From ophidian at ophidian.homeip.net  Thu Sep  3 22:09:47 2009
From: ophidian at ophidian.homeip.net (Aaron Clark)
Date: Thu, 03 Sep 2009 22:09:47 -0400
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Is Amazon ISBN search broken in 0.6.5 ?
In-Reply-To: <20090901002659.2f3ad499@jadzia>
References: <4A9C3002.9060403@ophidian.homeip.net>
	<20090901002659.2f3ad499@jadzia>
Message-ID: <4AA076EB.8050701@ophidian.homeip.net>

Cathal Mc Ginley wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> On Mon, 31 Aug 2009 16:18:10 -0400
> Aaron Clark <ophidian at ophidian.homeip.net> wrote:
> 
>> Is it just me or is ISBN Search broken on 0.6.5 with the Amazon
>> provider?
>>
>> I have correctly set up the new AWS secret key for Amazon and can
>> search for books via Title just fine.  However, searching for those
>> same books by ISBN keeps coming up empty.
> 
> A sample working title-search and a sample failing ISBN would help me to
> confirm this...

Obviously, I just wanted to check if I was the only one having an error 
or not before going through an extensive rigamarole trying to debug it.

Here is a sample book exhibiting the problem.  I have a whole stack so 
far if you need more to try.
ISBN: 0-7869-1907-8
Title: Jedit (Magic Legends Cycle - Book II)
Author: Clayton Emery

(I typically skip the -'s when I enter it into Alexandria and have never 
had issues with that process before)

I also noticed that the alexandria rpm on Fedora does not depend on 
ruby-aws, although I happen to get the same results regardless so it 
doesn't appear to matter in this case.  FWIW, I have version 0.6.5-6 
installed on Fedora 10.

>> Thoughts?
>>
> I hate to say "it works for me"... but this is the first such report
> I've seen.

Not a problem.  I couldn't find any info on the matter

> Are you sure the "title search" books are being "Found at Provider
> 'Amazon'"? (Keep an eye on the status bar.)

Yes, the results are always "Found at Provider Amazon".  It is also the 
first provider my system checks.  When doing ISBN searches, it goes 
through the entire set of providers without finding a result.

> An issue reported before (for Amazon not working) was due to extra
> spaces at the beginning or end of one or other of the AWS identifiers
> (I forgot to trim off extraneous whitespace). You could check this.

Checked.  This  is not the case for me.

> Finally, you could try running Alexandria with tons of debug output,
> from a terminal:
> 
>   alexandria --debug
> 
> And check if the Amazon provider complains for any particular reason.

The output was slightly confusing.   It appears to have found the book 
at the Amazon provider but then raises the NoResultsError exception.

It also appears to find the book at the Library of Congress but 
encounters some kind of parsing error.

(Note: I currently have it set to Amazon.ca, although it was set to the 
'us' locale when I initially experienced and reported the issue)

Aaron
-- 
"The goblins are in charge of maintenance?  Why not just set it on fire 
now and call it a day?"
--Whip Tongue, Viashino Technician
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From cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org  Thu Sep  3 23:27:06 2009
From: cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org (Cathal Mc Ginley)
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 2009 04:27:06 +0100
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Is Amazon ISBN search broken in 0.6.5 ?
In-Reply-To: <4AA076EB.8050701@ophidian.homeip.net>
References: <4A9C3002.9060403@ophidian.homeip.net>
	<20090901002659.2f3ad499@jadzia>
	<4AA076EB.8050701@ophidian.homeip.net>
Message-ID: <20090904042706.24bd937a@jadzia>

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On Thu, 03 Sep 2009 22:09:47 -0400
Aaron Clark <ophidian at ophidian.homeip.net> wrote:

I'm going slightly in-depth here. By all means, skip ahead to
HOW TO FIX IT.

> The output was slightly confusing.   It appears to have found the
> book at the Amazon provider but then raises the NoResultsError
> exception.
- ------------------- 8<----------- snip ------- 8<---------------
> `Alexandria::BookProviders::NoResultsError'
> at /usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/book_providers.rb:55 -
> Alexandria::BookProviders::NoResultsError

My spider-sense is tingling! At first, I thought this might have been
due to a buggy patch applied to the Fedora version of Alexandria you're
working with, relating to bug #27000
http://rubyforge.org/tracker/?func=detail&atid=863&aid=27000&group_id=205
But I thought Mamoru Tasaka (the Fedora packager) had applied my updated
revision (SVN r1087) to book_providers.rb along with the DeaStore patch.
http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=130298

The broken code looks like this at line 50 of 
/usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/book_providers.rb

    results.delete_if { |book, cover| ((!book) || (!cover)) }  

... this wrongly removes results with no cover image.

The r1087 code should be:

    results.delete_if { |book, cover| book.nil? }


Dang-and-blast!! I think I've even discovered a bug in the 'correct'
code... The delete_if is really expecting a 2D array, but when working
with ISBN-lookup results it's actually operating on 1D 2-element array.
So it's not even checking for the right thing. Observe:

ruby -e "['bk', 'cov'].each {|x,y| puts x.inspect; puts y.inspect; }"
"bk"
nil
"cov"
nil

PROMBLEM FOUND :^D

Now, combining this just-discovered bug with the "broken code", one
might arrive at a circumstance where all ISBN lookups are broken.
I pasted in the 'broken code' and tested it locally - and ISBN-search
was suddenly broken!


HOW TO FIX IT

sudo gedit /usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/book_providers.rb
At line 50, either comment-out the results.delete_if line with #
or ensure that it reads:
    results.delete_if { |book, cover| book.nil? }


Hope that does the trick! If it does, let me know, I'll have to notify
Mamoru Tasaka that there's a problem with the Fedora build of
Alexandria.

   -   Cathal.
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From overjoyed at zoho.com  Sat Sep  5 15:03:30 2009
From: overjoyed at zoho.com (Alex Eickmann)
Date: Sat, 05 Sep 2009 21:03:30 +0200
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Feedback
Message-ID: <1238b97e3b0.8803679820082575865.-7194431727408436028@zoho.com>

Dear Alexandria Team,

many thanks for that great programme!

The program seems to me very tiny and looks good.

I have some features that may help to make that stuff better:


- better ebook support
	-&gt; a link where i could refer to my book on net or on my hdd
-&gt; a preview of this book
-&gt; a script that read the metadata of my files and categorize them automatically (ISBN search, Cover, etc.)
-&gt; full text indexer (a la zotero)

- columns that i could add for myself (e.g. Language, publisher, freetext, pages,
- possibility to add my own hoster for literature (e.g. librarys from university)
- field for quotations

I think that the software of Citavi is really good maybe you can learn from it and could implement some features of that rich software. You could find it here www.citavi.com 

I know Alexandria is a collection tool for home books, but I believe there is so much more potential in it. Maybe it is possible to bring that tool to literature content manager, with references for open office and so. 

Thanks you, that I could give you those feedback.

Enjoy your weekend.
sascha
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From ophidian at ophidian.homeip.net  Mon Sep  7 21:11:33 2009
From: ophidian at ophidian.homeip.net (Aaron Clark)
Date: Mon, 07 Sep 2009 21:11:33 -0400
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Is Amazon ISBN search broken in 0.6.5 ?
In-Reply-To: <20090904042706.24bd937a@jadzia>
References: <4A9C3002.9060403@ophidian.homeip.net>	<20090901002659.2f3ad499@jadzia>	<4AA076EB.8050701@ophidian.homeip.net>
	<20090904042706.24bd937a@jadzia>
Message-ID: <4AA5AF45.5050301@ophidian.homeip.net>

Cathal Mc Ginley wrote:
> HOW TO FIX IT
> 
> sudo gedit /usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/book_providers.rb
> At line 50, either comment-out the results.delete_if line with #
> or ensure that it reads:
>     results.delete_if { |book, cover| book.nil? }
> 
> 
> Hope that does the trick! If it does, let me know, I'll have to notify
> Mamoru Tasaka that there's a problem with the Fedora build of
> Alexandria.

Fixed!  ISBN Search work great now.

Thanks,
Aaron
-- 
"The goblins are in charge of maintenance?  Why not just set it on fire 
now and call it a day?"
--Whip Tongue, Viashino Technician

From cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org  Mon Sep  7 21:13:23 2009
From: cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org (Cathal Mc Ginley)
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 2009 02:13:23 +0100
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Feedback
In-Reply-To: <1238b97e3b0.8803679820082575865.-7194431727408436028@zoho.com>
References: <1238b97e3b0.8803679820082575865.-7194431727408436028@zoho.com>
Message-ID: <20090908021323.3ba80e53@jadzia>

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On Sat, 05 Sep 2009 21:03:30 +0200
Alex Eickmann <overjoyed at zoho.com> wrote:
> - better ebook support
>   -> a link where i could refer to my book on net or on my hdd
This is a common request; in fact another user (Sami Kahn) has produced
a fork of Alexandria adding this feature. I've just realized that none
of our discussions were on-list though.

>   -> a preview of this book
Can you clarify? Do you mean the first few pages of an e-book? Would
this be automatically extracted? What formats?

>   -> a script that read the metadata of my files and categorize them
>      automatically (ISBN search, Cover, etc.)
Again, what formats?

>   -> full text indexer (a la zotero)
I'm only vaguely aware of the Firefox plugin Zotero. Adding full-text
search is a big job - are there any useful full-text-search libraries
for Ruby I wonder?

> - columns that i could add for myself (e.g. Language, publisher,
>   freetext, pages,
This sounds like a job for (oh no, not again!) Palatina
http://palatina.gnostai.org/

> - possibility to add my own hoster for literature (e.g. librarys from
>   university)
There is Z39.50 support, but you need to install Ruby-ZOOM

> - field for quotations
Also requested earlier (but I never got around to putting all the
wish-list features together onto a wiki).

Also potentially handled by Palatina.

> 
> I think that the software of Citavi is really good maybe you can
> learn from it and could implement some features of that rich
> software. You could find it here www.citavi.com 

I've had a look at the screenshots, and it seems to be a huge piece of
(proprietary, Windows, German-language) software. Way more work than a
single developer can take on, realistically.

> I know Alexandria is a collection tool for home books, but I believe
> there is so much more potential in it. Maybe it is possible to bring
> that tool to literature content manager, with references for open
> office and so. 

I would very much like to extend Alexandria, but at the moment there is
only one semi-active developer (me!) so I am somewhat constrained.
Apart from day-to-day bugfixes, I am trying to re-engineer the program
to be more extensible in the future (that's what Palatina's supposed to
be all about - but I haven't spent as much time on that as I'd hoped
either). 

The problem with adding a whole new catalogue of features is that I
don't know what is really required for the user. Because these aren't
features I personally need or miss, I'm not aware of what data,
processing and user-interfaces I'd have to add to make it a useful
"literature content manager" or "reference tool" or "reading management
assistant" or any of the other jobs users occasionally wish for.

But if you (and other users) would be willing to help me by
beginning to list detailed data and feature requirements (perhaps on a
wiki), and maybe sketching user-interfaces (pencil-and-paper sketches
would be fine!) then I could start engineering Alexandria and Palatina
to support it.

> Thanks you, that I could give you those feedback.
Thanks for getting in touch,

   -   Cathal.
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From ophidian at ophidian.homeip.net  Wed Sep  9 23:22:59 2009
From: ophidian at ophidian.homeip.net (Aaron Clark)
Date: Wed, 09 Sep 2009 23:22:59 -0400
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Why can't I delete books in Smart Library view?
Message-ID: <4AA87113.5060001@ophidian.homeip.net>

Today I randomly added a borrowed book to my Library because it was 
close at hand while I was testing out the ISBN search fixes were 
properly applied on Fedora 10.  Since it's a new book, it ends up in my 
Unread smart-library.  So I went there to delete the book, 
right-clicked, but the Delete option is greyed out.  Thinking this odd, 
I checked other books in other smart libraries I have.  At first, I 
thought deletion was broken.  Turns out you can only delete if you've 
selected the actual library on the left pane.  This means that on any 
sizable library (mine is over 200 books), you need to go searching 
through the list to find the book you want to delete.  So I went looking 
for the offending code causing this 
(lib/alexandria/ui/ui_manager.rb:449) to see whether it was intentional 
or not.

So my question is: Why does it behave like this?  Why can't I delete 
books from my Library when I'm in a smart-library?

Aaron
-- 
"The goblins are in charge of maintenance?  Why not just set it on fire 
now and call it a day?"
--Whip Tongue, Viashino Technician

From cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org  Thu Sep 10 11:03:06 2009
From: cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org (Cathal Mc Ginley)
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 2009 16:03:06 +0100
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Why can't I delete books in Smart Library
 view?
In-Reply-To: <4AA87113.5060001@ophidian.homeip.net>
References: <4AA87113.5060001@ophidian.homeip.net>
Message-ID: <20090910160306.4075dfdc@jadzia>

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On Wed, 09 Sep 2009 23:22:59 -0400
Aaron Clark <ophidian at ophidian.homeip.net> wrote:

> So my question is: Why does it behave like this?  Why can't I delete 
> books from my Library when I'm in a smart-library?

This code originates from before my time with Alexandria, but I can make
a good guess as to why it's done this way:

One of the big limitations with Alexandria is the handling of multiple
copies of a book. You can't have more than one Book with the same ID
(i.e. ISBN, or if there is no ISBN, a number generated from the title)
in a single Library. Because of this, when you 'delete' a book from a
Library view, Alexandria uses it's ID to choose which book to delete.

But with a Smart Library presenting the union of several Libraries
duplicates do occur in the view. So if you were able to delete a Book
from the Smart Library view and there was more than one Book with that
ID - Alexandria would delete a single book in an undefined way, the
'first' one it found with that ID using it's internal search, not
necessarily the one selected in the GUI.

So, that's the reason. (It's a dual problem, both the domain and the
the GUI make the same assumptions of "one copy of a book per Library").
It's not desirable behaviour, I'll admit, but until Alexandria
comfortably supports multiple copies of a Book, I think it'll have to
stay that way. 

   -   C.
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From ophidian at ophidian.homeip.net  Thu Sep 10 21:33:12 2009
From: ophidian at ophidian.homeip.net (Aaron Clark)
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 2009 21:33:12 -0400
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Why can't I delete books in Smart Library
	view?
In-Reply-To: <20090910160306.4075dfdc@jadzia>
References: <4AA87113.5060001@ophidian.homeip.net>
	<20090910160306.4075dfdc@jadzia>
Message-ID: <4AA9A8D8.9070507@ophidian.homeip.net>

Cathal Mc Ginley wrote:
> 
> But with a Smart Library presenting the union of several Libraries
> duplicates do occur in the view. So if you were able to delete a Book
> from the Smart Library view and there was more than one Book with that
> ID - Alexandria would delete a single book in an undefined way, the
> 'first' one it found with that ID using it's internal search, not
> necessarily the one selected in the GUI.
> 
> So, that's the reason. (It's a dual problem, both the domain and the
> the GUI make the same assumptions of "one copy of a book per Library").
> It's not desirable behaviour, I'll admit, but until Alexandria
> comfortably supports multiple copies of a Book, I think it'll have to
> stay that way. 

Bear with me here as I may be totally confused.

Is it not the case that when a Library loads all its books, it also sets 
its name as the library property of that book, and then the Smart 
Library filters through all of the Library instances to get their 
matching books, so the books presented by a Smart Library already know 
which Library instance they are from?

(Here's the files I'm looking at as I try to trace this:
lib/alexandria/model/library.rb:116
lib/alexandria/smart_library.rb:174
...man I wish I had a proper debugger for this)

Aaron
-- 
"The goblins are in charge of maintenance?  Why not just set it on fire 
now and call it a day?"
--Whip Tongue, Viashino Technician

From phil at pricom.com.au  Fri Sep 11 13:59:04 2009
From: phil at pricom.com.au (Philip Rhoades)
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 2009 03:59:04 +1000
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Rails version?
In-Reply-To: <mailman.6.1252691449.25869.alexandria-list@rubyforge.org>
References: <mailman.6.1252691449.25869.alexandria-list@rubyforge.org>
Message-ID: <4AAA8FE8.1040507@pricom.com.au>

People,

Alexandria is a nicer, more sophisticated version of a library app I 
produced with Ruby on Rails (as a learning exercise) - was there/is 
there any consideration for doing a Rails version of Alexandria?

Thanks,

Phil.
-- 
Philip Rhoades

GPO Box 3411
Sydney NSW	2001
Australia
E-mail:  phil at pricom.com.au

From cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org  Fri Sep 11 19:43:32 2009
From: cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org (Cathal Mc Ginley)
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 2009 00:43:32 +0100
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Rails version?
In-Reply-To: <4AAA8FE8.1040507@pricom.com.au>
References: <mailman.6.1252691449.25869.alexandria-list@rubyforge.org>
	<4AAA8FE8.1040507@pricom.com.au>
Message-ID: <20090912004332.54818628@jadzia>

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On Sat, 12 Sep 2009 03:59:04 +1000
Philip Rhoades <phil at pricom.com.au> wrote:

> any consideration for doing a Rails version of Alexandria?

Hi Phil,

There has been some chatter about it (and feature requests #1774 and
the more detailed and recent #24990 [1]). The thing is, we haven't
really had any Rails people working on Alexandria - I think we pretty
much all came to it from the perspective of GNOME developer.

I thought I remembered some other projects doing similar things. But
most of them are hosted services like LibraryThing, Goodreads
or BookJetty. There's a free software web-app for libraries, but it's
written in Perl [2].

If a web-based interface to your books would be useful to you (or fun
to write) I'd be happy to help you coax Alexandria into working better
with Rails. Or even to take suggestions to make future work easier.

   -   Cathal


[1]
http://rubyforge.org/tracker/?group_id=205&atid=866&func=detail&aid=24990
[2]
Koha http://koha.org/

- -- 
http://palatina.gnostai.org/ - Palatina: the experimental Alexandria
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From blackfeather at gmail.com  Fri Sep 11 22:21:35 2009
From: blackfeather at gmail.com (blackfeather at gmail.com)
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 2009 19:21:35 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Rails version?
Message-ID: <4aab05af.1a015a0a.760e.0eda@mx.google.com>

Hello,


I am interested in Rails-izing a fork.  I am a Rails dev with 2.5 years of experience (but no GNOME dev experience.).  Rails 3 will be a good way to go once it is out, hopefully soon.


I prefer to work on Ubuntu, and git for versioning.


blackfeather m.k.a. craig


-----Original Message-----
Date: Friday, September 11, 2009 5:14:44 pm
To: "Philip Rhoades" <phil at pricom.com.au>
Cc: alexandria-list at rubyforge.org
From: "Cathal Mc Ginley" <cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org>
Subject: Re: [Alexandria-list] Rails version?

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On Sat, 12 Sep 2009 03:59:04 +1000
Philip Rhoades <phil at pricom.com.au> wrote:

> any consideration for doing a Rails version of Alexandria?

Hi Phil,

There has been some chatter about it (and feature requests #1774 and
the more detailed and recent #24990 [1]). The thing is, we haven't
really had any Rails people working on Alexandria - I think we pretty
much all came to it from the perspective of GNOME developer.

I thought I remembered some other projects doing similar things. But
most of them are hosted services like LibraryThing, Goodreads
or BookJetty. There's a free software web-app for libraries, but it's
written in Perl [2].

If a web-based interface to your books would be useful to you (or fun
to write) I'd be happy to help you coax Alexandria into working better
with Rails. Or even to take suggestions to make future work easier.

   -   Cathal


[1]
http://rubyforge.org/tracker/?group_id=205&atid=866&func=detail&aid=24990
[2


From ophidian at ophidian.homeip.net  Fri Sep 11 23:01:46 2009
From: ophidian at ophidian.homeip.net (Aaron Clark)
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 2009 23:01:46 -0400
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Rails version?
In-Reply-To: <20090912004332.54818628@jadzia>
References: <mailman.6.1252691449.25869.alexandria-list@rubyforge.org>	<4AAA8FE8.1040507@pricom.com.au>
	<20090912004332.54818628@jadzia>
Message-ID: <4AAB0F1A.8060408@ophidian.homeip.net>

Cathal Mc Ginley wrote:
> There has been some chatter about it (and feature requests #1774 and
> the more detailed and recent #24990 [1]). The thing is, we haven't
> really had any Rails people working on Alexandria - I think we pretty
> much all came to it from the perspective of GNOME developer.
> 
> I thought I remembered some other projects doing similar things. But
> most of them are hosted services like LibraryThing, Goodreads
> or BookJetty. There's a free software web-app for libraries, but it's
> written in Perl [2].
> 
> If a web-based interface to your books would be useful to you (or fun
> to write) I'd be happy to help you coax Alexandria into working better
> with Rails. Or even to take suggestions to make future work easier.

Just musing out loud, but I wonder if the persistance layer of Rails 
might be something we could take advantage of (or this may be a 
Palatina-type feature) as opposed to the current yaml persistance.  Then 
again, it's more likely a caching issue on our side than the actual yaml 
persistance since I'm pretty sure Alexandria re-reads all the contents 
from disk every time you switch libraries (which is why it takes forever 
to switch to large smart libraries).

Aaron
-- 
"The goblins are in charge of maintenance?  Why not just set it on fire 
now and call it a day?"
--Whip Tongue, Viashino Technician

From cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org  Fri Sep 11 23:58:20 2009
From: cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org (Cathal Mc Ginley)
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 2009 04:58:20 +0100
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Rails version?
In-Reply-To: <4AAB0F1A.8060408@ophidian.homeip.net>
References: <mailman.6.1252691449.25869.alexandria-list@rubyforge.org>
	<4AAA8FE8.1040507@pricom.com.au> <20090912004332.54818628@jadzia>
	<4AAB0F1A.8060408@ophidian.homeip.net>
Message-ID: <20090912045820.46dc114a@jadzia>

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

On Fri, 11 Sep 2009 23:01:46 -0400
Aaron Clark <ophidian at ophidian.homeip.net> wrote:
> 
> Just musing out loud, but I wonder if the persistance layer of Rails 
> might be something we could take advantage of (or this may be a 
> Palatina-type feature) as opposed to the current yaml persistance.

Palatina uses DataMapper [1] for persistence at the moment rather than
Active Record [2] which is more commonly found on Rails. But DataMapper
is usable on Rails too.

> Then again, it's more likely a caching issue on our side than the
> actual yaml persistance since I'm pretty sure Alexandria re-reads all
> the contents from disk every time you switch libraries (which is why
> it takes forever to switch to large smart libraries).

While some caching certainly wouldn't be out of order, the real reason
for the delay seems to be in loading items into the GNOME list or icon
views. I've written a very simple GNOME UI for downloading bug reports
from RubyForge, and it can load 350 list items in about 1 second. So the
Alexandria code needs to be optimised somewhere.

   -   C.

[1] DataMapper  http://datamapper.org/doku.php
[2] Active Record  http://ar.rubyonrails.org/

- -- 
http://palatina.gnostai.org/ - Palatina: the experimental Alexandria
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From ophidian at ophidian.homeip.net  Sat Sep 12 00:23:22 2009
From: ophidian at ophidian.homeip.net (Aaron Clark)
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 2009 00:23:22 -0400
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Rails version?
In-Reply-To: <4aab05af.1a015a0a.760e.0eda@mx.google.com>
References: <4aab05af.1a015a0a.760e.0eda@mx.google.com>
Message-ID: <4AAB223A.6050906@ophidian.homeip.net>

blackfeather at gmail.com wrote:
> 
> I am interested in Rails-izing a fork.  I am a Rails dev with 2.5 years of experience (but no GNOME dev experience.).  Rails 3 will be a good way to go once it is out, hopefully soon.

Why fork it when you can work within the existing project?  Refactoring 
the backend persistance and library code to be separate from the 
ruby-gnome GUI component should give you a good chunk of the separation 
of concerns you would need to write a Rails-based frontend.

Cathal will correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that 
in some ways this is what the Palatina project was an effort to accomplish.

Aaron
-- 
"The goblins are in charge of maintenance?  Why not just set it on fire 
now and call it a day?"
--Whip Tongue, Viashino Technician

From ophidian at ophidian.homeip.net  Sat Sep 12 00:25:10 2009
From: ophidian at ophidian.homeip.net (Aaron Clark)
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 2009 00:25:10 -0400
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Rails version?
In-Reply-To: <20090912045820.46dc114a@jadzia>
References: <mailman.6.1252691449.25869.alexandria-list@rubyforge.org>	<4AAA8FE8.1040507@pricom.com.au>	<20090912004332.54818628@jadzia>	<4AAB0F1A.8060408@ophidian.homeip.net>
	<20090912045820.46dc114a@jadzia>
Message-ID: <4AAB22A6.6020601@ophidian.homeip.net>

Cathal Mc Ginley wrote:
> 
> While some caching certainly wouldn't be out of order, the real reason
> for the delay seems to be in loading items into the GNOME list or icon
> views. I've written a very simple GNOME UI for downloading bug reports
> from RubyForge, and it can load 350 list items in about 1 second. So the
> Alexandria code needs to be optimised somewhere.
> 

Something appears to be constantly re-scanning/loading data that has 
already been loaded.  Do we have any Ruby-Gnome hackers out there?

Aaron
-- 
"The goblins are in charge of maintenance?  Why not just set it on fire 
now and call it a day?"
--Whip Tongue, Viashino Technician

From cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org  Sat Sep 12 01:40:48 2009
From: cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org (Cathal Mc Ginley)
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 2009 06:40:48 +0100
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Rails version?
In-Reply-To: <4AAB223A.6050906@ophidian.homeip.net>
References: <4aab05af.1a015a0a.760e.0eda@mx.google.com>
	<4AAB223A.6050906@ophidian.homeip.net>
Message-ID: <20090912064048.4ec9ce21@jadzia>

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

On Sat, 12 Sep 2009 00:23:22 -0400
Aaron Clark <ophidian at ophidian.homeip.net> wrote:

> blackfeather at gmail.com wrote:
> > 
> > I am interested in Rails-izing a fork.  I am a Rails dev with 2.5
> > years of experience (but no GNOME dev experience.).  Rails 3 will
> > be a good way to go once it is out, hopefully soon.
> 
> Why fork it when you can work within the existing project?

I believe he meant fork in the GitHub sense - where people clone their
own repository and work independently without the fear of breaking the
larger project, then request changes be pulled back into the mainline.
(Or the mainline chooses to pull the changes back from the fork.) 

> Refactoring the backend persistance and library code to be separate
> from the ruby-gnome GUI component should give you a good chunk of the
> separation of concerns you would need to write a Rails-based frontend.
> 
> Cathal will correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression
> that in some ways this is what the Palatina project was an effort to
> accomplish.
> 
Quite so! But lack of demand for Palatina code meant I kept letting
design and development slide. Having a few 'clients' who want to use
the Palatina library could spur development a bit.

It seems to me that the first step in building a web-app would be
deciding which features from Alexandria should be available, and very
roughly sketching the user-interface. I know Rails apps are often built
from the model out, though... 

   -   C.

- -- 
http://palatina.gnostai.org/ - Palatina: the experimental Alexandria
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From hadmut at danisch.de  Sun Sep 13 16:31:22 2009
From: hadmut at danisch.de (Hadmut Danisch)
Date: Sun, 13 Sep 2009 22:31:22 +0200
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Proposal: please split Alexandria in GUI and
	functional library
Message-ID: <4AAD569A.2000901@msgid.danisch.de>

Hi,

Alexandria is really a great tool with great functions. Unfortunately,
it's way to store data and the graphical user interface does not meet
my personal requirements (e.g. allow to have and register several copies
of the same book, store data in a sqlite3 database). I'd like to write
my own books/DVD/music database with ruby on rails, and it would be
great if it was possible to use Alexandria's abilities to fetch data
with a given ISBN (or whatever the barcode reader gives).

I'd like to propose to split Alexandria into a graphical frontend and a
functional library that can be used from other applications as well.

:-)

regards
Hadmut


From cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org  Mon Sep 14 15:02:40 2009
From: cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org (Cathal Mc Ginley)
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 2009 20:02:40 +0100
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Proposal: please split Alexandria in GUI and
 functional library
In-Reply-To: <4AAD569A.2000901@msgid.danisch.de>
References: <4AAD569A.2000901@msgid.danisch.de>
Message-ID: <20090914200240.6d32eb47@jadzia>

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

On Sun, 13 Sep 2009 22:31:22 +0200
Hadmut Danisch <hadmut at danisch.de> wrote:

- --------- 8<---------- snip ------------------ 8<-------------------
> I'd like to propose to split Alexandria into a graphical frontend and
> a functional library that can be used from other applications as well.
 
Well, yes. I just mentioned your feature request (#24990) on this list
recently. And if you've been following the recent discussion about
supporting a "Rails version", you'll know that there's a choice of
refactoring the existing Alexandria code, or jumping straight in to
Palatina (which at the moment doesn't have a graphical component).

- --------- 8<---------- snip ------------------ 8<-------------------
> requirements (e.g. allow to have and register several copies of the
> same book, store data in a sqlite3 database). 

Both these features are supported already by Palatina, and the design
will allow for future development of "books/DVD/music" support. But
it's missing much that is necessary - it doesn't have the equivalent of
Library or SmartLibrary yet, for instance.

It would help me if prospective users could suggest the next features
they need from Palatina, so I can have a better-defined development
path. For myself, I need "Collections" (lists of Copies) and
"Catalogues" (sets of Publications) before I can proceed much further.
And I need to keep up to date with the rspecs too, so I can fix stuff
in future without too much fear of breaking everything.


I think it might be helpful to add some real-time chatter to this
discussion, since e-mail can be a little bit limiting when it comes to
getting across what you need from other developers. Setting up an IRC
channel on FreeNode might be nice, but I have no experience with
running such a channel. In the mean time, feel free to contact me via
XMPP/Jabber instant messaging -  gnostai at gmail.com is the account other
Alexandria developers use to contact me.

Of course, it's possible to have *too many* ways of contacting
developers: already there's the RubyForge Tracker, this mailing-list,
the Palatina wiki...

Anyway, thanks for getting in touch. 

   -   C.

- -- 
http://palatina.gnostai.org/ - Palatina: the experimental Alexandria
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From drew at inshar.com  Wed Sep 16 02:20:03 2009
From: drew at inshar.com (drew boardman)
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 08:20:03 +0200
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Problems recovering a backup
Message-ID: <1253082003.3884.5.camel@eee>

Hi all,

I backed up my database to re-install Ubuntu.  It was backed via Alex to
a .txt file and a .tc file.  The latter appeared as a zipped folder
containing the images and an .xml file with information in it.

When I try to import these files the following errors occurred; the .tc
file was "file format unrecognised" and the .txt file just hangs the
software.

I upgraded to 6.5 but still got the same error can anybody shed some
light on this?

Thanks

Drew


From drew at inshar.com  Wed Sep 16 02:27:24 2009
From: drew at inshar.com (drew boardman)
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 08:27:24 +0200
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Unable to add books
Message-ID: <1253082444.3884.10.camel@eee>

Hi all, 

I have another problem now, in that I am unable add books by ISBN or
title.  I have subscribed to the AWS Amazon password thingy and that
worked.  

The entering of the 13 or 10 ISBN number elicits a "book not found"
reponse.  Enter the title and in the status bar the 'libraries' are
being checked but it hangs when it gets to the last on the list
(Brazil).

I am using version 6.5.

Any ideas?

Drew


From phil at pricom.com.au  Wed Sep 16 04:41:40 2009
From: phil at pricom.com.au (Philip Rhoades)
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:41:40 +1000
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Rails version?
In-Reply-To: <20090912064048.4ec9ce21@jadzia>
References: <4aab05af.1a015a0a.760e.0eda@mx.google.com>	<4AAB223A.6050906@ophidian.homeip.net>
	<20090912064048.4ec9ce21@jadzia>
Message-ID: <4AB0A4C4.9080201@pricom.com.au>

People,


On 2009-09-12 15:40, Cathal Mc Ginley wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On Sat, 12 Sep 2009 00:23:22 -0400
> Aaron Clark<ophidian at ophidian.homeip.net>  wrote:
>
>> blackfeather at gmail.com wrote:
>>> I am interested in Rails-izing a fork.  I am a Rails dev with 2.5
>>> years of experience (but no GNOME dev experience.).  Rails 3 will
>>> be a good way to go once it is out, hopefully soon.
>> Why fork it when you can work within the existing project?
>
> I believe he meant fork in the GitHub sense - where people clone their
> own repository and work independently without the fear of breaking the
> larger project, then request changes be pulled back into the mainline.
> (Or the mainline chooses to pull the changes back from the fork.)
>
>> Refactoring the backend persistance and library code to be separate
>> from the ruby-gnome GUI component should give you a good chunk of the
>> separation of concerns you would need to write a Rails-based frontend.
>>
>> Cathal will correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression
>> that in some ways this is what the Palatina project was an effort to
>> accomplish.
>>
> Quite so! But lack of demand for Palatina code meant I kept letting
> design and development slide. Having a few 'clients' who want to use
> the Palatina library could spur development a bit.
>
> It seems to me that the first step in building a web-app would be
> deciding which features from Alexandria should be available, and very
> roughly sketching the user-interface. I know Rails apps are often built
> from the model out, though...
>
>     -   C.


I would offer my basic Rails app as a starting point but I suspect from 
what others have said that this wouldn't help too much.  Anyway, I am 
happy to work with people and test things if someone makes any progress.

Thanks to all,

Regards,

Phil.
-- 
Philip Rhoades

GPO Box 3411
Sydney NSW	2001
Australia
E-mail:  phil at pricom.com.au

From ophidian at ophidian.homeip.net  Wed Sep 16 09:40:04 2009
From: ophidian at ophidian.homeip.net (Aaron Clark)
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 09:40:04 -0400
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Problems recovering a backup
In-Reply-To: <1253082003.3884.5.camel@eee>
References: <1253082003.3884.5.camel@eee>
Message-ID: <4AB0EAB4.6000002@ophidian.homeip.net>

drew boardman wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I backed up my database to re-install Ubuntu.  It was backed via Alex to
> a .txt file and a .tc file.  The latter appeared as a zipped folder
> containing the images and an .xml file with information in it.
> 
> When I try to import these files the following errors occurred; the .tc
> file was "file format unrecognised" and the .txt file just hangs the
> software.
> 
> I upgraded to 6.5 but still got the same error can anybody shed some
> light on this?
> 

Drew, I typically do my backups from my home directory by simply "tar 
czf alexandria-library-`date +%F`.tar.gz .alexandria".  To restore, I 
simply remove the existing .alexandria directory and untar the archive 
back in.  No problems with it so far.  Your zipped folder may be a 
similar situation, so give that a try.

Aaron
-- 
"The goblins are in charge of maintenance?  Why not just set it on fire 
now and call it a day?"
--Whip Tongue, Viashino Technician

From ophidian at ophidian.homeip.net  Wed Sep 16 09:51:26 2009
From: ophidian at ophidian.homeip.net (Aaron Clark)
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 09:51:26 -0400
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Unable to add books
In-Reply-To: <1253082444.3884.10.camel@eee>
References: <1253082444.3884.10.camel@eee>
Message-ID: <4AB0ED5E.3020000@ophidian.homeip.net>

drew boardman wrote:
> Hi all, 
> 
> I have another problem now, in that I am unable add books by ISBN or
> title.  I have subscribed to the AWS Amazon password thingy and that
> worked.  
> 
> The entering of the 13 or 10 ISBN number elicits a "book not found"
> reponse.  Enter the title and in the status bar the 'libraries' are
> being checked but it hangs when it gets to the last on the list
> (Brazil).
> 
> I am using version 6.5.
> 

Looks like the Ubuntu maintainer has not picked up the full set of 
patches to fix this: 
http://rubyforge.org/tracker/?group_id=205&atid=863&func=detail&aid=27000

More discussion from the other week here:
http://rubyforge.org/pipermail/alexandria-list/2009-September/001643.html

Aaron
-- 
"The goblins are in charge of maintenance?  Why not just set it on fire 
now and call it a day?"
--Whip Tongue, Viashino Technician

From cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org  Wed Sep 16 15:36:43 2009
From: cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org (Cathal Mc Ginley)
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 20:36:43 +0100
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Problems recovering a backup
In-Reply-To: <1253082003.3884.5.camel@eee>
References: <1253082003.3884.5.camel@eee>
Message-ID: <20090916203643.02af687b@jadzia>

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

On Wed, 16 Sep 2009 08:20:03 +0200
drew boardman <drew at inshar.com> wrote:
> When I try to import these files the following errors occurred;
> the .tc file was "file format unrecognised" 

I've just checked, and Tellico import still works for me. Make sure you
import the .tc file directly, don't unzip it first. 

If you run Alexandria from a terminal (open a gnome-terminal and enter:

  alexandria

you should see info as to how far it gets before encountering an error.
For more debug info, run it like:

  alexandria --debug

I have a sneaking suspicion that REXML could be at the root of this,
can you tell me what exact version of Ruby you have installed? Run:

  ruby --version

> the .txt file just hangs the software.
In fact, the txt file is a list of ISBNs which Alexandria is attempting
to look-up again, one at a time. (This isn't intended as a backup
mechanism as such, since any information you changed yourself will be
lost.) Perhaps because your Amazon support isn't working, the length of
time searching for books makes it look as if Alexandria has stalled -
but Alexandria 0.6.5 should have a progress bar to show you how the
updates are going... (More on the Amazon support in another e-mail.)

   -   C.

- -- 
http://palatina.gnostai.org/ - Palatina: the experimental Alexandria
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From cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org  Wed Sep 16 15:47:02 2009
From: cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org (Cathal Mc Ginley)
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 20:47:02 +0100
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Unable to add books
In-Reply-To: <4AB0ED5E.3020000@ophidian.homeip.net>
References: <1253082444.3884.10.camel@eee>
	<4AB0ED5E.3020000@ophidian.homeip.net>
Message-ID: <20090916204702.0a5d47f8@jadzia>

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

On Wed, 16 Sep 2009 09:51:26 -0400
Aaron Clark <ophidian at ophidian.homeip.net> wrote:

> drew boardman wrote:
> > Hi all, 
> > 
> > I have another problem now, in that I am unable add books by ISBN or
> > title.  I have subscribed to the AWS Amazon password thingy and that
> > worked.  
> > 
> > The entering of the 13 or 10 ISBN number elicits a "book not found"
> > reponse.  Enter the title and in the status bar the 'libraries' are
> > being checked but it hangs when it gets to the last on the list
> > (Brazil).
You need to check:
1) Amazon is at the top of your list of Providers
2) The two AWS identifiers are entered exactly with *no spaces* at
the beginning or end.

Then test it with a known ISBN that is found at Amazon (e.g.
9780192891228 )

Check the Alexandria status bar, it should start with "Searching
provider 'Amazon'" and then when it's found, it should read "Found at
provider 'Amazon' before showing the name of the book.

> > 
> > I am using version 6.5.

If you installed this from the deb file, there should be no problems,
but keeping a deb version around while installing the new version from
source (i.e. alexandria-0.6.5.tar.gz ) can cause problems, since the
new version won't be found. To make sure, check the version number in
"Help > About".

> Looks like the Ubuntu maintainer has not picked up the full set of 
> patches to fix this: 
> http://rubyforge.org/tracker/?group_id=205&atid=863&func=detail&aid=27000

That problem was only introduced in the Fedora RPMs, those changes won't
be in any Ubuntu update - the deb file was rolled by me, before those
changes were added to Alexandria, so it doesn't apply.

(Of course, this also means that any recent bugfixes since the 0.6.5
release won't be present in the deb version. Perhaps a we're due a new
release soon.)

   -   C.

- -- 
http://palatina.gnostai.org/ - Palatina: the experimental Alexandria
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From cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org  Wed Sep 16 17:16:40 2009
From: cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org (Cathal Mc Ginley)
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 22:16:40 +0100
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Rails version?
In-Reply-To: <4AB0A4C4.9080201@pricom.com.au>
References: <4aab05af.1a015a0a.760e.0eda@mx.google.com>
	<4AAB223A.6050906@ophidian.homeip.net>
	<20090912064048.4ec9ce21@jadzia> <4AB0A4C4.9080201@pricom.com.au>
Message-ID: <20090916221640.5d781092@jadzia>

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

On Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:41:40 +1000
Philip Rhoades <phil at pricom.com.au> wrote:
> I would offer my basic Rails app as a starting point but I suspect
> from what others have said that this wouldn't help too much.  Anyway,
> I am happy to work with people and test things if someone makes any
> progress.

I find that *any* code is a better starting point than none! Apart from
anything else, it means I won't have to sit staring at an empty
terminal, with my copy of Ruby for Rails turned to page 1... :^)

If it turns out the app isn't suited to the eventual task, we'll still
learn something along the way. "Prototype to Learn" as the Pragmatic
Programmers say.

A note on the license before you offer any code - Palatina will be
GNU GPL v3+ and I'd like to make any web-based code (whether a web
user-interface or a web-service for book data) GNU AGPL v3+

   -   C.

- -- 
http://palatina.gnostai.org/ - Palatina: the experimental Alexandria
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From drew at inshar.com  Mon Sep 21 12:09:40 2009
From: drew at inshar.com (drew boardman)
Date: Mon, 21 Sep 2009 18:09:40 +0200
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Unable to add books
In-Reply-To: <20090916204702.0a5d47f8@jadzia>
References: <1253082444.3884.10.camel@eee>
	<4AB0ED5E.3020000@ophidian.homeip.net> <20090916204702.0a5d47f8@jadzia>
Message-ID: <1253549380.4205.5.camel@eee>

Dear Aaron and Cathal

Thanks for the replies.  I have now managed to re-import the existing
book collection that I had backed up.  However Alex still will not find
the the providers.

1) Amazon is at the top of my list of Providers
2) The two AWS identifiers are entered exactly with *no spaces* at
the beginning or end.

Then I tested it with a known ISBN that is found at Amazon (e.g.
9780192891228), and this did not work.

Checked the Alexandria status bar, and it started with "Searching
provider 'Amazon'" and then worked its way through the others before
stopping, but not hanging, I could still close or re-search if I wanted
to.

I even looked at Tellico, I was getting that desperate!

Yours

Drew


From cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org  Tue Sep 22 10:01:12 2009
From: cathal.alexandria at gnostai.org (Cathal Mc Ginley)
Date: Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:01:12 +0100
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Unable to add books
In-Reply-To: <1253549380.4205.5.camel@eee>
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Message-ID: <20090922150112.04532455@jadzia>

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On Mon, 21 Sep 2009 18:09:40 +0200
drew boardman <drew at inshar.com> wrote:

> Dear Aaron and Cathal
> 
> Thanks for the replies.  I have now managed to re-import the existing
> book collection that I had backed up.

Glad to hear you haven't lost your data, at least.

>  However Alex still will not find the the providers.
> ---snip----
> Checked the Alexandria status bar, and it started with "Searching
> provider 'Amazon'" and then worked its way through the others 

Hm... Time for debug logging I think. Run Alexandria from a terminal:

    alexandria --debug

This will provide excessive amounts of debug trace logs, including the
Amazon error messages. If your AWS data is still misconfigured, you'll
get several messages like this:

D, [2009-09-22T14:51:25.736655 #5552] DEBUG -- <Obj
Alexandria::BookProviders::AmazonProvider>: Got Amazon::RequestError at
uk: HTTP Response: 403 Forbidden

Otherwise, let me know what the messages from the AmazonProvider say,
and I'll try to diagnose the problem.


> I even looked at Tellico, I was getting that desperate!
No need to panic! :^) 

Actually, there is also GCStar [ http://www.gcstar.org/ ] which is
also GTK-based, is quite stable, and has a ton more features than
Alexandria (although it doesn't match Alexandria's user-interface,
which everyone seems to love). It was originally written for DVD
collections but also handles books.

I know it's a bit of a shame to have to recommend other software, but
I'll readily admit that Alexandria's not as stable as it should be.

   -   C.

- -- 
http://palatina.gnostai.org/ - Palatina: the experimental Alexandria
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