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Specify Book Format/Find and Replace/Wordpress

Posted: Wed Dec 01, 2010 11:42 pm
by witchkitten
First, I'd like to say that the pedias are amazing applications and I'm so incredibly grateful for them. They're among my favorite applications for my mac and some of the most used as I love cataloging. They're incredibly well built and user friendly. Now that I've said how wonderful they are, I'd like to say what I think is missing and would improve my user experience.

1. I noticed that someone already requested adding a way of searching blu-ray vs. dvd in DVDpedia and I wanted to request that there be a way of specifying the format (Kindle, paperback, or hardcover) in the search for Bookpedia as well. It used to be that if you searched for a title in Bookpedia all formats would show up but then Amazon changed something and now only one shows up, usually Kindle. I know that I can add paperback to the end of the search or hardcover or kindle but it would still be nice to just be able to select the format somewhere.

2. The other request I'd like to make is the ability to find a replace, especially for the descriptions but would also be useful in other fields. I've found that there are some inconsistencies in the book descriptions in Amazon as far as punctuation and I'd like to be able to fix them without having to go through each and every entry. For example, some descriptions use "--" for a long dash, others use "—" or " -- " (same as the first but has spaces before and after) or "---". Being able to search for "--" and replace all of them with "—" would be incredibly useful. So far, I've been trying to go through all of my library (which is quite large) and change them individually but this is very tedious.

3. And, I'd also like to renew another request that was previously made (and I commented on) but hasn't been addressed in a while which is the ability to export into Wordpress or the creation of a wordpress plugin. I'd really like to put my library up on my blog but there is no way of doing it. This would be incredibly useful for all the pedias.

Thanks for the great applications.

Re: Specify Book Format/Find and Replace/Wordpress

Posted: Fri Dec 03, 2010 6:03 pm
by Conor
Those are some very thoughtful and detailed feature request, thank you for taking the time to provide that feedback. The good news is that they are all under development, and in the order that you mentioned them. We are working on some very big changes to make the first two not only possible but also useful to all Bookpedia users. The third we are not sure if we will be able to include in time for the next version, but it's coming.

In the meantime if you are feeling technical you can take advantage of the open SQL database Bookpedia uses to run the find and replace. SQL is very powerful and it's easy to delete data without warning, so first make a copy of your database file in "~/Library/Application Support/Bookpedia/Database.bookpd". Quit Bookpedia and run the program called Terminal. Copy paste these 3 lines one at a time followed by a return:

Code: Select all

~/Library/Application\ Support/Bookpedia/Database.bookpd
update zEntry set zSummary = replace(zSummary, '--', '–');
.exit
You can add several more of the middle command line, to replace other characters and in other fields.

Re: Specify Book Format/Find and Replace/Wordpress

Posted: Sat Dec 04, 2010 1:23 pm
by sjk
witchkitten wrote:… the ability to export into Wordpress or the creation of a wordpress plugin. I'd really like to put my library up on my blog but there is no way of doing it.
Not sure I understand this. While there isn't a direct method of exporting to Wordpress (et.al.) can't you simply export a 'pedia library then import or link to that?