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Version
Change Log
Scroll this page to
see enhancements for version 2.3, then 2.2, then 2.1, then 2.0
| Trousers 2.3 (release date is to be determined) |
General
- Multi-language: Add option to specify
fonts for screen data, report data, and report static text. A
user with appropriate multi-language fonts will be able to create
transcripts and grade sheets completely in many more languages such as
Russian and Arabic. Prior to this, multi-language support for
reports was restricted to Romance languages (Spanish, French, etc.)
unless the user employed special additional software.
- Import from Trousers 1.0: The process failed if any table had more than 32767 rows. This bug is fixed.
Reports
- Student
Grade Sheet and Student Transcript: Global Parameters Maintenance
allowed up to 100 characters of text; however only the first 500
characters appeared on the transcript. This bug is now fixed.
Data Maintenance
- Student Maintenance: User now
sees how many characters of each 30-character address line have been
used. This helps users who must determine the best way to
compress an unusually lengthy address into the available fields.
- Enrollment Maintenance: Grade picklist is now
sorted by grade points. For example, if display order previously
was "A, A+, A-, B, B+ ..." it is now "A+, A, A-, B+, B ...".
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| Trousers 2.2 |
Multi-School
- Some users reported that schools
defined to Trousers did not appear on the dropdown listbox of the
Welcome Screen. It turns out that when a user defines a new
school with Trousers and then modifies the entry in
ODBC, Windows removes a Registry entry placed by Trousers to
identify the file as a Trousers 2 database.
Because Windows is not likely to change to accommodate Trousers,
the Trousers routine which populates schools in the dropdown
listbox was modified to render this a non-issue.
Data
Maintenance
- All Picklists: Change sort order of some picklists to the order most appropriate for the context.
Queries
- Class Query: Add Date and Time
as a selection option.
- Class Query: Fixed two small bugs. [1] If user
specified a single or double quote within the data selection criteria
for Location or Notes (which presumably is uncommon), the query either failed or returned spurious
results. Also the popup window title was incorrect.
- Warning
Queries: These are four new queries. These queries reveal
[1] doublebooked students (two or more classes for one term and
date/time, [2] doublebooked instructors (same as [1] but for
instructors), [3] Prospective students enrolled in one or more classes,
[4] Class overenrollment (too many students per class.
Reports
- Student
Grade Sheet: Fixed two bugs. [1] Optional freeform
student-specific top-of-grade-sheet text did not appear on the
grade sheet. [2] A paraticular combination of user events
in Student Maintenance caused Trousers to terminate abnormally when
creating a grade sheet.
- Instructor Grade Sheet: Added a
Global
Parameters option to show/hide the horizontal separator line.
This line was introduced in 2.1; some users prefer the separator line and
others do not.
- All Reports: Changed bottom-of-page text "Date
Printed" to "Date Created." This is because a user can create a
transcript on one date and direct it to a .PDF file instead of
printing. Thus a report create date may differ from the print date.
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| Trousers 2.1 |
Multi-School
- Add an option to delete a Trousers school.
Data
Maintenance
- Class Maintenance, Course Maintenance:
Allow
the user to specify a range of terms during which a course is
active. In Class Maintenance, only courses which are active
during the user-specified term appear in the course picklist.
This spares the user from scrolling through long-retired courses when
defining classes for a more recent term.
- Term Maintenance: Add option to generate
a list
of terms according to user-specified parameters if no terms have been
defined.
- Enrollment Maintenance (Class View):
Display
student status filter on the screen. Prior to this the filter
was
accessed by clicking a button so many users did not know the filter was
available.
- Global Parameters Maintenance, Reports
Tab, BUG
FIX: Trousers 2.0 had a bug which prevented the user from changing the
names of optional graphics files which appear at
top-of-report.
Reports
- Instructor Grade Sheet, Enrollment
Confirmation: Provide for Global Parameters end-of-sheet verbiage
similar to Student Grade Sheet end-of-sheet verbiage.
- Enrollment Confirmation: Allow user to
determine sort order of classes via a Global Parameters setting.
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| Trousers
2.0 |
General
- Trousers is now a 32-bit
application. This ensures compatibility with
Windows versions 98 through XP.
- Installation: Installing Trousers 2.0 is
quite straightforward and
intuitive. Trousers 1.0 installation required the user to
follow a
step-by-step process which sometimes involved changing PATH
declarations in AUTOEXEC.BAT or the Windows Control Panel.
- Database Connection: If Trousers fails to
connect to the database
(which should be uncommon), Trousers tries to determine the cause,
explain it to the user, and recommend a solution.
- Welcome Screen and User Maintenance: User
Maintenance allows a "clue"
to be associated with each user ID and password. At
the Welcome
Screen, a user who specified an incorrect password now sees a prompt
with the memory-jogging clue.
- .INI File Maintenance: While using
Trousers, the user can now click a
button to invoke Windows Notepad with TROUSERS.INI or LANGUAGE.INI
ready for update. In Trousers 1.0, the user needed to invoke
Windows
Notepad (or another text editor) outside of Trousers, then search for
the .INI file to open.
- User Manual: It was updated to document
version 2.0 features, and much
editing was done to strive for conciseness/clarity. The LAN
installation section was completely rewritten and now includes
step-by-step guidance.
- Welcome Screen: A new "My Trousers"
button allows the user to create a
file containing information about the Trousers environment -- ODBC
Setup, PC characteristics, etc. This file can help the user and/or the
author diagnose a problem if Trousers behaves unexpectedly.
Multi-School
- A
click-the-button option in Trousers itself allows a user to define
additional schools. Prior to this, multi-school users had to
locate
and manually text-edit ODBC.INI for each Trousers school.
- At
the Welcome Screen, the user selects a school from a dropdown listbox
of all defined schools. Prior to this, the the user had to
type the
school name.
Data
Maintenance
- Instructor Maintenance, Class
Maintenance:
Users may classify instructors as Active or Inactive.
Inactive
instructors do not appear on the instructor picklist for Class
Maintenance unless the user chooses. The benefit is that a
user
who is assigning instructors to classes may scroll through a shorter
list of Active instructors instead of a much longer list of all defined
instructors.
- Instructor Status Update Shortcut: Added
this
function an an alternative way to change instructor status
for
many instructors.
- Class Shortcut: Allow the user to copy
some/all
classes from one term to another term. This is a time-saver
for a
school that offers a group of courses each term.
Reports
- All Reports: Users may now include a
picture
object in the upper right and/or left page corners. An ideal
use
for this is a school logo. Valid formats are BMP,
GIF,
JPEG, JPG, RLE, WMF.
- Report Manager: Current default zoom
percentage
is 100. A Global Parameters option will allow the user to set
that to another number. This is a convenience to users who
must
adjust the percentage to 99 to work with their particular
printers.
- Student Transcript, Student Grade Sheet:
Increased end-of-sheet verbiage from 500 to 1000 characters.
Added free-form text at beginning-of-transcript and
beginning-of-gradesheet.
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Possible Future Changes
General
- Support student or instructor having one name in
several parts, as opposed to First Name / Last Name. This is out
of courtesy to some cultures in India, Ethiopia, and elsewhere.
- Improve support for credit from other schools.
- Multiple Users, LAN Configuration: If User A
begins to work with a Trousers school while User B is doing the same,
warn both users.
- Import/Export:
Improve support for exporting Trousers data to databases such as MS
Access, MS SQL Server, Oracle, Sybase, MySQL.
- Add an option to directly transfer data from one Trousers database to another.
Currently the user must export data from one database, then import data
into the other.
- Install Trousers in the Program Files directory instead of a directory directly off the root drive.
- Allow the user to substitute "Semester" or another word for Term.
- Increase the size of the grade field from
3 to 4 characters.
- Student (Instructor) Picklist, used in Student
(Instructor) Maintenance and in report selection: Current
default sort order is student (instructor) name. Allow
default to be either student (instructor) name or ID according to
a Global Parameters
setting.
Data Maintenance
- Instructor Maintenance and Student Maintenance: Add a dropdown listbox for title (ex. Mr., Dr., Rev.)
- Fee Maintenance: Add functionality to maintain student fees. This could be
integrated with Trousers or it could be a separate program.
- Class Maintenance: Add optional dropdown list box for Location.
- Plan Maintenance: Allow for more sophisticated plans, i.e. a student must
take two courses from a group of four, three courses from a group of
six, etc.
- Plan Maintenance: Allow plans to have names.
- Student Maintenance (with ripple through to Studnet
Picklists for Student Maintenance, Enrollment Maintenance, and
Queries/Reports): Add a sixth Student category of "Withdrawn" to imply
permanently leaving school, thus implying that "Inactive" students
intend to return.
Reports
- Student Grade Sheet: At user option allow these to
appear: Total Credits Attempted, Total Credits Earned, Total Points,
total GPA. Currently only Total GPA appears, and it is not optional.
- Code Report: Add GPA.
- Student Plan Progress Report: Add credit hours.
- Instructor Grade Sheet: Allow additional variations of format of instructor name.
- Student Transcript & Student Grade Sheet: Add additional options for format of Instructor Name.
- Student Transcript and Student Grade Sheet: Add an option to suppress GPA.
- Student Transcript and Student Grade Sheet: Add option to display points per grade on a detail line.
- Studnet Transcript: When creating for a group of students, sort by student last name.
©
Copyright 2005 James Crispin
604 East Evergreen Street Wheaton, IL 60187 USA
phone: 630.462.0103
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