Tangled^™ user guide - installation instructions

installation overview

The easiest way to initially install Tangled is to buy it already on an SD card because it automatically installs when you initially insert the SD card.  However, that is not the preferred approach because it costs more, requires physical shipping of the SD card, and isn't a preparation for the ongoing process of updating field guide components as updates (most of them free) become available.

The preferred approach (because updates are important) is to download and install the individual components listed under the heading for your device (e.g., PalmOS devices) in the Tangled platforms column of the home page.

• Download and install the Tangled application.
  
  
• Download and unzip the Tangled phenotypic directory to your SD card.
  
  
• Optionally, download and copy the purchased Tangled multimedia to your SD card if you want to enable the Tangled application's access to photographs and recordings.
  
  
• Optionally, download and install the Tangled sighting application (a.k.a. TS) if you want to enable the ability to log sighting records to spreadsheet files in your SD card's /tangled/sighting directory.
  
  

installation details

Except for the linking step which should be done last, the following steps can be done in any order.

installation detours

Although the installation of the Tangled field guide components can be straightforward, there are potential detours.  Fortunately they can be avoided by heeding the following.

• Don't mix components from different applications.
  
  
  Links to the Tangled components are in the Tangled platforms column of the home page.  Those are the components that should be downloaded and merged into a single /tangled directory on your SD card.
  
  Although versions of the Universal Field Guide (UFG) application and even the Peck bird information manager application are still being distributed by freeware sites, attempting to combine the executable from an older field guide (e.g., Peck bird information manager) with the multimedia directory or the phenoypic directory of the new field guide (i.e., Tangled) doesn't hurt anything, but it won't work.  The parial exception to this rule is that it is possible to manually change some directory names in the UFG multimedia directory so that it generally works with the Tangled application: change /ufg/birds_of_North_America to /tangled/birds_of_NA.  However, because Tangled uses the latest AOU checklist (i.e., supplement 50), 19 photographs and 13 recordings in the UFG multimedia will not link with the Tangled application.  The definitive reference describing the name changes and the order changes in the new AOU checklist is the AOU's supplement 50 documentation.
  
  
• Don't mix components from old and new versions.
  
  
  Links to the most recent releases of the Tangled components are in the Tangled platforms column of the home page.  Those are the components that should be downloaded and merged into a single /tangled directory on your SD card.
  
  After the initial installation, be sure to occasionally visit the Tangled field guide users group where Tangled component update notices are regularly posted.  Typically, updating a Tangled component doesn't require updating other components.  For example, there are months when the Tangled application gets several updates, but the Tangled multimedia typically gets updated only once per year.  When an update of one component requires the update of another, that will be noted in the installation instructions in the update notice posted to the users group.
  
  
• Don't create multiple tangled directories.
  
  
  The Tangled components (e.g., the Tangled multimedia directory and the Tangled phenotypic directory) should be merged into a single /tangled directory at the root of your SD card.  In other words, you should copy the Tangled multimedia directory and extract the zipped Tangled phenotypic directory to the root of your SD card (e.g., G:\).  If you copy the Tangled multimedia directory into a /tangled directory already on your SD card (e.g., G:\tangled), the incorrect result will be two/too tangled directories (e.g., G:\tangled\tangled).
  
  
• Don't forget to link.
  
  
  After you install the Tangled application (and optionally the Tangled sighting application) and you merge the multimedia and phenotypic directories into a single /tangled directory at the root of your SD card's directory structure, the last step is to link it all together by selecting the Tangled application's class list's 'select/link' menu item.
  
  If the Tangled application reports link errors at the end of the 'select/link' operation (that takes a minute or so to complete) or if there are some other unexpected results, read the link report file named /tangled/birds_of_NA/admin/link.txt.  It may include some error messages to help with troubleshooting.