. To use this
feature select ‘Maintenance’ and then ‘Options’ from the system menu.
File menu
Backup Data
This facility will allow you
to backup to any disk except a CD-ROM.
It will even allow you to
backup to the disk where the Cat Pedigree System lives but this would be the
height of folly. If you lose the hard disk where CPS is, you also lose all your
data as well! The system cannot tell if a D: drive is a separate physical drive
from C: or if it is just a logical partition. It is NOT good practice to backup
to another partition on the same physical disk as your CPS but it is good and
speedy to do so to a separate hard disk.
This backup system will allow you to backup to Jaz
and Zip drives as well as normal floppies or the newer very high density
floppies. If you want to be sure of secure data, you must consider using Zip,
Jazz, magneto-optical, “USBee” or another hard disk as storage devices rather
than floppies as a backup medium. Backup is discussed in some detail on our web
site at www.EastCoastSoftware.co.uk
on the FAQ page. Read the answer to Q12.
The best time to take a backup is after an inputting
session.
Please do take a backup after changing data - say
each week. Computer hard disks are robust but do occasionally fail. If you have
spent several hours entering data, a 25p floppy disk and the few minutes it
takes to do a backup is a very low cost insurance against having to enter all
that data again.
Anyone who does not backup the data at intervals is
taking a very foolish risk.
Backup your data
every week
Restore Data
This is the reverse of backup. The hard disk was
lost, the data could not be recovered but you had a backup. After the hard disk
is repaired or replaced and CPS re-installed on it, it is very easy to put the
data back on the system - provided a backup has been done before the disk
crash.
If you haven’t done a backup, after the disk repair
you can easily re-install CPS but without the backup, you face a long period of
typing before you are back to where you were before the disk crash.
Reindex Data
Choose this when things seem to go wrong - data is
in the wrong order, data you know to be there does not appear or error messages
about indexes or tags appear. It should
not really be necessary but it will make sure that the indexes are in good
order.
Tools
Reminder
This is a temporary reminder into which you enter
notes of things you want an automatic reminder for.
On the form there is a spin box at the top that you
set for the number of days ahead you want reminding. For example, you may want
to remind yourself when subscriptions are due or when vaccinations expire. If
you click on the Add button, some entry areas will appear. The first is a date
spin box which, like those you have already met, can be spun to the date you
require or you can right click on it for a calendar to appear and when you
double click on any date, it will be placed into the date field. Next, tab to
the short note field where you put in words that will remind you what you want
to remember. If you want longer notes, enter them in the box at the bottom left
of the form. You don’t have to enter longer notes if they are not required.
When you click the Save button, the reminder will be entered into the central
table. You cannot change things in this central table. Click on Edit to do
that.
Any entries you have made which fall inside the
number of days you set on the top spin box from the date for the reminder will
be displayed as you start up the CPS. For example, if you set the days ahead to
14, when the current date gets to 14 days before the remind date, each time you
start CPS, that reminder will be displayed. As the remind date is passed, these
entries are automatically deleted. You can re-set the days ahead at any time.
A good use for this is to enter your
wife’s/husband’s birthday. After all, you spend so much time with the cats that
a few brownie points gained by remembering their birthday will be valuable.
Permanent diary
The permanent diary is very similar to the reminder
except that entries are not automatically deleted. You decide when and if you
want individual entries deleted. It is permanent and you can view its contents
whenever you want.
Known
problems
1. When
installing, one or two users have received the error message, "Invalid
driver name or insufficient system resources" followed by a file name.
This is caused when you have a fax allocated as your printer driver or when
your printer driver has a fault or you do not have a printer installed.
Workaround:
install a printer driver for a printer that uses paper - use the generic
drivers supplied with Windows if you do not have one for your printer.
2. If, when
opening up the system, you see the error message “Database Engine
Initialization Error”, “Cannot Initialize with Different Configuration File”.
You are currently running another application, which uses a Borland Database
Engine (BDE), and you must close this application before opening the Cat
Pedigree software.