Customizing the link overview functionality

The link overview functionality in adlwin.exe offers a special display showing from which databases and fields the current record (often an authority term or name) is referenced. (Please see the Adlib 7.3 release notes for more information about its user interface.)

This functionality works without any extra set up if feedback databases have been specified (which is the case for model applications 3.6 and higher): the Link overview button in the View menu in Adlib becomes active for the currently displayed record if for the current database feedback databases have been specified.
By default, the Link overview only displays the number of the record in the other database, which references the current record, like in the screenshot below for example, which indicates that in this case the object_category field in records 1, 2, 3 (amongst 34 others) of the listed feedback database has a link to the currently displayed record.

LinkOverviewDefaultFormat

However, per feedback database definition you can change which information will be displayed per record. Per feedback database you just need to specify the desired Format string* (similar to how this can be done for the Hierarchy browser). So instead of "record: #" you could choose to display the record number, followed by the title of the record and the first registered object name - all fields separated by forward slashes - for the COLLECT feedback database, for instance. To do so for the thesaurus, for example, in the Application browser simply select the ../data+COLLECT feedback database underneath the thesau database structure definition in your \data folder and enter your Format string of choice.

LinkOverviewCustomFormat

Opening the same Link overview in Adlib now shows more useful information per record (even though these records coincidentally do not have an object name):

LinkOverviewCustomFormatResult

* A quick recap of the syntax of format strings

%<tag><[occ]>%<fixed text>…

The part between percent characters is the data part: provide the tag or field name that you want to display. If you do not enter an occurrence number, by default the first occurrence will be used.
Behind the data part you may (optionally) provide a fixed text, e.g. explanatory, or to introduce the next data part, since you may repeat %<tag><[occ]>%, with or without <fixed text> in between. Examples of filled in format strings are:

%priref% / %title% / %object_name%

%OB[2]%

Both the data and text parts are optional.

Besides the possibility to have some record information in the Link overview, you can set a detail zoom screen for a linked field: this allows the user to double-click any of the listed records (for the relevant linked field) in the Link overview in order to open it for display (not editing) in a zoom screen so he or she can view much more details of the relevant record.

Since such a detail zoom screen will have to be set per linked field and there may be many linked fields in quite a number of feedback databases, there’s a good chance you will only implement this double-click zoom screen viewing for a limited number of fields. So first consider for which linked fields you'd like to have this functionality. For the object_name field for example, you set this up by registering an appropriate screen in the Detail screen option on the Link screens tab of the object_name properties in the collect.inf. You'll have to find or create an appropriate screen yourself, but there's probably already some existing zoom screen (starting with "zm_") that you can use, although in the example below we have found that the objid-in.fmt screen serves this purpose well too. For other linked fields in COLLECT you can use the same screen: the other databases will require a different zoom screen.

LinkOverviewDetailZoomScreen