GTX contains several empty databases, which are just waiting for you to add your own information; your own comments about individual races, individual trainers and no less than three types of comments about individual horses. These comments will then appear in future races in the relevant places in the Field View and Form View.

User Horse Comments

This feature enables you to enter your own comments about a horse in the Field View. Those comments will then appear in the Form View of that horse in its future races, against the prior run in which the comment was entered.

You can enter up to three different comments for each horse; each comment being limited to 255 characters.

You will need to have the User Horse column displayed on your Field View, and User Horse, Horse Comm1 and Horse Comm2 columns on your Form View, although Comm1 and Comm2 are necessary only if you use more that one comment. Your comments can be edited at any time.

(You can learn how to add, remove or rearrange columns here).

Let's look at a simple example...

You have the Flemington meeting on 16 April 2011 displayed on your Field View, showing Race 5, and you decide you want to add a comment about Sense of Sun.

The User Horse Comments panel opens with the Comments tab already selected. Simply enter your comments in the text field below the tabs. If you want to enter a second comment, select the Additional Comm 1 tab and enter your comment in that text field. Same for Additional Comm 2.

Hopefully, your own comments will be a little more imaginative and informative than our samples below...

When Sense of Sun next competes in a race, any comments you have entered will appear on his Form View, provided you have the appropriate columns displayed. His next run was at Caulfield on 30 April 2011, Race 8.

A section of his Form View from that Caulfield meeting shows shows the three comments in the relevant columns, in the row displaying the data from the prior run at Flemington on 16 April 2011...

Your comments will remain with that run until the run disappears from the Form View and you can edit or remove the comments by clicking in the comment field to open the User Horse Comments panel.

  The buttons in the User Horse Comments panel, from left to right, are for the following:

		Go directly to your earliest comment (chronologically) in your comment database
		Go to the previous comment
		Go to the next comment
		Go to the latest comment (chronologically) in your comment database
		Delete this record (deletes the Comment, Additional Comm 1 and Additional Comm 2 if present)

The 15 digit code above the buttons identifies this horse in this race by the following:

  Year - Month - Date - Track - Race number - Saddlecloth/TAB number.

For the technically-minded, both the User Horse Comments and Form Comments databases are indexed on date, track, race number and horse number.

Form Comments

This database, additional to the User Horse Comments, enables you to enter your own comments about a horse in the Form Comments column in the Field View. Those comments will then appear in the Form View of that horse in its future races, against the prior run in which the comment was entered.

This database works the same as the User Horse Comments, with the following two differences:

(a) Form Comments has only one input field (comment), unlike User Horse Comments which has three.

(b) You need to have the Form Comments columns on both the Field View and Form View to create, edit and view your comments. (You can learn how to add, remove or rearrange columns here).

When the horse, Fantastic Blue in the example above, next competes in a race, any comments you have entered will appear in his Form Comments column, on his Form View, against the run on 19 Mar 11, provided you have the Form Comments column displayed. Any comments you add in his subsequent runs will also appear in his Form View. Let's say that you added a further five comments in his seven subsequent runs. His Form View relating to his run in Race 4 at Doomben on 20 Aug 11 could look like this...

Your comments will remain with each run until the run disappears from the Form View. You can also edit or remove the comments by clicking in the comment field to open the Form Comments panel.

The buttons in the User Horse Comments panel, from left to right, are for the following:

		Go directly to your earliest comment (chronologically) in your comment database
		Go to the previous comment
		Go to the next comment
		Go to the latest comment (chronologically) in your comment database
		Delete this record (ie delete this comment)

The 15 digit code above the buttons identifies this horse in this race by the following:

   Year - Month - Date - Track - Race number - Saddlecloth/TAB number.

For the technically-minded, both the User Horse Comments and Form Comments databases are indexed on date, track, race number and horse number.

Horse Profile Comments

If you add the Horse Profile column to your Field View, you can then add comments about horses, and those comments will appear in the Horse Profile column on the Field View each time those horses compete in the future.

This database works in the same manner as the user Horse Comments and the Form Comments in that you click in a horse's row in the Profile column to open the Horse Profile comments box, in which you can enter your comments.

One extra feature you will notice in the Horse Profile box is the Style: field.  This was created for the purpose of giving a visual indication against each horse so you could see at a glance whether a horse was a front runner, a mid-fielder or a backmarker. It enables a code to be entered - up to six alphanumeric digits - to give an indication of the horse's running style. It's a personal thing - you can create whatever code you want that means something to you. One GTX user, for example, has entered numeric values for many thousands of horses, some of which would include 0-3 to indicate a horse that generally leads in a race but sometimes gets back to about 3 lengths off the lead. Or say 5-11 indicating its past runs have been between 5 and 11 lengths off the lead when settling down in a race.

The codes don't really need to relate to a horse's running style, even though that's why they were created - they can be for whatever you want.

These codes will appear against each horse in future races on the Field View, if you display the Horse Pro Style column.

User Race Comments

The User Race database enables you to add comments about a race, rather than a horse, and those comments will appear in future races in the User Race column in the Form View of every horse that raced in the original race that the comment related to.

To open the User Race Comments box to add your comments, in the Field View, click on the race number between the track name and race distance on the Race Details Bar.

Trainer Profile Comments

The Trainer Profile database enables you to enter comments about a trainer. Then, whenever that trainer has a horse in a race, your comments will appear in the Trainer Profile (TProfile) column against every horse trained by that trainer.