Panorama > Release Notes
 
Version 0.1.003 (released December 2nd, 2012)

This version introduces database features for the first time, including the data sheet. To open a database, press the Open Database button in the RagelUnicode window. In the data sheet you can scroll to view data, insert and delete records and edit data. The Select button opens a dialog that allows you to enter a selection formula.

Let me emphasize that most of the user interface is currently primitive scaffolding that is incomplete and in many cases will eventually be replaced altogether. Obviously the current tool bar is primitive and nonstandard. The cell editor doesn’t have any of Panorama’s special editing tricks and will eventually be completely replaced (tabbing also doesn’t scroll correctly). Other than the Window menu, the menus are incomplete and don’t work anyway. There’s currently no indicator that shows what column is currently selected – I’m not sure how that is going to work but I’ll have to come up with something.

In addition to the minimal user interface, you can also type formulas or procedures into the RagelUnicode window. For example there is currently no user interface for sorting, but you can sort a mailing list database by last name by typing in the following procedure and pressing the Run button:

field Last
sortup

If you open up a really large database, you may see a delay before it opens. For example, I have an 80,000 record database that takes 3 seconds to open. When I first saw this delay I was disappointed, but then I realized that Panorama is actually importing this file, not opening a native file. At the moment there is no save command and no way to create a native file for this new version. It currently opens only Panorama 6 files, and automatically imports them and converts them to the new format, which is the cause for the delay.

In general I have not yet done any benchmarking for speed with this new version. It’s possible that the new version may be slower than Panorama 6 at some operations – it’s doing a lot more internally in terms of handling unicode characters, etc. On the other hand, the current version is not fully optimized for speed yet, so it should get faster, and it does seem like it is probably fast enough already.

In addition to the new user interface, there are also 45 additional statements and functions implemented in this new version. These are described below.

Brand new features implemented in this release (features that were not included in Panorama 6):

Features implemented in this release that work differently than they did in Panorama 6.

Features implemented in this release that work exactly the same as they did in Panorama 6.

ALL features that were added or changed in this release:

See Also