This Tutorial video shows you the basic functions of the MEMO MAGISTER software.
See the picture showing the MEMO MAGISTER form.
The MEMO MAGISTER form ("card") has 18 fields in which you can enter text. When scrolling cards forwards and backwards, the contents of the fields on the current card are updated in the fields on the main form. You can search the card index and sort the cards hierarchically. The user can decide the content of the text fields.
The following breakdown has been used in the sample card file included with the program:
Fields 1-3: Source information (Title: Source author, Title 2: Source title / topic, Title 3: Source publisher etc.).
Fields 4-7: Source Day, Month (often needed for archive sources), source Year, and source Page.
Fields 8-9: Topic and Keywords fields. It is essential for the management of research data to define each note in its own place in the keyword hierarchy. The use of the keyword fields allows the content of the note to be described and indexed (see also Code fields 11-13). The order of the contents of the fields should be carefully considered in terms of sorting the material.
Field 10: File link field. In this field, you can enter a file name with directory path or an Internet web address (so-called URL, such as files ending in .html). You can also create a file link to a file on your computer via the File Explorer by pressing the 'Create' button below the field, this will open the File Explorer view, which allows you to select the desired file from your computer. The most convenient way to move an Internet address (html) from the address field of an Internet browser is to use the copy / paste function.
Press the 'Open' button below the field to open the file linked to the field in its host program. For example, if you have linked a Word file to this field, then the file opens in Word just as if you clicked a file in Windows File Explorer, the file opens in its host software. This way, you can link to the file link field any file (txt, rtf, pdf, doc, jpg, wav, mp3, etc., etc.) whose host program is properly installed on Windows.
NOTE! When you link files on your computer's hard disk to this field, notice the structure of the directory path. All files on your computer are always located on a some drive in a certain subdirectory of the root directory. Eg C:\research materials\PDFs\statistics.pdf. It is wise to place all the materials of the same research project (eg a master's degree) in one certain main directory (eg C:\research materials) and then place all the material related to the project in the subdirectories of this directory. This allows you to quickly transfer and back up all your research data to a USB flash drive, for example.
Also note that if you use a USB flash drive on different machines, the drive letter of the USB flash drive may vary (for example, D:\, F:\, or G:\) depending on how many drives your computer has. However, when your research materials are always under the same main directory on the USB flash drive (or on the hard drive of the computer to which you have transferred your materials), all linked files are active as soon as you change drive letter of the link by using the Find-Replace function (see menu: Tools - Find-Replace).
Fields 11-13: Fields for different codes according to the user's choice. There is only the imagination as a limit to exploiting these fields. In the Card Sample Database the Code1 field has an entry indicating which chapter of the master's thesis is in question. The Code2 field uses codes whose meaning can be changed during the research process (eg qualitative research). The Code3 field indicates the quality of the source used (PRN = printed, ARC= archive, etc.) This code can also have its own hierarchy. For example, Archival sources include letters (ARC letter), unprinted Minutes (ARC Minutes), etc.
Fields 14-17: Year, Month, Day and Time of the event (especially for historians, also useful when using MEMO MAGISTER, eg as a project diary, etc.).
Field 18: Memo field (line limit in the demo version 600 lines). It is useful to put an abbreviated Source Note at the beginning of the Memo field (e.g. Aartmanner 1903, 5), from which it can be perfectly copied with 'Copy / Paste' to the footnote of your word processor.
Field 19: The unique identifier of the card that is given to the card during its creation phase. The tag does not change even if the card is modified. The tag is created from your computer's diary and includes the year, month, day, and time. Convenient when, for example, you want to sort or pick cards by their creation time.
Of course, it is not necessary to fill in all the fields of the form. You can leave the fields you do not need blank.
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Each text field contains the editing functions within the field, which you can access by clicking on the field with the right mouse button: Undo (Ctrl + Z), Cut (Ctrl + X), Copy (Ctrl + C), Paste (Ctrl + V), Delete (Delete), 'Select All'. You can move from one field to another by moving the mouse cursor to the field. Similarly, by pressing the Enter key in the field, the cursor automatically moves to the next field (in the Memo field, Enter produces a line break). You can also press Tab to move to the next field. You can move to the previous field by pressing Sift + Tab.
All the fields are text fields that can be sorted according to the ASCII values of the letters in the text. This is possible because the computer processes text information as numbers. Each letter and number has a so-called ASCII value that allows the computer to process text. In the ASCII value hierarchy, the digits appear first, then the uppercase letters, and then the lowercase letters in alphabetical order. This allows you to sort numbers and letters in the same field. For example, the year of a research source book may be followed by an alphabet if there are several sources from the same author in the list of sources for the same year.
Thus, when sorting numbers (e.g., years, page number) in the text field, in front of the number the certain number of zeros must be used to sort the field correctly. After all, zero comes in the ASCII number hierarchy before other numbers. For example, the sorted number sequence must be in the form 001, 002, 003 ... 010,011..099, 100,101, etc. Similarly, when performing searches, the '<' and '>' characters (arrows) refer to the ASCII value hierarchy of the characters.
The tilde character (~) in the search function searches for any string in the field. So, for example, you are free to use only part of the word when searching.
Download the full Memo Magister 0.5 beta manual here
