On Thu, Feb 04, 2016 at 12:37:30PM +0000, Chris Walker wrote:
On Thu, 4 Feb 2016 12:28:32 +0000 Chris Green cl@isbd.net wrote:
I'm looking for programs that might help with maintaining a log, as in a ship's log or a log of maintenance activity on a vehicle.
It's well nigh impossible to use the word log in the search because one is immediately swamped by hits relating to computer logging, e.g. things which write to syslog.
The word journal isn't much better because it too has computer related meanings which swamp any useful output and, anyway, journal isn't quite the right word for what I'm looking for.
So does anyone have any bright ideas either for what to search for or programs that I might find useful.
If I search for 'vehicle log software' it throws up pages of them.
Here are the first few :- http://www.kzsoftware.com/products/vehicle_maintenance/ http://www.freelogbook.biz/ http://en.softonic.com/s/vehicle-log-software?ex=SWH-2097EN.6
Note that I didn't specify linux so you might want to add that to your search criteria.
Much the same as Laurie's suggestion, yes it does produce some results and I'll take a look but there's no obvious "right" result.
Sorry I'm being a bit negative, thanks for the ideas. I've been banging away at this requirement for a *long* time now and haven't come up with anything very suitable.
You may remember I've been burbling on about a nice, easy, editable grid view of a database. That's the same requirement.
I'm after a way of entering sequential sort of information, mostly free format text but also some specific numeric information that I want to be able to do calculations with. I also want to be able to see the 'surrounding context', i.e. the previous entry. Finally I want straightforward editing of existing entries, again with the ability to see the context while editing.
It's nearly possible with a simple text file and a decent editor but this rather limits the validity checking. I have a boat log that works this way (written by me for Dokuwiki) but, having used it for a while, it has some drawbacks. In particular the syntax for the entries, while quite simple, is just a bit too difficult to remember without looking at some sort of cheat sheet. A more structured data entry system would make it work much better.