Saving a Topical Guide
From Scripture Topical Guide
The basic method for saving your topical guide is to simply go to the "File" menu and select the "Save" option. This will ensure that all recent changes are saved. If you would like to save the topical guide to a different location than the one you are working from, select "Save As". A dialog box will then appear allowing you to select the folder to save in.
I do not take responsibility for any lost data, whether due to system glitches, programming errors, or otherwise. So, Make Frequent Back-Ups. This, of course, is good advice for everything you do from recording genealogy to writing reports for school. Always make redundant copies, and/or archives of your valuable data.
Modifications
Whenever you add, remove or modify anything in your topical guide, the program will register the portion of the topical guide that was changed as having been modified. This status is tracked at the level of the alphabetic category (or "buckets"). Visually, this status is marked by adding an asterisk (*) after the letter (or after the pound, #, sign). However, there is currently an issue which causes the modified category titles to appear as "..." rather than, say "A*", so a "..." in the place of an alphabetic category name can also be taken to mean that the category is not saved.
Automatic Saving
Apart from the normal "Save" and "Save As" methods of saving, the Scripture Topical Guide also does some automatic saving.
The simplest form of automatic saving occurs when you close the program. If any alphabetic categories have been modified since last saved, the program will automatically save them when it it closed. (However, it is not recommended that you rely on this, as you will receive no immediate verification of that the changes have been saved.)
A second auto-save occurs whenever you close an alphabetic category (including the single non-alphabetic category) in the tree view on the left-hand side of the program's window. Whenever you do this, the program checks to see if the category has a modified status (the asterisk in the title), and if it does, the program saves it. You can verify that it has been saved by noting that the category's title will lose the asterisk.
Upgrades and Data Loss
The Scripture Topical Guide is the method I use to maintain my own citations and topical notes. The system was created partially to prevent the loss of my notes and citations and to ease the transition of updating to a new note-taking system.
Losses are common occurrences. many, like myself, have experienced such loss, upon having their marked scriptures stolen. Transition issues occur when new scriptures are purchased.
In the digital realm, you may one day decide to create your own system, or to use somebody else's system. To that end, I chose XML as the archival format for the Scripture Topical Guide. Using XML, it becomes realitively easy to programmatically export the format data to a format of your choice. The only such export I have created as part of my program currently, is the export to HTML, but I plan to create some further export tools, as time permits for some other standard data formats (wiki, MySQL, ...). The details of the XML format used are also published to allow other developers to create their own exports as desired.
Using a digital system for recording notes and citations also makes loss easier to prevent by making archival easy. Keep a copy of your topical guide data on a memory stick, on a separate computer, or archive it with other data on a CD.
