The amount of room available to add authors to a citation is limited. I can add about 2 lines and then can add no more characters. This is off-putting, as occasionally I have an article or report that might have 15 or more authors, and I would like to add them. Is there a way to change the limit for this field.
Thanks
Don
Room for authors.
I also have difficulties with the length of the author field, as well as that of the title field.
A work around is to utilise separate 'custom_X' memo fields for the full text of each, and use the main title and author fields for an abbreviated version. (Not ideal as the short title field already exists and cut and pasting can then normally be required when producing documents, detracting from many of the real gains available from the compiled database.
I conjecture, that as with me, this issue comes from attempting to fully reference court case and other similar data. Although not a legal researcher and not working in that area at the moment, I do reference many for my research. I would expect this issue to be raised regularly in the new forum covering that sphere.
The restriction is due to the version database restrictions of the database used by Biblioscape (DBISAM) for text fields. Those restrictions in the text field do not exist in the next version up of DBISAM.
Paul has stated in the past the database was to be updated in V.8, but for some reason that has not occurred. when that upgrade happens this problem will be solved.
Ian
N.B. The Biblioscape ODBC driver is particularly attractively priced when comparisons are made.
Ians, the new database
Ians, the new database engine will be used in version 9 release. The string field length limit will be doubled to 512. That should be enough for the Authors field. Thanks, Paul
Go to C:\Program
Go to C:\Program Files\Biblioscape 8\tools\dbsys.exe (or an equivalent), start the tool, find the field in the relevant table and change the length of the field.
Thanks. I will give it a
Thanks. I will give it a try.
Don
That doesn't work. I used
That doesn't work. I used the dbsys.exe program, and restructured the authors field in the au_x table from a size of 30 to 100. Basically nothing changed. I could enter a couple more letters but that was it. Actually it makes sense that I couldn't add more, because a size of 30 for an authors field means something different than 30 characters for the authors field.
Something else needs to be done.
PAUL: what do I do??
Don
I imagine it should be
I imagine it should be Authors field in the bib table. Can you not see your entries in there?
Or you can wait for Paul to give the authoritative answer. :)
I had not thought about that
I had not thought about that table. I went to it and tried to restructure it, but got the message that 250 (the current value) was the max. So maybe Paul can help.
Thanks for your help.
Don
welcome. sorry it was not of
welcome. sorry it was not of use. am also curious now...
In the next major release,
In the next major release, the limit will be increased to 512 characters. That should be enough.
Re: In the next major release...
Paul,
It has been over a year since this discussion about lengthening the author field. Since version 9 is still not released, would you please advise me on how to successfully change the author field to the "Memo" type? When I try, upon clicking the Save button, dbsys.exe presents me with this error message: DBISAM Engine Error # 12292 Invalid field 'Authors' specified for the index 'secx_Authors' in the table 'bib'
Is it possible to successfully change the author field to the "Memo" type? If so, how?
Please advise,
Thanks,
Ben
Ben, if you remoce the
Ben, if you remoce the secondary index first, you can change it to Memo field. But this is not recommended because a memo field cannot be displayed correctly in the references grid. You can put the extra text in a custom field or the Misc field.
Re: If you remove the secondary index first
Paul,
I don't mind the title not displaying correctly within Biblioscape, but is there a way to make it display correctly in BiblioWeb? After changing the title and sec_title to the Memo field type, they both display as (MEMO) on the search results page (though they display correctly on the record page).
Please advise,
Ben
It should work fine in
It should work fine in BiblioWeb.