macOS Personal book catalog for OS X. How to in SL and above?

TheGenerous · Jul 4, 2013

I'm interested in coding a Book catalog for personal use in Xcode. A basic application I could do in Matlab but I'd want my dad to be able to use it.

I want it to work in Snow Leopard and above. How can I do that?

Thank you

Consultant · Jul 4, 2013

TheGenerous said:
I'm interested in coding a Book catalog for personal use in Xcode. A basic application I could do in Matlab but I'd want my dad to be able to use it.

I want it to work in Snow Leopard and above. How can I do that?

Thank you

Ever heard of Delicious Library?
http://www.delicious-monster.com/

TheGenerous · Jul 4, 2013

Consultant said:
Ever heard of Delicious Library?
http://www.delicious-monster.com/

I've tested it already. Thanks for suggesting it.

I'm imterested in coding a custom built application for me and my dad. Basically we have the catalog in txt files and image files. We just want to compile them in any way we'd like; pdf, html, or LaTeX. And if we want to use another OS in the future I could port it while keeping the txt and image database intact.

subsonix · Jul 5, 2013

TheGenerous said:
I've tested it already. Thanks for suggesting it.

I'm imterested in coding a custom built application for me and my dad. Basically we have the catalog in txt files and image files. We just want to compile them in any way we'd like; pdf, html, or LaTeX. And if we want to use another OS in the future I could port it while keeping the txt and image database intact.

You could probably make the database with SQLite, it's readily available on OS X and is portable. Then create a graphical front end that operates on the data base, presents results, offers searches and so on.

chown33 · Jul 5, 2013

TheGenerous said:
I'm imterested in coding a custom built application for me and my dad.

What programming languages do you know?

All you've mentioned is Matlab. We can't read your mind, and all we know about you and your skills is what you tell us.

Basically we have the catalog in txt files and image files. We just want to compile them in any way we'd like; pdf, html, or LaTeX.

I'm not sure what you mean.

Are you describing the behavior of the book-catalog program itself? That is, the book-catalog program works by converting txt and image files into different formats (PDF, HTML, or LaTeX), but has no other behaviors or responsibilities, such as displaying the catalog or interacting with the user.

It's important to provide a clear and complete description of what the program should do. We can't read your mind, we can't see the files on your disk, we only know what you tell us about your goals for the program.

And if we want to use another OS in the future I could port it while keeping the txt and image database intact.

How important is portability? Is it something you'd be willing to sacrifice, say, for ease or speed of development?

For example, if it takes about two weeks to write a non-portable program, or 4 months to write a portable one, which would you rather do?

subsonix · Jul 5, 2013

chown33 said:
All you've mentioned is Matlab.

He mentioned that he could do it in Matlab but was interested in doing it in Xcode. That pretty much implies Obj-C and Cocoa.

chown33 · Jul 5, 2013

subsonix said:
He mentioned that he could do it in Matlab but was interested in doing it in Xcode. That pretty much implies Obj-C and Cocoa.

He asked for PDF, HTML, or LaTeX output, so it's not entirely clear to me what he wants the program to do.

It's possible he wants something like a command-line tool, but packaged in a way that doesn't require a Terminal window or command-line. For that, a shell script wrapped with Platypus would probably work.

Or it's possible that learning Python would work. It has GUI capabilities, and may be easier for a beginner to get something useful from.

subsonix · Jul 5, 2013

chown33 said:
He asked for PDF, HTML, or LaTeX output, so it's not entirely clear to me what he wants the program to do.

I assumed he wanted to store them in the data base, that would be fine as blobs. If he wants to preview them in the application it self, then that's going to be a whole lot more complicated, agreed.

chown33 said:
It's possible he wants something like a command-line tool, but packaged in a way that doesn't require a Terminal window or command-line. For that, a shell script wrapped with Platypus would probably work.

Or it's possible that learning Python would work. It has GUI capabilities, and may be easier for a beginner to get something useful from.

True, good points.

chown33 · Jul 5, 2013

subsonix said:
I assumed he wanted to store them in the data base, that would be fine as blobs. If he wants to preview them in the application it self, then that's going to be a whole lot more complicated, agreed.

I was thinking the same thing, until he wrote this:

... while keeping the txt and image database intact.

That's when I stopped thinking, "He wants to read an existing txt file and image files into a database", and started wondering, "Maybe he wants to continue using the txt file as the primary 'database'".

To me, it's unclear if the current txt file is only intended to be used to seed the app's database, after which it will be ignored, or whether the txt file is intended to be the ongoing primary data source, to be edited in the future, for repeated use by the app (import it, export it, etc.).

In short, does the OP want a simple converter program, or a fully interactive book-catalog program?

TheGenerous · Jul 6, 2013

Thank you so much for helping me.

I think all of you are right. I haven't thought about those details; portability, language, scripts.

I've been seeing many companies and software being acquired recently. And it has killed a couple of my projects in the last five years. I could just use Evernote or iWork for creating the catalog. But it's a hassle migrating databases. In contrast, my music collection relies in the filestructure and it's been good for me.

This book catalog is something I'm interested in keeping for years.

For the last year, I've been programming for data analysis in grad school (Matlab, Labview, ImageJ) and thought I could be able to make a small personal application on the Mac. Again, thank you for helping me besides I'm quite lost.

calbear98 · Nov 27, 2013

What fields/information do you want to store in the catalog? Can you show an example of some lines from your text file?

I was building a web app for this but switched to building a mobile app, because I realized I don't want to sit at a computer with stacks of my books and CDs.

Let me know, because I want to build a good app and make it easy for people to import their lists.

TheGenerous said:
Thank you so much for helping me.

I think all of you are right. I haven't thought about those details; portability, language, scripts.

I've been seeing many companies and software being acquired recently. And it has killed a couple of my projects in the last five years. I could just use Evernote or iWork for creating the catalog. But it's a hassle migrating databases. In contrast, my music collection relies in the filestructure and it's been good for me.

This book catalog is something I'm interested in keeping for years.

For the last year, I've been programming for data analysis in grad school (Matlab, Labview, ImageJ) and thought I could be able to make a small personal application on the Mac. Again, thank you for helping me besides I'm quite lost.

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macOS Personal book catalog for OS X. How to in SL and above?

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