EpiData manager test
Hi, I have tested EpiData manager and EpiData entry client. First : congratulations for this great job! It will be hard to forget the .qes .chk .rec system, but xml is a good choice for the future!
Bug report and suggestions (I work on a PC with windows 7) : 1/ Entry client : - when entering a date without "/", the first slash is automatically inserted (like in EpiData entry), but not the second one, and a blank grey screen appears after pressing tab or enter. This screen disappears when pressing ESC
-is a search function planned ?
2/ Manager - Moving fields or headings does not seem easy once they are created. Actually I can't find how to do it ! - A double click on an item should open the properties window - edition of the value labels is not intuitive. For example, it took me a long time to understand that I had to press enter to insert a new line - in value label edition : the image of the edited value label disappears when it is selected (first column on the left) - I created a new project and tried to enter new value labels : I could insert new lines but could not fill the "value" and "label" columns : they became blank after entering text and pressing enter
That's all for now!
Pascal THIBON, MD CHU Caen, Normandie France
Thank you for the testing and report here Pascal Thibon. This is the time when users should not only try out for stability and bugs, but also comment on user friendliness and "feel" of the software. We do quite a bit of testing and development before releasing each test version, but do not have the time to test everything on all operating systems. Therefore user involvement is a must for quick progress.
a Regarding date entry in EpiData Client: We will make the entry of dates resemble EpiData Entry, but with the change that the software should accept any sign (-/-) as date separator. The principle is that the user only has to enter as few digits as possibly, taking the missing parts from current day, month and year. Any bugs documented in relation to this will be fixed.
b A search function will be implemented.
c It has turned out to be "not very easy" to handle moving fields, sections etc. as also documented in the Mac version earlier. We might have to do this all over before first public release.
Just these days work is done on copying attributes (labels and range etc) from one field to other fields or to copy a field or a section to other places on the form without moving the first one.
d Regarding the "value label" editor we have already tried a few different designs, but it seems we should work more. We wish in principle that things are intuitive - since it turns out that too much explanation is needed when we teach if principles are not intuitive. - and that users tend to abandon software which is not immediately intuitive (or malfunctional).
Regards
Jens Lauritsen EpiData Association
a few more comments as I've tried some other things on the MAC (Intel) version
Please understand that all of my comments are meant to reflect my 100% enthusiasm for what you are doing! This just looks better and better each time. Jamie
On 2011-01-14, Jens wrote:
a Regarding date entry in EpiData Client: We will make the entry of dates resemble EpiData Entry, but with the change that the software should accept any sign (-/-) as date separator. The principle is that the user only has to enter as few digits as possibly, taking the missing parts from current day, month and year.
Manager seems to have picked up the date/time separators from my MAC preferences, but defaulted to comma for the decimal separator, rather than taking what I have in Preferences. We'll need to be able to change these under Project Settings. It will be nice if this also changes any data in the file, but that's something for the future. At least for a new project, we should be able to choose settings.
c It has turned out to be "not very easy" to handle moving fields, sections etc. as also documented in the Mac version earlier. We might have to do this all over before first public release.
Moving fields is actually working pretty well on the MAC version; not so for sections. Perhaps this just has to be "adequate and functional" and we can let someone write the "fancy" version in the future. The current build does questionnaire building better than Epi Info Win versions ever have, IMHO. Form creation libraries for software like Access/Excel must be monsters--we don't need to go there.
Just these days work is done on copying attributes (labels and range etc) from one field to other fields or to copy a field or a section to other places on the form without moving the first one.
d Regarding the "value label" editor we have already tried a few different designs, but it seems we should work more. We wish in principle that things are intuitive - since it turns out that too much explanation is needed when we teach if principles are not intuitive. - and that users tend to abandon software which is not immediately intuitive (or malfunctional).
The screens now work pretty well - maybe we just need some tool tips or some text in the status line of the values window, or placeholder text in the boxes for value and label. Can <tab> out of these be equivalent to <enter>. We will want to be able to import existing value sets from another .epx. And if this can be done on the fly like COMMENT LEGAL USE abc.rec at some point in the future, that will be wonderful. The value labels manager could do this by asking for file name (longlist.epx) and value label set name. Currently, Manager will not let you set a value--it insists on sequential order 0,1,2 for integers. This can be changed by editing the .epx. The principal for values is great (i.e. what shows up in the .epx).
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