Some of you will have seen paper copies of the Europa Flyer index. Now it's
available in soft-copy, in flavours to suit most people.
I constructed it in FileMaker Pro for Mac, and have also converted it to
dbf format and plain tab-separated text format. The FileMaker versions can
be used by anyone with version 3.0, on either Mac or Windows 95.
There are 2 places to get the files from, depending on what format you want
and what facilities you have available on your computer.
First, binary files:
If you have an ftp client package, then point it at ftp.avnet.co.uk and
check out the /pub/europa/ directory. For WWW clients with ftp capability,
use:
ftp://ftp.avnet.co.uk/pub/europa/
There, among all Graham Clarke's diagram files, you'll find:
flyr_ndx.sit stuffed FileMaker 3 file for Mac people
flyr_ndx.sea self-extracting version of above
flyr_ndx.zip zipped FileMaker 3 file for Windows 95 people
fndx_dbf.zip zipped dBase format file
Mac people will need Stuffit Expander for the .sit file. If you don't have
that, then pick up the .sea file instead. It's bigger to download, but will
self-extract on a double-click. W95 people using FileMaker 3 should get
flyr_ndx.zip and use their unzipper of preference on that. DOS/windows
people with a database manager that uses dBase format should get
fndx_dbf.zip and unzip that.
Second, text files:
If you ask the list majordomo for an index of the europa files you'll now
find among them:
flyr_ndx.hqx bin-hex encoded FileMaker 3 file for Mac
flyr_ndx.tab ascii text; tab separates fields & CRLF separates records
If you're a Mac FileMaker 3 user without ftp capability, then the .hqx file
(bin-hex'd) is the one to order (using the 'get' command to the majordomo).
Again, you'll need Stuffit Expander to unwrap that. Finally, if you want a
generic text file that you can import into just about any database manager
or spreadsheet (or word processor even!), then get the .tab file. Fields
are separated by tab chars, and records by CR-LF char pairs (suits DOS; Mac
& unix people will have to strip out the LFs or the CRs respectively).
The index includes all items in all issues up to number 8 (Mar 96). I'll
try to keep it up-to-date as new issues come out.
If you feel there are any improvements that could be made, or have any
problems with getting or using the index, please let me know.
It might be helpful in reducing the variety of versions kept in the
archives if I knew which ones were most useful to club members. Perhaps you
could let me know by email which version you've downloaded, when you do it.
Then, if I find that a particular version has never been downloaded, it's
pretty unlikely I'll take the time to create that version at the next
update.
Enjoy!
Rowland
... that's Rowland with a 'w' ...
|