I tried to load a checklist for California from Avisys, but was unable to do so. When the .html file was displayed in the
browser for me to select the species list, all the data
(scientific name, common name, status) appeared in the first column with a "/" separator.
I also have a question about regions: Is it possible to index
bu region/subregion? such as State/County?
California has so many birds that county lists are useful.
Thanks,
lmd
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Also the installer seemed to crash while setting up
shortcuts (not surprisingly) with the following outputL
After clicking to create shortcuts, I got
Couldn't find X Input Context
java.lang.NullPointerException
at com.memoire.vainstall.VALinkKDE.getIcon(VALinkKDE.java:195)
at com.memoire.vainstall.VALinkKDE.writeEntry(VALinkKDE.java:39)
at com.memoire.vainstall.VALinkKDE.writeEntry(VALinkKDE.java:23)
at com.memoire.vainstall.VALinkKDE.create(VALinkKDE.java:79)
at com.memoire.vainstall.VALinkKDE.createAll(VALinkKDE.java:141)
at com.memoire.vainstall.Setup.createShortcuts(Setup.java:795)
at com.memoire.vainstall.Setup.nextStep(Setup.java:492)
at com.memoire.vainstall.gui.VAPanel.nextAction(VAPanel.java:47)
at com.memoire.vainstall.gui.VAWizard$1.run(VAWizard.java:162)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:534)
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
I do not know how avisys checklists are built. It's possible but unlikely that the table is just one column. My guess is that the table contains nested tables. For example, to center a table nicely some web sites use a table with just once cell and that cell contains a table that contains multiple rows and columns. J-Bird should actually be able to handle the example just given. My bet is that the table consists of one column and that each row in it contains a table that contains the columns that you see. That would I believe produce what you have seen. You can test that idea. First, select the first column and the last column in just one row. That should produce a nice result - one row with several columns. Then try the first column in one row and the last column in the next row. If that produces garbage, each row in the table is a single cell that contains a subtable - or worse. Such subtables will not work. I considered them when I wrote the table gleaner, but I decided that I had to make too many assumptions to try to pull data from subtables into neat
rows and columns and that I could easily end up with tables that were not rectangular. It may be worth revisiting the issue. That requires mapping out possibilities and asking which cases can be covered.
Checklists are all simple lists. It's possible to nest checklists in the sense that checklists have parents. However, the parent checklist imposes no constraint on the contents of child lists. Parents provide candidate species when building checklists manually. I've thought about implementing an action in which any species that is on child lists but not on the parent's list is automatically added to the parent list.
To do state and county lists, you'll have to import a state list and lists for the counties that you want. There is at present no way to import many checklists at once using either a single column to indicate which checklist an entry belongs to or multiple columns to indicate which checklists each species belongs to. It's just not there, yet.
Thanks for the heads up on the shortcuts. I need to get inside of vainstall and disable shortcuts on all platforms but MS Windows. They are supposed to work on KDE and Gnome, too, but I bet that they are dated there.
Dick
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Actually in my original post, I misspoke myself, saying avisys when I meant Avibase. I was trying example 2 given in the J-Bird user manual.
The Avibase presentaton does, in fact use nested tables. Each species is a row <tr> entry and the common name and latinized name are <td> entries. I see how dealing with _every_ formatting possibility would be a near-infinite time sink.
I avoided the problem by falling back to the AOU checklist, example 1, which worked as advertised from the spreadsheet format the AOU provides. As you pointed out, there are a lot of subsetting inconsistencies and I probably made some suboptimal choices, but I did get the NA list loaded.
>"I've thought about implementing an action in which >any species that is on child lists but not on the >parent's list is automatically added to the parent list. >
I wondered if that were happening now- apparently not. It would make the work of loading the AOU list
easier as many of the inconsistencies appear to be due to species splits.
The state/county question was not so much a checklist question as a tick-counting question.
I have not worked through any of that yet, nor looked at the schema so the question may not make sense.
Returning to the Avibase problem, it appears that an alternative is "save as" text from the browser.
This produces entries like
Streaked Shearwater /Calonectris leucomelas/ Rare/Accidental
and running
tr / , < CA_avb.txt > CA_avb.csl
produces a comma-separated list.
Thanks for your thorough response.
LeRoy Dorman
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Avibase? That should work. If you are importing the California list using the Sibley & Monroe 1996 nomenclature, first click on the word Chukar. Then, scroll to the bottom and click on either "Dolichonyx oryzivorus" or in the blank area to the right of it in the blank column (underneath Rare/Accidental). Then, click Forward. You should get a nice table of common names, scientific names and if you chose a status column.
Let us know what happens,
Dick
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Well, I tried this again and it worked.
In my earlier attempts, I was using the Mozilla browser
instead of invoking the built-in J-Bird browser.
Sigh.
LeRoy
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
I tried to load a checklist for California from Avisys, but was unable to do so. When the .html file was displayed in the
browser for me to select the species list, all the data
(scientific name, common name, status) appeared in the first column with a "/" separator.
I also have a question about regions: Is it possible to index
bu region/subregion? such as State/County?
California has so many birds that county lists are useful.
Thanks,
lmd
Additional information:
J-Bird version: 0.4.3
OS: Solaris9-X86 CDE window system
java Version: build 1.4.2_04-b05
Also the installer seemed to crash while setting up
shortcuts (not surprisingly) with the following outputL
After clicking to create shortcuts, I got
Couldn't find X Input Context
java.lang.NullPointerException
at com.memoire.vainstall.VALinkKDE.getIcon(VALinkKDE.java:195)
at com.memoire.vainstall.VALinkKDE.writeEntry(VALinkKDE.java:39)
at com.memoire.vainstall.VALinkKDE.writeEntry(VALinkKDE.java:23)
at com.memoire.vainstall.VALinkKDE.create(VALinkKDE.java:79)
at com.memoire.vainstall.VALinkKDE.createAll(VALinkKDE.java:141)
at com.memoire.vainstall.Setup.createShortcuts(Setup.java:795)
at com.memoire.vainstall.Setup.nextStep(Setup.java:492)
at com.memoire.vainstall.gui.VAPanel.nextAction(VAPanel.java:47)
at com.memoire.vainstall.gui.VAWizard$1.run(VAWizard.java:162)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:534)
Imd,
I do not know how avisys checklists are built. It's possible but unlikely that the table is just one column. My guess is that the table contains nested tables. For example, to center a table nicely some web sites use a table with just once cell and that cell contains a table that contains multiple rows and columns. J-Bird should actually be able to handle the example just given. My bet is that the table consists of one column and that each row in it contains a table that contains the columns that you see. That would I believe produce what you have seen. You can test that idea. First, select the first column and the last column in just one row. That should produce a nice result - one row with several columns. Then try the first column in one row and the last column in the next row. If that produces garbage, each row in the table is a single cell that contains a subtable - or worse. Such subtables will not work. I considered them when I wrote the table gleaner, but I decided that I had to make too many assumptions to try to pull data from subtables into neat
rows and columns and that I could easily end up with tables that were not rectangular. It may be worth revisiting the issue. That requires mapping out possibilities and asking which cases can be covered.
Checklists are all simple lists. It's possible to nest checklists in the sense that checklists have parents. However, the parent checklist imposes no constraint on the contents of child lists. Parents provide candidate species when building checklists manually. I've thought about implementing an action in which any species that is on child lists but not on the parent's list is automatically added to the parent list.
To do state and county lists, you'll have to import a state list and lists for the counties that you want. There is at present no way to import many checklists at once using either a single column to indicate which checklist an entry belongs to or multiple columns to indicate which checklists each species belongs to. It's just not there, yet.
Thanks for the heads up on the shortcuts. I need to get inside of vainstall and disable shortcuts on all platforms but MS Windows. They are supposed to work on KDE and Gnome, too, but I bet that they are dated there.
Dick
Actually in my original post, I misspoke myself, saying avisys when I meant Avibase. I was trying example 2 given in the J-Bird user manual.
The Avibase presentaton does, in fact use nested tables. Each species is a row <tr> entry and the common name and latinized name are <td> entries. I see how dealing with _every_ formatting possibility would be a near-infinite time sink.
I avoided the problem by falling back to the AOU checklist, example 1, which worked as advertised from the spreadsheet format the AOU provides. As you pointed out, there are a lot of subsetting inconsistencies and I probably made some suboptimal choices, but I did get the NA list loaded.
>"I've thought about implementing an action in which >any species that is on child lists but not on the >parent's list is automatically added to the parent list. >
I wondered if that were happening now- apparently not. It would make the work of loading the AOU list
easier as many of the inconsistencies appear to be due to species splits.
The state/county question was not so much a checklist question as a tick-counting question.
I have not worked through any of that yet, nor looked at the schema so the question may not make sense.
Returning to the Avibase problem, it appears that an alternative is "save as" text from the browser.
This produces entries like
Streaked Shearwater /Calonectris leucomelas/ Rare/Accidental
and running
tr / , < CA_avb.txt > CA_avb.csl
produces a comma-separated list.
Thanks for your thorough response.
LeRoy Dorman
Avibase? That should work. If you are importing the California list using the Sibley & Monroe 1996 nomenclature, first click on the word Chukar. Then, scroll to the bottom and click on either "Dolichonyx oryzivorus" or in the blank area to the right of it in the blank column (underneath Rare/Accidental). Then, click Forward. You should get a nice table of common names, scientific names and if you chose a status column.
Let us know what happens,
Dick
Well, I tried this again and it worked.
In my earlier attempts, I was using the Mozilla browser
instead of invoking the built-in J-Bird browser.
Sigh.
LeRoy