The Readerware Newsletter

Also in this issue, lots of news and helpful hints.

Readerware 2.25 Now Shipping

Release 2.25 is now available for all products (Readerware, ReaderwareAW and ReaderwareVW), and all platforms, (Windows, Mac OS X and Linux). A full list of the new features and fixes included in 2.25 is available online:

Release 2.25 Update

Windows and Linux users are encouraged to download the full installer rather than the upgrade installer. This is because Readerware 2.25 also includes a new version of the Java runtime.

Working with Images

One of the new features introduced in Readerware 2.25 is an image search. A lot of you asked if there was a way to display a list of items without images. The new image search allows you to search for items with and without images.

Obviously one of the reasons you want to list items without images, is so that you can add images to them. Readerware has a number of ways to add images.

Readerware auto-catalog can automatically check your database, and for each item without an image, it will go out on the internet and try and find one. This is part of the Readerware auto-catalog functionality that is only available in expert mode. So the first step is to turn off wizards. You do this using preferences, select the General tab and clear the "Use Wizards" check box. You can turn wizards back on the same way.

Now when you select auto-catalog, you will see some advanced functions available. To add new images, start by selecting the site(s) you want to search. Then simply click on the "Add Images to Database" button. Readerware will go through your entire database checking for items without an image. For each one it finds, it searches the sites you selected. If found the image is added to the database.

This process could take a while, it will depend on the size of your database, the number of sites you are searching and the number of items without images. One point to remember is that Readerware looks for the image using the product ID. That is the ISBN for books and the UPC for CDs and videos. Items that do not have a product ID are skipped, Readerware cannot automatically add images for items without a product ID.

Hopefully this feature will resolve many of the missing images in your database. Once the auto-catalog run completes, Readerware will display a statistics dialog telling you how many new images were added. You can also do an image search, Readerware displays the total number of items returned in the status bar at the bottom of the main window. You can easily tell how many items now have images and how many are still without images.

So what about those items still without images. The Readerware browser allows you to search manually and add images to existing items. Start by turning off browser integration mode using preferences. Then display the detail view for an item you want to add an image to. Now select one of the Web menu search items. The Readerware browser window will open. Search for an item at any one of the supported sites. For example, you can search by title and maybe come up with another edition of the item. When you have found a suitable image, right click on the browser window and select "Import Image on this Page" from the popup menu. Readerware will then copy the image from the web site and update the current item automatically.

You can search for all items without images and then use the next button to display the detail view for each item in turn and add images as you go.

You can also accomplish this in your regular browser. Perform the search as before and find the image you want to use. Right click on the image and select the save image item from the popup menu. Most browsers have this feature. This will copy the image from the web site and save it on your hard drive. Now you need to tell Readerware to use this image. Again display the item detail view, click on the "Select Image" button and pick the image you just saved. Readerware will then copy the image to the database. Once in the database, you can delete the image file you created.

You can normally find an image for most items on the web. But you can also scan in the image yourself. Scan the item and save the image as a GIF or JPG file on your hard drive. You will normally want to scale the image to a thumbnail size, although Readerware will accept images of any size. Then select the image in Readerware as described above.

So as you can see there are a number of different ways you can add images to items already in your database. The new image search facility makes it easy to identify items without images.

Views and Printing

As you probably know you can create as many views in Readerware as you want. You can create a table view that contains just the database columns you are interested in. You can size and order the columns to suit your needs. You can create a summary view that contains just a few columns like title, author, format, ISBN etc. You can create views for reports, create a view containing just the columns you want to print.

Readerware 2.25 introduces a new way to define these views. Up to now the only way to customize a view was to drag columns around in the table, right click on a column header to show or hide columns. You can still define views this way.

With Readerware 2,25 you can now define and customize views in preferences. Just bring up the preferences dialog and select the View tab. You will see two lists. The first lists all your views, the second lists the columns for the selected view.

Using preferences you can copy, rename and delete views. Any changes you make are saved automatically when you click on the OK button. If you make a mistake and say accidentally delete a view, click on Cancel. Your changes will not be saved and the view will still be there.

To customize a view, first select it. In the column list you will see all the database columns. Columns with a check mark next to them are displayed in the view, columns with an X next to them are not. Simply double click on any column to toggle its status.

To change the position of a column in a view, select it and then use the up and down arrows to move it up and down the list.

Maintaining views this way can be a lot easier. For example moving a column by dragging it in the table, can be time consuming if you have to scroll around the table and move it several columns over. You don't have to keep switching views if you are customizing several views. On the other hand, if you want to just hide a column or switch the order of two columns in a view, doing it from the view itself can be a lot faster. Now you have a choice.

• Readerware Views
• View Preferences

Loan columns

Still on the subject of views and printing. Many of you wanted to produce loan reports, listing who the item was on loan to. As the loan information is stored in another table in the database, the loan columns did not show up in the table automatically. With Readerware 2.25 you can now add loan columns to any view, display the information on the screen and print it.

Using either the new View preferences dialog described above or the popup menus, you will now be able to show and hide the Loan To, Loan Date and Loan Due Date columns.

• Readerware Loan Tracker

Deleting Databases and Multiple Items

Another frequently requested feature was the ability to delete a database and multiple rows within a database. Both of these features are in Readerware 2.25.

As a Readerware database is made up of several files, it used to be difficult to delete an old database. Now simply select File->Delete Database from the Readerware menu. The standard file selection browser is displayed and you can select the database you want to delete. Note that you cannot delete the open database. Readerware will then display a confirmation dialog. Make sure this is what you want to do because there is no going back after you hit the "Yes" button. Readerware will permanently delete all database files and images.

Of course you can backup a database prior to deleting it. The Readerware backup facility will create a compressed zip file of the complete database, all the data and images. You can then copy this backup file to CD and if you ever need the data back, simply restore it.

Deleting several rows at a time is another new feature in Readerware 2.25. Simply select the rows you want to delete and click on the delete button in the toolbar. Again you will receive a confirmation dialog before the delete takes place. When you click on the Yes button, Readerware will delete all the selected rows and their associated images.

To select a row in the table, click on the row selection icon, the first icon in each row. To select a range of rows, hold down the shift key and select the end of the range. To select additional non-contiguous rows, hold down the Ctrl key and click on a row. To select all rows in the database, you can click on Edit->Select All in the Readerware menu.

These are very useful and powerful features, but they can also be dangerous. Delete a row or database by mistake and you cannot get the data back. So always backup your Readerware database.

ReaderwareAW Report Writer

There was a bug in the ReaderwareAW report Writer. Including track information in your templates was not working. Looking into this it became necessary to expand the template format to better handle track information.

If you are familiar with Readerware report writer templates you will know that you embed special keywords into an HTML file that tell Readerware where to substitute data. You define the start and end of the substitution area, Readerware then duplicates this section of the template once for each item you print. Then Readerware replaces the keywords within the substitution area with the data from your database.

The ReaderwareAW template structure has been extended to handle disks and track information in the same way. A CD can consist of multiple disks so you define a disk area in your template, this will be duplicated for each disk included in the CD. Similarly each disk can contain a different number of tracks, so you define a track area within the disk area and this section of the template is duplicated once for each track within the disk.

There is a new sample template included with Readerware 2.25. It will produce a web page or report containing disk and track information. You can use the awTrackReport template as is or customize it to meet your needs.

Here is a simple example:

[[$BEGIN_READERWAREAW]] [[$IMAGE]] <BR>[[$TITLE]] <BR>[[$ARTIST]] <BR>[[$UPC]] <BR>[[$CATEGORY]] <BR>[[$RATING]] [[$BEGIN_READERWAREAW_DISKS]] <BR>DISK [[$DISKNUMBER]]: <TABLE BORDER=1> [[$BEGIN_READERWAREAW_TRACKS]] <TR> <TD>[[$TRACKNUMBER]]</TD> <TD>[[$TITLE]]</TD> </TR> [[$END_READERWAREAW_TRACKS]] </TABLE> [[$END_READERWAREAW_DISKS]] [[$END_READERWAREAW]]

This is followed by the BEGIN_READERWAREAW_DISKS - END_READERWAREAW_DISKS section, this simply displays the disk number and starts a table for the tracks.

Within the disks section is the BEGIN_READERWAREAW_TRACKS - END_READERWAREAW_TRACKS section, this displays the track titles as separate rows in the table.

Remember that Readerware automatically duplicates these sections of the template, the READERWAREAW template section is duplicated once for each CD you are printing, within that the DISKS section is duplicated once for each disk in the CD set. Finally within the DISKS section is the TRACKS section, this is duplicated once for each track on the disk.

To see how this works, run the sample template in the report writer and save the generated HTML. Then you can open the HTML file in a text editor and see how Readerware has substituted the data for the template.

Site News

Lots of site news.

Borders is Back!

As mentioned is a previous newsletter Borders has closed its online doors. If you go to borders.com today, you will end up at Amazon. But there is good news, the Borders database is still online. Borders has one of the best databases, more items, supports a UPC search and is better organized than most. The Borders database for example is the only source of LaserDisc titles. I had to update all the URLs to point to the new Borders site, but with Readerware 2.25, you can once again run auto-catalog against the Borders database. It works with all products, so you can search for all your books, music and video titles at Borders.

You can also drag and drop from Borders:

• Readerware Search Page
  
• ReaderwareAW Search Page
  
• ReaderwareVW Search Page
• Readerware Drag and Drop Support

• Borders

ReaderwareVW now supports the Internet Movie Database, IMDb. Their database is second to none, they have everything. Unfortunately they do not support a UPC search.

So what does this mean to the ReaderwareVW user? ReaderwareVW auto-catalog is the easiest way to catalog your collection. Simply scan or enter a barcode, ReaderwareVW searches for the item and adds it to your database. But auto-catalog can only access sites that support a product ID search.

The good news is that with the new drag and drop support introduced in Readerware 2.2, you can now catalog from sites that don't have a UPC search.

Just go to the IMDb web site in your browser, find the title you are looking for and then drag and drop, it's cataloged. Not as easy as auto-catalog maybe, but the second easiest way to catalog your collection. The IMDb database is a mine of information containing full credits for most movies and ReaderwareVW will extract it all, images too if available. Drag and drop, it's cataloged.

You can start your search at the ReaderwareVW search page:

• ReaderwareVW Search Page
• Internet Movie Database
• Readerware Drag and Drop Support

The CDDB database lists just about every CD. So it is great resource for CD collectors. Like IMDb, they do not support a UPC search so it is only accessible using ReaderwareAW drag and drop..

Unfortunately CDDB only has a basic track listing, there are no images or label information etc. But ReaderwareAW will generate a full track list for you from the CDDB database, and you can add your own images as discussed earlier. CDDB started out as a database for CD player software, a way to get a track list when playing a CD on your computer.

The CDDB database was actually built by users, users who took the time to add their new CDs to the CDDB database. Somewhere along the way CDDB, now known as Gracenote, decided that all that user entered data was theirs. That upset a number of people and freedb.org was born. This is basically the same concept as CDDB but with all their data freely available. As freedb is newer, it doesn't have as many titles as CDDB, however the freedb web search does provide more information, but again no images.

You can drag and drop from both CDDB and freedb. Try them both out and decide which you like best. A useful strategy is to search freedb first and then CDDB if freedb does not have the title. The ReaderwareAW search page provides a good starting point and an easy way to search both sites without having to enter the search data twice.

• ReaderwareAW Search Page
• CDDB (Gracenote)
• freedb
• Readerware Drag and Drop Support

Turn a Webcam into a Barcode Reader

There is an interesting new program called CamK@t that will scan a barcode using a webcam. Instead of scanning a book with a barcode reader hold it up to your webcam. The software recognizes and decodes the barcode data. It has the ability to pass the decoded data to any program, including Readerware. I have been playing around with this program, it takes a bit of getting used to, but it works as advertised.

Personally I think it is easier to use a real barcode reader and as there are free and low cost barcode readers available, there is no reason not to use one.

At least in the US. Unfortunately many of these devices. like the CueCat® for example, are not available outside of the US. So the CamK@t may be an option. It will work anywhere, with virtually any webcam.

If you have a webcam, You can download a free demo version from their web site and try it out for yourself. It is fairly easy to set up but a little cumbersome to use. The Installer is not in English, but the product itself is. CamK@t shows you a live picture from the camera with a red mark to indicate the center of the picture. Hold the item so that this mark is over the barcode and it will be scanned. I found the continuous scan mode the easiest to use. You might have to adjust focus and light etc. It takes some practice but you can get the hang of it.

To feed the scanned data directly into Readerware, you have to enter the title of the window that will receive the data. This is normally the Readerware auto-catalog wizard. Once set up, CamK@t will pass each scan to Readerware and it will be entered in your auto-catalog list.

You can also capture the scans to a text file and use the file as input to Readerware auto-catalog.

It is a pretty interesting program, I am impressed that they can scan barcodes as well as they do.

• http://www.camkat.com

Your Feedback

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