From aqeel at aqeeliz.com Sun Dec 2 03:06:07 2007 From: aqeel at aqeeliz.com (Aqeel Zafar) Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2007 13:06:07 +0500 Subject: [Alexandria-list] Code Orientation? In-Reply-To: <167b6aa00711292115nf5fbb58o39f206ca6f8a5d68@mail.gmail.com> References: <167b6aa00711292115nf5fbb58o39f206ca6f8a5d68@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4752676F.90105@aqeeliz.com> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 11/30/07 10:15, Joseph Method wrote: > Is anyone else interested in something like this? It would be a > meeting in IRC or Jabber that would go into Gobby or a shared screen > session to talk about some points in the code. Sounds great, I am interested. Aqeel - -- Public GnuPG key at : http://aqeeliz.com/uploads/0x630C3748.asc -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFHUmdizfHlmGMMN0gRAh/aAJ9EeNC5L5QqPwdf3Lh4mFxz0+ujdgCfcRhc YeWqPiQh1hJtx277PztkrTc= =xHef -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org Mon Dec 3 14:55:43 2007 From: cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org (Cathal Mc Ginley) Date: Mon, 03 Dec 2007 19:55:43 +0000 Subject: [Alexandria-list] 0.6.2 release, progress update In-Reply-To: <1195852462.8971.23.camel@matilda> References: <1195852462.8971.23.camel@matilda> Message-ID: <1196711743.8728.16.camel@matilda> Greetings fellow Alexandrians, Okay, obviously I'm running later than planned for the 0.6.2 release, but I've made some progress. I'm happy with the deb file now, lintian doesn't complain about it at least. Perhaps some Debian or Ubuntu users could check that the current SVN revision (r803) creates a good deb file (using 'rake debian:deb') which: * passes lintian checks * installs cleanly * runs a working program (I know that 0.6.2 is considered a 'downgrade' from 0.6.2b2 in terms of version numbers... I'll know for again though!) I've also discovered that some of our dependencies have been moving while we weren't looking: * we need ruby-amazon 0.9.2, the widely distributed libamazon-ruby_0.9.0-2.deb is causing bugs with non-us locales. * if you're installing Ruby/ZOOM as the new 'zoom' gem, you'll also need the 'marc' gem. At a slightly later date, I'll have a go at (1) making an up-to-date libamazon-ruby deb file, and (2) creating two new deb files for libzoom-ruby and libmarc-ruby. I still have to tackle the rest of the lists though; the "Website TODO" and the "General TODO". Release coming "Real Soon Now (TM)"... :^) - C. On Fri, 2007-11-23 at 21:14 +0000, Cathal Mc Ginley wrote: ----------- 8<--------- snip ------------- 8<------------- > == Website TODO == > > * Add a call for translators, (we've lost a few over the many months of > inactivity, but we've gained a couple as well). > > * Include a list of known shortcomings next to the list of features. > > * Include a wish-list for features (condensing the various wish-lists > composed on this mailing list over the years). > > == General TODO == > > * Update the ChangeLog for the project (this is one job I'm not looking > forward to - there have been dozens of quite major changes in alexandria > between versions 0.6.1 and 0.6.2). > > * Make the minimum of necessary changes to the Manual, so it reflects > the current features of the program, so as not to confuse new users. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 231 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part Url : http://rubyforge.org/pipermail/alexandria-list/attachments/20071203/3c1bd63b/attachment.bin From tristil at gmail.com Thu Dec 6 19:33:13 2007 From: tristil at gmail.com (Joseph Method) Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2007 19:33:13 -0500 Subject: [Alexandria-list] Bad PR Message-ID: <167b6aa00712061633y38b6b625sc3cc5e3bcfa82fe6@mail.gmail.com> Oh, well. http://blogs.sun.com/richb/entry/experiences_with_alexandria_and_tellico -- -J. Method From cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org Sun Dec 9 06:02:48 2007 From: cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org (Cathal Mc Ginley) Date: Sun, 09 Dec 2007 11:02:48 +0000 Subject: [Alexandria-list] Bad PR / Alexandria's Limitations In-Reply-To: <167b6aa00712061633y38b6b625sc3cc5e3bcfa82fe6@mail.gmail.com> References: <167b6aa00712061633y38b6b625sc3cc5e3bcfa82fe6@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1197198168.8682.58.camel@matilda> On Thu, 2007-12-06 at 19:33 -0500, Joseph Method wrote: > Oh, well. > > http://blogs.sun.com/richb/entry/experiences_with_alexandria_and_tellico > Yep, Rich Burridge certainly has some valid complaints. I'm going to take a quick tour of them here, to confirm the real problems and suggest solutions for the other points. "There was a version that automatically came via the Ubuntu network software repositories but as it wasn't even able to dismiss the About box via the "Close" button, I wasn't holding out too much hope for how useful it was." This kind of issue with 0.6.1 thing is the main reason I want to press ahead with the release of 0.6.2; even if it is a little rough around the edges, there are real issues with 0.6.1 (many to do with online API drift) which make it unusable for many users - and most people won't hang around to look for an upgrade. "So I downloaded the latest deb package via their download page, installed that and tried again. The About Close button bug is definitely fixed (yea!), and I was able to easily add a book by giving it the book ISBN, via the "Add Book" button. Cool. Now I just need to work out how to automatically add the 3000+ books I already have." Okay, first shortcoming. There is no way Alexandria as it currently exists will handle a library of that size. It'll just be too slow to render. You can see a slowdown at about 100 books. Maybe if you had 30 "Libraries" with 100 books each, it might just be manageable. I'll summarize the next bit, Rich put together a list of 3000+ ASINs. In fact, for books Amazon ASINs are equivalent to ISBNs, which is why Alexandria will manage to import them. Except it didn't; "... it just hung". "At this point I was so disgusted, that I just went to the terminal window and typed Control-c to try to quit the program. Lo and beyond, it printed out "found at Worldcat" and proceeded to add it to the collection. Sigh." Okay, there are three underlying problems here: 1. Long running operations aren't properly threaded to allow user interaction. 2. There is no feedback in the user interface during the sequential lookup of providers 3. He was using the buggy libamazon-ruby 0.9.0 which prevented amazon.co.uk lookups from working. This, at least, is fixable: http://alexandria.rubyforge.org/news/2007-12-09--upgrade-to-ruby-amazon-0.9.2.html (I really do recommend everyone upgrade your Ruby/Amazon). "As alexandria started, it output: Can't load image_size, hence exported libraries are not optimized Can't load mechanize, hence provider Deastore not available Can't load Ruby/ZOOM, hence Z39.50 and providers Library of Congress, British Library not available so maybe that's what's causing the hang, but I would have liked to think that the initial installation of alexandria via the Synaptic Package Manager would have sorted out all the required runtime dependencies. It certainly told me about a load of other packages that it intended to install as well as alexandria." This shows that our debug output isn't terribly helpful. Although we *have* since added image_size and mechanize to the deb file's dependencies. "There doesn't seem to be an easy way to add another provider (Amazon UK), which would presumably solve my hanging problems, so I've currently given up on alexandria. If I feel in a hacking mood, i'll download the source, learn Ruby, and see if I can fix this." This shows that the user-interface for providers is poor (it still says Amazon (Usa) even when another locale is selected, and it's not immediately obvious that the locale can be changed). It is also a failure of our documentation to explain how this is done, and indeed the "Features" list, which fails to mention the .co.uk support (I removed it to make the list look nicer, mea culpa). At this point, Rich went on to discuss Tellico, and the post was followed up by comments from Tellico author Robby Stephenson, and our own Joseph Method, suggesting a work-around or two. Anyway, as Joseph pointed out "obviously we can do better", but I'm not too discouraged. Fixing these issues with Alexandria will not be a massive job, just a matter of a constant small effort over a couple of weeks and months. But I think it's best to be very up-front about the shortcomings of the program, it prevents user frustration and disappointment, so I'm planning to make a list of known "Limitations" of Alexandria to put alongside the "Features" list on the website around the time of the 0.6.2 release. That's all for now, - Cathal. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 231 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part Url : http://rubyforge.org/pipermail/alexandria-list/attachments/20071209/42a40f87/attachment.bin From devi.webmaster at gmail.com Mon Dec 10 07:33:47 2007 From: devi.webmaster at gmail.com (Daniel Brumbaugh Keeney) Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 06:33:47 -0600 Subject: [Alexandria-list] Code Orientation? In-Reply-To: <167b6aa00711292115nf5fbb58o39f206ca6f8a5d68@mail.gmail.com> References: <167b6aa00711292115nf5fbb58o39f206ca6f8a5d68@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <3bceeb2d0712100433q2b385819t16786b7383f487d1@mail.gmail.com> On Nov 29, 2007 11:15 PM, Joseph Method wrote: > Is anyone else interested in something like this? It would be a > meeting in IRC or Jabber that would go into Gobby or a shared screen > session to talk about some points in the code. > -J. Method Okay, so only two people, including myself, responded to this, but could we do it anyhow? Daniel Brumbaugh Keeney From cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org Mon Dec 10 07:55:49 2007 From: cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org (Cathal Mc Ginley) Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 12:55:49 +0000 Subject: [Alexandria-list] Code Orientation? In-Reply-To: <3bceeb2d0712100433q2b385819t16786b7383f487d1@mail.gmail.com> References: <167b6aa00711292115nf5fbb58o39f206ca6f8a5d68@mail.gmail.com> <3bceeb2d0712100433q2b385819t16786b7383f487d1@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1197291349.8685.24.camel@matilda> On Mon, 2007-12-10 at 06:33 -0600, Daniel Brumbaugh Keeney wrote: > On Nov 29, 2007 11:15 PM, Joseph Method wrote: > > Is anyone else interested in something like this? It would be a > > meeting in IRC or Jabber that would go into Gobby or a shared screen > > session to talk about some points in the code. > > > -J. Method > > Okay, so only two people, including myself, responded to this, but > could we do it anyhow? > > Daniel Brumbaugh Keeney Three, actually! You, Aqeel and (in another thread) Girish. I believe Joseph is still keen on the plan; we were chatting the other day and he suggested the 18th or 19th of this month. I'd be interested in sitting in too, maybe to help with the code I'm familiar with, or learn about the stuff I've not gone near yet. We need to arrange 2 things in the mean time: 1) Time and time zones. When will we all be able to work together? (We might have to arrange separate sessions for different ends of the world!) With a bit of notice, I can be free at *any* given time of day or night. Others might have more fixed schedules. Let us know your preferred time to spend an hour or two looking at software (times in UTC for preference!) 2) Infrastructure. We'll have to decide what software to use (IRC or Jabber, for instance, besides the collaborative editor Gobby), and then set up the software and decide how to use the different programs together. Joseph was thinking of drawing up some instructions, maybe including videos of how to set things up. Anyway, the plan is still on. Watch this space! - C. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 231 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part Url : http://rubyforge.org/pipermail/alexandria-list/attachments/20071210/9247d237/attachment-0001.bin From devi.webmaster at gmail.com Mon Dec 10 08:31:58 2007 From: devi.webmaster at gmail.com (Daniel Brumbaugh Keeney) Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 07:31:58 -0600 Subject: [Alexandria-list] Code Orientation? In-Reply-To: <1197291349.8685.24.camel@matilda> References: <167b6aa00711292115nf5fbb58o39f206ca6f8a5d68@mail.gmail.com> <3bceeb2d0712100433q2b385819t16786b7383f487d1@mail.gmail.com> <1197291349.8685.24.camel@matilda> Message-ID: <3bceeb2d0712100531k3b748c4fsc7c80d4561de9ca3@mail.gmail.com> On Dec 10, 2007 6:55 AM, Cathal Mc Ginley wrote: > Three, actually! You, Aqeel and (in another thread) Girish. I believe > Joseph is still keen on the plan; we were chatting the other day and he > suggested the 18th or 19th of this month. I'd be interested in sitting > in too, maybe to help with the code I'm familiar with, or learn about > the stuff I've not gone near yet. > > We need to arrange 2 things in the mean time: > > 1) Time and time zones. I prefer between 13:00-23:00, but could probably do 12:00-03:00 > 2) Infrastructure. > I can work with anything, but I've been itching to use Gobby, I haven't yet had the opportunity. Daniel Brumbaugh Keeney From girish at hri.res.in Mon Dec 10 08:40:12 2007 From: girish at hri.res.in (Girish Kulkarni) Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 19:10:12 +0530 Subject: [Alexandria-list] Code Orientation? In-Reply-To: <1197291349.8685.24.camel@matilda> References: <167b6aa00711292115nf5fbb58o39f206ca6f8a5d68@mail.gmail.com> <3bceeb2d0712100433q2b385819t16786b7383f487d1@mail.gmail.com> <1197291349.8685.24.camel@matilda> Message-ID: <8a2141c0712100540q5014e5c8ha8b9f27c8bbb6fe@mail.gmail.com> Hi Joseph & Cathal, On Dec 10, 2007 6:25 PM, Cathal Mc Ginley wrote: > > Okay, so only two people, including myself, responded to this, but > > could we do it anyhow? > > > > Three, actually! You, Aqeel and (in another thread) Girish. I believe > Joseph is still keen on the plan; we were chatting the other day and he > suggested the 18th or 19th of this month. I'd be interested in sitting > in too, maybe to help with the code I'm familiar with, or learn about > the stuff I've not gone near yet. I'm busy in a conference between 17 and 21 Dec so could we please move the dates a little further up? Maybe some weekend after the 21st? Or if weekends are not available then some day in the first week of Jan? (I'll be travelling on 31 Dec and 1 Jan so that is uncomfortable too!) And in case we do sit before 31 Dec, my suitable time slot would be around 2030 to 0230 UTC. (Although this slightly overlaps with Daniel's preference---and completely with Cathal's working hours?---I know it could be bad. Please let me know if I should look for an alternative. Also, any time is okay if we it *after* 1 Jan.) Sorry for the fuss; this is just because I am travelling this second fortnight of December but do not want to miss this. Thanks, Girish. From cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org Mon Dec 10 09:42:57 2007 From: cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org (Cathal Mc Ginley) Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 14:42:57 +0000 Subject: [Alexandria-list] Code Orientation? In-Reply-To: <8a2141c0712100540q5014e5c8ha8b9f27c8bbb6fe@mail.gmail.com> References: <167b6aa00711292115nf5fbb58o39f206ca6f8a5d68@mail.gmail.com> <3bceeb2d0712100433q2b385819t16786b7383f487d1@mail.gmail.com> <1197291349.8685.24.camel@matilda> <8a2141c0712100540q5014e5c8ha8b9f27c8bbb6fe@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1197297778.10325.20.camel@matilda> On Mon, 2007-12-10 at 19:10 +0530, Girish Kulkarni wrote: > Hi Joseph & Cathal, Just me at the moment. Though I /seem/ to be speaking for Joseph a lot here :^) I'm just relaying what he said. I know he's a bit busy this week, so he mightn't have time to comment himself. ------------- 8<------- snip --------- 8<------------ > > I'm busy in a conference between 17 and 21 Dec so could we please move > the dates a little further up? Maybe some weekend after the 21st? Or > if weekends are not available then some day in the first week of Jan? > (I'll be travelling on 31 Dec and 1 Jan so that is uncomfortable too!) > Thanks for the dates. We'll probably end up doing a couple of these sessions, so we'll try to arrange one for that weekend before Christmas. They're going to be pretty informal, I'd imagine. Doing more than one introductory session will help us all, teaching something is a great way to learn it, and one thing we'll have to learn is how to express our knowledge of the code-base to people who are unfamiliar with it. > And in case we do sit before 31 Dec, my suitable time slot would be > around 2030 to 0230 UTC. (Although this slightly overlaps with > Daniel's preference---and completely with Cathal's working hours?---I > know it could be bad. Please let me know if I should look for an > alternative. Also, any time is okay if we it *after* 1 Jan.) > This is fine. We have plenty time to arrange our best working times, and since you're on the other side of the world from America, it wouldn't be unreasonable for some juggling of schedules to be required. (Everyone make sure you're converting to and from UTC the right way around; I often get it mixed up when trying to think what time it is in America or India. The command 'date' is handy for this, 'date --utc' will give you the current UTC time). > Sorry for the fuss; this is just because I am travelling this second > fortnight of December but do not want to miss this. > > Thanks, > Girish. No worries, - Cathal. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 231 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part Url : http://rubyforge.org/pipermail/alexandria-list/attachments/20071210/a51915a8/attachment.bin From tristil at gmail.com Wed Dec 12 00:43:43 2007 From: tristil at gmail.com (Joseph Method) Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 00:43:43 -0500 Subject: [Alexandria-list] Code Orientation? In-Reply-To: <1197297778.10325.20.camel@matilda> References: <167b6aa00711292115nf5fbb58o39f206ca6f8a5d68@mail.gmail.com> <3bceeb2d0712100433q2b385819t16786b7383f487d1@mail.gmail.com> <1197291349.8685.24.camel@matilda> <8a2141c0712100540q5014e5c8ha8b9f27c8bbb6fe@mail.gmail.com> <1197297778.10325.20.camel@matilda> Message-ID: <167b6aa00712112143m6968c4a8o123fe2f2cce5f771@mail.gmail.com> Yeah, sorry, I'm working on end of term papers until the 18th. Let's do one session on the 19th and one after New Year, maybe 3rd or 4th. We can put up documents and transcripts from the first one for Girish and others to read. I'll make myself available whatever time on the 19th. My main idea is to talk about the logic flow for major operations, and to point out some ruby tricks employed in the current codebase that I didn't understand when I started. But what would actually be useful? On Dec 10, 2007 9:42 AM, Cathal Mc Ginley wrote: > On Mon, 2007-12-10 at 19:10 +0530, Girish Kulkarni wrote: > > Hi Joseph & Cathal, > Just me at the moment. Though I /seem/ to be speaking for Joseph a lot > here :^) I'm just relaying what he said. I know he's a bit busy this > week, so he mightn't have time to comment himself. > -- -J. Method From aqeel at aqeeliz.com Thu Dec 13 00:04:26 2007 From: aqeel at aqeeliz.com (Aqeel Zafar) Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2007 10:04:26 +0500 Subject: [Alexandria-list] Code Orientation? Message-ID: <4760BD5A.2070807@aqeeliz.com> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 12/10/2007 05:55 PM, Cathal Mc Ginley wrote: > We need to arrange 2 things in the mean time: 1) Time and time > zones. Any time is fine by me, though, I would prefer if it's not between 2am - - 5am my time, that is 2100 - 0000 utc. > > 2) Infrastructure. I prefer Jabber, but any thing will do. Aqeel -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFHYL1KzfHlmGMMN0gRAkDJAKCC7pPNuNkePMXkQpFCxmGfn17/0QCfe7sJ pD70nUCitWis/S2qeBr2CpM= =OtQD -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org Fri Dec 14 18:51:25 2007 From: cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org (Cathal Mc Ginley) Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2007 23:51:25 +0000 Subject: [Alexandria-list] Approaching 0.6.2 (again...) Message-ID: <1197676285.10147.54.camel@matilda> Well, a full two weeks later than I hoped, I'm pretty much finished all the tasks needed for releasing 0.6.2 (in my TODO list e-mail on Nov 23). Here's a summary: I added a man page for alexandria. I added a few dependencies to the deb file (still need to make a ruby-zoom deb, though). It now builds an error-free deb (according to lintian). I updated the manual a bit: made some new screenshots with the 0.6.2 GUI; added a section on Smart Libraries. Did you know the manual didn't have an explicit documentation license before? Thanks to Liam Davison (the original author) for agreeing to license it under the GNU FDL! I've figure out how to create ChangeLog files from svn (thanks to a program called svn2cl). But I'll need to tweak the format. A brand new toy: a barcode scan animation in "Acquire from Scanner", along with some audio feedback. (Of a sort; it plays audio from /usr/share/sounds and some game sounds if they're found. I really need to make my own audio files.) I'd like to ask the users on this list a favour: check out the latest SVN alexandria (r816), install it, run it, read the manual & let me know if there's anything which should prevent me from pushing this as a more stable version of Alexandria. I'm really looking for show-stoppers, but please note any niggling problems too, for a later date. The only other changes I need to make are to the website, which I can do independently. Anyway, that's all for now. - Cathal. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 231 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part Url : http://rubyforge.org/pipermail/alexandria-list/attachments/20071214/5dc01dfb/attachment.bin From tristil at gmail.com Wed Dec 19 01:45:31 2007 From: tristil at gmail.com (Joseph Method) Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2007 01:45:31 -0500 Subject: [Alexandria-list] Brain-Dumps and Code Orientation Message-ID: <167b6aa00712182245m7f6841d5yada3d2305051a8eb@mail.gmail.com> Hi all, I'm done with essays with some time before the holidays. I wrote a "brain-dump" just now, at http://www.stupididea.com/2007/12/19/setup-for-alexandria-development-part-i/ that might be helpful for some people. It would be great if Cathal were to write something similar, probably on a high-level or forward-looking topic. Anyway, this one is about simple issues of setup. Please respond on the list if you have any questions that arise from this post. I'll do another one tomorrow that will be on more interesting code topics. I'll be available tomorrow to do some kind of code orientation, but I'm going to try to cover most of what I would say there in these posts. -- -J. Method From tristil at gmail.com Wed Dec 19 21:48:42 2007 From: tristil at gmail.com (Joseph Method) Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2007 21:48:42 -0500 Subject: [Alexandria-list] Code Orientation Blog Entries Message-ID: <167b6aa00712191848k572d7ff0sc5b85b81e6c1e85f@mail.gmail.com> Hi all, I wrote this as part of the brain-dump I mentioned: http://www.stupididea.com/2007/12/19/setup-for-alexandria-development-part-ii I had to move the old blog out of the way but I'll put up the last article soon. -- -J. Method From cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org Thu Dec 20 00:51:49 2007 From: cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org (Cathal Mc Ginley) Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2007 05:51:49 +0000 Subject: [Alexandria-list] [ANN] Alexandria 0.6.2 Message-ID: <1198129909.8729.15.camel@matilda> Alexandria 0.6.2 has just been released. Alexandria is a GNOME application to help you manage your book collection. Alexandria 0.6.2 is the first new stable release of this program in two years. It marks the culmination of months of effort from the new maintainers, and our beta testers, in bringing the project back to life after a long hiatus. Notable new features since 0.6.1: * Smart Libraries: these function likes filtered views on your libraries, defined by a set of rules. * CueCat "Acquire from Scanner" support: you can now add dozens of books quickly and easily by using an unmodified CueCat barcode scanner to scan ISBN barcodes. * New translations for Dutch and Ukranian. Online release notes may be found here: http://alexandria.rubyforge.org/news/2007-12-20--0.6.2-released.html These include instructions for downloading and installing the new release. We believe 0.6.2 is fairly stable (and much more stable than 0.6.1) but you should still back up your libraries before upgrading. New users should not have any problems. We hope this new version encourages you to get involved with the development process of Alexandria; reporting new bugs on the Tracker and commenting or discussing features on the mailing list. In any case, thanks to everyone who helped with the development of the 0.6.2 release, and we hope that you enjoy it. - Cathal Mc Ginley. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 231 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part Url : http://rubyforge.org/pipermail/alexandria-list/attachments/20071220/65ad93b6/attachment.bin From hdevalence at gmail.com Sun Dec 23 00:38:23 2007 From: hdevalence at gmail.com (Henry de Valence) Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2007 00:38:23 -0500 Subject: [Alexandria-list] I'm a beginner looking for work Message-ID: <200712230038.23668.hdevalence@gmail.com> I'm new to ruby (and programming in general). I've done a bit of programming in Java and a bit in C++, and a bit of ruby (not as much), but I've never made a big, full program. Also I have no experience with using source-code management tools, etc. I was wondering if you could help me get into programming by giving me a couple small, manageable chunks to work on, if it's not too much effort. -- Harry de Valence From cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org Sun Dec 23 13:56:50 2007 From: cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org (Cathal Mc Ginley) Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2007 18:56:50 +0000 Subject: [Alexandria-list] I'm a beginner looking for work In-Reply-To: <200712230038.23668.hdevalence@gmail.com> References: <200712230038.23668.hdevalence@gmail.com> Message-ID: <1198436211.9326.35.camel@matilda> On Sun, 2007-12-23 at 00:38 -0500, Henry de Valence wrote: > I'm new to ruby (and programming in general). I've done a bit of programming > in Java and a bit in C++, and a bit of ruby (not as much), but I've never > made a big, full program. Also I have no experience with using source-code > management tools, etc. I was wondering if you could help me get into > programming by giving me a couple small, manageable chunks to work on, if > it's not too much effort. We're always happy to welcome new, interested developers. There are a couple of points to mention: * We've just released the first stable version of Alexandria in a long while, but we're really planning on starting a new, concerted development effort with lots of new code. (We'll also need to maintain the old code for a considerable while.) So, if you're interested in taking part in all the phases of software development from requirements gathering to design, planning, coding, testing and documentation - now is an excellent time to start working on Alexandria. * Except not just now. We're probably going to take Christmas off :^) * But definitely in January! * Joseph Method (the official maintainer, I'm the other admin) is very interested in the whole concept of mentoring, and in particular in using Alexandria as a part of the process of getting people programming in Ruby. In fact, he's writing a series of weblog posts about getting started on Alexandria (part 2 is on http://www.stupididea.com/ - part 1 is lost in the ether, but I might summarize it myself sometime). * We'll hopefully be using a lot of collaborative tools to keep in contact and to build up a developer community. Certainly some chat programs, probably a wiki, most likely developer weblogs, and the collaborative editor Gobby for pair-programming... None of this is set up yet, nor are we sure how they should fit into the whole scheme of things, but we have a kind of hazy notion... * Anyway, things will be in flux for a little while. But there will definitely be "manageable chunks" of work to be done in the near future, and we're going to be around to help you work on them. Welcome to Alexandria! (Oh, and Merry Christmas!) - Cathal Mc Ginley. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 231 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part Url : http://rubyforge.org/pipermail/alexandria-list/attachments/20071223/ff7d9d7d/attachment-0001.bin From jrs at cherrystem.com Wed Dec 26 17:46:33 2007 From: jrs at cherrystem.com (Joe Stevenson) Date: Wed, 26 Dec 2007 16:46:33 -0600 Subject: [Alexandria-list] Any thoughts of including a field for Call Numbers - Dewey Decimal or LC Classification Message-ID: <4772D9C9.3000802@cherrystem.com> Hi all, In the development of Alexandria, has their been any thought of adding a field for a Call Number? I like being able to catalog my books by Author, Title, etc., but using a logical classification would be much better. Most of my books are technical/non-fiction. This type of system would be better for both organization and also physically shelving the books. Isn't this type of information already available from the LC server? Thanks for your work on Alexandria. --Joe From tristil at gmail.com Thu Dec 27 03:13:03 2007 From: tristil at gmail.com (Joseph Method) Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2007 03:13:03 -0500 Subject: [Alexandria-list] Any thoughts of including a field for Call Numbers - Dewey Decimal or LC Classification In-Reply-To: <4772D9C9.3000802@cherrystem.com> References: <4772D9C9.3000802@cherrystem.com> Message-ID: <167b6aa00712270013w38f8327cq32b2d35354aa7bae@mail.gmail.com> I would support this as long as the field is not turned on by default for display. We should collect this information if/when we encounter it, and display if the user requests it in preferences. On Dec 26, 2007 5:46 PM, Joe Stevenson wrote: > Hi all, > > In the development of Alexandria, has their been any thought of adding > a field for a Call Number? I like being able to catalog my books by > Author, Title, etc., but using a logical classification would be much > better. Most of my books are technical/non-fiction. This type of > system would be better for both organization and also physically > shelving the books. > > Isn't this type of information already available from the LC server? > > Thanks for your work on Alexandria. > --Joe > _______________________________________________ > Alexandria-list mailing list > Alexandria-list at rubyforge.org > http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/alexandria-list > -- -J. Method From adriyetichaves at gmail.com Thu Dec 27 07:44:36 2007 From: adriyetichaves at gmail.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Adri=E1n?= Chaves =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fern=E1ndez?=) Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2007 12:44:36 +0000 Subject: [Alexandria-list] Virtual Books In-Reply-To: <167b6aa00712270013w38f8327cq32b2d35354aa7bae@mail.gmail.com> References: <4772D9C9.3000802@cherrystem.com> <167b6aa00712270013w38f8327cq32b2d35354aa7bae@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1198759477.5556.6.camel@castro> I have a lot of virtual books, books with copyleft that I downloaded. Would you add the option of entering the location of the file (PDF or ODT) and open from Alexandria? P.S: I'm galician. I translated this message. From tristil at gmail.com Thu Dec 27 13:27:19 2007 From: tristil at gmail.com (Joseph Method) Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2007 13:27:19 -0500 Subject: [Alexandria-list] Virtual Books In-Reply-To: <1198759477.5556.6.camel@castro> References: <4772D9C9.3000802@cherrystem.com> <167b6aa00712270013w38f8327cq32b2d35354aa7bae@mail.gmail.com> <1198759477.5556.6.camel@castro> Message-ID: <167b6aa00712271027s2a2cfd17yec6f8634da0a7fed@mail.gmail.com> Hi Adrian, > I have a lot of virtual books, books with copyleft that I downloaded. > Would you add the option of entering the location of the file (PDF or > ODT) and open from Alexandria? I think this is part of the direction we will go in, but in the meantime you might want to look at referencer: http://icculus.org/referencer/ > > P.S: I'm galician. I translated this message. Would you consider doing a Galician translation of Alexandria? There's some information here: http://alexandria.rubyforge.org/features/translations.html. -- -J. Method From cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org Fri Dec 28 01:35:18 2007 From: cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org (Cathal Mc Ginley) Date: Fri, 28 Dec 2007 06:35:18 +0000 Subject: [Alexandria-list] Code Orientation Blog Entries In-Reply-To: <167b6aa00712191848k572d7ff0sc5b85b81e6c1e85f@mail.gmail.com> References: <167b6aa00712191848k572d7ff0sc5b85b81e6c1e85f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1198823718.8692.52.camel@matilda> On Wed, 2007-12-19 at 21:48 -0500, Joseph Method wrote: > Hi all, > > I wrote this as part of the brain-dump I mentioned: > > http://www.stupididea.com/2007/12/19/setup-for-alexandria-development-part-ii > > I had to move the old blog out of the way but I'll put up the last article soon. > I thought I'd put up my own variation on the theme of getting started with Alexandria from SVN, since I mentioned it on the alexandria-i18n list: http://www.gnostai.org/journal/2007/12/28/getting-started-with-alexandria-development/ I'll follow up with more abstract design articles at a later date. - Cathal. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 231 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part Url : http://rubyforge.org/pipermail/alexandria-list/attachments/20071228/b8973532/attachment.bin From devi.webmaster at gmail.com Fri Dec 28 17:05:16 2007 From: devi.webmaster at gmail.com (Daniel Brumbaugh Keeney) Date: Fri, 28 Dec 2007 16:05:16 -0600 Subject: [Alexandria-list] Virtual Books In-Reply-To: <1198759477.5556.6.camel@castro> References: <4772D9C9.3000802@cherrystem.com> <167b6aa00712270013w38f8327cq32b2d35354aa7bae@mail.gmail.com> <1198759477.5556.6.camel@castro> Message-ID: <3bceeb2d0712281405q569a0917l21573022505774b7@mail.gmail.com> On Dec 27, 2007 6:44 AM, Adri?n Chaves Fern?ndez wrote: > I have a lot of virtual books, books with copyleft that I downloaded. > Would you add the option of entering the location of the file (PDF or > ODT) and open from Alexandria? Actually, I proposed using Alexandria to my an archivist to see what he felt it needed, and he rejected it offhand due to scalability restrictions and the lack of being able to specify where it is physically (vault, 3rd aisle, 2nd shelf, last row). I expect I would find physical location even more helpful for my own, somewhat less well organized books. Daniel Brumbaugh Keeney From tristil at gmail.com Sat Dec 29 02:23:01 2007 From: tristil at gmail.com (Joseph Method) Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2007 02:23:01 -0500 Subject: [Alexandria-list] Bug Triage Message-ID: <167b6aa00712282323o3f0f13d3q8aa07ce96d30e95b@mail.gmail.com> There's an option in the tracker to turn off "Allow non-logged-in postings". Is this the way to go? Also, would anyone like to be signed up to do bug triage? Just send me your Rubyforge username. -- -J. Method From lennart at karssen.org Sat Dec 29 05:34:18 2007 From: lennart at karssen.org (L.C. Karssen) Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2007 11:34:18 +0100 Subject: [Alexandria-list] Bug Triage In-Reply-To: <167b6aa00712282323o3f0f13d3q8aa07ce96d30e95b@mail.gmail.com> References: <167b6aa00712282323o3f0f13d3q8aa07ce96d30e95b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1198924458.8498.30.camel@barabas.karssen.org> Hi Joseph, I don't think it's a good plan to disallow anonymous bug reports. I think that reporting bugs should be as easy as possible. People are not always keen to go through the "hassle" of registering with yet another site when they simply want to inform us about a bug and go on with their life/use of Alexandria. We do need better bug reports though, mentioning at least the Alexandria version and the distro used. Probably also the architecture. Is it possible to add lists/checkboxes for that on the bug reporting page? However, to come back to the first point, I don't think the quality of the bug reports will increase if a user needs to log in before reporting one. Lennart. On Sat, 2007-12-29 at 02:23 -0500, Joseph Method wrote: > There's an option in the tracker to turn off "Allow non-logged-in > postings". Is this the way to go? Also, would anyone like to be signed > up to do bug triage? Just send me your Rubyforge username. > -- ---------------------------------------------------- L.C. Karssen Utrecht The Netherlands lennart at karssen.org http://www.karssen.org Stuur me aub geen Word of Powerpoint bestanden! Zie http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.nl.html ---------------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part Url : http://rubyforge.org/pipermail/alexandria-list/attachments/20071229/495b0653/attachment.bin From hdevalence at gmail.com Sat Dec 29 08:03:56 2007 From: hdevalence at gmail.com (Henry de Valence) Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2007 08:03:56 -0500 Subject: [Alexandria-list] Virtual Books In-Reply-To: <3bceeb2d0712281405q569a0917l21573022505774b7@mail.gmail.com> References: <4772D9C9.3000802@cherrystem.com> <1198759477.5556.6.camel@castro> <3bceeb2d0712281405q569a0917l21573022505774b7@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <200712290803.56810.hdevalence@gmail.com> On Friday 28 December 2007 17:05:16 Daniel Brumbaugh Keeney wrote: > Actually, I proposed using Alexandria to my an archivist to see what > he felt it needed, and he rejected it offhand due to scalability > restrictions and the lack of being able to specify where it is > physically (vault, 3rd aisle, 2nd shelf, last row). I expect I would > find physical location even more helpful for my own, somewhat less > well organized books. You might alleviate the scalability issue by using an SQL backend; have a choice between the current format, SQL/SQLite, SQL/MySQL, and SQL/PostgresSQL. Then you could have another frontend that only allowed read operations (ie one that would be suitable for kiosks). -- Harry de Valence From cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org Sat Dec 29 13:25:45 2007 From: cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org (Cathal Mc Ginley) Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2007 18:25:45 +0000 Subject: [Alexandria-list] Virtual Books In-Reply-To: <200712290803.56810.hdevalence@gmail.com> References: <4772D9C9.3000802@cherrystem.com> <1198759477.5556.6.camel@castro> <3bceeb2d0712281405q569a0917l21573022505774b7@mail.gmail.com> <200712290803.56810.hdevalence@gmail.com> Message-ID: <1198952745.8787.21.camel@matilda> On Sat, 2007-12-29 at 08:03 -0500, Henry de Valence wrote: > On Friday 28 December 2007 17:05:16 Daniel Brumbaugh Keeney wrote: > > Actually, I proposed using Alexandria to my an archivist to see what > > he felt it needed, and he rejected it offhand due to scalability > > restrictions and the lack of being able to specify where it is > > physically (vault, 3rd aisle, 2nd shelf, last row). I expect I would > > find physical location even more helpful for my own, somewhat less > > well organized books. There are a lot of situations where using Alexandria would be nice if only it supported the required features: school or village libraries, second-hand bookshops etc. If we actually want this to happen, we need to dig out all the requirements from potential users and design them into the core of the program. For example: how should we store two indistinguishable copies of a book for a second-hand bookshop? - in a school library perhaps no two copies of a book will be indistinguishable... Apart from functional requirements, there will be operational requirements such as scalability, speed of display, speed of search, reliability of the data store... We should gather them all. (I think I shall set up a wiki to gather requirements.) > > You might alleviate the scalability issue by using an SQL backend; have a > choice between the current format, SQL/SQLite, SQL/MySQL, and > SQL/PostgresSQL. It's a good candidate for the root of the problem, but really we don't know what's causing the poor performance and scalability, since no-one has done any profiling. Data storage based on multiple files won't be terribly fast, but it might not be behind the huge lag when selecting a 100-book library. It could just be the way in which the books are loaded into the GUI display. We'll have to do tests. Secondly, having a program that works flawlessly whether using a bunch of YAML files in a directory or a full RDBMS is going to be tricky. For example, we'd have to implement all search functions twice... at least. > Then you could have another frontend that only allowed read > operations (ie one that would be suitable for kiosks). Multiple front-ends are part of the new development ideas anyway, though I think they could be implemented as sets of plugins or something... This is all going to take a lot of design and implementation, what we will probably end up with is a new program that just looks like the current Alexandria. Hopefully, people will still like using it! - C. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 231 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part Url : http://rubyforge.org/pipermail/alexandria-list/attachments/20071229/79276e1b/attachment.bin From cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org Sat Dec 29 13:47:18 2007 From: cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org (Cathal Mc Ginley) Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2007 18:47:18 +0000 Subject: [Alexandria-list] Bug Triage In-Reply-To: <1198924458.8498.30.camel@barabas.karssen.org> References: <167b6aa00712282323o3f0f13d3q8aa07ce96d30e95b@mail.gmail.com> <1198924458.8498.30.camel@barabas.karssen.org> Message-ID: <1198954038.8787.31.camel@matilda> On Sat, 2007-12-29 at 11:34 +0100, L.C. Karssen wrote: > Hi Joseph, > > I don't think it's a good plan to disallow anonymous bug reports. I > think that reporting bugs should be as easy as possible. People are not > always keen to go through the "hassle" of registering with yet another > site when they simply want to inform us about a bug and go on with their > life/use of Alexandria. > > We do need better bug reports though, mentioning at least the Alexandria > version and the distro used. Probably also the architecture. Is it > possible to add lists/checkboxes for that on the bug reporting page? > I think the Tracker is pretty limited - and there are a lot of the fields that nobody uses. And because of the odd way permissions work, I can't even assign myself to a bug. > However, to come back to the first point, I don't think the quality of > the bug reports will increase if a user needs to log in before reporting > one. > The problem really is follow-up. At least if the user is logged in they will get an e-mail when we touch the bug. The problem is that we (ideally) shouldn't close a bug until someone can confirm the problem no longer exists. It's easiest if that is the original reporter. We can't get in touch with 'Nobody' so the bugs tend to languish. I think we first of all need a "Writing good bug reports" doc (based on the answer to Question 1 in doc/FAQ). We should also ask users to create a RubyForge account before adding a bug report, and explain why. Finally, we need to be a bit more harsh with anonymous bug reports (and explain up-front that we will be doing this). If we ask for more information on a new anonymous report but don't get it within 1 week, we could just close the bug. - Cathal. > > Lennart. > > > On Sat, 2007-12-29 at 02:23 -0500, Joseph Method wrote: > > There's an option in the tracker to turn off "Allow non-logged-in > > postings". Is this the way to go? Also, would anyone like to be signed > > up to do bug triage? Just send me your Rubyforge username. > > > _______________________________________________ > Alexandria-list mailing list > Alexandria-list at rubyforge.org > http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/alexandria-list -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 231 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part Url : http://rubyforge.org/pipermail/alexandria-list/attachments/20071229/9f2034ea/attachment-0001.bin From lennart at karssen.org Sat Dec 29 19:46:11 2007 From: lennart at karssen.org (L.C. Karssen) Date: Sun, 30 Dec 2007 01:46:11 +0100 Subject: [Alexandria-list] Bug Triage In-Reply-To: <1198954038.8787.31.camel@matilda> References: <167b6aa00712282323o3f0f13d3q8aa07ce96d30e95b@mail.gmail.com> <1198924458.8498.30.camel@barabas.karssen.org> <1198954038.8787.31.camel@matilda> Message-ID: <1198975571.8181.6.camel@barabas.karssen.org> On Sat, 2007-12-29 at 18:47 +0000, Cathal Mc Ginley wrote: > On Sat, 2007-12-29 at 11:34 +0100, L.C. Karssen wrote: > > Hi Joseph, > > > > > I think the Tracker is pretty limited - and there are a lot of the > fields that nobody uses. And because of the odd way permissions work, I > can't even assign myself to a bug. Indeed it is. I've been looking around the "management tools" and it definitely misses some basic options. > > > However, to come back to the first point, I don't think the quality of > > the bug reports will increase if a user needs to log in before reporting > > one. > > > The problem really is follow-up. At least if the user is logged in they > will get an e-mail when we touch the bug. The problem is that we > (ideally) shouldn't close a bug until someone can confirm the problem no > longer exists. It's easiest if that is the original reporter. We can't > get in touch with 'Nobody' so the bugs tend to languish. True... > > I think we first of all need a "Writing good bug reports" doc (based on > the answer to Question 1 in doc/FAQ). We should also ask users to create > a RubyForge account before adding a bug report, and explain why. > Finally, we need to be a bit more harsh with anonymous bug reports (and > explain up-front that we will be doing this). If we ask for more > information on a new anonymous report but don't get it within 1 week, we > could just close the bug. I agree. That way we can keep the bug tracker as clean as possible. > > - Cathal. > > > > > Lennart. > > > > > > On Sat, 2007-12-29 at 02:23 -0500, Joseph Method wrote: > > > There's an option in the tracker to turn off "Allow non-logged-in > > > postings". Is this the way to go? Also, would anyone like to be signed > > > up to do bug triage? Just send me your Rubyforge username. > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Alexandria-list mailing list > > Alexandria-list at rubyforge.org > > http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/alexandria-list -- ---------------------------------------------------- L.C. Karssen Utrecht The Netherlands lennart at karssen.org http://www.karssen.org Stuur me aub geen Word of Powerpoint bestanden! Zie http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.nl.html ---------------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part Url : http://rubyforge.org/pipermail/alexandria-list/attachments/20071230/66a94d74/attachment.bin From hdevalence at gmail.com Sat Dec 29 21:06:34 2007 From: hdevalence at gmail.com (Henry de Valence) Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2007 21:06:34 -0500 Subject: [Alexandria-list] Bug Triage In-Reply-To: <1198975571.8181.6.camel@barabas.karssen.org> References: <167b6aa00712282323o3f0f13d3q8aa07ce96d30e95b@mail.gmail.com> <1198954038.8787.31.camel@matilda> <1198975571.8181.6.camel@barabas.karssen.org> Message-ID: <200712292106.34237.hdevalence@gmail.com> On Saturday 29 December 2007 7:46:11 pm L.C. Karssen wrote: > > The problem really is follow-up. At least if the user is logged in they > > will get an e-mail when we touch the bug. The problem is that we > > (ideally) shouldn't close a bug until someone can confirm the problem no > > longer exists. It's easiest if that is the original reporter. We can't > > get in touch with 'Nobody' so the bugs tend to languish. > True... You could do a halfway solution requiring the person to put in their email address, but not get an account. The time it takes to sign up is a big factor. -- Harry de Valence From ophidian at ophidian.homeip.net Sun Dec 30 22:46:47 2007 From: ophidian at ophidian.homeip.net (Aaron Clark) Date: Sun, 30 Dec 2007 22:46:47 -0500 Subject: [Alexandria-list] Virtual Books In-Reply-To: <1198952745.8787.21.camel@matilda> References: <4772D9C9.3000802@cherrystem.com> <1198759477.5556.6.camel@castro> <3bceeb2d0712281405q569a0917l21573022505774b7@mail.gmail.com> <200712290803.56810.hdevalence@gmail.com> <1198952745.8787.21.camel@matilda> Message-ID: On 29-Dec-07, at 1:25 PM, Cathal Mc Ginley wrote: >> >> You might alleviate the scalability issue by using an SQL backend; >> have a >> choice between the current format, SQL/SQLite, SQL/MySQL, and >> SQL/PostgresSQL. > > It's a good candidate for the root of the problem, but really we don't > know what's causing the poor performance and scalability, since no-one > has done any profiling. Data storage based on multiple files won't be > terribly fast, but it might not be behind the huge lag when > selecting a > 100-book library. It could just be the way in which the books are > loaded > into the GUI display. We'll have to do tests. I agree, there is no point in spending time on a solution if you don't actually know what the problem is, only the symptoms. > Secondly, having a program that works flawlessly whether using a bunch > of YAML files in a directory or a full RDBMS is going to be tricky. > For > example, we'd have to implement all search functions twice... at > least. I'm suspicious that the best way to do this would be to set up some sort of "pluggable" data source system as backends. Search would be something for the backend to provide (even if it's just "I don't support this yet"). Aaron -- "In the last, lorn fight 'gainst the fall of long night, the mountains stand guard, and the dead shall be ward, for the grave is no bar to my call." --The Horn Of Valere