Catalogue Sections in Catalogues

The CatSection field (in Stock records) specifies the default section under which an item will appear in catalogues (if section ordering is activated in the output format used to output it). Select from the available list of abbreviated names or enter a new section name. The list of available CatSections grows as you enter new sections to accommodate new inventory items. The actual text that is output as the heading text is can be modified at any time by Double Clicking with the mouse in the CatSection field on the Stock Screen.

Care should be taken when naming and selecting these abbreviated Section names. Use only alphanumerics in the section names, i.e. a to z, A to Z or 1 to 9 as these section heading may be used to generate filenames from.

As you catalogue a book try to anticipate the section in which you want it to be included, most of the time, when you produce Web pages or hardcopy catalogues. Select abbreviated section names to represent these sections. Note: You must ensure that the first eight characters are unique amongst all the sections names you use, i.e. do not use both Antarctica and antarcticExpeditions as abbreviated sections. File names are automatically constructed from the first eight characters of these section names. Such is the case when catalogues are being output to multiple files, one file per section. If two sections were named as above all the items from both sections would end up in the same file, antarcti.txt (or antarcti.htm for Web output) which is not what was intended (Eight character names are a compromise to accommodate DOS filenames).

You are given the opportunity of changing the section under which any item is placed when you add the item to a catalogue or add a view of items to a catalogue.

Use the Replace command on the Stock Screen to do global changes to catalogue sections such as changing the section for an entire view of records.

Modifying a record’s catalogue section after it has been added to a Catalogue

When you add an item to a catalogue from Stock it automatically inherits the section specified in the CatSection field in the Stock record and will be included automatically in this section in all future outputs (where sorting by section is applied). You can however change the Catalogue section of any item after it has been added to a catalogue. Note: modifying the Cat Section from the Catalogue screen, i.e. after it has been added to a catalogue, only changes the section in the catalogue being worked on. In this way you can temporarily move items into different sections while retaining their original section information in Stock.

You may want to do this in cases where you do not have sufficient items in the current catalogue to justify a full section for them. Moving them to another section, by changing their CatSection entry on the Catalogue screen, will rectify this. Remember: carrying this out from the Catalogues screen does not change the corresponding stock item’s default section.

If adding a view of items from Stock you can specify that the entire view is added to a specific section, overriding the default sections set in stock.