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CHRONOS User Instructions. Revised: 15 Nov 1990 Copyright 1990, Steve Estvanik / Cascoly Software / All rights reserved. Contents: 1. INTRODUCTION 2. GETTING STARTED 2.1 PEOPLE 2.2 EVENTS 2.3 EDITING 3. INTERACTIVE HISTORY 3.1 DISPLAY 3.2 SELECTIONS 3.3 REPORTS 4. FILES 4.1 FUNCTIONS 4.2 EDITING OUTSIDE CHRONOS 5. REQUIREMENTS 6. SHAREWARE 7. REFERENCES 1. INTRODUCTION How old was Paul Revere when he rode into history? How old was Napoleon when the Declaration of Independence was signed? How many years separated Cortez and Michelangelo? In War & Peace, how old is Natasha when Napoleon captures Moscow? Cascoly's CHRONOS historical timelines program examines these questions and many more. Unlike conventional paper chronologies, CHRONOS lets you decide which people and events to include. You can sort and select by individual people and events, or groups and factions, developing new insights and tracing patterns across different eras and cultures. CHRONOS will be useful to history and art students, genealogsits, teachers, writers and anyone interested in exploring historical relations or cultural events. 2. GETTING STARTED CHRONOS combines people and events into files called datasets. These are the two basic elements of CHRONOS. Figure 1 shows the main CHRONOS menu. File options are explained in section 4. This section describes how to use the People & Events portions of the program to create new datasets or to modify existing ones. Examples can be found in the datasets provided with the program. These datasets are described in more detail in the References, (Section 7) which also contains information that might be useful in creating your own datasets. If you want to look at an existing application, you can go directly to section 3. The remainder of this section describes how to create a new dataset from scratch, and how to add new people and events. 2.1 PEOPLE CHRONOS considers 2 main types of information -- People and Events. As you might expect, People items store information about historical persons or fictional characters. You can add or edit these records using the data entry window shown in Figure 2. If you don't know the exact birth or death years, you can enter an approximate one. (Note that, since the month and day are left out, any age calculations can only be accurate to within a year. For years before 1700, there will be additional discrepancies, since the acceptance of the Gregorian calendar reform did not occur everywhere at the same time. English speaking countries did not start using the new calendar until the mid 1700's and Russia accepted the reform only after the 1917 Revolution.) Also, if you decide to create a current dataset, containing living persons, you should set the 'death' year to some arbitrarily high value, such as 2030 or 2050. You can assign people to factions that you define using the Faction option of the People submenu (Figure 2). This lets you group people into logical categories of your choosing. These might be national or political, such as Union, Confederate, British or French. Or factions could be by occupation, such as artist, musician, statesman and poet. Selection options (section 3.2) let you display, sort and print by selected factions or the entire dataset. You can assign a color to factions that will help to distinguish them on the screen. 2.3 EVENTS The second main data element is the event. This is a specific historical happening. It could be a battle, a political act, or the publication date of a famous novel. You can append a description, along with the year of the event. Events use groups in a similar fashion to factions for people. Groups allow easier sorting and selection. For example, in the Revolutions dataset you can choose to display only Americans, or only French events. Or events can be modified to use categories, such as political, cultural and religious. Thus you might have factions defined by nationality and groups by type, or you could define factions by type and groups by nationality, depending on your goals. In the samples, REVOLT.CHR uses the first ordering, and RENAISS.CHR uses the second. 2.3 EDITING People and Event items are added, edited and deleted in a similar fashion. From the parent menu (Figure 1), choose either the People or Events submenu (Figures 2 and 4). Then choose from Add, Edit or Delete. When adding a new item, a blank entry window appears and you can fill in the requested information. Events will be sorted by their year, people by their year of birth. When you're finished with a window, press <Esc> or the right mouse button to accept it. When you choose edit or delete, a popup picklist (Figure 3) shows a list of all people or events and you can choose the one you wish to edit or delete. When you need to add or edit a faction or group, another popup appears, so you don't need to remember the numbers for all factions or groups. 2.4 LIMITS CHRONOS can handle up to 300 people and 300 events per dataset. However, the window area required to display these will depend on the span of years these people and events occupy. If the span is less than 200 years, there should be no problem. If it is greater than 200, you might receive a message : "Unable to create [People/Event] window" This might be due to an attempt to show too large a span for the number of people or events you have. It could also be due to an input error for one of the people or events. Check this by printing a list of all people and events and checking the years entered. 3. INTERACTIVE HISTORY Once a dataset is populated, you can begin your explorations using the display and select options (Figure 1). To reduce the startup time for new users, CHRONOS comes with 2 datasets already created: REVOLT.CHR covers the historical period from the American Revolution thru the French Revolution and Napoleonic era to the Civil War. RENAISS.CHR covers the Renaissance period in Europe from about 1500 to the end of the 30 Years War in 1648. It emphasizes the interaction and ferment among political, religious and cultural events. 3.1 DISPLAY After editing People or Events, or after making a selection, choose DISPLAY from the menu to show the latest subset of data. When you make selections, it just restricts the elements that are going to be displayed, they are still part of the dataset for subsequent selections. Most of the commands and actions in this program are similar for keyboard and mouse operation. You select a function and execute it. However, the dataset display lets you explore and the commands to control mouse and keyboard are quite different. Press <F1> for a summary of keyboard and mouse commands. MOUSE The CHRONOS display shows people and events on 2 linked but independent scrolling windows. The left button controls movement of a window, and scrolling. The right button controls selection and display of individual items. In either mode, the current section is determined by the placement of the mouse cursor. Editing: Use the <Left button> to select items, and the <Right Button> or escape to exit. When using popups, a scroll bar on the right side of the popup lets you use the mouse to jump to another part of the popup. Scrolling: Figure 5 shows the scroll command map. If you want to scroll left or right, click Left while in one of the areas marked 'b'. Both top and bottom sections scroll horizontally at the same time, so people and events are always synchronous. Areas marked 'c' control vertical movement. Here, each section, people or events, scrolls independently. The 4 corners of each section are similar to <Home> and <End> keys. Left click on each to move to that section of the dataset. For example, click on the lower right corner to move to the lower right portion of the dataset. Note that in some data sets, the upper right and lower left may result in mostly blank screens. But if you scroll horizontally or vertically, you'll recover the data. This sounds more complicated than it is. The easiest way to learn it is to experiment with the datasets provided. Click on each corner to see how the view changes. Then use the horizontal and vertical controls for finer adjustments. Selection: Right click of the mouse button shows details of a person or event. If a person, it shows their age in the year of the last selected event. If an event, it shows the age of the last selected person. Thus, to follow the course of a person's life, first select that person (right click on them), then select the events you want to examine. Each will be shown and the person's age will be calculated. KEYBOARD Scrolling: Keyboard scrolling is handled by the arrow keys. These are analagous to using the mouse in sections 'b' & 'c'. These keys scroll vertically and horizontally, one row or column at a time. To move to the corners, use the <Home>, <End>, <PgUp> and <PgDn> keys. Again, it's suggested you experiment with the various keys to see how the screen changes. To change from one section to another, use the <Ins> and <Del> keys. You can always tell which section you're in from the message displayed on the bottom line. Selection: The <F2> key will display details about the currently selected person or event. To change this selection, use the Keypad (Gray) '+' and '-' keys. This will move you to the next or previous item. 3.2 SELECTIONS This item lets you reduce or expand the number of people, events, factions or groups that are displayed. By combining these functions you can work with smaller groupings. Figure 6 shows the various possibilties for selection. Choosing 'All' resets any previously deselected items. (This is the default when the file is first read in.) Selecting by 'Groups' or 'Factions' allows you to eliminate entire groups or factions from the display. Selecting 'People' or 'Events' allows you to further reduce the selected number of items. If the previous selection was 'All', then you will start with all items selected, and indicate which ones to remove. If the previous selection was 'Groups' or 'Factions' then only those people or events in the indicated groups or factions will currently be selected. You may deselect items or add to the selected set. When you next display the dataset, only selected items will appear. The file itself is unchanged, no matter whether items are selected or not. Selection Keys: Picklists: Single choice (used for selecting an item to edit): <Home> -- first item <end> -- last item <up arrow> -- up one item <down arrow> -- down one item <PgUp> -- move up one page of items <PgDn> -- move down one page of items Multiple choice (used in the selection section): <Ins> -- selects an item <Del> -- deselects an item <+> or <space> -- toggle between selected and deselected <Ctrl Enter> -- Block toggle -- if no items are selected, select them all; if all are selected, deselect all. <enter> -- select the current list Mouse: <left button> -- select/deselect an item (the check mark will appear) 3.3 REPORTS Figure 7 shows the various reports available. The Text option prints the complete text of the dataset. The People and Events options print only those parts of the dataset. The People report includes Faction information and the Events report include group information. The Age report shows the age of all people who were alive for the currently selected event. 4. FILES The Files selection from the main menu lets you open new files, save changed ones, and also has several informational selections. 'Open' -- Shows, then reads from a list of currently available analyses. 'New' -- Prompts you for a name for a new analysis. 'Save' -- Saves current analysis to disk 'WriteAs' -- Saves current analysis under a different file name 'About' -- A brief summary of this program. 'Register' -- Details on how to register this shareware program. If, after an evaluation period, you decide you will continue to use the program, you should register it. 5. REQUIREMENTS CHRONOS has been optimized for use on a color monitor, but will also work on monochrome screens. It will use a Microsoft-compatible mouse if you have one installed. It is fully menu-driven. To use the keyboard, you can either use the arrow keys, or the first letter of a menu word to select the action you wish. Then press <enter>. To use the mouse, just move it to the item you want and press the left button. To back up from a menu or to finish an entry screen, press the right button, or <Esc>. 6. SHAREWARE & THE ASP This program is shareware, which is a means of distributing software. Under the shareware concept, software may be freely copied and passed along to others, or distributed through bulletin board systems or national networks. As a recipient of a shareware program, you may use the software for a short trial period to determine if it meets your needs. If the software is not suitable, then you can discard it. If you decide to use it, you should register it. CHRONOS costs $30 to register. When you register, you will receive a disk with the latest version of the program, updated datasets, plus several other Cascoly utilities. Registration also entitles you to online support via CompuServe. Send email to Cascoly Software, CompuServe number 76703,3046. (We will also answer mail from registered users.) As an additional benefit, registration entitles you to a free introductory account on CompuServe. (Details will be sent when you register.) Cascoly Software is a member of the Association of Shareware Professionals (ASP). ASP wants to make sure that the shareware principle works for you. If you are unable to resolve a shareware-related problem with an ASP member by contacting the member directly, ASP may be able to help. The ASP Ombudsman can help you resolve a dispute or problem with an ASP member, but does not provide technical support for members' products. You can contact the ASP Ombudsman at P.O. Box 5786, Bellevue, WA 98006 or send a Compuserve message via easyplex to ASP Ombudsman 70007,3536 7. REFERENCES Several example datasets are included to illustrate the range of studies possible using CHRONOS. Users are encouraged to send interesting datasets to Cascoly, and we will include them in future updates. The Revolt and Renaiss datasets were compiled from a variety of sources. Some good starting points would include the 'Who Was Who' books that can usually be found in the reference section of libraries. Another good source is an unabridged dictionary. They often have a section on famous people. Some historical periods have special dictionaries that are useful. Eg, "The Dictionary of the Napoleonic Wars", by David Chandler. FIGURES: Figure 1: File menu Figure 2: People Menu & Entry Window Figure 3: Sample Edit picklist for People Figure 4: Events entry and editing Figure 5. Mouse Map for Display Figure 6: Selection Criteria Figure 7: Reports _______________________________________________________________________________ Figure 1: File menu _______________________________________________________________________________ ╒══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╕ │ File People Event Display Select Reports Quit │ ╘═╒══════════╕═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╛ │ Open │ │ New │ │ Save │ │ WriteAs │ │ About │ │ Register │ ╘══════════╛ _______________________________________________________________________________ Figure 2: People Menu & Entry Window _______________________________________________________________________________ ╒══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╕ │ File People Event Display Select Reports Quit │ ╘══════════╒══════════╕════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╛ │ Add │ │ Edit │ │ Delete │ │ Factions │ ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │Name │ │Description │ │Faction 0 │ │Year of birth 1900 │ │Year of death 1900 │ └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ _______________________________________________________________________________ Figure 3: Sample Edit picklist for People _______________________________________________________________________________ ╒══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╕ │ File People Event Display Select Reports Quit │ ╘══════════╒══════════╕════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╛ │ Add │ │ Edit │ │ Delete │ │ Factions │ ╘══════════╛ ╒═════════ People ═════════╕ │1732 George Washington │█ │1735 Paul Revere │█ │1741 Benedict Arnold │█ │1751 James Madison │█ │1769 Napoleon Bonaparte │█ │1819 Walt Whitman │█ │1833 J.E.B. Stuart │█ ╘══════════════════════════╛█ ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ _______________________________________________________________________________ Figure 4: Events entry and editing _______________________________________________________________________________ ╒══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╕ │ File People Event Display Select Reports Quit │ ╘══════════════════════╒══════════╕════════════════════════════════════════════╛ │ Add │ │ Edit │ │ Delete │ │ Groups │ ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │Event Group 0 │ │Description │ │Year of event 1900 │ │ │ └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ _______________________________________________________________________________ Figure 5. Mouse Map for Display _______________________________________________________________________________ ┌───┬────────────────────────────────────────────────┬───┐ │ a │ c │ a │ ├───┼────────────────────────────────────────────────┼───┤ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ b │ │ b │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ ├───┼────────────────────────────────────────────────┼───┤ │ a │ c │ a │ ├───┴────────────────────────────────────────────────┴───┤ ├───┬────────────────────────────────────────────────┬───┤ │ a │ c │ a │ ├───┼────────────────────────────────────────────────┼───┤ │ │ │ │ │ b │ │ │ ├───┼────────────────────────────────────────────────┼───┤ │ a │ c │ a │ ├───┴────────────────────────────────────────────────┴───┤ └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Left Mouse Button: a: Moves screen to requested corner of virtual screen. b: Scrolls horizontally c: Scrolls vertically Right Mouse Button: Middle line: moves date selector Bottom line: selects command Top or bottom section: selects a person or event _______________________________________________________________________________ Figure 6: Selection Criteria _______________________________________________________________________________ ╒══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╕ │ File People Event Display Select Reports Quit │ ╘═══════════════════════════════════════════════╒══════════╕═══════════════════╛ │ All │ │ People │ │ Events │ │ Groups │ │ Factions │ │ Scale │ ╘══════════╛ _______________________________________________________________________________ Figure 7: Reports _______________________________________________________________________________ ╒══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╕ │ File People Event Display Select Reports Quit │ ╘═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╒════════╕═════════╛ │ Text │ │ People │ │ Events │ │ Ages │ ╘════════╛