Quite some time ago, well before the ESRI Palm Springs conference, I asked
for contributions towards a possible paper about "Classic Work Arounds"
in Arc/Info. Well, this started to look like a lot of work to document,
prepare for presentation and make funny!
However, with a bit of help and encouragement from a number of people
(principly Jeff Olsenholler), I persevered and changed this to a List
of Arc/Info Commandments. Jeff had started this several months ago so
I took his idea and extended it to the enclosed. I have tried to list
all his and my contributors at the end. Apologies to any I may have
inadvertently missed. At the last minute I found a couple of duplicates
and tried to remove them - I hope no others slipped through the net
(there are so many!). Although these are MEANT to be funny there are a
lot of valueable tips described herein.
Enjoy!
This is my second posting to the list but as I, nor any of my colleagues,
never saw it appear I assume it either got lost or the God's of ESRI
impounded it.
(comment from Bob Hickey - I believe this was compiled by Lyle A. Burgess: lyle@geoimage.com.au )
The 10 Commandments (Actually there's 58 herein)
=====================================================
Number 1: Thou shalt not have more than five hundred Info files, lest they die.
Number 2: Thou shalt not have more than three hundred GRID files.
Number 3: Thou shalt not use upper case letters anywhere, lest thy files hide.
Number 4: Thou shalt not use dots (".") in a grid filename.
Number 5: Thou shalt not use tabs in AMLs.
Number 6: Thou shalt not use INFO if it can be avoided. (FOI please forgive me for I have spoken blasphemy).
Number 7: Thou shalt not bother trying to read the documentation for INFO. (FOI please forgive me further for I have again spoken blasphemy).
Number 8: Thou shalt not build a point coverage as poly or vice versa as this is a deemeth to be a great sin and your pointers will corrupteth.
Absolution: You are forgiven, but you now have to restore the old
coverage from your FULL backups. Sorry, incrementals won't do.
Number 9: Thou shalt not 'rm xx*' while thy neighbour worketh.
Number10: Thou shalt not use rm -r (unix) to delete coverages, attribute files will not be deleted.
No. 11: Thou shall not use mv (unix) to rename coverages, link to attribute information (PAT, AAT, etc.) will be lost.
No. 12: Thou shalt not use the default tolerances for clean.
No. 13: Thou shalt not let tolerances default with coverages that cover a large area.
No. 14: Thou shalt not use grid data in ArcView, although thou can use ERDAS files or Sun rasterfiles or Tif files.
No. 15: Thou shalt not exit arcedit when a listing window is pinned and the quit button has been hit.
No. 16: Thou shalt not SORT thy attribute tables
No. 17: Thou shalt not use lower case letters in INFO
No. 18: Thou shall not use the command cd in UNIX whilst using Arc/Info for w be thy way to change directories.
No. 19: Thou shalt not CREATEWORKSPACE with the same name as an existing coverage (or vice versa), KILL of the coverage will wipe out the workspace.
No. 20: Thou shalt not do ADDITEMs before cover-id in PAT or AAT, link to attribute data will be lost. Instead pass cover-id as <start-item> to the ADDITEM command.
No. 21: In INFO, thou shalt not SORT external coverage attribute files (PAT, AAT, etc.), link to attributes will be lost. Applies to Arcedit also. Instead use COPYINFO (Arc) to copy the Info file to an new file, then use SORT. Remove file when finished with ERASE.
No. 22: In INFO thou shalt not ALTER Arc/Info internal items in PAT, AAT, etc. (AREA, LENGTH, etc), attribute data will be lost. Instead use ADDITEM (Arc) to create a new item with the definition you want, then use CALCULATE to copy the data to the new item.
No. 23: In ARCEDIT thou shalt not SAVE session in one window and process the same coverage in another, even specifying EDITCOVERAGE will not retrieve the newly processed coverage from the disk. Instead SAVE, QUIT, process, and then run Arcedit.
No. 24: Thou shalt not edit (or even open) a coverage when someone else is editing it. (Or, Thou shalt not covet thy neighbours coverage.)
No. 25: Thou shalt not use xx as the start of a filename, lest you want ARC to remove it for you. In the middle of a session ARC will produce a lot of these.
No. 26: Thou shalt be careful when you use BUILD command. Once you use the point option, you cannot get your polygon back.
No. 27: Once you have ARC on the machine, you have a real OPEN SYSTEM. All your coverages are readable by others, lest you have time to chmod.
No. 28: Thou shall not (easily) use stream digitising as the Disciples of Dangermond hath deem this to be evil.
No. 29: Thou shall learn to type extremely long commands and command arguments and never, ever shall thou abbreviate help commands for the Gods of ESRI find solace and praise in the art of typing.
No. 30: Thou shalt Never, Never make any of the parent directories names of ANY coverage in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS.
No. 31: Thou shalt Never, Never let more than one user edit the same coverage. (Thou must create a user that is for editing coverages and many workers must use this account.)
No. 32: Thou shalt Never, Never believe everything that the INFO manual tells you. Despite the warnings that ALL COMMANDS MUST BE ENTERED IN UPPERCASE LETTERS AFTER LOGGING IN AT THE USER ARC, SOME COMMANDS ALLOW YOU TO FREELY MiX CasE MakING iT diFFICULT to UNderStand WHY InFO IS TOUchy ABout CASE.
No. 33: Thou shalt Always feel PO'ed that ARC allows you to do things you shouldn't WITHOUT complaining.
No. 34: Thou shalt not use digitised tics with RMS errors of less than 0.003 or thou shall find thy coverage driftith with respect to whereith should be and faulty coordinate conversions.
No. 35: Thou shalt always remain awareth of the topology defined for a coverage and how it is modified by ARC commands in case thy looseth track of where it goeth.
No. 36: Thou shalt not edit internal INFO files with the system editor or thou may find thy files unreadable.
No. 37: Thou shalt not delete, change or add new items between standard items
in coverage INFO files. eg)
INFO FILE ITEMS NOT TO BE ALTERED
======= ==================
cover.TIC IDTIC, XTIC, YTIC
cover.BND XMIN, YMIN, XMAX, YMAX
cover.PAT AREA, PERIMETER, cover#, cover-ID
cover.AAT FNODE#, TNODE#, LPOLY#, RPOLY#, LENGTH, cover#, cover-ID
ARC/INFO expects a standard item format for each file and will not recognise changes made to it.
No. 38: Thou shalt not add items to the TIC and BND files of a coverage.
No. 39: Thou shalt not change the cover# values for any record in the PAT or AAT.
No. 40: Thou shalt not sort on the Cover# of PAT or AAT files.
No. 41: Thou shalt not sort lookup tables by their key items (the same item that is also in the corresponding feature attribute table). The values of this item represent categories of values. Unsorted categories will not be "looked up" correctly.
No. 42: Thou shalt always keep the PAT and AAT files sorted on the cover# when leaving INFO. For each record, the values for cover# and $RECNO should always be equal.
No. 43: Thou shalt not copy an existing TIC, BND, PAT, or AAT to another coverage.
No. 44: Thou shalt not use the directory structure of the user workspace to organise your work. Remember, you can use coverages from more than one workspace with an ARC/INFO command.
No. 45: Thou shalt be aware of system limitations and organize and structure your coverages accordingly.
No. 46: Thou shalt not exceed 13 characters in the length of thy coverage names. For just as surely as the Holy AAT and PAT contain a cover-ID field, every INFO fieldname is less than 16 bytes. Thus, any more characters than 13 in thy coverage names ye shall esteem an accident waiting to happen.
No. 47: On PC's thou shalt not create coverages with more than 8 letters and they should start with a letter and can only use A-Z or 0-9 and _ for the other characters.
No. 48: Thou shalt pretty-print thy AML programs using SPACE, and SPACE alone. No TABs shalt thou use for pretty-printing, lest they be misinterpreted as meaningful, and become an abomination unto you.
No. 49: Thou shalt not spatially index thy coverage if thou esteemest it worthy of use in ArcView. Any man, woman, child, or beast who commits this wrong shall suffer the glassy-eyed condescendence of a large demo audience as the map inexplicably vanishes from the screen.
No. 50: If thou dost redirect thy Arc/Info's stderr, thy harvest shall be plentiful. But redirect its stdout, and reap emptiness.
No. 51: Thou shalt remember that before EXPORTing thy coverages for use in PC Arc/Info, thou shalt remove their annotation files and reduce their precision to single.
No. 52: Thou shall learn to type extremely long commands and command arguments and never, ever shall thou abbreviate help commands for the Gods of ESRI find solace and praise in the art of typing.
No. 53: Thou shalt be aware of the occasional, baffling, sometimes partial, sometimes complete disappearances of themes when a zoom-in is performed in ArcView I.
No. 54: Thou shalt never understand why an EPS snapshot *sometimes* produces a file with no postscript graphics?
No. 55: Thou shalt remember that in INFO GET <file> COPY ASCII without the ASCII parameter will not work properly, assuming the system file is a standard text file.
No. 56: Thou shalt remember that in INFO RELATE <file> BY <relate_item> <type> NUMERIC (when relate item is B) without the NUMERIC parameter the relate will not work
No. 57: Thou shalt not be allowed to go off on a long weekend holiday with the family while leaving 4 sessions running believing one is getting something accomplished, because the Lord of ARC shall decree that everything will crash with a FATAL ERROR just after thou departeth from the office.
No. 58: Remember that thou art wrestling with a gorilla and you should act accordingly.
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