Build History:GenderWise

Build 3.020

Released September 2003

• Fixed a problem with program hanging on the splash screen for Windows XP.

Build 3.019

Released January 2000

• Fixed installer so that Zip Magic would no longer cause problems.
• During Tools | Browse | Append Records, program would crash if target file would grow to a size over 2 GB.
• In Tools | Browse | Split File, If you used a For or While condition while splitting randomly or by the contents of a field, the program would hang.

Build 3.018

Released January 2000

• Adjusted our dBase III header's year stamp to adhere to the Microsoft 'standard'. DataTech products were reporting corruption on databases modified after 12/31/99.

Build 3.017

Released September 1999

• When name splitting, if you specified "Inverse" and "Govt Inverse" as "Mainly Contains" and "Also Contains" (in either order), the splitter would sometimes hang. This bug was most likely introduced in enhancements made to the "Mainly/Also" logic made to version 3.015.
• The ASCII Importer would sometimes crash while analyzing the file for a second time after clicking OK on the File Info dialog.
• If you use an existing database's structure to import a flat file, the database's record size will be used for the flat file, rather than being determined by the ASCII Importer's analyzer.
• Added a little more checking to the expression evaluator so that bad expressions like "NAME=" or "FIELDNAME\" return a syntax error rather than crashing the system.
• Changed a characteristic of the street splitter: "1501-A Nolan River Rd" will return "1501-A" for the street number instead of "1501A".
• Fixed a bug in the street splitter: "123 Main St Apt A" would only return "Apt" as the secondary (no "A"!).
• The ASCII importer would not allow delimited files with fields wider than 254 characters to be imported (you could never leave the importer dialog).
• Expression evaluator wasn't properly evaluating logical fields.
• Added the StrChr() function to the expression evaluator. It is useful for locating the beginning of a number embedded in a character string (a common Replace… With request).
• Repaired some broken help links.

Build 3.016

Released June 1999

• Fixed problem with certain ASCII delimited files where a small group of records in the middle of the database were skipped.
• Fixed problem with ASCII SDF and flat files where the field estimator would create fields larger than 254 characters (the dBase limit). This phenomenon was displayed with files with sparsely populated wide records.
• Added Split File to Tools | Browse (you can thank Double Take for Windows for this).
• Added Join() and WhiteSpace() to the expression evaluator (for use in Replace… With, Sort, filters, etc).
• Fixed a little confusion over batch processing and End in ASCII.

Build 3.015

Released March 1999

• Fixed crash that occurred when user closed Personator while leaving child dialog boxes open.
• Improved "Mainly/Also Contains" logic: "Smith, John" and "Smith, Mary A" are recognized as Inverse rather than Full Names. This improvement entailed adding a user-modifiable Rank field to the PFn database. This field is filled with the popularity rank as given by the US Census Bureau.
• Added Inverse, Government Inverse, and Mixed First dual-name splitting capability. Note that your "Mainly/Also contains" settings should be the same for best results.
• Fixed problem with bad sorting when working with databases that lived in a Long File Named directory (like "c:\Program Files\Personator\Demo.Dbf").
• Added CheckSum(), WdCount(), and Word() to the expression evaluator (for use in Replace… With, Sort, filters, etc.).
• Added error checking so that if user entered a bad for, while, sort, or replace expression, crash does not result.
• People with full names like "Mac Silvia" or "Van Nostrom" get split with first names of "Mac" and "Van" now (unless there's a prefix, like "Mr. Mac Silvia", which will split like before: "Mr." And "Mac Silvia" (as there's really no way to tell).
• Added Genderbase correction to DDE capabilities (see Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) - Genderize)
• Added a "Search Again" tool icon, as well as hotkey (F3) to Tools | Browse.
• If you appended from a file with smaller fields, garbage would get deposited into the 'extra space' at the end of the fields.

Build 3.014

Released October 1998

• Fixed split name by delimiter so that it will work regardless of the "Mainly/Also Contains" settings (users previously had to specify "Full Names").
• Many of the Street Splitter post-splitting standardizations were not being performed; now they are.
• Added extra processing to ASCII Import Analyzer to scan entire file when comma-delimited to ensure that fields are properly sized (ie, you can be assured that there will be no truncations). Impatient users can hit "Cancel" to stop this analysis and proceed to the importer using the results obtained to that point.
• Fixed Tools | File Control | Sort - if you tried to sort in reverse order (by using Descend(Zip), for example), you probably got an incorrect sort. Also, 16-bit version was forgetting to delete a 0-byte temporary file.
• Increased size of "Search For" and "Replace With" strings in Search and Replace to 255.

Build 3.013

Released June 1998

• Adjusted dual name splitter so that "Mr & Mrs John Smith now split into "Mr John Smith" and "Mrs John Smith" instead of "Mr Smith" and "Mrs John Smith".
• Did some work on the ASCII importer, particularly with delimited files and inheriting existing structures.
• If you are genderizing to a Full Name "Jack" (missing last name) no longer gets genderized to "Mr. Jack".
• Fixed annoying bug in Tools | Modify Structure - decimal places for numeric fields under 3 should always be zero. Also fixed printing of database structure with numeric fields.

Build 3.012

Released March 1998

• Added the space as an allowable delimiter for ASCII files.
• Fixed the <>, and, or, not operators in the expression evaluator, which weren't being recognized.
• Added a "Print" button to Tools | Modify Structure (saves you a whole two steps!).
• ASCII importer now recognizes delimited and ragged SDF files that are infested with NULL characters. Still won't import them, but now tells you what to do about it.
• Added the highly requested Vertical record viewer/editor in Tools | Browse (See Tools | Browse | File Control | Vertical Display for more information).
• Converted sorting and lookup table access from Borland Database Engine (BDE) to Postman's Sort. This should eliminate some of the compatibility issues between users using other BDE products along with Personator.
• The dialog asking whether or not to add new fields has been removed from the setup screens, and is only presented once now, just before processing.
• Tools | Browse | File Control | Copy Records and Append Records now correctly deal with records marked for deletion.
• Added DDE Support (see Dynamic Data Exchange).
• Sex only "L. Smith III" is now smart enough to know that it's a male.
• Informal salutation for "L Smith" was created as "Dear L", which is just wrong. "L. Smith" (with the period) was handled okay, though.
• "Robeert Smith" with Genderbase/Correction & sexing was correcting to "M Robert Smith".
• Modify Structure: If user changes a field type to D or L (or N with a size over 20), the size is automatically adjusted.
• Modified disk space reporting to conform with new Windows 95 OSR2 (now properly reports drive sizes over 2GB). However, network drives are still reported as 2GB (due to what we think is still a bug in Windows 95).
• Added replace/with, search & replace, and concatenate fields verification dialog box (so they work just like the DOS version!).
• Changed default fonts to our "Peoplesmith" font.

Build 3.011

Released January 1998

• Fixed "Drop Street Address if a PO Box/RFD present" custom street splitting option - wasn't working for Output Lines 1-3.
• Changed the ENTER key behavior in Tools | Modify Structure and Tools | Browse to work the way you'd expect.
• Fixed the Trim() and RTrim() functions in the expression evaluator, which weren't working correctly for single character strings.
• Fixed the Interactive ASCII Importer: (1) Handles files with large fields better. (2) Handles oddball files more gracefully. (3) Provides an indication of progress when working on lengthy analysis runs.
• Tools | Browse | Print Records - formatted printing of database's structure better.
• Open… and Save As… dialog boxes now appear as Explorer-type dialogs for Windows 95 and Windows NT users.
• Open… and Save As… dialog boxes now display how much disk space is available so that the user can more intelligently use his disk drives.
• 16-bit disk space checking was checking the incorrect drive, which led to some weird drive accesses.
• "Smith, J", "Smith, J M", and "Lee Mark D" now split properly as Inverse and Government Inverse Names.
• If you set your shortcut or pif to run minimized or maximized, the program will actually run that way.

Build 3.010

Released December 1997

• Fixed the Salutation setup, as it allowed 30 character slugs, but would immediately forget the last 10 characters specified.
• 0 record databases are no longer reported to be corrupt, so that our more clever users can use them as ASCII Import templates.
• Added .txt to the list of ASCII Import file types.
• Added the "Wheatonator" control to the Genderizer setup - if you are genderizing a full name and desire an output (reconstructed) full/inv/govt name, you need a way to specify whether or not you want a comma preceding the suffix. See Setup | Genderizer: Output Gender for more information.
• Improved the genderizer's reconstruction of full/inv/govt name, as sometimes there was lots of white space between parts.
• Added the "Transform Suffixes" and "Remove Transformed Suffixes" controls to the Genderizer setup so that you have more control over what happens when you get "John Smith, MD". See Setup | Genderizer | Input Name for more.
• Added the "Remove" field to the Suffix lookup table, as it was needed for the "Remove Transformed Suffixes" option. See Tools | Lookup Tables | Suffix Table for its usage.
• Added "Senior" and "Junior" to the Suffix lookup table. Changed the sex of "Jerry" to 6-usually male.
• Fixed the Browse tool so that it got focus when you started it (that was really annoying).
• Added "Display Tool Tips" control in Tools | User Settings: General Settings so users could shut off those annoying yellow tips.
• Added default field names and sizes for name 2. See Tools | User Settings | Default Field Names for more.
• Shortened the height of the Genderizer setup dialog box to help our resolution-impaired users.
• Improved the dual name splitter for names like "John A. and Mary B. Smith" and "John and Mary Jo ".
• Fixed a 16-bit crash that sometimes occurred after importing.

Build 3.001

Released December 1997

• Modified the Name Splitter setup to clarify what happens when splitting by delimiter.
• Fixed some typos in the help file.

Build 3.000

Released November 1997

• Initial Release.