[Taxacom] Announcing Specify 7 for the Web

[Bob Mesibov]

This looks very nice. I'm especially impressed with the 'Importing external data' manual, because it patiently goes into detail about fixing errors and fixing format inconsistencies. What data validation routines have you built into data entry?

(I asked this question of Thomas Pape when he announced his Filemaker Pro-based database last month here on Taxacom [http://markmail.org/message/re3ya2lf35ec6bx5] but I didn't get a response.]

A couple of minor feedback points about collecting events:

- The example given in the beta gives lat/lon in DD to 10 decimal places, or to the nearest 0.01 mm. Why?

- Your full-date format is month-day-year, all in numbers, which is almost uniquely American. If Specify 7 is intended for international use, why not use the ISO 8601 standard, YYYY-MM-DD or YYYY/MM/DD?

- Your date entry is a single box, which allows for full date, month/year or year. So would 3 boxes, one each for year, month and day, and keeping these separate would greatly reduce the chances for misunderstandings after export, and disasters like the famous Excel stuff-up (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/214330).
-- 
Dr Robert Mesibov
Honorary Research Associate
Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, and
School of Agricultural Science, University of Tasmania
Home contact:
PO Box 101, Penguin, Tasmania, Australia 7316
(03) 64371195; 61 3 64371195