[Alexandria-list] Just another wishlist for Alexandria

[Cathal Mc Ginley]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:52:47 -0300
Pablo Bianchi <pablo.bianchi at gmail.com> wrote:

- -------- 8<-------snip [amarok labels feature] snip--------- 8<------
> http://yfrog.com/08amarokscreenshotlabelsj

These are equivalent to the tags Alexandria uses, but they are simply
displayed as a comma-separated list in the Book Properties dialog, and
are useful mostly in searches or in creating Smart Libraries.

The idea of a tag-cloud widget is nice, but it's a big feature.

> Fetching records of books with z39.50 is different from bulk
> importing/exporting from/to a ISO2709 (a "MARC file", to be strict,
> the file could have any other format, like UNIMARC or CEPAL).
Your knowledge and familiarity with MARC and related formats could be
very useful to Alexandria. Once I set up a Wiki, perhaps you could work
on a few quick summaries and introductions to the most useful aspects
of MARC...

> To use z39.50 should be in some place the list of servers. A line
> would be the LOC server:
The Library of Congress is enabled by default if you have Ruby-ZOOM set
up fully. After installing rubygems with apt-get, you need to use
the 'gems' program itself to install marc and zoom:
  sudo gem install marc
  sudo gem install zoom

> ISBN: 9789871138517 (A brave new world). Perhaps I'm doing something
> wrong, but I only see the default blue cover. Right-clicking, Display
> online information, Amazon  go here:
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/9871138512 where I can see the
> cover.
Aha, this should be on a FAQ as I've seen it before. For *some* books,
the Amazon AWS web-service doesn't provide a link to the image - even
when the website does. No way to tell when this is the case though. A
"fill-in" feature would be a way to work around this though.

- ---------  8<--------- snip [translation feature] snip------- 8<-------
> Formally, for a cataloging program this is not a good idea. But, is
> Alexandria for a formal library, even a small one, to loan books...? I
> think not, only for a personal use (at least firstly).
> 
What I mean is that Alexandria can't be all things to all users. Perhaps
a plugin architecture could allow someone to write an inline translator
or dictionary interface, but with (currently) one active developer, my
priority is going to be to focus on book-cataloguing features.

> A use-case (I owe you the UML diagram :P): When I read a book, I often
> use the last white pages to make some annotations. If I have not near
> a dictionary, I write there the words I don't know to search for them
> later. Mainly I have three parts on those pages: "Unknown words",
> "Things to search about", "Quotes and page-number of interesting
> sections"
> 
Aha! I misunderstood you here: I thought that by "Things to search
about" you meant something to do with automatic searches for Alexandria
to do... (As in "Alexandria should search for remarkable quotes"...)

In fact, you just mean extra Notes tabs for specific types of notes!
This type of thing could easily be supported in Palatina (arbitrary
properties are supported).

> Well, a library soft it could be as much complex as you want. I'm
> familiar with Koha, an Integrated Library System big and complex,
> using MySQL (you can use SQL lite?) over a web server like Apache. You
> could think not only about "biblios" a with a list of items associated
> (copies of a book), also about a book on multiple volumes. In those
> cases you usually have an ISBN for each volume *AND* another ISBN for
> the complete group. Also you can add support for serials (magazine)
> with ISSN...

Cheers for the pointer to Koha (a GPL'd web-based library system).
Useful for research.

Palatina isn't yet as complex or comprehensive as that, but it *should*
provide more than enough detail for the nerdiest individual (like me!)
to catalogue and document their book collection fully. And two other
wider use-cases I'm interested in are "Second-Hand Bookshop" and
"School or Village Library"...

   -   Cathal.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: GnuPT 2.6.2.1 by EQUIPMENTE.DE

iEYEARECAAYFAknJPZgACgkQfMAUnRdb+8qYWwCfRAVgKXnDrOxdjxzM/CAX2wAH
NcYAn0QqGQQUNrQ9c6w0gROJoiEqNI5N
=/vyD
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----