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3. Using Logbook for Grok

3.1 Starting Grok

When starting Grok from the command line, you can go directly to the Logbook by specifying the database name, either logbook_glider or logbook_power as an argument. After Grok has started you may want to review the user preferences and modify them to suit your own tastes, (go to the "File" menu and select "Preferences").

3.2 Entering Data

The entry of new data is straight forward. Simply choose the "New" button near the lower left corner to create a new blank card, and then enter your data into the custom form. The entry fields are labeled in a self explanatory manner.

3.3 Sorting, Searching and Queries

The appeal of electronic logbooks lies in their ability to display flights that meet some specific criteria; flights in a specific aircraft or type, flights in the last 90 days, and so on. This section describes how to use the sorting, search and query features of xmbase-grok.

You can search the database by entering a string in the search entry field just below the main menu bar, and clicking on the "Search" button. Grok will search all of the records in the database, and those records containing the search string are placed into the summary. See the Database Format Reference section below for a description of the database fields that are searchable. This approach is useful for locating flights in a specific aircraft or type, flights along a specific route, and so on.

Grok is capable of much more sophisticated searches through a simple search query language, the xmbase-grok manual has full details. The "Query" menu contains some ready to use search queries for showing recent flights. These should prove useful for verifying currency requirements. If you have custom search queries that you use frequently, you can add them to the "Query" menu from the Form Editor.

Once you have the desired flights in the summary window, you can further customize the presentation of the information by selecting how the records in the summary window are sorted. Go to the "Sort" menu and select the database field you want to be used for sorting. The default sort field is the flight date.

In the static portion of the input form (just above the entry fields), there is a display that shows the totals of various categories of flight time. These sum totals are computed over all the flights in the display summary. This makes it easy to determine time in aircraft type or other similar statistics by first performing a search, and then referring to the total time display.

3.4 Exporting Data

Grok contains an export function that can be used to generate formatted reports from the current database. The default output format is simple HTML. You can also write your own export template to export data in a custom format of your own, see the xmbase-grok manual for details. To use the export function, go to the "File" menu, then select "Export".

3.5 Customization

You can easily modify many aspects of the input form to suit your own tastes. First go to the the "File" menu, select "Form editor" and then "Edit current form". This will bring up the Form Editor Canvas which shows the physical layout of the form entries. Select a form entry by left clicking on it, then modify the attributes from the Form Editor window. See the xmbase-grok manual for more detailed information.


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