MetaEdit+ 2.5 documentation updates

The following changes have been made to MetaEdit+ 2.5 after the manuals were printed: see also the information on time zones (requires patch me970321) and type patches (requires patch me970321, corrections in me971014).

User's Guide

p.2-4, 2-18 Opening projects

When opening projects as a normal user, the graphs from those projects, along with all their directly contained objects, relationships and roles, are preloaded into memory. When opening projects as sysadmin, no preloading is performed. To change this behaviour in either case, press and hold down shift while opening the project.

p.2-27, 3-3, 3-37, 3-67 Opening editors and property dialogs

When users open editors or property dialogs, MetaEdit+ normally attempts to obtain locks for the graph and representation graph, or the properties. Holding down shift while opening stops MetaEdit+ attempting to obtain the locks, thus leaving them free for other users in a multi-user repository. The graph or dialog is opened in the same way as if locks had failed, i.e. read-only: it is not possible to make and save changes. If you change your mind and want to make changes, close the graph or dialog and open it again normally.

System Administrator's Guide

p. 4 Unix group permissions

Instructions on how to have MetaEdit+ users with different primary groups, by using the setgid bit on repository directories.

p. 5 Converting a MULTI-user repository

The System Administrator's Guide contains instructions on converting single user databases for use with the multi-user version. It is also possible to convert multi-user databases to be usable by the single-user version: Close all clients and suspend the server. Make a copy of the database. This is your backup copy, in case anything goes wrong! 

Restart the server, and log in as sysadmin with a normal MetaEdit+ multi-user client - do NOT choose any projects to open. From the Main Launcher, select Special->Repository page->Admin Launcher, and from that Areas. In the Areas Browser that opens, select each logical area in turn (they are the ones whose names are in bold), and choose Maintenance-> Update Position Tables from the popup menu, answering Yes to the dialog that appears. Close MetaEdit+, committing changes. Suspend the server. You can now make a copy of the database files, and that copy of the database can now be used with MetaEdit+ single-user version. 

You can also restart the server and continue to use the database (not the copy) as a multi-user database, but of course there is no longer any connection between data in this database and the copy. 

Although the Concurrency Mode for all users in the single-user database will show 'WWCheckNoReadFlag', MetaEdit+ single user version always uses 'SingleCheck', so this is not a problem (see System Administrator's Guide, p.22). However, if you create new users with the single user version, you will notice that their Concurrency Mode for areas is always SingleCheck. This is fine in the single user version, but if you want later to convert this database to a multi-user database, you should make sure to change their Concurrency Modes to WWCheckNoReadFlag for all areas (apart from Administration, which should be WWCheck). The System Administrator's Guide mentions this, and also gives other instructions about converting from single user to multi-user: you should read these carefully.

p.9 Socket vs. File communication

The most common cause of a client failing to open a socket connection, and thus using the slower file communication, is a problem in DNS. MetaEdit+ tests whether socket communication is possible by trying to obtain an IP number for the name 'localhost', which should always give the IP of the client computer. If the DNS server cannot provide an answer, the test fails. If DNS seems to be working otherwise, one workaround is to add an entry for 'localhost' to your client's local 'hosts' file (or similar), assuming of course that your network software uses such a file. The IP number should in general be 127.0.0.1 and not the actual IP of your client computer. The line to add will often look like this (the separator character is a tab):

127.0.0.1    localhost

p.22 Local Path

By default, temporary files for each user are created in a directory for each user underneath the path for the repository. In a multi-user repository use of these files can be speeded up by having them stored on a local drive. The Local path setting in the User Browser allows you to define the directory where these files will be stored. Note that you must not allow more than one instance of MetaEdit+ at a time to use this directory as its local path.

p.22-24 Fine Tuning

As computer power and in particular memory size has increased since MetaEdit+ was released, we recommend checking the Fine Tuning settings for your users, and increasing the values for MaxImageSize, MaxPersistentObjectSize, MinObjectAmount, MinPersistentObjectsSize. Reasonable maximum values are Default * (RAM / 16MB); in general however you will not need to increase the values by more than 50%. See the guidelines on p.22-24 for more details.