User Guide
Right now there is no detailed user guide for Basemix. In lieu of that, this page exists to hold some information that might be helpful for getting up to speed.
Basemix is designed to let you keep as much or as little detail as you want. Basemix doesn't know anything about rats or litters unless explicitly created in the system (you have to make a litter and each rat in the litter for it to calculate size, you cannot just set a litter and a size for example). This might seem a little overkill at first, especially if you want to start fleshing out the "extended family" of rats such as the family trees of your foundation rats, borrowed rats, or whatever. Creating full records for every rat and litter helps add a lot of richness to the data that we can explore easier, but mostly this is something that will improve over time: Basemix is in its infancy and some of the pain points around creating records for rats you care less about will be addressed. Further, some easy-to-toggle filters with sensible defaults exist to try and hide the records you care less about from the day-to-day usage. This gives you the richness of any information you add to them, gives you access to them as a fully fledged "rat" or "litter" in the system, but means you can focus on your current breeding information first and foremost.
One key design goal of Basemix is to be intuitive and not force you to navigate a strange way around the system to do what you want. If you are viewing a rat, you can navigate to its litters and view/edit them. If you are viewing a litter, you can navigate to the parents or offspring and edit them. That sort of thing.
The main menu is divided into these sections:
Home
The home page shows when the app first loads and today only contains some basic information about the app's current state and how to provide feedback. You can navigate to the Home screen at any time by clicking the application title "Basemix" in the menu bar, it does not appear as a specific menu item.
In the future this page may evolve to display nearby key events based on the current date, or latest basemix news.
Rats
The rats page shows a list of the rats that matter most to you for your day-to-day usage. That might mean many things over time but today it means rats that are owned by you, and not known to be dead. If a rat has a date of death set, or the "owned by me" box is unchecked on a rat, it will disappear from this list by default (note that some handy toggles exist on the list so you can change what you see, but by default these filters are enabled). There is also a text search which currently operates on rat names to help you find specific rats. You can create new rats directly from this page.
Clicking any rat will navigate to it, and show you its profile page. From here you can edit the rat, view and export the pedigree or navigate to related records. You can also create new litters from a rat as a starting point, and find or create owners for the rat if it is marked as not owned by you. The rat profile will show some calculated information like current age - calculations in the system get more accurate with more information (e.g. age will calculate to the current date. You need to set a date of death to get a final age).
Litters
The litters page currently shows you all litters in the system, ordered by date of birth currently. In time this will change to show you the more relevant litters, similar to the rats list.
Clicking any litter will navigate to it and show you the litter profile page. From here you can edit the litter or navigate to any related records such as the parent or offspring rats. You can also find existing rats to link to the litter, or create new rats directly from the litter.
Owners
The owners page lists all owners in the system and allows you to create more.
Clicking any owner will take you to the owner profile page. From here you can edit owner information and contact details. Some contact details can be clicked as a shortcut to contacting owners (e.g. clicking email or phone number will open your default apps for email/phone handling with their details pre-filled).
A word of warning - Basemix stores everything offline so any owner information you add into the system is not in danger of being transmitted to any unintended parties by accident. However, you need to be mindful of data protection for your own purposes. The database is not encrypted and Basemix does not require credentials to access so anyone who has access to the file system of the device you use Basemix on potentially has access to the data held within it. Never share a copy of the database with anyone else if you have owner details in it. In time Basemix will support full exports without sensitive data and will support the ability to export and transfer smaller amounts of data (like an individual rat).
Settings
The settings page lets you store your rattery details, and lets you configure some parameters about how Basemix behaves (such as pedigree export specifics). You can tweak and save some simple values here.
Tools
This page has some tools for managing your data in Basemix, including:
- Backup and export database
- Import data from other popular sources
- Erase all data
- Restore a backup