FESTIVAL PROGRAM BUILDER
for Windows/NT/XP
User Manual
by
John & Karen Herr
(Dancing Penguins Software)
Version January 2006
Copyright @2006
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 What is Festival Program Builder (FPB)?
1.1 What FPB Can Do for You
1.2 What FPB Can NOT Do for You

2 Required Hardware and Software
2.1 Hardware/Software
2.2 Text Editors & Word Processors
2.3 Your FPB Package
2.4 Installation

3 Quick Intro to Festival Program Builder (FPB)

4 How to Use Festival Program Builder (FPB)
4.1 Defining the FPB Configuration
4.2 Defining Leaders
4.3 Defining Dances
4.4 Defining Rooms
4.5 Defining Events
4.6 Defining Voters
4.7 Adding Dances to Cuers
4.8 Adding Votes to Voters
4.9 Building the Program
4.10 Getting Reports

5. Using the Menu Items in the FPB Menu Bar
5.1 File
5.2 Leaders
5.3 Dances
5.4 Votes
5.5 Rooms
5.6 Events
5.6 Program
5.8 General Reports
5.9 Help

6. Database Files
6.1 Leader Database leader.db
6.2 Dance Database dance.db
6.3 Vote Database vote.db
6.4 Room Database room.db
6.5 Event Database event.db

7. Configuration File

8. Limitations
8.1 Number of Entries Allowed
8.2 Number of Resources Allowed

9. Technical Support


1.0 What is Festival Program Builder (FPB)?

FPB assists you in building a dance program for an evening, a weekend, a festival, or for a full convention. It will allow you to enter leaders (including cuers, callers, and etc), dances (for the cuers), room names, special events (such as Grand March), educational sessions (such as a Panel Discussion), and other pertinent information into a database. Once entered, you can then create a program accessing these leaders and events with simple point and clicks.

You will specify which day and room, and then build a program for that room on that day. After you have built all the programs for every room, you can then combine them all under a ‘conflict analysis’ function to find out if you have leaders in two different rooms at the same time, or if they don’t have enough time to get from one assignment to another.

FPB is set up to process from one to three days of programming, but it is expandable to any number of days.
Just to be very clear, here is an example of the output that FPB generates:

Day: Thursday
Room: Ballroom A

7:00p    Grand March
7:30p    Presentations and Awards
7:30p    Jones, Joe (HI)
8:00p    Carlson, Chuck & Candy (AK)
8:00p    A Taste Of The Wind (Eddins) [2/TS]
8:04p    All Shook Up (Becker) [2/TS]
8:08p    Could I Have This Dance (Eddins) [2/WZ]

This shows a program that starts with a Grand March, followed by Presentations and Awards, and then a Cuer cues 3 dances.

1.1 What FPB Can Do for You
It will save you a lot of preparation time because it is pre-set with data to get you started. It will also save you a lot of time when you actually build the program. For example: It prints out a form to send to your cuers with a list of dances with their associated dance IDs, choreograhpers, rhythms, and phase levels. The Cuer merely circles the Dance Ids that he/she cues. This will save the Cuer a LOT of time and he/she will probably send the list back more quickly. Once you get the Cuer’s response, then all you have to do is type in the Dance Ids into the program (not the actual dance text), which only takes about 60 seconds per cuer.

When it is time to build the program, all of your database information will be available within a single screen. You simply click on the category tab (e.g. Cuers, Callers, Events, Educators, etc), then click on the item (Cuer & Dance, or Caller, etc), then click on the Move button and the item will be included into the program list. Here are a few of the benefits in this process:
a) Times are automatically computed for you and displayed as you build the program,
b) You can remove/move the leaders or events up & down, with auto-recalculation of the times,
c) You can save your information at any time, and re-load the data later and continue,
d) You can dynamically change the time allocations of any item in the program (overriding the default values).
e) You can add any extra text into the program without it taking a time allocation,
f) A counter is shown for each leader so you can see if that leader has already
been assigned, and how much,
g) Round dance counters help you to avoid duplicate dances within the program.

When you are done building the program, you click on the ‘Save Program To Print', and a formatted program is generated to a file, which you can send to your printer. Since it is in a file prior to printing, you can load it into any word processor and embellish it by changing font types, font sizes, or page formats to your preferences.

You can run many different reports, but probably the most valuable report is the output from the ‘Conflict Analysis’ menu item. It checks for overlaps, duplicity, and transit time sufficiency. And, if you have a problem, you can reload your saved program and change it dynamically, and then re-print it, all in less than 5 minutes. Speaking from experience, we can say that this will be one of your most beneficial functions. The last few days of building a convention is overloaded with last minute changes that are made simple with FPB.

FPB is so powerful, that a single person could do it all (Square Dance program, Round Dance program, Education, and etc). But, in reality, it is not done that way. FPB is able to be run independently on multiple computers by the various convention leaders, The only requirement is that a common database is built first, and then each leader gets a copy of that database on their computer. Then they can work independently. When all the output files are generated, they can be combined for ‘Conflict Analysis’.

Another benefit is that once you have built a database of leaders, dances, and etc, then for the next weekend or convention, you will have very few changes - just add or remove a few leaders and/or dances, and you are up and running again.

Besides the main function of generating programs, it can also give you many types of reports, such as an address & phone list, or an availability list of each leader during morning, afternoon, and evening for each day.

You can also enter unique information and ask for that information later. For example, you can annotate for each leader what he/she enjoys most doing. Then later, for example, you can get a list of all the Callers that enjoy working with the youth.

1.2 What FPB Can Not Do for You
FPB is not magic. It cannot have data in its database that you have not entered (or was not already there). You still have to enter the information. It is very important to fully enter the information. For example, if you enter a new Caller, and you don’t click on the Caller check box, then he/she will not appear when it is time to make the program. Also, if the leader is both a Cuer and a Caller, then you will need to check both boxes, or he/she will show up only under the category(s) that you have checked when it is time to build the program.

When you have multiple convention leaders building a total convention program, then you will have to do a little co-ordination. For example, some one person must build the master database (with inputs from all the convention leaders). When the database is stable, then copy it out to each convention leader. Everyone must start with the same initial database. Subsequently the individual leaders may remove or change the characteristics of the leaders with no impact. But if 2 convention leaders add the same new person into their individual databases with different Ids, the combined conflict analysis programs will not be predictable. Just make sure that everyone has the same ID for every database item.

FPB is flexible. For example, for the Round Dance program: you may use dance inputs from cuers to determine the most popular dances for the program. Or you take dance inputs from both cuers and from dancers, and use the input from the dancers to determine the most popular dances for the program. This and many other changeable features are managed within the Configuration File. Therefore you need to go through the configuration process and establish how you want FPB to work and save the new set of configuration data out to the Configuration File.

Because FPB does so much, it is important to get acquainted with it well before you have to use it. It is not difficult to learn, but you should put in a little time with it early.

2. Required Hardware and Software

2.1 Hardware/Software
FPB will run on most any PC (Windows, NT, or XP). A minimum of memory is required.

2.2 Text Editors & Word Processors
There are two needs for text manipulation. The first is when you want to change the database information directly without using FPB. In this case you should use a simple text editor (and NOT a word processor). The database files are actually simple text files. If you use a Word Processor on them (such as Word, WordPerfect, ClarisWorks, etc), special characters are embedded that will cause FPB to be unable to read the file correctly.

The second need is when you have finished building a program or a report. At that point you may use any Word Processor (such as Word, WordPerfect, ClarisWorks, etc), to make your program output file look better for printing.

2.3 Your FPB Package
The program consists of various files which include:
a) 5 database files (each has a suffix of .DB),
b) a configuration file (CONFIG.CFG),
c) an executable file (FPB.EXE),
d) a help file (includes the manual) (FPB.HLP)

2.4 Installation
Step 1: Determine the directory where you want the program installed, say C:\ PROGRAMS \ FPB

Step 2: Copy all the FPB files into that directory.

Step 3: Execute FPB.exe in that directory

3. Quick Intro to FPB for Windows
Step 1 - Starting the program:
When you start FPB, the main window of FPB appears. It will take awhile until the menu items become active because it has to read in all your database files. With a Pentium 150, the time should be in the neighborhood of 15 seconds.
When FPB starts, it first reads in the Configuration File. Then it loads in all the database information into memory and you are ready to build a program. But first we recommend that you change your configuration settings. Then you should change your database to reflect you local information such as room names, or local leaders in your area that are not already included into the database.

Step 2 - Configuration:
To check your configuration settings, go to the menu bar:
            File | Setup | Configuration Settings
You should see a Dialog box with 6 tabs. By clicking on any one of the tabs, you will see more configuration settings.

You may change the settings. If you change the settings, and want those changes to continue when you re-run FPB the next time, then be sure to SAVE the settings by clicking on the ‘Save to File’ button. Otherwise the settings will remain in effect only durring your current running of FPB and your changes will be lost when you exit the program. When you are done changing the settings, then click on ‘OK’ to keep your changes for this run, or click on ‘Cancel’ to ignore your changes. If you click on ‘Save to File’, and then ‘Cancel’, your changes will be in effect on your next run of FPB, but will not be in effect during the current run.

For more information, see Configuration Options

Step 3 - Entering Leader Information
FPB comes with an already established database. It contains many leader names with their associated profiles. You will need to update the database with current profile information by changing existing information and adding new information, and possibly deleting leaders that you don’t want in the database. Especially important is to update the ‘Leader Types’ box, and the ‘When Available’ box.

To review all the leaders, you can go to the menu bar:
            Leaders | Modify a Leader
A small dialog box will appear with a drop down list entry box. You can type in a name, or simply click on the down arrow, and select the leader, then click on the ‘Accept’ button. This will bring up all the information on that leader, which you can change. When you are done changing the information, then click on the ‘Update’ button.

Be sure that when you are done changing the database, that you select on the menu bar:
            Leaders | Save All Leaders to Disk.
This will save your new leader database out to disk. Without doing this, all your changes will be gone the next time you run FPB. The FPB database consists of 5 files: LEADER.DB      All leader information including associated round dances that they cue
DANCE.DB      All the round dances (candidates for the program)
ROOM.DB      All the room definitions
VOTE.DB      All the votes submitted by round dance voters
EVENT.DB      All the events that can be allocated into the program
When you save all leaders, you will be saving only the leader database file. And the same is true for the other database files. Be sure to save all your changes.

Step 4 - Entering Dance Information
FPB comes with an already established Round Dance database. It contains many dances. You will need to update the database with current information by changing existing information and adding new information, and possibly deleting dances that you don’t want in the database. To review the dances, you can go to the menu bar:
            Leaders | Modify a Dance
A small dialog box will appear with a drop down list entry box. You can type in a dance name, or simply click on the down arrow, and select the dance, then click on the ‘Accept’ button. This will bring up all the information on that dance, which you can change. When you are done changing the information, then click on the ‘Update’ button. And when you are done changin all the dances be sure to save the Dance database.

Be sure that when you are done changing the database, that you select on the menu bar: Leaders | Save All Dances to Disk. This will save your new dance database out to disk. Without doing this, all your changes will be gone the next time you run FPB. The FPB database consists of 5 files, one for the leaders, one for dances, and etc. When you save all dances, you will be saving only the dance database file.

Step 5 - Connecting Dances to the Cuers
FPB has a very simple way to connect Cuers with the Round Dances that they cue. Follow the following process or something similar:
a) Update the dance portion of the database the way you want them (deleting those that you deem unnecessary)
b) Use menu bar:
            Dances | Dances (Views & Prints) | Dance Printouts | Create Voting List
or
            Voting | Voters (Views & Prints) | Voting List Prints | Create Voting List
This will create a file named ‘LETTER.PRT’, with all the dances listed alphabetically, by phase.
c) Load LETTER.PRT into a word processor and add some introductory text that asks the cuer to circle the ID of each dance that he/she cues AND would like to see on the program. We suggest that you do not limit the number of dances that the cuer can circle. It will make your programming later much easier.
d) Send out the letter to all the cuers, asking for a return within 30 days. Since the job is easy, they should have no problem returning within 30 days. Also, don’t send out the list too early, because the cuers want to include the latest dances just before the dance event.
Note: A nice benefit of this is that the dance list includes phases, rhythms, & choreographers - which normally is real pain for cuers to find and write up on a sheet for you. (So, many don’t do it.)
Note: It is suggested that you reduce the font size of LETTER.PRT in order to use a minimum of paper.
e) When you get each response back from the cuers, then goto menu bar:
            Leaders | Cuers (Views & Prints) | Show all Cuers w/ their Dances
Then click on the associated cuer in the ‘Select Cuer’ list box. Then type in all the dance IDs that the cuer circled (clearing out previous entries if necessary into the ‘Attach Dances to Cuer’ list box. There is no limit (within reason) to the number of dances that can be connected to the cuer. The more entries, the easier the programing will be later.
f) Click on the ‘Accept Dances’ button. This will cause FPB to check your input list and correct certain things like duplicate entries and dance IDs that don’t exist, and then re-order your list numerically. In order to save permanently this information, don’t forget to go back to menu bar:
            Leaders | Save All Leaders to Disk
which saves the the leader database file (along with their associated dances) out to the disk for future FPB runs. You do not need to re-save the dance database file in this particualr process.

Step 6 - Entering Room Information:
Using a similar process as under Step 3 update your room information. There are two types of room names for each room:
a) Formal Room Name: This is the permanent name of the room that your convention leadership assigns to the room. An example: Your convention center has a room named 'Exhibit Hall B'. Your convention leadership decides to give it a new name, say: 'Ballroom B'. The convention leadership’s name for that room is the Formal Room name. The formal name may have nothing to do with the way the hall is to be used. And the formal name may also be the same as the convention center’s name. Sometimes you may prefer to include both the convention center name and the convention leadership name into the formal room name, such as 'A310 - Exhibit Ballroom Hall'.
b) Usage Room Name: This is the name that your convention leadership gives to the hall relative to its usage. An example: 'Ballroom B', will be used as the Phase III-IV Hall for Round Dancers. Therefore, the Usage Room Name is 'Round Dance III-IV Hall'.
There is space for a full description of that room which may include a clarification of what the room names really mean.

You may also enter the dimensions of each hall if you desire. FPB will compute the total square footage of each hall for you in the room reports, which you could use later to compute the square footage per dancer.

Be sure that when you are done changing the rooms database, that you select on the menu bar:
            Leaders | Save Rooms to Disk.
This will save your new room database out to disk. Without doing this, all your room changes will be gone the next time you run FPB. When you save all rooms, you will be saving only the room database file.

Step 7 - Entering Event Information:
Using a similar process as under Step 3 update your event information. To get the feeling for the types of events that can/should be entered as events, look at the default set of events that came with FPB. One exception is to not include Education Seminars as events. They will be included separately under the Educators tab while building your program.

Be sure that when you are done changing the database, that you select on the menu bar:
            Leaders | Save Events to Disk
This will save your new event database out to disk. Without doing this, all your event changes will be gone the next time you run FPB. When you save all events, you will be saving only the event database file.

Step 8 - Defining Educators:
Using a similar process as under Step 3 update your educator information within each leader’s profile.

Any dance leader can be designated as an Educator. When you enter the leaders basic profile data, check the Educator box in the Leader Types area. All the leaders that have this box checked will be included under the Educators tab while building the program.

Also, note that while you are under the Educators tab of the Build a Program dialog box, you can add people into the education sessions only if they have been identified as an educator in the leader profile, which causes them to show up under the Educators tab. Educator settings are saved when you save all leaders out to disk.

Step 9 - Identifying Master of Ceremonies (MCs):
When you are entering or modifying a leaders profile, be sure to check the ‘Will MC’ box if the leader has agreed to act as an MC. Checking his box will only have meaning if the leader has been designated as a Cuer and/or a Caller. If checked, then this leader will show up under the MC Callers tab and/or MC Cuers tab in the Build a Program dialog box. MC settings are saved when you save all leaders out to disk.

Step 10 - Entering Voting Information:
FPB is installed with the default state of having all voting done according to the Cuers. But, you may change that to have all voting to be done according to the dancers. First a discussion of what voting means.

When you have all the dances entered for all the cuers, FPB will tally up the number of times each dance was specified by the cuers. For example, if dance ID 327 was circled by 13 cuers, then that dance will get 13 votes. You can get a printout that will show you how many votes all the dances received. Under the Configuration Settings, you can determine in various ways how to eliminate the more unpopular dances. For example, you may want to say that only dances with at least 3 votes may be considered for the program. Then, when you build the program, any dance with less than 3 votes will not show up.

To complicate this a little further, lets say that you decide that you want the dancers to decide the program instead of the cuers (by setting the Configuration Settings appropriately). Then you must send the dance list (LETTER.PRT) out to both cuers and dancers. When you get the cuers response, you must enter his/her dance IDs under menu bar:
            Leaders | Cuers (Views & Prints) | Show all Cuers w/ their Dances . When you get the dancers response, you must enter their dance Ids under menu bar:
            Voting | Add a Voter or under Voting | Modify a Voter
which brings up the ‘Voters with their Dance Votes’ dialog box. Type in the IDs into the List Dance Numbers list box.

Now with dancer’s votes entered, FPB will look at the cuers dances, and drop out the dances that don’t meet the voting criteria according to the dancer’s votes.

Be sure that when you are done changing the database, that you select on the menu bar:
            Leaders | Save Voters to Disk
This will save your new voter database out to disk. Without doing this, all your changes will be gone the next time you run FPB. When you save all voters, you will be saving only the voter database file.

Step 11 - Building Program
When all your data has been entered and you are ready to build your program, then goto menu bar:
Program | Build a Program
This will bring up the large dialog box entitled 'Build a Program'. Because of the large amount of data to prepare, it may take 10-15 seconds to appear (more on older PCs). You will see a set of tabs in the upper left. By clicking on those tabs you can display all the Callers, Cuers (with their dances), MCs, events, etc. All this information is refered to as the Candidate data. On the right side is where you will see the program area where your selections will be entered as part of the program.

The buttons in between are the commands. For example, if you select tab/category: Cuers, and then you select a specific Cuer/Dance item in the list, then click on ‘Add to Program’ and that Cuer/Dance item will be put into the program. This button works with any tab/category. If you change your mind, you can select an item (click on it) within the program and then click on button: ‘Remove from Program’ and it will be removed.

Note: You may double click a candidate item, and it will automatically be moved into the program list.
Note: Any item moved from the candidate area into the program list will be appended after the item currently selected in the program list.

There are many capabilities on this dialog box which are explained full in TBD.

When you are done building the program, then click on ‘Save Program to Print’. This will ask you for a file name, and then will save the program out to that file.

When you have finished building your program list (for a particular day and particular room), or if you haven't finished the program and want to save it until later, then click on ‘Save Program to File’ (found under the program). You should also save the candidate data by clicking on ‘Save Candidates to File’. This will save all the data in all categories (tabs). Later you can use ‘Load Candidate File’ and ‘Load Program File’ to resume your work.

4. How to Use FPB

4.1 Defining the FPB Configuration
FPB allows you control over many different aspects of the program development. A few examples:
1) you can determine how many votes it takes to cause a dance to become a candidate dance for the program,
2) you can base your voting from cuer input or from dancer input,
3) you can select to display leaders even if they are not available in the Build a Program dialog box,
4) you can define the time periods of the day wherein a leader in available or not, and etc.
FPB comes with a pre-defined set of configuration settings. They are stored in the file CONFIG.CFG, which is a simple text file that can be modified within any simple text editor (not a word processor). It is suggested that you use the FPB menu item File/Setup | Configuration Settings to make any desired changes.
Before we get into the actual meaning of all the configuration settings, lets mention the meaning of the buttons. On each tab sheet, there is a ‘Save to File’ button and a ‘Help’ button. The ‘Save to File’ button will simply set a ‘Save’ flag such that when you click on the ‘OK’ button, the entire configruation will be saved to file. But, if you click on the ‘Cancel’ button, then the flag will be ignored, and the new configuration settings will not be saved to disk. So you could make various changes on different tab sheets, and when you are done, then click on ‘Save to File’ and it will all be saved. The ‘Help’ button will display a help display just for the associated tab sheet.
Clicking the ‘OK’ button without having clicked on the ‘Save to File’ button, says to save the changes for the current run of FPB, but do not save them to the configuration file for future runs of FPB - and then FPB will exit the Configuration Settings dialog box. The ‘Cancel’ button says to ignore any of the changes and exit the Configuration Settings dialog box.

Now back to the tabs. The menu selection above will bring up a dialog box with 6 tabs. Each of these are tabs are explained as follows:

Tab 1) General Settings
This set of items includes 3 check boxes and a time entry box.
a) Output Program in Uppercase:
If you check this box, then everytime you ask for an output file to be generated, the output will be converted to uppercase, otherwise it will be in standard upper/lower mix.

b) Display Files as they are Created
If you check this box, then every time you ask for an output file to be generated, the output file will be displayed on the screen in a ‘NOTEPAD’ window.

c) Include those who are unavailable within the Build a Program window
If you check this box, then within the Build a Program dialog box, when you click on a tabl/category, then all leaders of that type will be included in the list, regardless of their availability. If not checked, then those leaders that are not available on the indicated day, will not be included in the list. When unavailble leaders are displayed, there will be an underscore character in front of their name (‘_’) to indicate their unavailability.

d) Transit Time between engagements (in minutes)
A numeric entry in this box will determine how many minutes to allow for a leader to get from one engagement in one hall to another engagement in another hall. For example -look at all the halls. Which two halls are the furthest distance apart, and how long would it take to get from the one to the other? If that value is 20 minutes, then enter 30 minutes in the box (just to be safe). This value is used when you perform a conflict analysis on the final program, inputing all hall programs for the entire day, each day.

Tab 2) Auto Load Methods
You may select one of the following Auto-Load Modes:

a) None
This specifies to NOT load any database set when starting FPB

b) Standard Database
This specifies to load the Standard Database Files (This is the default set)
c) Custom Database
This specifies to load the Customized Database Files. When you select this, you must enter the names of the custom database files into the ‘Custom Database Files’ area.

You can load two different sets of database files - the standard set (the default set) , or a customized set. The standard set has a predetermined set of files named: LEADER.DB, DANCE.DB, ROOM.DB, VOTE.DB, & EVENT.DB . FPB is installed with these files already filled with much information. You will always load and run with this set if the ‘Standard Database’ item is selected.

If you want to build another set of files, then you can name them differently, as you please, such as: LDR.DB, DNC.DB, RM.DB, VOT.DB, & EV.DB . Then you can load and run with this set instead if you select the ‘Custom Database’ item.

One usage of these may be: You keep the reliable database within the Standard set. Copy all those files over to another set with new file names. Then set the Custom Database setting, entering the newly named files. Then run FPB and test out your changes, or just experiment. Once verified that everything works well, then you can copy your new reliable set back to the Standard set, and set the Standard Database setting.

Tab 3) Program Slot Times
These settings assign default time durations for each type of leader. For example, if you enter 5 into the Cuer Slot box, then when you build a program, and you move a Cuer w/ his/her dance over to the program, that assignment will automatically receive an allotment value of 5 minutes. This means that whatever follows the cuer/dance item will be 5 minutes after his/her time.

Similarly, if you move a caller into the program, he/she will automatically be assigned the value you put into the Caller Slot box setting.

These values may be overridden at the time you are building the program. After moving an item over to the program (which causes it to get the automated slot time), you can use the ‘Modify Items Time’ button and the associated numeric entry box to change the time slot value of the item that is currently selected in the program.

Tab 4) Vote Selection Methods
You may select from 3 different techniques of determining if a dance should be a candidate on the program. But, first let's discuss of what being a candiate means. Lets say that 11 different cuers can cue dance #17, and only 2 cuers can cue dance #24. First of all, if only 2 cuers can cue dance #24, it may be difficult to fit dance #24 into the program. Therefore, we need a way to eliminate all the dances that got very few votes. When you are building a the final program, you will see the cuer that cues dance #24, but dance #24 will not be there, only the other dances that he/she cues (and were not eliminated) will show up. Therefore a dance is a candidate if it survived the voting process. The 3 voting selection methods are:
a) % Dances in each Phase
b X Dances in each Phase
c) At Least X Votes


We recommend that you keep it simple and use the 3rd method - ‘At Least X Votes’. This means that in order to survive the cut the dance must get at least X votes from cuers or dancers depending on the setup under:
            File/Setup | Configuration Settings | Vote Sources/Limits setting
You set the value of X in the upper right-hand area titled ‘At Least X Votes’. So, if you enter a 3 in the entry box, then every dance will need at least 3 votes to become a candidate.

The 2nd option is ‘% Dances in each Phase’ . If you select this item, then you must enter values into each entry box in the lower left-hand area titled ‘Method: % Dances in each Phase’. Lets say that you enter the values 70, 60, 50, 40, & 30 respectively. This means that after tallying up all the votes for each dance, FPB looks at the phase level of each dance. Then it selects the top 70% vote-getters in Phase II, the top 60% vote-getters in Phase III, the top 50% vote-getters in Phase IV, and etc. The rest of the dances are eliminated. The numbers you enter is a percentage (as whole numbers between 0 and 100). If your percentages are too low, you will end up with very few candidate dances for your program.

The last option is ‘X Dances in each Phase’ . If you select this item, then you must enter values into each entry box in the lower right-hand area titled ‘Method: X Dances in each Phase’. Lets say that you enter the values 3, 5, 7, 9, & 11 respectively. This means that after tallying up all the votes for each dance, FPB looks at the phase level of each dance. Then it selects the top 3 vote-getters in Phase II, the top 5 vote-getters in Phase III, the top 7 vote-getters in Phase IV, and etc. The rest of the dances are eliminated. So, don’t use low numbers because you will end up with very few candidate dances.

Note: If you select one of the methods that is dependent on the Phase level, and a dance itself does not have a phase level entered for it, then it cannot become a candidate.

Tab 5) Vote Sources / Limits
When counting votes for dances, you can select to use responses from cuers, or from dancers. As a normal process you will need to get input from the cuers as to what they cue, and this information will be entered under menu bar:
            Leaders | Cuers (Views & Prints) | Show All Cuers w/ their Dances
This will suffice, if you select your source of voting from the cuers.

But if you select Dancers as your voting source, then you must also send out a list of all the dances (with their IDs) out to all the dancers. When you get their responses, you will enter their data via menu bar:
            Voting | Voters (Views & Prints) | List Voters w/ their Votes
If you select to get votes from dancers, then you must enter the maximum number of dances that they may vote for. This is done by phase level. In other words, when you send out your letter of dances with IDs to the dancers, you need to tell them that they can only vote for a certain number of dances in each phase. For example: 20 dances in phase II, 30 dances in phase III, and etc.. FPB will perform its correction process of dances entered, and then only accept the first number of dances that matches what you have entered into the Vote Limits for Dancers area.

The only reason there are limits to the dancers’ votes and not to the cuers, is that there could be a very high number of dancers, each entering a very large number of dances which possibly could run you out of memory, but probably not. We suggest that you start with large numbers and if you have problems, then try smaller numbers.

Once you have all the voting data entered (whether just from cuers or from dancers too), then when you build a program, FPB will tally the votes accordingly, eliminate those that don’t make the cut. Then the cuers list of dances will be compared against the surviving list of dances. Each dance that didn’t survive will be dropped from the cuers list. This will then become the set of cuers and dances that will be shown under the tab/category ‘Cuers’ in the Build a Program dialog box.

Tab 6) Time Usage
This set of settings allows you to:
1) specify how you want clock times to appear in printouts,
2) specify how to break up the day into morning,
afternoon, and evening, &
3) How you would like to name the days.

Time Output Modes:
Just select how you want the times to be displayed. You will see these formats used whenever times are shown in the program, or in output files. When you are running FPB and it asks you to type in a time value, then you may enter either the military times (16:00), or the a/p times (4:00p), but should not enter the plain time (the middle selection) because it is ambiguous, and will be interpreted by FPB always as morning time (a.m.). Definition of Unavailable Time Periods: The day is broken up into 3 time periods #1 (morning), #2 (afternoon), & #3 (evening). You may choose define these periods differently than provided to you. If so, then make the appropriate changes. This [currently] does not affect the working of FPB very much. It is mostly there for your referencing. For example. If all the leader profiles say tell which mornings they won’t be available, then you can get a report telling you that at a glance. Where changing the times may come into play is when your morning stops right after Showcases, and immediately following will be Educational Sessions, or Clinics. So, you can define the afternoon starting at 10:30 am (when Showcase is over). But, of course, when you send out a leader profile for the leader to fill out, it would have to explain the times when you want to know if he/she is available, without just saying morning, afternoon, & evening. Under this case, the time changes could serve you better. Names of Days: Conventions may be held on different days, such as Wed, Thru, Fri, or Thur, Fri, Sat, or Fir, Sat, Sun. Or maybe it is just a single evening program where you are going to use Day 1 only as Tuesday. At any rate, you should type in the day that will be Day 1, and then etc if there are more days. The typed day names will be used throughout the program and in all the output files as appropriate.

Here is a trick, if you are doing a program for a whole week. You can make separate directories and copy the program and its associated files into each one of those directories. In the first directory, run FPB and give it day names of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. In the 2nd directory, type the names Thursday, Friday, & Saturday. In the 3rd directory use only Day 1, named as Sunday. Then build your programs for those days (keeping track of directory you are in). When you do the conflict analysis, everything will still work, because there is not conflict analysis over multiple days, but only over a single day. If it is necessary to perform multiple day analysis, then please contact Dancing Penguins Software - it may be possible.

4.2 Defining Leaders - Leader Profile
FPB comes with an already established database. It contains many leader names with their associated profiles. You will need to update the database with current profile information by changing existing information and adding new information, and possibly deleting leaders that you don’t want in the database. Especially important is to update the ‘Leader Types’ box, and the ‘When Available’ box.

To review all the leaders, you can go to the menu bar: Leaders | Modify a Leader

A small dialog box will appear with a drop down list entry box. You can type in a name, or simply click on the down arrow, and select the leader, then click on the ‘Accept’ button. This will bring up all the profile information on that leader, which you can change. When you are done changing the information, then click on the ‘Update’ button.

If you have leader couples who both are leaders, then you should make two entries one for each of the two. Example: Mortimer is a Cuer and Caller. Partner Matilda is a Caller and Clogger Leader. Make two profiles, one for Mortimer with Cuer and Caller check boxes checked, and the ‘Partner is Leader’ box checked. The other for Matildaa with Caller and Clogger boxes checked and ‘Partner is Leader’ box checked.

Be sure that when you are done changing the database, that you select on the menu bar: Leaders | Save all Leaders to Disk. This will save your new leader database out to disk. Without doing this, all your changes will be gone the next time you run FPB. The FPB database consists of 5 files, one for the leaders, one for dances, and etc. When you save all leaders, you will be saving only the leader database file.

In the leader’s profile dialog box, the area entitled 'Check All Leader Types contains check boxes for you to check off all the leaders skills. If the leader does more than one skill, then mark all that are applicable. FPB will force you to check at least one box.

Round Dance Cuer
When you check this box, then you should also check the phase levels that he/she cues and the boxes for levels of teaching. This boxes are not actually used for computations, but rather as informational (reports) only. There is only one set of these check boxes. So, if a leader is a cuer and a caller, then you should decide which purpose they should be used (but not both).

Square Dance Caller
When you check this box, then you should also check the sq. dance levels that he/she calls and the boxes for levels of teaching. This boxes are not actually used for computations, but rather as informational (reports) only. There is only one set of these check boxes. So, if a leader is a cuer and a caller, then you should decide which purpose they should be used (but not both).

Clogging Leader
There are no other special check boxes for the Clogging leader.

Country Wester Leader
There are no other special check boxes for the Country Western Leader

Education Leader
All leaders are potentailly an educator. And you may check every leader as an educator if you like. But, we recommend that you only check those people that will probably be included into the Education Program. FPB defines Education Program as those activities normally termed Education Sessions, Clinics, Panels, and etc. So, if a Caller is going to be a member of a Panel, then he/she should be checked as an Educator.

Also, note that while you are under the Educators tab of the Build a Program dialog box, you can add people into the education sessions only if they have been identified as an educator in the leader profile, which causes them to show up under the Educators tab.

Other Leaders
If you have some other form of dancing at your activity or convention, then this is the place to specify it. For example, if you have Folk Dancing, with Folk Dance Leaders, then check this box. If you have more than one other type of leader, then you will have to double up and use the same check box for both. Then when you get any reports, you will have to convert the leader type in the output file.

Master of Ceremonies (MCs)
When a leader returns his/her leader profile sheet, hopefully it had the question 'Are you willing to MC?'. If answered positively, then you should check the ‘Will MC’ box. This box only has meaning iFPB f the leader is a Cuer or Caller. If checked, then this leader will show up under the MC Callers tab and/or MC Cuers tab in the Build a Program dialog box.

4.3 Defining Dances
FPB comes with an already established database. The dance database file contains many dances. You will need to update the database with current information by changing existing information and adding new information, and possibly deleting dances that you don’t want in the database.

To view the total list of dances, go to the menu bar: Leaders | Dances (Views & Prints) | Show All Dances . This will bring up a dialog box with all the dances listed alphabetically with phase, rhythm, and choreographer.

To modify a dance, go to the menu bar: Leaders | Modify a Dance A small dialog box will appear with a drop down list entry box. You can type in a dance name, or simply click on the down arrow, and select the dance, then click on the ‘Accept’ button. This will bring up all the information on that dance, which you can change. When you are done changing the information, then click on the ‘Update’ button.

To add a dance, go to the menu bar: Leaders | Add a Dance . This will bring up the same dialog box, but empty. You will type in the name of the new dance and associated information. When you click on ‘Accept’ the dance will be added to the database and you will be told its new ID number.

Be sure that when you are done changing the database, that you select on the menu bar: Leaders | Save all Dances to Disk. This will save your new dance database out to disk. Without doing this, all your changes will be gone the next time you run FPB. The FPB database consists of 5 files, one for the leaders, one for dances, one for voters (with their votes), and etc. When you save all dances, you will be saving only the dance database file.

4.4 Defining Rooms
Using a similar process as under Step 3 update your room information. There are two types of room names for each room:
a) Formal Room Name: This is the permanent name of the room that your convention leadership assigns to the room. An example: Your convention center has a room named 'Exhibit Hall B'. Your convention leadership decides to give it a new name, say: 'Ballroom B. The convention leadership’s name for that room is the Formal Room name. The formal name may have nothing to do with the way the hall is to be used. And the formal name may also be the same as the convention center’s name. Sometimes you may prefer to include both the convention center name and the convention leadership name into the formal room name, such as 'A310 - Exhibit Ballroom Hall'.

b) Usage Room Name: This is the name that your convention leadership gives to the hall relative to its usage. An example: 'Ballroom B', will be used as the Phase III-IV Hall for Round Dancers. Therefore, the Usage Room Name is 'Round Dance III-IV Hall'.

Finally, there is space for a full description of that room which may include a clarification of the room names really mean. Sometimes, you may prefer to include.

You may also enter the dimensions of each hall if you desire. FPB will compute the total square footage of each hall for you in the room reports, which you could use for danceability computations of sq. ft per dancer, later.

Be sure that when you are done changing the database, that you select on the menu bar: Leaders | Save Rooms to Disk. This will save your new room database out to disk. Without doing this, all your changes will be gone the next time you run FPB. The FPB database consists of 5 files, one for the leaders, one for dances, one for rooms, and etc. When you save all rooms, you will be saving only the room database file.

4.5 Defining Events
Using a similar process as under Step 3 update your event information.

To get the feeling for the types of events that can/should be entered as events, look at the default set of events that came with FPB. One exception is to not include Education Seminars as events. They will be included separately under the Educators tab while building your program.

Be sure that when you are done changing the database, that you select on the menu bar: Leaders | Save Events to Disk. This will save your new event database out to disk. Without doing this, all your changes will be gone the next time you run FPB. The FPB database consists of 5 files, one for the leaders, one for dances, one for events, and etc. When you save all events, you will be saving only the event database file.

4.6 Defining Voters
FPB is installed with the default state of having all voting done according to the Cuers. But, you may change that to have all voting to be done according to the dancers. First a discussion of what voting means.

When you have all the dances entered for all the cuers, FPB will tally up the number of times each dance was specified by the cuers. For example, if dance ID 327 was circled by 13 cuers, then that dance will get 13 votes. You can get a printout that will show you how many votes all the dances received. Under the Configuration Settings, you can determine in various ways how to eliminate the more unpopular dances. For example, you may want to say that only dances with at least 3 votes may be considered for the program. Then, when you build the program, any dance with less than 3 votes will not show up.

To complicate this a little further, lets say that you decide that you want the dancers to decide the program instead of the cuers (by setting the Configuration Settings appropriately). Then you must send the dance list (LETTER.PRT) out to both cuers and dancers. When you get the cuers response, you must enter his/her dance IDs under:
            Leaders | Cuers (Views & Prints) | Show all Cuers w/ their Dances
When you get the dancers response, you must enter their dance Ids under:
            Voting | Add a Voter or under Voting | Modify a Voter
which brings up the ‘Voters with their Dance Votes’ dialog box. Type in the IDs into the List Dance Numbers list box.

Now with dancer’s votes entered, FPB will look at the cuers dances, and drop out the dances that don’t meet the voting criteria according to the dancer’s votes.

Be sure that when you are done changing the database, that you select on the menu bar: Leaders | Save all Voters to Disk. This will save your new voter database out to disk. Without doing this, all your changes will be gone the next time you run FPB. The FPB database consists of 5 files, one for the leaders, one for dances, one for voters (with their votes), and etc. When you save all voters, you will be saving only the voter database file.

4.7 Adding Dances to Cuers
FPB has a very simple way to connect Cuers with the Round Dances that they cue. Follow the following process or something similar:
a) Update the dance portion of the database the way you want them (deleting those that you deem unnecessary)
b) Use menu bar:
            Dances | Dances (Views & Prints) | Dance Printouts | Create Voting List
or
            Voting | Voters (Views & Prints) | Voting List Prints | Create Voting List
This will create a file named ‘LETTER.PRT’, with all the dances listed alphabetically, by phase.
c) Load LETTER.PRT into a word processor and add some introductory text that asks the cuer to circle the ID of each dance that he/she cues AND would like to see on the program. We suggest that you do not limit the number of dances that the cuer can circle. It will make your programming later much easier.
d) Send out the letter to all the cuers, asking for a return within 30 days. Since the job is easy, they should have no problem returning within 30 days. Also, don’t send out the list too early, because the cuers want to include the latest dances just before the dance event. Note: A nice benefit of this is that the dance list includes phases, rhythms, & choreographers - which normally is real pain for all to research. Note: It is suggested that you reduce the font size of LETTER.PRT in order to use a minimum of paper.
e) When you get each response back from the cuers, then goto menu bar: Leaders | Cuers (Views & Prints) | Show all Cuers w/ their Dances. Then click on the associated cuer in the ‘Select Cuer’ list box. Then type in all the dance IDs that the cuer circled (clearing out previous entries if necessary) into the ‘Attach Dances to Cuer’ list box. There is no limit (within reason) to the number of dances that can be connected to the cuer. The more entries, the easier the programing will be later.
f) Then click on the ‘Accept Dances’ button. This will cause FPB to check your input list and correct certain things like duplicate entries and dance IDs that don’t exist, and then re-orders your list numerically. In order to save permanently this information, don’t forget to go back to menu bar:
Leaders | Save All Leaders to Disk which save the entire leader database (which includes the dances they cue) out to the disk for future FPB runs.

4.8 Adding Votes to Voters
There are two ways to select the dances that are to be the candidates for a program. The first is to use the dances that Cuers say that they cue. This information is entered by following the previous section (Adding Dances to Cuers). FPB will compute which dances are popular according to the Cuers, based on the criteria set up in the configuration file.

The second way to select candidate dances is to mail out letters to the dancers that will be attending the event and let them vote on which dances they want on the program. This process is similar to the process of entering the Cuers dances, except that you will enter the voter’s names and their dance votes under the Voting menu item. FPB will use three criteria in building the candidate dance list:
1) The votes from the dancers,
2) The dances that Cuers can actually cue, and
3) the criteria in the configuration file. Therefore, if many dancers vote to have dance ABC on the program, and none of the Cuers can cue it, it will not be in the candidate list. If you want to get it on the program, you will have to find a Cuer that can cue it and add that dance under that Cuer’s dance list.

This section explains how to enter dance votes that came from dancers (and not from Cuers):
a) Update the dance portion of the database the way you want them (deleting those dances that you deem unnecessary)
b) Create a dance-voting letter as described in the previous section (Adding Dances to Cuers). Send out the letter to the dancers.
c) As you get the dancer’s votes back, use menu bar:
            Voting | Add Voter
to enter their votes. This will bring up a new dialog box with 2 entry boxes. One is where you type in the name of the voter. And the other is to type in all the IDs of the dances that the voter wants to see on the program. Separate the dance IDs with commas.
d) Then click on the ‘Add’ button. This will cause FPB to check
your input list and correct certain things like duplicate entries and dance IDs that don’t exist, and then re-orders your list numerically. In order to save permanently this information, don’t forget to go back to menu bar:
            Voting | Save Voters to Disk
which saves your voting information out to the disk for future FPB runs.

Note: You can change the voting information by using:
            Voting | Modify Voter
which will ask you for the name of the voter and will then show you the dialog box with the information which you can change and then click on the Update button. Again, don’t forget to save your changes permanently using
            Voting | Save Voters to Disk
4.9 Building the Program
Before building a program, you must have done the following:
a) Set up the FPB configuration as appropriate for your needs,
b) Updated the Round Dance database
c) Updated the Leader’s profiles (don’t forget their availability check boxes)
d) Assigned the dances that Cuers can cue, and
e) Established the Rooms and Events.

To prepare to build the program, use:
            Program | Build a Program
to bring up the Build a Program window.
When the window appears you will see to major list boxes. The one on the left is the Resource List Box with tabs above it for each of the different types of resource available to you for building the Program. The list box on the right will contain the actual Program as you move items from the Resource List Box over to the Program.

Resource List Box
Click on the ‘Cuers’ tab in the upper-left corder of the new window. You will see a list of all the cuers and the dances they can cue (that survived the voting criteria). If you click the ‘Callers’ tab, you will see all the callers. Try all the tabs. Next to the leaders names in the left list box, you will see the number zero (0). This number will change each time you use the item. For example, under Callers, it will increment each time you make an assignment for that Caller. For Cuers, it will increment each time you use that particular dance. In fact, it will increment for every cuer that cues that dance within the list. For example, if George and Mary both cue 'All Night', then when you assign Mary to cue it, both Mary’s and George’s ‘All Night’ items will increment. The purpose of this feature is to help you to avoid using the same dance more than you want on a program.

Add To Program button
To actually build the program, you click on the desired tab, then click on the desired item in the list box, then click on the 'Add to Program' button. This will append the item over into the 'Program' list box. If items already exist in the Program, the new item will be appended after the currently selected item within the Program. Therefore you cannot insert in front of the first item in the Program. In order to insert in front of the first item, you must append it after the first item, and then use the 'Up' button to move it up in front.

You may switch back and forth between the different tabs as you merge items from the Resource List box to the Program.

Modify Item’s Time button
Notice as you enter items into the Program, that the times are automatically calculated. This calculation uses the value you gave FPB in the Configuration. If you have a special case, where for examle, you want a certain leader to have a different amount of time allocated, then you select that item in the Program, type in the number of minutes into the '# mins' edit box, and then click on the 'Modify Item’s Time' button. All the timing assignments for the items following the modified item will automatically adjust.

Remove From Program button
If you change your mind and want to remove a Program entry, click on the Program item, and click on the Remove from Program button. This will update the usage counters in the Resource List Boxes.

Up & Down buttons
If you want to move a Program item up or down, click on the item to be moved, then use the Up and Down buttons.

Add MC’s choice to Program button
This button is only acitve when you select the MC Cuers tab. Click on the cuer you want in the Resource List Box. Then click the button. FPB will append that cuer into the Program along with the text 'MC Choice'. This means that the MC will be cueing a dance of his/her’s choice.

Insert Text to Progarm button
Use this button to insert text into the Program. Click the button and a new dialog box will appear. Type in your text and click on Accept. The new text will be appended after the currently selected Program item. The text will not be allocated any time value.

Empty Progarm Items
Clicking on this button will cause the Program to be emptied, without changing the Resouce List Box counters. This feature could be used to build an evening program in one room, and then in another room, while keeping count of which dances have been already allocated, or which callers have already been assigned, etc.. In order to reset the counters, you need to exit the Build a Program dialog box and re-enter.

Save Program to Print button
This button will use the Program that you have built, and format it out to a file. FPB will ask you for the file name, which should normally end with a ‘prt’ suffix. The resultant file is a file that you can print. FPB cannot know the exact format of your final program. It just provides you with a basic, easily readable formatted result. You will have to use your favorite word processor to give it its final ‘look’.

The following 4 buttons are a little more difficult and should be practiced with un-important data prior to using them with important data. Always back up your data regularly - just in case.

The purpose of these buttons is to allow you to save your work before you finish, and be able to shut down your computer, and resume later from the point where you left off.

When you want to save your information, you will probably want to save both the Candidate and the Program information. Therefore, use the Save Candidates to File and the Save Program to File buttons first. Then when you resume at a later time, you can use Load Candidate File and Load Program File.

Save Candidates to File button
Clicking on this button will cause a copy of your Resource List Box data to be saved out to disk. This includes all the data from all the tabs (Cuer, Caller, MCs, etc). The data saved also includes the counter’s current values. You will be asked for a filename. We recommend that you use ‘can’ as the standard suffix for your candidate files.

Load Candidate File button
After you have saved a Candidate file, you can re-load it with this button. FPB will ask you for the file name to be loaded.

Save Program to File button
Clicking on this button will cause a copy of your Program data to be saved out to disk. This includes all the time allocations and computations. You will be asked for a file name. We recommend that you use ‘prg’ as the standard suffix for your program files. If you were to change the default time allocation setting prior to loading, the old values will still be in tact. The new defaults will show as you add new items into the program.

Load Program File button
After you have saved a Program file, you can re-load it with this button. FPB will ask you for the file name to be loaded.

4.10 Getting Reports
There are numerous reports available which fall into the following categories: 1) General Leader Reports
            Phone & Address List
            Labels (Addresses)
            Availability (shows which days the leaders are available)
            List Leaders by State
            List Leaders who have Leader Partners
2) Unique Reports for Cuers
            Listed with the Dances They Cue (by dance ID or Name)
            Listed with the most popular dances (determined by entered votes and configuration criteria)
            Listed with their value to the Program (how many of each level they can do)
            List of those that can Cue Dance 'XXX'
            List of those who are Willing to Show a Dance without Teaching it.
3) Dance Reports
            Listed Alphabetically, ID, Phase, or by Cuer
            List of Dances that do not have Complete Information (e.g. missing the Choreograher’s name)
4) Voting Reports
            Create a Voting List of all the Dances
            Show the response from the Voting
            Show the dances that survived the voting (determined by enetered votes and configuration criteria)
            List the dances that didn’t get enough votes (per configuration criteria), or that got zero votes
5) Room Reports
            Alphabetic List with Room Sizes
6) Event Reports
            Alphabetic List
7) Program Reports
            List program conflicts (like when a person has been assigned to be in two different places at the same time)
            List all assignments (1 report per person which will include ALL assignements [SQ,RD, Clog, & etc] )
            List how many times Round Dances were programed (across all halls, & all days)
            List how much work is being done overall by each Leader

When you ask for a report, the data is saved in a file that ends with the suffix of .PRT . If you specify to show reports (set within the configuration dialog) then the file will be displayed in a NOTEPAD window. You can print the file from within the NOTEPAD window. If you specify to NOT show the reports, then the reports will be written to the file, but will not be displayed to you. You can load those files later from within any word processor and print.

5. Using the Menu Items in the FPB Menu Bar
When you enter FPB, you will see the following menu bar:
            File - Leaders - Dances - Votes - Rooms - Events - Program - Gen Reports - Help

The following subsections briefly describe the usage of the menu items that may not be inherently understood.

5.1 File
The File menu includes the following menu items:
Standard Data Load - This will cause the standard data base files to loaded. This will be those data files have the suffix ‘.DB’ and reside within your working directory.
Custom Data Load - This will cause those data base files that you have specifically identified within the configuration dialog boxes to loaded. These files may reside in any directory, and may use any suffix of your choice.
Configuration -> - This will bring up the configuration dialog box with its various tabbed categories. You can select a tab, change the corresponding values and click on ‘OK’ to run with those changes, or you can click on ‘Save to File’ and then ‘OK’, and then run with the changes, and expect those changes to be effective the next time you run FPB. If you click on ‘Save to File’ under any tab, changes from all tabs will be saved to file. View a Text File - This will bring up a dialog box where you can enter any text file name and display that file.

5.2 Leaders
The Leaders Menu allows you to manage your leader database, which includes all types of leaders, including: CUERS, CALLERS, CLOGGERS, CWESTERN, EDUCATORS, & CONTRA.
The menu includes:
1) Add a Leader - This is where you add new leaders of all types into your database.
2) Modify a Leader - This is where you modify the information about a leader that already exists in your database.
3) Delete a Leader - This is where you drop a leader from your database.
4) Save Leaders to Disk - You must save your changes or they will be gone when you exit FPB.

5.3 Dances
The Dances Menu allows you to manage your Round Dance database of dances. The menu items are:
1) Add a Dance - This is where you add new dances into your dance database.
2) Modify a Dance - This is where you modify the information about
dances that already exist in your dance database.
3) Delete a Dance - This is where you delete a dance from your dance database.
4) Dances - This leads you to see all the dances in a single window, or request various reports.
5) Save Dances to Disk - You must save your changes or they will be gone when you exit FPB.

5.4 Votes
The Voters Menu allows you to manage your voter database. You can send out a survey letter for dance votes to the dancers (not to the cuers). The results are entered and managed under this menu set. The menu items are:
1) Add a Voter - This is where you add a new voter along with the votes he/she has selected to your vote database.
2) Modify a Voter - This is where you modify the voter’s information.
3) Delete a Voter - This is where you delete a voter and the associated voting information from the database.
4) Voters - This leads you to see all the voters along with the votes they have selected. Additionally, you will be able to select from a set of reports.
5) Save Voters to Disk - You must save your changes or they will be gone when you exit FPB.

5.5 Rooms
The Rooms Menu allows you to manage your room database. The menu items are:
Add a Room - This is where you add a new room to your room database.
Modify a Room - This is where you modify a room’s information.
Delete a Room - This is where you delete a room from your room database.
Rooms - This leads you to see all the rooms along with their information. Additionally you can request from a set of reports.
Save Rooms to Disk - You must save your changes or they will be gone when you exit FPB.

5.6 Events
The Events Menu allows you to manage your event database.
Events can be many things, such as:
Exhibition Team - ‘Dancing Feet’
After Party - Squares Only
Hall Close
Break
General Session
Grand March
or any other thing you would like to create. Each event must be defined with the number of minutes that it will occupy so that when you build the program, FPB will know how much time to give it. The menu items are:
1) Add an Event - This is where you add a new event to your event database.
2) Modify an Event - This is where you modify an event’s information.
3) Delete an Event - Thisis where you delete an event from your event database.
4) Events - This leads you to see all the events along with their information. Additionally you can request from a set of reports.
5) Save Events to Disk - You must save your changes or they will be gone when you exit FPB.

5.7 Program
The Program Menu manages your final product - the progam. The menu items include:
1) Build a Program - After setting up all your data in your databases, use this menu item to build your program.
2) Print Program Conflicts - When you have built programs for every room for every day, then use this to see if you have any assignment conflicts.
3) Print All Program Assignments - When you have resolved all your conflicts, use this menu item to report all the assignments to send to your leaders.
4) Total Program Dance Counts - This will report the total number of times each Round Dance occurs in all your programs.
5) Total Work by each Leader - This gives you a final tally (in minutes) that each leader has been allocated within all the programs for your event.

5.8 General Reports
The General Reports menu includes:
1) Address Labels for all Leaders - Under the main menu item - Leaders, you can get an address list by leader type. Under this menu item, you can get a single address list of ALL leaders.
2) Availability of all Leaders - Under the main menu item - Leaders, you can get an availability list by leader type.

3) List Leaders by State - This will list all of the leaders, by order of what state they are from.
4) Leaders Ordered by # yrs Teaching - This will list all leaders in order of how many years they have been teaching. If the corresponding leader profile item was left blank or has a zero, the leader will not be listed
5) Leaders with their Levels - This will list all the leader with the levels that they cue, call, or prompt along with the level they teach.
6) Leaders that Leader Partners - There are some leader couples where both persons are leaders. This menu item will tell you which leaders have partner leaders. When entering profiles, you need to enter a separate profile for both persons in the couple.
7) Phone/Address of all leaders - This will list all leaders alphbetically, regardless of Leader Type.
8) Search Comment field of all Leaders - When you were entering profile infomation, there was a field for entering comments. If you had used the comment field, then you can use this menu item to search for the people have certain character strings in their comments. For example, you could have typed in ‘youth’ into the comment field for each leader that has experience with youth. Then, this function would allow you to create a file with the names of all leaders that have the word ‘youth’.

5.9 Help
The Help menu includes:
1) FPB Manual - This menu selection brings up the on-line help facility, with focus on the basic manual that explains all of the functions and usages of FPB.
2) Term Definitions - While currently small, this, in time, will be expanded with many terms that are used throughout the documentation and within the dialog boxes and menus of the program. along with their definitions
3) Errors - There are quite a few possible error conditions. In time, these will all be listed along with possible solutions to the described problems.
4) Index - This will display a list of topics with links to the locations where the topics are discussed.

Besides the help features that are available above, every FPB window has a HELP button which will display a help window to explain all the features of the window currently displayed.

6. Database Files
The program was not built to use Off-The-Shelf Database systems because:
1) The intent was to make the program useful without any database expertise.
2) There is no need to purchase or coordinate with a commercial database product.
3) The database files used in this program are easy to read and modify with only simple editor knowledge.

The program uses the following default database files, which may be overridden by your own database files (explained later):

6.1 Leader Database File (leader.db)
This file contains information about leaders. It contains a variable number of lines of information per leader. The first line contains all of the information from the leader’s profile, including:: Name, Address, Partner, Phone, and etc. If the leader is NOT a cuer, then there is only one line following which is blank. If the leader is a cuer, then the following lines contain up to 15 dance IDs, separated by comas. When FPB sees a non-numeric entry in the next line, it knows that the new line is for a leader, and that there are no more dances to assign to the previous cuer. For actual format detail, see: LEADER.DB Format.

6.2 Dance Database File (dance.db)
This file contains one line per dance. Each line contains all the information you entered when you added the dance into FPB, including:: Name, Choreographer, Phase, Rhythm, Record Label, & Dance ID. For actual format detail, see: DANCE.DB Format.

6.3 Vote Database File (vote.db)
This file contains a variable number of lines per voter. The first line contains the name of the voter. The following lines contain up to 15 dance IDs, separated by comas. When FPB sees a non-numeric entry in the next line, it knows that the new line is for a leader, and that there are no more dances to assign to the previous voter. For actual format detail, see: VOTES.DB Format.

6.4 Room Database File (room.db)
This file contains one line of information about each room, including: Room Name, Room Location, & Size. For actual format detail, see: ROOM.DB Format. 6.4 Event Database File (event.db)
This file contains one line of information about each event, including the event name, an alternate name, a description, and room dimensions. For actual format detail, see: EVENT.DB Format.

You may override the default loading of the above files. In the Configuration dialog box, specify that Auto-Load of data to be turned off and save your configuration. Then, exit, and then re-start FPB. With loading turned off, nothing will be loaded. You can load the standard set of database files or the customized database files by selecting menu item:
            Files | Load Standard Database,
or
            Files | Load Custom Database.

Another way to load databases is to leave in the automatic loading, but select either the Standard, or the Custom database set. The Standard set includes those file names listed above which are expected to be found in your current working directory. The Custom set includes any filenames you have buillt and may reside in any directory of your choice - just be sure include the path to those files within your configuration.

It is important to understand the relationship between these database files because if you add a dance ID to a leader, and the dance doesn’t already exist in the dance.db file, then it will not be accepted.

7. Configuration File
The configuration file is found in your working directory and is named CONFIG.CFG. FPB comes with default settings within CONFIG.CFG. When FPB starts, it reads in CONFIG.CFG. To view and/or change the default settings, use menu:
            FILE/Setup | Configuration Settings'
If you change the settings, they will remain in effect until you exit FPB. If you want to retain the changed settings, be sure to save your changes to file, using the Save to File button.

See Configuration File Format to see the actual format of the file.

8. Limitations

8.1 Number of Entries allowed
FPB has limits as to how many entries you are allowed in certain areas. For example, in the Demo Version you can only enter up to 10 leaders (combined for all types). Here is a complete list:

Version	# Leaders	#Rnd Dances	#Rooms	#Events	#Prog Items
Demo	10	25	5	10	15
Personal	20	500	10	50	100
Professional	200	2000	50	200	200

8.2 Number of Resources Allowed
Within the Build a Program window, you have resources that you can draw from on the left-hand side of the window. FPB has limits to the number of resources it will handle, which apply to each tab, as follows:

Resource	Entry Limit
Callers	300
Cuer-Dance pairs	8000
Cloggers	100
Country Western	100
Contra	300
MC Callers	300
MC Cuers	300
Educators	200
Events	300

Note: A Cuer-Dance Combo is defined as the total number of entries you get when you add up all the dances that each cuer (that is on the program) can cue. For example, if Joes cues 35, and Mary cues 15, and Billy cues 20, you will end up with 70 Cuer-Dance combinations.

9. Technical Support
If you encounter problems, try searching/reading this basic manual (you can print it out) to see if the problem is discussed. If this fails, then look at the Errors section. If this also fails, then please call Dancing Penguins Software (DPS), John & Karen Herr, 303-681-3147. If it is determined to be a flaw in the software, DPS will attempt to correct the problem and send you a corrected version as soon as reasonably possible.

Because of the low cost, and the limited market sales, Dancing Penguins Software cannot spend a lot of time answering basic computer software questions, or questions about how FPB works. Much time was put into the HELP facility to make it as helpful as possible. So, please read the documentation and ask your computer-literate friends the basic questions. DPS will be happy to answer questions that are directly applicable to FPB.

It is expected that long distance phone calls will be at the user’s expense.

If you find that FPB is not what it was advertised to be and you wish to return it, DPS will refund your purchase price, if within 6 months of purchase. The date of purchase will be assumed to be the date that the software is received by you.