WinDove

Contents


WinDove is a visual interface to the data in Dove's Bellringer's Guide to the Church Bells of Britain and Ringing Peals of the World, now made available on the Central Council's web site. In addition to various options for selecting and sorting the data, maps showing the location of the towers can be displayed.

The software is at an early stage of development, and a prototype is available for download here.
 

Download

Version 0.6

I currently use Windows95 at home and NT4 at work, so am unable easily to test my programs under later operating systems. I have had reports that Version 0.5 will not run under XP. Version 0.6 has been compiled with two later versions of Visual C++. Both run under NT, but V7 does not under 95.

  • dove70.zip (77 kB, dated 7/5/03) is compiled using V7 (.net) and may need dlls from redist70.zip.
  • dove60.zip (79 kB, dated 7/5/03) is compiled using V6 and may need dlls from redist60.zip.
  • dovedat.zip (307 kB, dated 7/5/03) latest tower and map data.

    • Older Files

    File dovezip.exe (510kB, dated 7/9/02) is a self-extracting zip file containing the following:

    WinDove.exe (Version 0.5)

    The main program. This reads data from dove.dat and map.dat, which should be in the working directory. Its use should be self-explanatory. The program requires the libraries mfc42.dll, msvcrt.dll and msvcp50.dll, which should be in the \windows\system directory. If necessary they can be downloaded and extracted from redist.exe.

    dove.dat

    Data extracted from the proof edition of the Guide at http://www.cccbr.org.uk/dove.htm.

    map.dat

    Map data containing the coastline and administrative boundaries of Great Britain. This has been extracted from imagery available on the Ordnance Survey web site and is Crown Copyright.

    ReadDove.exe

    A program to create file dove.dat from the text file. Before running, download file dove.txt into the working directory.

    Recent Changes

    Frequently Asked Questions

    Where's the map? I can only see the tower listing.

    The program uses a split window, with the tower listing initially at a fixed width of 600 pixels. If the overall window is smaller than this the map will be hidden. There is a bar to the right of the scroll-bar that can be dragged to adjust the split between the two windows. If you maximize the window this should be more apparent.

    Why is Walton on Thames at the top in the screenshot?

    The default for the map display is to be centred on Walton (it has to be somewhere). The display above was achieved by selecting by distance (0 to 75 - distances in km), sorting by distance, and zooming out a couple of times (keypad -).

    Future Developments

    I would be grateful for any comments on the software, or suggestions for improvements. Please mail with comments, or if you wish to be informed of any updates. Possible enhancements include the following:

    Additional Fields

    The user can add personalized fields, containing numbers, dates or text. It is possible to select or sort on these fields in the same way as the others. Note, however, that the data in the html files do not include a unique identifier for each tower. Consequently ReadDove does not yet attempt to ensure that such data remains associated with the correct tower when the dove.dat file is updated. This will presumably be possible when the database tables themselves become available. Please do not spend time creating personalized data before this feature is sorted out.

    Any additional fields from the database will be included as they are made available. The current settings for selection and sorting are also be saved in the file.

    Enhancements to Map Display

    Clearly roads, rivers, etc. would be a useful addition. If anyone knows of sources of such (free) data, please let me know. Tower names will also be an option.

    Latitude/Longitude

    Code is included to covert from OSGB grid refererences to Lat/Long and to UTM coordinates, although this is not quite accurate, and needs to be sorted out. If I had data in either form for the overseas towers I might find some way of including these on the maps. Map data for Ireland and the Channel Islands would also be welcome.

    Printing

    Needs to be sorted out.

    Scrolling

    This may not appear to work as expected.The map window is fixed at 1000 x 1000 pixels, and scrolling only occurs within this window. Eventually I hope to override the scrolling behaviour, and enable the whole map to be scrolled, whatever the scale.
    Ringing Software

    This page created by Philip Saddleton

    Last updated 1 February 2006