Readerware Newsletter

Welcome to the Readerware Newsletter

Readerware 2.77 is now shipping. Replace wizard improvements, backup/restore updates and Mac OS X performance improvements.

In this issue, tracking sold items, fun with the report writer and more.

Visit the Readerware Newsletter archive, all back issues of the newsletter are online.

Readerware 2.77 Now Shipping

Release 2.77 is now available for all products (Readerware, ReaderwareAW and ReaderwareVW), and all platforms, (Windows, Mac OS X and Linux). A full list of the changes included in 2.77 is available online:

Readerware 2.77 changes

Some of the highlights in this release.

Mac OS X users will want to upgrade. There are significant GUI performance improvements, scrolling is much faster, smoother screen refreshes and the double scrolling bug has been fixed. Also the filters are now working correctly with the new OS X file dialogs and you can select all valid file types.

The replace wizard has a new copies field editor. You can now set, increment or decrement the copies field by the entered amount. Useful when recording sales, use the replace wizard to scan in the barcodes and decrement available copies.

UPC codes are now validated. A common error when entering UPC codes by hand was to only input part of the code, all the digits printed on the barcode label must be input. Readerware now validates the length and the check digit.

A couple of important bug fixes in this release and some backup/restore improvements, so it is recommended that all users upgrade.

Download Readerware 2.77

Upgrade Policy

Most of you know this by now but Readerware 2.77 is a free upgrade. All 2.x upgrades are free.

You can always download the latest 2.x release for free. If you ever want the latest version on CD, you can order it from the web site for $12.

Readerware CD

Tracking Sold Copies

There has been some discussion recently on the Readerware Message Boards about how you would mark items as sold in your database. Readerware doesn't currently have this feature, but there are a number of ways you can track sold copies with Readerware.

Readerware 2.77 introduces a change to the replace wizard. The new copies editor allows you to set, increment or decrement the copies count. As always you can adjust the whole database, current search results or selected items. You can also input a list of ISBNs.

So you can easily track sold items and reduce the available copies. Just use the replace wizard, scan the sold books and you can automatically decrement the available copies count. If you are using copies to track quantities for sale, this new feature should make it easy to track your sold items too.

What if you want to include the sold items in your uploads to sites like Amazon? The Amazon UIEE file format does support removing sold items. But because Readerware does not currently have a field for tracking sales, it is not set when you create the UIEE file.

But it is fairly easy to do this yourself. The first step is to add a user defined field to the database. Select Edit->Preferences, User Columns tab and add a field called "Sold" to the database. Amazon expects this field to contain a value between 1 and 7, 1 = add, 2-7 mean delete.

To prepare your database, use the replace wizard and set the new Sold field to "1", i.e. all your books are for sale. As you sell books you will want to change this field to "2". You can just edit this field manually or use the replace wizard. As before with the copies field, you can simply scan the sold books and let Readerware set the Sold field to "2".

You can easily create a TAB delimited or CSV file containing the sold indicator.

But there is no way to create a UIEE file with user defined fields. Enter the Readerware report writer. The report writer is template based. Typically you create an HTML template to define your report format. Readerware then merges in the data and creates an HTML file that you can print or save. But the templates don't have to be HTML, so you can define a template to create virtually any text based format.

Here is an example that will create a simplified UIEE file:

[[$BEGIN_READERWARE]]UR|[[$ROWKEY]]AA|[[$AUTHOR]]TI|[[$TITLE]]PU|[[$PUBLISHER]]DP|[[$PUBDATE]]BD|[[$BOOKFORMAT]]NT|[[$ISBN]]PR|[[$VALUE]]XB|[[$USER1]][[$END_READERWARE]]

This template simply consists of the UIEE tags and the appropriate Readerware keywords. The report writer will replace the keywords with the data from your database. Notice that the XB tag references the first user defined field, which in this example is the Sold field.

Save that in your reports\RW directory as UIEE.txt. You will need to restart Readerware before it will pick up new template files. Simply run the report writer and save the output. You now have a UIEE file containing your sold indicator.

You can use this technique to create virtually any test based file format.

For more information, visit these links:

Adding user defined columns
Readerware Report Writer
Amazon UIEE format

More fun with the Readerware Report Writer

Not all of the advanced features in the Readerware report writer are for dealers. A number of other questions have come up recently that can be answered with a quick report writer template.

Some users have asked for a way to create the book cover images as "isbn.gif" files. Readerware stores the images using the internal row number as not all books have an ISBN. So how can you create image files with the ISBN as the name?

Again, you can create a report writer template that will create a file of Readerware images and the corresponding ISBN.

Here is a simple example:

[[$BEGIN_READERWARE]]Copy "[[$IMAGENAME]]"[[$RAWISBN]].* [[$END_READERWARE]]

Run the report writer and save the output as a file. If you look at it you will see that the report writer created a DOS batch file. You can save it as a .bat file and run it to copy your image files and name them with the ISBN. You can easily change the sample to create the appropriate copy command for other platforms.

Another common question deals with exporting track information using ReaderwareAW. There is no standard way of formatting this amount of variable information. But developing a template and using the report writer to create the file, you can list album and track information in virtually any format.

A simple example:

[[$BEGIN_READERWAREAW]]"[[$TITLE]]","[[$ARTIST]]"[[$BEGIN_READERWAREAW_DISKS]][[$BEGIN_READERWAREAW_TRACKS]]"[[$TITLE]]" [[$END_READERWAREAW_TRACKS]][[$END_READERWAREAW_DISKS]][[$END_READERWAREAW]]

This will create a CSV file with album information on one line followed by all the tracks then a blank line.

These are just a few examples of what you can accomplish using the Readerware report writer. It is a very powerful feature.

For more information, visit these links:

Readerware Report Writer
ReaderwareAW Report Writer
ReaderwareVW Report Writer

Safari

Readerware browser integration has been tested with the new Safari browser for Mac OS X that Apple announced this week at Macworld San Francisco. Everything works fine, you can launch it from within Readerware and drag and drop to catalog items

For those of you who haven't tried it yet, it is a very nice browser, fast and lean. Yet with all the features you need, built in Google search, SnapBack technology, popup blocker etc.. You can download it from the Apple site. Of course you can still use Netscape 7 or Microsoft Internet Explorer with Readerware. Readerware will launch your default browser.

Readerware Drag and Drop
Apple Safari Browser

Your Feedback

Your feedback is always welcome and does make a difference. Please send in your comments. E-Mail support@readerware.com.

Thanks for your support.

To remove yourself from this list, please reply to this e-mail with REMOVE in the subject. You may also unsubscribe from the web site at http://www.readerware.com/rwSub.html.