CardMEDIA is a valuable tool for organizing much of the information you deal with either day to day or occasionally. We realize it's inconvenient to have to limit this data to only your MessagePad. The ability to export and/or import this data will greatly enhance the value of the software for your MessagePad.

While we have plans and are in the preliminary stages of development for a seamless import/export tool for CardMEDIA, we felt it would be valuable to our customers to have a tool in their hands NOW that would allow this capability.

The tool wasn't written by us, but was brought to my attention by a customer (Thanks to Mike James) who wasn't waiting around for a solution, and just needed a little guidance in making it work properly with CardMEDIA. The tool was written and released by Steve Weyer and is called:

Sloup (current version 2.1, January 9, 1998).

What follows is a brief explanation of how to get Sloup to do the export work for you (I will add import information later). This is NOT meant to be a tutorial on Sloup or a primer on frames, slots, and Newton Data Storage, but once you've acquired the package and have become familiar with how to work with Sloup, this reference will tell you how to work with CardMEDIA entries. Please contact Steve Weyer about general issues regarding the operation of Sloup. I've begun the series with 'Exporting BOOK Entries' and 'Exporting ARTICLE Entries', and will add additional information later.

Exporting BOOK Entries

You should store your books entries in a particular folder, for example, "Books", and then do your dump based on the following:

If you use a different folder name, just change the title to whatever it is:


{labels: '<Your folder title>.....

This is the information to be entered into Sloup:

Names
{labels: 'Books, title: "string", authors: "string", publisher: "string", edition: "string", volume: "string", chapter: "string", page: "string", date:"string", keywords: "string", catalog: "string", location: "string"}
DUMP!

Exporting ARTICLE Entries

You should store your books entries in a particular folder, for example, "Books", and then do your dump based on the following:

If you use a different folder name, just change the title to whatever it is:


{labels: '<Your folder title>.....

This is the information to be entered into Sloup:

Names
{labels: 'Articles, title: "string", authors: "string", journal: "string", volume: "string", issue: "string", date: "string", page: "string", keywords:"string", catalog: "string", category: "string"}
DUMP!

General Info

It is possible to obtain a dump of CardMEDIA entries without using a folder name (leave out the labels slot), but you will get alot of erroneous entries due to the presence of the 'title slot in both the name cards and CardMEDIA BOOK Entries. Using the 'labels slot also greatly speeds up the transfer process.

If you're a registered CardMEDIA user and have additional questions about how to do any of this, let me know and I'll be glad to assist.

RLee (1/29/98)