[Alexandria-list] Now Alexandria supports music CDs, movie DVDs, games, ...

[Marco Costantini]

Dear all,

On Saturday 24 February 2007 20:37, Joseph Method wrote:
> Great news. Do you expect any possible issues with image sizing, etc?

No, there aren't. The code used for that is the same code used for books (both 
in the file book_providers/thalia.rb and in the rest of Alexandria). Hence I 
expect that there are no issues other that  those possible with books and a 
given provider.

> As I mentioned before, I think this is a good direction for Alexandria
> to go in the future. It would be great to enable Amazon, etc. to do
> this as well.

With provider bol.it is already possible to do the same. At the beginning of 
book_providers/bol_it.rb there is a line

LOCALE = "libri" # possible locales are: "libri", "inglesi", "video", 
"musica", "choco"

(Probably the name "locale" for the variable is not good.) By changing this 
variable, you can catalogate respectively Italian books, English books, video 
DVDs, music CDs, and chocolate (yes, they sell chocolate too).
It would by nice to change this, and make the choice of this variable a 
selectable preference, but I don't know how to do it.

Also with provider ibs_it it is possible to catalogate music: I have a slight 
modification of the file ibs_it that does the job.

> For the current release, I think this should be treated as an
> "unsupported feature". 

I would say "experimental feature". Currently, it is simply that Thalia 
returns information about a book or a CD or DVD, according to the EAN number 
entered; and Alexandria doesn't know that the object could not be a book. 
There isn't any option or feature to enable or disable, nor any part of the 
code specific to non-book objects.

> For later releases, we should consider how and
> whether to differentiate the data model and ui for CDs, DVDs, etc. For
> example, most functionality could depend on a common interface of
> Possession, but a MusicCD, which conforms to the Possession interface,
> would have special attributes, such as a track listing with links to
> open a music player.

An integration with the ruby program MusicExtras (see 
http://musicextras.divineinvasion.net/ ) would be possible.

Also providers specific to music could be added, see for instance
http://www.cdquest.com/music/details.aspx?id=0028943876926
(0028943876926 is the EAN).

Does someone of you know a good provider for CDs or DVDs? Good in the sense of 
wide database and easy parsable web pages.

On the other hand, in my opinion, Alexandria should continue to focus on 
books, and provide the cataloging of non-book objects just as a byproduct of 
being a good program for books. Let's be warned about the risks of 
"featuritis" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Featuritis ), and let's think 
well before adding all this stuff. Track listing could not fit so well in a 
program for books.

Greetings,
Marco