Item Attribute Question

[tfjern]

UR is indeed a powerful piece of software, but it is so frustratingly user-unfriendly, it requires constant tweaking to get it to do what you want, which it usually does, eventually, after much tweaking or roaming the forums in search of answers, but the average consumer (not the geeks, of course) does not have the time to fiddle around with the options or try to wade through the user-unfriendly "help" file.

To make matters worse, when you ask a simple question on this forum, you frequently get responses that are virtually incomprehensible. Does this help answer the simple question I posed at the top of the thread? Namely,

http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/...-datatype.html

That's why a few years ago some of us begged Kinook to provide more user-friendly videos and screenshots that display step-by-step the many wonderful things UR can do (not the out-of-date and superficial ones currently online). Kinook, before the recent economic meltdown, even sponsored a contest, in which users could submit videos and win a prize (hopefully not judged by the programmer, a geek's geek).

Any chance this contest could be resurrected?

[vogelap]

I'm glad I am not alone in my feelings that URp is an extremely capable but user-unfriendly piece of software.

What I loved about EverNote 2.2.1 was that it had a very short learning curve and virtually "disappeared" once you started using it... The technology got out of the way and just enabled me to do what I needed without calling attention to itself.

My wish is that URp would to do the same thing -- get itself out of the way ("disappear") and let me capture, manage, and locate my information, knowledge, and documents.

How can we move forward?

[quant]

UR is extremelly customizable, and that's the price we pay for what you call "user-unfriendly piece of software".

I'm very happy to pay that price!

There are dozens of PIM softwares which are great, but if there is something you'd like to have different way than developer coded, you are stuck with that, for better or worse.

If you find UR unfriendly, I'd suggest you to try different PIM, might suit your bill better.

[tfjern]

That's the ticket, Geek?, encourage customers to go elsewhere if they have legitimate complaints or the audacity to make suggestions about a fine product so it becomes even better and more user-friendly.

[ashwken]

At its heart UR is a user-interface for the mySQL relational database. And while it is not required to know this, or to know anything about relational database concepts to get up and running in UR, once you start to move beyond the surface an understanding of these concepts does become helpful. I don't see how Kinook can possibly include a satisfactory introduction to these concepts in a help file for this program.

In this particular case, there were four different people working to understand and resolve the problem presented. This post currently stands at (300) views, which tells me that someone beyond the handful of participants may benefit from this discussion.

As was mentioned by $Bill, the issue presented is a common quandry faced when developing a database structure, namely how best to deal with a one-to-many relationship. Apparently there are three differnt avenues available to resolve this quandry:

_ use of the Auto-complete attribute option to build the drop-down pick list. Here you build compound values (the many) which can be stored in a single Attribute (the one), where a Search on any one value will reveal the many places it is assigned.

_use of the Data Explorer to build an internal table of values (the Tags branch) and the Alt-L interface to assign/create the one-to-many relationship. This relationship can be viewed on the TAGS side thru the Data Explorer, or on the Item side thru the Ctrl-6 Parents Pane.

_use of Keywords, which is a variation on the previous option.

_not mentioned was use of the Logical data type, where you bring "the many" choices into "the one" record.

Each of these avenues have an upside and a downside, which avenue is chosen will depend on the size of the list of values you wish to assign.

Where is the best place for a discussion such as this, I don't know. I will say that I benefited greatly from the time when software publishers made available extensive printed documentation, with in-depth discussions of database concepts and numerous "for examples", and still required an active user forum for further support.

[quant]

Originally posted by tfjern
That's the ticket, Geek?, encourage customers to go elsewhere if they have legitimate complaints or the audacity to make suggestions about a fine product so it becomes even better and more user-friendly.

IMHO, you dont have legitimate complaint. And not the first time.

It was more or less obvious that what you were asking about is not possible at the moment in UR, and Bill already mentioned it twice very clearly. The rest of us were trying to give our best answers about possible way to immitate the feature you desire. Nevertheless, you still complain, not only abut the fact that feature is not present, but also about the "quality" of our genuine help. Please accept my appology for my "geeky" anwers. If you don't want to see them, feel free to add me to your ignore list.

[tfjern]

1. I started this thread to ascertain whether or not a certain feature was possible in UR, nothing more, nothing less.

2. Thanks to the earnest efforts of several forum contributors, it has become apparent that UR still lacks this feature, thus, the thread has been moved by Kinook to the "UR Suggestions" department. This feature lack may have been obvious to some at the very outset, but not to customers like me, hence the tread and my question.

3. Unfortunately, often explanations made by forum contributors are somewhat hard to follow, at least to slow learners like myself. I apologize for my obtuseness.

4. It has already been well established by many customers that UR itself and the "help" file in particular are relatively user-unfriendly (assuming UR hopes to win a wider audience of customers, which we all hope, of course). The occasional complaint for better online videos and the like are being done out of affection for UR and its future sales, not out of any malice toward the product.

5. Somebody on this forum has a big chip on his shoulder.

[quant]

Originally posted by tfjern
5. Somebody on this forum has a big chip on his shoulder.

and someone else enjoys knocking if off ;-)

[$bill]

Originally posted by tfjern
1. I started this thread to ascertain whether or not a certain feature was possible in UR, nothing more, nothing less.

Really?
From you first post:

Originally posted by tfjern ...how can this be done...

Would that be 'how' as in -- in what way, by what means, by what method, in what manner?
ashwken nicely summarises those responses....and yet you seemed to become agitated with the helpful replies to your post. Now I understand, you didn't want any help, your weren't trying to understand....This is not a "geek speak" problem.

Please step off the soapbox. Your ongoing attempts at saving UR from itself (and us "geeks") seen disingenuous and are almost certainly counterproductive to that purpose. The only thing that is "well established" is that you (and a few others) are having trouble using UR as-well-as-you-would-like and you propose that writing a "friendly" help file would help. Ok, I heard you, Kinook has heard you....repeatedly, time after time, over and over, post after post, day after day, month after month.....Am I making myself clear?

Oh, if you want a simple, single purpose database -- There's an app for that (TM).....and UR remains the best-of-the-best for the rest of us.

[tfjern]

So occasionally complaining in the forum about the "help" file and prodding (OK, kind of nagging) Kinook to provide better online videos of the product is in your opinion evidence of disingenuousness, apparently in a cunning plot to undermine UR sales?

Then why is my name listed twice (both my initials and real name) on the testimonials page, where I praise UR in glowing terms (and still do, all the time, except for the two you-know-whats). Is that some form of disingenuousness, too?

OK, I'll "step off my soapbox" and never mention the help file or online videos again.

P.S.: This thread has gotten kind of weird. It started out as a question about Item Attributes and deteriorated into suspicions about motives.

[wordmuse]

Sounds to me like you're looking for a multi-value attribute. To my knowledge, this is not supported by URP. Currently, an attribute can have only one value. This single value may consist of any text string, or anything else that URP supports in the Attribute dialog.

That said, I would welcome - nay relish - multi-value attributes.

Roadmap?

- Bal