Because reading Wiki articles is slow, this program keeps a cache of Wiki data much like your browser does, but with one very important difference: A browser can quickly check the server to see if the page has been updated, and then use the cache if the page has not been updated. But this application cannot quickly check the server to see if the wiki article, or, more importantly, the mod itself, has been updated.

Instead, this cache relies on a expiration time. When you use the middle caching option, the program will grab Wiki data from the cache if that Wiki article's cache is newer than the expiration date. and will read the Wiki article again only if the cache has expired. Unfortunately, that caching technique could cause you to miss recently-updated mods.

To make sure that you have the most up-to-date Wiki data, you can use the first caching option, which ignores the cache and reads all Wiki articles.

On the other hand, if you want to re-run the report without reading the Wiki articles again, use the third option, which reads Wiki articles only if they have never been read on your TNG site.

If you just need to focus on certain mods, you can reduce the load on the Wiki by searching for those mods, and/or eliminating specific mods from the search.

More about Caching

If a search string starts and ends with a slash, it will be treated as a regular expression. Here are some regular expression hints:

1. You can anchor the search text to the beginning of the mod name /^Place/ in front of the search string.
2. You can search for, say 'Media' or 'Place' with /(Media)|(Place)/
3. Or combine the two with /^((Media)|(Place))/ to look for either term at the beginning of the mod name,
   or /(^Media)|(Place)/ to look for 'Media' at the beginning of the mod name or 'Place' anywhere in the modname.

Regular expression hints

You can search for multiple status values from the report columns 'Site1 v Wiki', 'Site2 v Wiki', and 'Site2 v Site1'. (You can color-code values from the Installation Status columns, but you cannot search for them.)

The possible values for a status column are shown in columns of checkboxes. If you check status values in multiple status columns, at least one of the checked statuis values must be found in each column. But if you select multiple values in one column, any of those values will satisfy the requirement for that column.

That is, if you check Site1vWiki='no link', Site1vWiki='missing', and Site2vSite1='=site1', the report must find
(Site1vWiki=='no link' OR Site1vWiki=='missing') AND Site2VSite1=='=site1'

Searchable Status Columns

The report will use the Basic and Advanced Options only if those sections of this form are open when you submit the form. That is, if you open the Basic and/or Advanced subforms, set some values, and close the subform, then those values will not be used in the report. They will, however, be retained and displayed when you re-open the subform, or after you run the report and return to this form

Activiating the Basic and Advanced Options

The status values in these columns can be color-coded:

• Installation Status - colored exactly as they are in the Mod Manager List
• For both possible TNG sites, the comparison of each mod's version # to the version in th4e mod's Wiki article.
• If a second site has been selected, a comparison between the two mod version numbers.

Some of the color-coding can be interpreted very roughly as 'good' (green) or 'bad' (light red), but overall, the color just helps you find repeated occurrences of a particular status value.

Color-coding of Status Columns

This help message window can be dragged out of the way, and left on the screen as long as you need it.