Dear all
A number of bugs have been reported on part of EpiData Entry recently. Some of these are known and others new. All reporting done to the Flyspray database and/or discussed on this list are very important inputs to the re-writing of software which includes a new Entry-Client. The new client will use the proposed "XML" based data format, but will also fix known issues. Currently the development is focused on quality issues of reading and writing data files. The decision has been made to rely on "in-house" quality assurance where we construct a number of "difficult to read files", and document that these can be read, exported to all supported formats, read again with proper testing of values, field formats etc. This strategy is much less error-prone than relying on user-reporting of testing. The similar report for EpiData Analysis is always available at: http://www.epidata.dk/php/downloadc.php?file=epidata_analysis_validate.pdf
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Currently we are looking at all the Check file commands to decide how and which of these should be continued or discontinued. Currently NO commands are on the "discontinue list". But some commands might be challenged. When doing so, the EpiData list will be oriented.
There are three types of current check file contents: a. Metadata descriptions (study label, file label, field labels, category/value labels, missing value definitions). b. Data Entry attributes at field or file level: (range, legal, mustenter, top of form, no-enter, type comment etc) (file level: type comment allfields ....etc) c. Scripting commands : (jumps, goto, if ... then ... before file, after file, relate .....)
Basicly the three levels a,b,c also reflect the user groups. From quick studies almost without metadata, labels are added (a), attributes added (b) and then further controls (c). A proper visually oriented filebuilder will be developed to assist users in the definition of these levels.
Documentation of the new file format is shown at: http://www.epidata.org/dokuwiki/doku.php/documentation:datafileformat_xml
Regards
Jens Lauritsen EpiData Association