Biota Support
Biota support starts with the Biota Manual, which was deliberately written in much more detail than many manuals, to provide you with full, rapid access to the information you need. You get the Biota Manual when you purchase Biota.
"How To" Questions: The Manual is the first place to go to find out if Biota can do something you want done. Use the Table of Contents (there is much more detailed version that the chapter listing shown here) or, if necessary, Acrobat's "Search" tool to see if you can find the answer you need. Often, there is more than one way to do a task with Biota, but usually there is a fast way and a slow way. If some task seems to take longer than you think it should, try looking up the topic in the Table of Contents for alternative approaches.
Questions that can be answered by consulting the Manual will receive the lowest priority for email support.
Support by Email
Problems with Biota licenses or distribution media (CD) .
Please contact Biota's publisher, Sinauer Associates: support@sinauer.com
Problems with orders for Biota from Sinauer or Biota resellers. Please contact Biota's publisher, Sinauer Associates: orders@sinauer.com
Technical problems with Biota or problems with the Biota Website . If you are a Registered Biota owner, you may request email help with problems you can't solve with the help of the Biota Manual. Please contact Biota's author, Robert Colwell at colwell@uconn.edu. You can generally expect a response within 24 hours.
When preparing an email with a request for for support, please be sure to include the following:
- The word "Biota" in the message Subject.
- Your 4-digit User Number (not 15-character the License Code), if possible, or the name under which you registered your copy of Biota.
- Version of Biota. From the File menu in Biota, select "About Biota." Record the Version and Date of the copy of Biota that you are using, and indicate whether it is BiotaApp (the stand-alone version) or Biota4D (running under 4D Server or 4th Dimension).
- A detailed description of what you want to do, or the problem you have doing it.
Please do not telephone the Author or contact the Publisher with technical support questions.
Bug Reporting
Every effort has been made to beta-test Biota thoroughly. In any program this complex (more than 11,000 objects, including nearly 5000 methods and 380 forms), however, users invariably prove that completely bug-free behavior is only a theoretical possibility.
If Biota does something you did not expect, first try consulting the Manual, including the section on "Troubleshooting" in Appendix L, to see if the behavior is normal. If something happens that is clearly not intended, you may have found a bug. If a 4th Dimension error window appears that is not discussed in the Errors section of Appendix L, you have definitely found a bug.
If you believe you have discovered a bug, please email Biota's author, Robert Colwell at colwell@uconn.edu.
When preparing an email with a bug report, please be sure to include the following:
- The word "Biota" in the message Subject.
- Your 4-digit User Number (not 15-character the License Code), if possible, or the name under which you registered your copy of Biota. (If you are using an unregistered Demo version, please state that.)
- Version of Biota. From the File menu in Biota, select "About Biota." Record the Version and Date of the copy of Biota that you are using, and indicate whether it is BiotaApp (the stand-alone version) or Biota4D (running under 4D Server or 4th Dimension).
- A description of the problem. To be most useful the description of the problem should include a full account of the steps that led up to it. If at all possible, try making it happen again until you are sure what steps reliably produce the problem. If the problem cannot be reproduced, it cannot be fixed.
- Any data that were involved. If the problem seems to concern a particular data record, please write down exactly what was in the record.
- Your computer model and processor.
- The operating system and version number you are using.
Known Bugs
As the of the date of release (January 12, 2007) there are no known bugs in Biota 2.04.
Notes for Mac OS X
NOTE: Biota 2.03 is now certified for Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger).
Although Biota 2 runs native under Mac OS X, there are a few peculiarities to be aware of.
- Quitting Biota. Due to limitations in the 4th Dimension development environment used to build Biota, you must Quit Biota in the traditional, pre-OS X way, by selecting Quit Biota from the File menu, not from the OS X Applications menu. You can also quit, as with any Mac program, by pressing Command-Q on the keyboard. (Future updates will likely offer a Quit option in the Applications menu.)
- Preferences. As with all other Biota versions, the Preferences screen for Biota is in the Special menu, not in the OS X Applications menu.
- Web Server. To run Biota's onboard Web server under Mac OS X, you must change the port settings. Under MacOS X, using TCP/IP Ports 0 through 1023 (including Port 80) for Web publishing requires specific access privileges: only the "Root" user of the machine can launch an application using these ports. If you try to launch Biota's Web server on Port 80, you get an error message stating that "The Database cannot be published." The easiest solution is to set Biota's onboard Web server port to a number greater than 1023 (Port 2000 or Port 8080, for example.)
If you use a port number other than 80, visitors to your site must append the port number to the URL for your site, separated by a colon. For example, if your Web site address is "www.myhost.edu/mysite," and you are using port number 2000 for Biota, visitors must use the URL "www.myhost.edu/mysite:2000."
By default, the Root user is not enabled on a machine running MacOS X. If you prefer to use Port 80 under Mac OS X, you must first enable the Root user and then log in with this user name. You can enable the Root user by means of the NetInfo Manager utility (in the OS X Applications:Utilities folder). Once the utility has been launched, select the Security command in the Domain menu, choose Authenticate, then Root User, and follow the instructions. Close the NetInfo Manager and log in using the Root user name. You can then launch the Web server on port number 80. See the Mac OS X documentation if necessary.
Notes for Mac OS 9
To run Biota 2 under Mac OS 9, you need to have Apple's CarbonLib 1.4 or later installed. You can download CarbonLib for free from Apple.
Notes for Windows
Biota 2 for Windows runs under Windows XP, NT4, ME, 2000, or 98.
Note: Biota 2.04 has not been tested under Windows Vista, which was not yet available at the time of release of Biota 2.04. Your Suggestions for Biota Biota's current tools and features evolved over a period of more than ten years, under the constant guidance of Biota users. Suggestions for improvement are warmly welcomed. Please email Biota's author, Robert Colwell at colwell@uconn.edu. Please include the word "Biota" in the Subject line of your message.
Version History
The section lists the changes made in each new version, in reverse chronological order, beginning with 2.03.
Version 2.04 (released January 12, 2007)
Biota 2.04 is a maintenance update. It has no new features. The following bugs from Version 2.03 have been fixed in 2.04:
(1) Display errors sometimes appeared for Degree-Minutes-Seconds and Integer Degrees-Decimal Minutes formats for geographical coordinates (S and W hemisphere only) in the Locality table (Mac OS with Intel processor and certain Windows Intel processors only). This was a display issue only; coordinates are saved in Biota Data Files in Decimal Degrees format. Fixed.
(2) For the Specimen, Species, Collection, and Locality tables, the Record Set Option Screen was not offered when leaving the Record Listing screen if an individual record had first been opened and Canceled. Fixed.
(3) Exporting label text for Locality labels repeated the second label data for all subsequent labels. Fixed.
(4) Host information was not included in printed or exported Locality labels. Fixed.
(5) A non-informative error message appeared when clicking the Remove button in Import and Export Editors but no field had been selected for removal. A message now appears stating that a field must first be selected.
(6) In the New Loan input screen, the Cancel button was previously a default button, so that use of the Return key or a barcode reader to add specimens to a Loan dismissed the form prematurely. The Cancel button on this screen must now be manually clicked, as in other Biota input screens.
(7) In the Notes input tab for Specimen, Species, Collection, Locality, and Loans tables, if you created and saved a New Note, added a second Note or tried to revise a Note in the same parent record, then clicked a different tab on the parent record without first saving the parent record, Note information was sometimes lost. Fixed: it is no longer necessary to save the parent record to save a new Note or revisions to an existing Note, as long as you click the Save Note button.
(8) When determinations of Specimen records were changed using Series-->Find and Identify Specimen Series, the [Specimen]SpcmRecChangedDate and [Specimen]SpcmRecChangedBy fields were not updated. Fixed.
Version 2.03 (released April 27, 2004) Biota 2.03 is primarily a maintenance update (see Bugs Fixed in Biota 2.03, next section). There are two new features, however:
(1) The Export Specimens Examined tool now handles undetermined specimens, either alone or mixed with determined specimens.
(2) A new Find tool has been added to the Database Client Mode of Biota's onboard Web server: "Localities or Collecting Events for Specimens or Species." The Command Name for the URL to activate this command is "LCforSpcmSpp." (See Chapter 32, page 6, of the Biota 2 Manual.)
Bugs Fixed in Biota 2.03 (or earlier)
(1) In early versions, it was not possible to create a new data file in BiotaAppWin from the "Create New Data File" item in the File menu. This was corrected as of Version 2.02.
(2) In Version 2.02, it was not possible to enter a Date Determined value other than today's date. (The next tab was displayed before the entry could be completed.) Fixed in 2.03.
(3) The "Find Orphan Records" tool (in English, but not Spanish) did not display correctly in Version 2.02. Fixed in 2.03.
(4) A bug in the Import Editor in Version 2.02 prevented importing of new References. Fixed in 2.03. (Note: the fix involved changing the Reference Number field from a numeric field to an alpha field. Only digits are allowed in the field, however. The only difference you might experience is that, to sort Reference records by Reference Number, you must use the Add Formula option in the Order by screen, entering "Num([Reference]ReferenceNumber." See Chapter 10, p. 26 in the Biota 2 Manual.)
(4) In some circumstances, the menus disappeared after using the Import Editor in Version 2.03. Fixed.
(5) Under Mac OS 10.3 (Panther), dates were displayed in Biota in US format (MM/DD/YYYY), even if the OS was set to International format (DD/MM/YYYY). Fixed in 2.03; the display format now automatically matches the OS setting, as in all previous Biota versions. (NOTE for Biota4DMac users: This bug fix requires 4D Server 6.8.5.)
(6) Several bugs in Version 2.02 in the Database Client Mode of Biota's onboard Web server have been fixed in 2.03:
(a) The "Specimens or Species for Localities or Collecting Events" tool did not work. Fixed.
(b) In the "Specimens for a Species" tool, the picklist of species names was not alphabetically arranged. Fixed.
(c) When in Database Client Mode, the Web Browser Mode homepage sometimes appeared inexplicably instead. Fixed.
(7) A workaround has been implemented for the cosmetic bug that formerly appeared under 4D/4D Server 6.8.5 for Mac OS. This means that Biota4DMac users are free to switch to 4D Server 6.8.5 from 6.8.4 (or earlier versions). There is no charge from 4D to do so. (BiotaAppMac 2.0.3 uses 4D Engine 6.8.5.)
(8) Not a bug, but a change: As of Version 2.03, the limitation on running Biota with the operating system set to European style numbers (comma as decimal separator) has been eliminated. Instead, a message appears explaining the limitations under this setting. The only important limitation is that manual entry of Latitude and Longitude is not possible. You must change the Number format setting to the International standard, period (full stop) as decimal separator.
|
