Below are some brief notes prepared by Adrian Browne, Vice President Technical Development regarding the upcoming FieldWorker Pro release. FieldWorker Pro is currently in beta, and is will be available in August.

GPS SHAPES

• FieldWorker Pro now supports Lines and Polygons. Before recording the GPS or offset location, tap on the shape icon (point, line or polygon). Collecting GPS is still governed by the GPS preference settings - i.e. Average, Trail etc.

• When creating a line or polygon, the location of the last recorded node is shown. To add another node, just tap the GPS or offset button again. There is no limit to the number of nodes in a given shape. Polygons are automatically closed to the starting position.

• Shapes can be edited so that nodes can be deleted and inserted. This means that you have complete flexibility to create and modify any shape you wish. Also note that even after you have stopped collecting nodes for a station, and have moved onto a new station - perhaps to record some special data about a specific point - you can scroll back to the previous station and continue to add nodes to that shape.

• For Lines the length is shown and for Polygons, the perimiter and area are shown. These factors are updated as each node is added to the shape.

• The Map display shows Lines as heavy lines and Polygons as shaded areas enclosed in a fine dark gray line.

GPS OFFSET

When you want to compute the location of a target, an alternative to Range & Bearing has been added - Triangulation. In this method FieldWorker finds the GPS location of one reference point and you enter the distance from there to the target. You then move to another reference point and repeat the process. This gives enough information for FieldWorker to exactly calculate the location of the target. Although this requires another GPS reading, the laser equipment needed is much simpler and cheaper. Also in high Northern latitudes, compass readings tend to be unreliable.

GPS GRID

GPS Preferences now allows you to specify your own Transverse Mercator grid system. Many countries like the UK and Finland and half of the states in the US use this system. To create the grid, you need to know the longitude of the central meridian, the scale used on that meridian, and the false easting and northing in metres. You now select which Grid system you want FieldWorker to use when converting Lat/Long to cartesian coordinates. When you display your coordinates as Grid values, the name of the grid will also appear. You can also export these grid values.

NEW SCREEN TYPES

screen type: many

Like 'mixed', you can define any combination of field types in this screen. However, you may enter as many observations of this screen data as you wish at each station. The only field which is compulsory to enter is what we call the 'primaryKey' which by default is the first one you define (see later how to change this). To enter more observations, the field name for the primaryKey is enclosed in a button with two options, New and Delete. Tap on New and the screen is cleared of the previous data allowing you to enter more. As soon as you have entered the value for the primaryKey for the second observation you will notice that the left/right buttons above it become active, allowing you to scroll back and forth through the observations. There is also a diamond picker which lists all the values you have entered for the primaryKey. You can jump directly to the data for any observation by tapping on the key value.

screen type: Sketch

Allows you to create one drawing using all the usual Newton tools - Shapes, Ink, Ink Text and Text. You tell the system what tool to use by tapping on the button in the bottom bar (a button with a squiggly line which appears with a sketch view). Unfortunately we are still not able to support the export of these sketches - hopefully that will come soon.

screen type: Voice

A note screen is shown with a microphone icon that allows you to record your voice notes or for that matter any field noises such as birdsong. You can pause your recording and continue. After a recording has been made, the icon changes to a speaker. You can replay, pause and continue to replay the recording so that it will be easy to transcribe by hand or by attaching the keyboard to the Newton.

UNLIMITED Fields

You can now have as many fields in each screen as you like. If there are more than 7, a pair of up/down arrows will appear in the bottom bar to allow the user to scroll through them.

NEW FIELD TYPES: 'mutipick', 'date' , 'time' , 'temperature', 'alpha', 'sketch' and FORMULA

multipick

• like a nested picklist, but allows user to select many options from the list. These are shown as text separated by a delimiter which defaults to ':'

date

• will display a calendar button. Tap it to bring up a calendar like view which defaults to today.

time

• displays an analog clock button. Tap to show time and date defaulted to Newton time.

temperature

• displays a thermometer button. Tap to show current ambient temperature.

sketch

• displays a button which when tapped, opens a grid view in which you may draw shapes, ink lines, ink text and text.

formula:

enter a calculation based on the other data entered. Values in fields in the same screen can be referred to as: f1, f2, f3... To refer to data from other screens use a combination of screen number and field number. e.g. Field 3 from Screen 2 would be s2.f3 You can even access any of the GPS data and the length and perimeter of shapes through reference to screen 0. Hence the area is s0.area; Latitude is s0.gps.lat; the full list is:

• s0.name
• s0.shape
• s0.date
• s0.time
• s0.length
• s0.area
• s0.gps.lat
• s0.gps.long
• s0.gps.alt
• s0.gps.zone
• s0.gps.easting
• s0.gps.northing
• s0.gps.utc
• s0.gps.satellites
• s0.gps.readings
• s0.gps.range
• s0.gps.azimuth
• s0.gps.distance

You can use any of the normal mathematical syntax in the formula as well as any legal NewtonScript expressions such as if ... then ... else ...

The user invokes the computation by tapping on an = button on the entry line.

Modified FIELD type: 'alpha'

• You can specify a control of maximum length of the text. If this value is greater than 15, a 'note' button is displayed on the entry line. Tap it to show a large text entry area.

FIELD ATTRIBUTES

This version also has optional new field ATTRIBUTES, which you place in columns E,F,... of a spreadsheet on the same line as the field name you want to affect.

default='something' or default=5.233

• sets the value to the default (NOTE that you must use ' NOT " to surround any text)

default=same

• carry forward whatever was entered in the last station (e.g. useful for Collectors name)

default=next

• add one to whatever was entered in the last station (only for numeric and numberOnly field types)

mandatory

• the user must enter a value for this field before creating a new station. Encloses entry area in black box to give the user a visual cue. You DO NOT use this attribute for the first (or primaryKey) field in a 'many' screen as FW already treats this field as required.

modify=yes or modify=no

• this overrides the general project controls for picklist, numeric and checkbox. (e.g. you want to allow changes to all picklists except a few OR you want to disallow numeric scale changes except in a few cases)

separator='/'

• for multiPick fields, changes the separator between choices from the default of ':' to any single character you want to specify. Now also an option for picklist fields - to show and delineate levels in a nested list.

Only for fields in 'Many' screens:

default=sameInMany

• carry forward whatever was entered in the last occurence but not from the previous station.

default=nextInMany

• add one to whatever was entered in the last occurence (starts at 1 for each station).

primaryKey

• make this field the primaryKey in a 'many' screen instead of the default which is the first. ie. this field will appear as the first field on the screen.

You may use as many attributes as you wish for each field. The order is not important. Just put one in each column.

User Interface

• The project menu and name are shown in all views, so you can switch from map to map.

• A left/right scroller has been added to the station number for quick referencing back and forth.

• A left/right scroller has been added to the screen menu line to move to the previous/next screen.

• When the Newton 2000 is operating in Landscape view, the FieldWorker GPS data is grouped on one side of the screen and the data entry is shown on the other. The data entry is always shown on the same side as the button bar. (You can tell the Newton to move the ButtonBar from right to left in the Rotate button in the extras drawer). This is very useful for left handers.

Memory Considerations (A note for beta users)

The file structure of FieldWorker Pro data has been modified to allow almost indefinitely large projects. If you are transitioning from 0.96 or before to 0.97 or later, you will have to remove all your projects from FieldWorker before upgrading the software. FAILURE TO DO THIS WILL CAUSE NASTY ERRORS. The final software will do the file conversion for you.

For more information about the development of FieldWorker Pro, contact us.