From tristil at gmail.com  Wed Jan 17 18:19:37 2007
From: tristil at gmail.com (Joseph Method)
Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2007 18:19:37 -0500
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Stopgap release
Message-ID: <167b6aa00701171519h20aa3e24w466c666900cc67f7@mail.gmail.com>

Hi, I've done a tiny unofficial pseudo-release of Alexandria at:

http://files.dererum.com/alexandria-0.6.1.1-stopgap.tar.gz

from the diff at http://files.dererum.com/0.6.1.1.diff

This is just to get people talking, I guess. Changes are:

* Added read, own, and want book attributes, reflected in book
properties window and in the listview. Owning precludes wanting,
apparently.
* Added crude, currently pointless tags field to book properties window.
* Fixed  bug #5911 re: about window not closing.
* Fixed bug blocking adding smart folders.
* Added new default smart libraries Read, Owned and Wishlist
* Added new bug: recurring error message in console:
GLib-GObject-WARNING **:IA__g_object_set_property: object class
`GtkCellRendererToggle' has no property named `text'

So most of these were 'easy' to do (but hard for me, because the
codebase is somewhat intricate and mysterious at times). I would like
to suggest that anyone who is still interested help me to move toward
a 6.2 release. I would like to advertise on ruby lists for more
volunteers to help with this goal. It seems to me that a 6.2 release
would require:

* tackling all the random crash bugs
* establishing new project leadership (hopefully several active
members with commit rights) for the Rubyforge repository and website.

and that's about it. Any thoughts?

-- 
-J. Method

From arrak at arrak.org  Wed Jan 17 23:37:40 2007
From: arrak at arrak.org (Mathieu Leduc-Hamel)
Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2007 23:37:40 -0500
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Stopgap release
In-Reply-To: <167b6aa00701171519h20aa3e24w466c666900cc67f7@mail.gmail.com>
References: <167b6aa00701171519h20aa3e24w466c666900cc67f7@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <c2c16f990701172037x62085d00tf6c5fdfe9e279e6a@mail.gmail.com>

I was curious and a little bit anxious to have some news of
alexandria, in fact I was researching a new book collection manager (I
found gcstar that was very cool and complete but coded in gtk2-perl
and his interface is little bit strange)

I would like to help and make something for alexandria.

In fact many things in the TODO are interesting to implement and maybe
we can start by reviewing the priorities (for myself I would like to
implement something like this : http://www.delicious-monster.com/)

What do you think?

mathieu

On 1/17/07, Joseph Method <tristil at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi, I've done a tiny unofficial pseudo-release of Alexandria at:
>
> http://files.dererum.com/alexandria-0.6.1.1-stopgap.tar.gz
>
> from the diff at http://files.dererum.com/0.6.1.1.diff
>
> This is just to get people talking, I guess. Changes are:
>
> * Added read, own, and want book attributes, reflected in book
> properties window and in the listview. Owning precludes wanting,
> apparently.
> * Added crude, currently pointless tags field to book properties window.
> * Fixed  bug #5911 re: about window not closing.
> * Fixed bug blocking adding smart folders.
> * Added new default smart libraries Read, Owned and Wishlist
> * Added new bug: recurring error message in console:
> GLib-GObject-WARNING **:IA__g_object_set_property: object class
> `GtkCellRendererToggle' has no property named `text'
>
> So most of these were 'easy' to do (but hard for me, because the
> codebase is somewhat intricate and mysterious at times). I would like
> to suggest that anyone who is still interested help me to move toward
> a 6.2 release. I would like to advertise on ruby lists for more
> volunteers to help with this goal. It seems to me that a 6.2 release
> would require:
>
> * tackling all the random crash bugs
> * establishing new project leadership (hopefully several active
> members with commit rights) for the Rubyforge repository and website.
>
> and that's about it. Any thoughts?
>
> --
> -J. Method
> _______________________________________________
> Alexandria-list mailing list
> Alexandria-list at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/alexandria-list
>

From tristil at gmail.com  Thu Jan 18 00:34:40 2007
From: tristil at gmail.com (Joseph Method)
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2007 00:34:40 -0500
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Stopgap release
In-Reply-To: <c2c16f990701172037x62085d00tf6c5fdfe9e279e6a@mail.gmail.com>
References: <167b6aa00701171519h20aa3e24w466c666900cc67f7@mail.gmail.com>
	<c2c16f990701172037x62085d00tf6c5fdfe9e279e6a@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <167b6aa00701172134g3efe9432j98d3e4ed3b3179fa@mail.gmail.com>

Delicious Monster is a great program that builds on the Mac Cocoa
interface, so it just looks nice. Plus the shelves are made from lush
mahogany But in terms of its basic feature set, Alexandria and DM are
comparable. The major difference is that DM does music and movies.
Conceptually, Alexandria might even go beyond DM with its smart
libraries.

I have some ideas for how Alexandria can distinguish itself:

* Bibliographies. Think playlists of books.
* Integrate tightly with the Gnome platform. A major meta-goal of
development could be to get inclusion in Gnome releases and in a major
distro. Examples of integration are a plugin to make bibliographies
from Alexandria available in Openoffice and a Beagle plugin. Other
ideas?
* (blue sky) Multi-user access based on a new client-server framework.

But the main practical priority at the moment is making Alexandria
stable. I think this requires a thorough code review. Expanded unit
tests for what works and doesn't work would be a great start.

On 1/17/07, Mathieu Leduc-Hamel <arrak at arrak.org> wrote:
> I was curious and a little bit anxious to have some news of
> alexandria, in fact I was researching a new book collection manager (I
> found gcstar that was very cool and complete but coded in gtk2-perl
> and his interface is little bit strange)
>
> I would like to help and make something for alexandria.
>
> In fact many things in the TODO are interesting to implement and maybe
> we can start by reviewing the priorities (for myself I would like to
> implement something like this : http://www.delicious-monster.com/)
>
> What do you think?
>
> mathieu

-- 
-J. Method

From arrak at arrak.org  Thu Jan 18 10:52:16 2007
From: arrak at arrak.org (Mathieu Leduc-Hamel)
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2007 10:52:16 -0500
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Stopgap release
In-Reply-To: <167b6aa00701172134g3efe9432j98d3e4ed3b3179fa@mail.gmail.com>
References: <167b6aa00701171519h20aa3e24w466c666900cc67f7@mail.gmail.com>
	<c2c16f990701172037x62085d00tf6c5fdfe9e279e6a@mail.gmail.com>
	<167b6aa00701172134g3efe9432j98d3e4ed3b3179fa@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <c2c16f990701180752o50f720kac21f919a144b856@mail.gmail.com>

Hi Joseph,

> Delicious Monster is a great program that builds on the Mac Cocoa
> interface, so it just looks nice. Plus the shelves are made from lush
> mahogany But in terms of its basic feature set, Alexandria and DM are
> comparable. The major difference is that DM does music and movies.
> Conceptually, Alexandria might even go beyond DM with its smart
> libraries.

Yes, exactly, in DM you have some cool features (webcam barcode
scanning, great graphical interface...) but we have the chance to
build something openly with the help of many people on great
plateform.

Alexandria lost his visibility when the development start slow down...

> I have some ideas for how Alexandria can distinguish itself:

> * Bibliographies. Think playlists of books.
Something like bibtex on kde???

> * Integrate tightly with the Gnome platform. A major meta-goal of
> development could be to get inclusion in Gnome releases and in a major
> distro. Examples of integration are a plugin to make bibliographies
> from Alexandria available in Openoffice and a Beagle plugin. Other
> ideas?

Deskbar, gnome-vfs?

> * (blue sky) Multi-user access based on a new client-server framework.

Something like daap would be cool

> But the main practical priority at the moment is making Alexandria
> stable. I think this requires a thorough code review. Expanded unit
> tests for what works and doesn't work would be a great start.

Did you take a look at the actual unittest framework??

And first of all did you have any contact with the current package
maintainer? with the people of alandria? Do you know if they have any
interest in the project?

Mathieu

From tristil at gmail.com  Thu Jan 18 11:15:48 2007
From: tristil at gmail.com (Joseph Method)
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2007 11:15:48 -0500
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Stopgap release
In-Reply-To: <c2c16f990701180752o50f720kac21f919a144b856@mail.gmail.com>
References: <167b6aa00701171519h20aa3e24w466c666900cc67f7@mail.gmail.com>
	<c2c16f990701172037x62085d00tf6c5fdfe9e279e6a@mail.gmail.com>
	<167b6aa00701172134g3efe9432j98d3e4ed3b3179fa@mail.gmail.com>
	<c2c16f990701180752o50f720kac21f919a144b856@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <167b6aa00701180815u332ef58cgb96c2719e1a504a6@mail.gmail.com>

> Yes, exactly, in DM you have some cool features (webcam barcode
> scanning, great graphical interface...) but we have the chance to
> build something openly with the help of many people on great
> plateform.

+1 :)

> > * Bibliographies. Think playlists of books.
> Something like bibtex on kde???

Right now we have two concepts: Libraries and Smart Libraries.
Libraries are containers for books, and Smart Libraries dynamically
query the regular libraries. So I mean we extend the concept of
Library and Smart Library to make a Bibliography, or just Book List,
where it's not a container but more like a playlist, a list of
pointers to books that are already in a library. The export function
will export to bibtex, and other formats. I think this would be useful
for academics who may "own" the books they want to reference.

One thing we ought to do is help justify why people want to put their
books in a database. For me, the main justification is the principle
of Input Once.

> > * Integrate tightly with the Gnome platform. A major meta-goal of
> > development could be to get inclusion in Gnome releases and in a major
> > distro. Examples of integration are a plugin to make bibliographies
> > from Alexandria available in Openoffice and a Beagle plugin. Other
> > ideas?
>
> Deskbar, gnome-vfs?

Yeah, a deskbar plugin. I don't understand about gnome-vfs, though. Do
you mean so that books could be displayed through Nautilus?

> > * (blue sky) Multi-user access based on a new client-server framework.

> Something like daap would be cool

I had to Wikipedia this, but yeah. ITunes is a great metaphor for what
Alexandria could be.

> > But the main practical priority at the moment is making Alexandria
> > stable. I think this requires a thorough code review. Expanded unit
> > tests for what works and doesn't work would be a great start.
>
> Did you take a look at the actual unittest framework??

Yes, currently the unittests in Alexandria are for the book providers
and the isbn validity checker. Right now 4 of the tests are failing
(Amadeus, Barnes & Noble, MCU, Proxis). I want to add functional unit
tests for internal application mechanisms. I think the procedure is
usually to identify a bug, define the error condition, write the
unittest, fix the problem, make sure it never fails again. Alexandria
crashes in many places, but the most troublesome area is around book
adding.

> And first of all did you have any contact with the current package
> maintainer? with the people of alandria? Do you know if they have any
> interest in the project?
>
> Mathieu
>

I sort of figure that they would be reading the list and responding to
these efforts if they were still interested. But of course I am going
to write them. We need to get some people added to the project page so
we can commit to the repository and create new releases. Anyone out
there with project privileges?

Olivier Jousselin has said he will be able to help in the short term.
I suggested we have an organizational meeting on IRC.

-- 
-J. Method

From synergism at gmail.com  Thu Jan 18 12:17:26 2007
From: synergism at gmail.com (Ben Armstrong)
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2007 13:17:26 -0400
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Fwd:  Stopgap release
In-Reply-To: <167b6aa00701180901o5b0e1de7i5a2f9388accf3b58@mail.gmail.com>
References: <167b6aa00701171519h20aa3e24w466c666900cc67f7@mail.gmail.com>
	<3f1ae6620701180845k60fc09b2ncdf389f67961babd@mail.gmail.com>
	<167b6aa00701180901o5b0e1de7i5a2f9388accf3b58@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <3f1ae6620701180917r7325adb8n9a06bfa0e27683d4@mail.gmail.com>

This conversation happened in private email by accident, not by design.
Joseph requested I forward it to the list.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Joseph Method <tristil at gmail.com>
Date: Jan 18, 2007 1:01 PM
Subject: Re: [Alexandria-list] Stopgap release
To: Ben Armstrong <synergism at gmail.com>

> > * Added read, own, and want book attributes, reflected in book
> > properties window and in the listview. Owning precludes wanting,
> > apparently.
>
> Owning shouldn't preclude wanting.  I may have a copy but it is damaged
and
> now want another.  Or I might want another copy to give as a gift.  Also,
> consider these other relationships we have to books:

I was thinking that "Replace?" could be an attribute. And # of copies.
I agree that owning precluding wanting is a little funny. The
bookcrossing thing is frankly weird and sticky. I would just say that
you don't own it, but it's in your library, which the current
arrangement allows.

> I want to express all of these relationships in Alexandria, and also have
> Alexandria either directly handle some of the pecularities of each kind of
> relationship to "my" books, or be able to interface with other software
> which handles those pecularities (like tracking loans from libraries, due
> dates, renewals, etc. see http://libraryelf.com/ for this sort of thing)

What if some of these more esoteric options were pushed off into a
secondary notebook page in book properties? I think they're doable,
though. They just require some elaboration, especially in the
interface. I can foresee something where you have a simple # of copies
field in the main notebook page, then you switch to an advanced
notebook area where you can assign individual state to each copy.

> See also an earlier posting of mine to the list about this idea.  I have
not
> yet found the resources to follow through on it, but remain interested in
> it.
>
> Ben

One way to help would be to try your hand at designing glade or
photoshop mockups of your ideas, to show how the interface would work.

--
-J. Method
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From synergism at gmail.com  Thu Jan 18 12:27:03 2007
From: synergism at gmail.com (Ben Armstrong)
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2007 13:27:03 -0400
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Blue skying: Blogs,
	bookcrossing and book suggestions
In-Reply-To: <3f1ae6620510200434v7548d410ie509670249c3b887@mail.gmail.com>
References: <3f1ae6620510200434v7548d410ie509670249c3b887@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <3f1ae6620701180927j2512aaj1444fa75eae7db33@mail.gmail.com>

This was the post I alluded to in my earlier email.

Joseph, you suggested I mockup how things would look.  But what I've
described below is too broad for anything so specific.  If any of these
ideas have merit, they need to be narrowed down to achievable things that
are harmonious with the current design and goals of the Alexandria project.
Without narrowing my scope a bit, I won't have any starting point for a
mockup.

Ben

On 10/20/05, Ben Armstrong <synergism at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I found Alexandria in a search for software that knows about Amazon.  I
> had this idea that my program, Alibi, ought to be able to combine
> information about which books I have borrowed from the library with the
> information Amazon knows about book preferences (readers who bought book X
> also bought book Y).  Now that I have discovered alexandria, I am thinking
> this feature would fit just as nicely within alexandria as my own program.
> What do you think?
>
> Beyond just learning what big commercial sites like Amazon know about user
> preferences, this would work too in a more decentralized way, if Alexandria
> were to support some sort of publishing of reviews, ratings, etc.  I seem to
> recall in my intial browse of feature requests for Alexandria (though I
> don't have it at my fingertips) that someone had asked about RSS support.
> Wouldn't it be nice if Alexandria users were able to share in some P2P way
> their thoughts and preferences about books they own or have at least
> borrowed and read?  Wouldn't it be nice also if Alexandria users could share
> with each other (either in a public way, or at least among friends)
> materials they make available to others for loans?  A radical model for this
> sort of sharing is bookcrossing.com.  Wouldn't it be nice Bookcrossing
> were a provider for Alexandria as well?
>
> Through all of these connections, I imagine this scenario:
>
> 1. Someone recommends a book to you.
> 2. You turn to Alexandria, asking "who has this book?"
> 3. Alexandria says:
> - Your local library
> - Amazon
> - Proxis
> - Barnes & Noble
> - Several bookcrossers, one of whom is within 100 km of where you live
> - Your friend, Dave
> 4. You consider asking Dave if you can borrow the book; Dave is also an
> Alexandria user
> 5. You pull up the list of books Dave has said he is willing to loan; the
> book you want is on it
> 6. Furthermore, Dave has rated the book & written a little review, so you
> read his comments
> 7. You click on Dave's email address and send him a note requesting the
> book
> 8. It is a month later, you've managed to borrow the book & read it, and
> add your own rating/comments, now enriching the Alexandria user community
> with your own insights
> 9. You decide you'd like to read more books like this, so you ask
> Alexandria
> 10. Alexandria gives you a list of suggestions from several sources,
> including Amazon, Bookcrossing and the global Alexandria user community
>
> Ben
>
>
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From synergism at gmail.com  Thu Jan 18 13:13:08 2007
From: synergism at gmail.com (Ben Armstrong)
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2007 14:13:08 -0400
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Local libraries as providers & patron support
In-Reply-To: <3f1ae6620510190849w7fc59c5cp1ddabf6b74356c3c@mail.gmail.com>
References: <3f1ae6620510190849w7fc59c5cp1ddabf6b74356c3c@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <3f1ae6620701181013q5d7faae5p524acf91698a54f1@mail.gmail.com>

Ah, there was also this one.  And Laurent Sansonetti had this to say about
it:

Laurent> Your proposition sounds great to me, and would be a great feature
for
> Alexandria!
>
> Basically, what we should do is:
>
> - to provide a way to subscribe to a library PAC, giving all the info
(location, user, password...)
> - to put the result of the subscription in a read-only library,
periodically or manually refreshed
> - to provide a way to set up some alarms (e-mail, message dialog?) to
remain the user that some books are due
>
> What do you think, will this be OK for you?

But I was unclear about how this would fit into the current architecture of
Alexandria.  Perhaps this should be my starting point for a mockup?

Ben


On 10/19/05, Ben Armstrong <synergism at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I understand that alexandria taps into catalogues held by various
> providers to allow a user to manage a collection of books and materials they
> own.  Alexandria also supports loaning out these materials to others.  But I
> have an idea to extend alexandria to manage materials I have borrowed from
> others.
>
> Does it make sense to make local libraries providers for alexandria, and
> support patron records held at the local library to build future
> enhancements to alexandria?  That is, is it consistent with the development
> goals for this software for it to know about which books a person has
> currently out on loan from libraries, as well as those books held in a
> person's private collection (which may be loaned out to others)?
>
> I have developed such a library patron access application in Python, a
> language which I have invested less time in using since I discovered Ruby.
> I have considered for some months converting the whole thing from Python
> into Ruby, but because of the effort required to do that, I thought I'd look
> to see if anyone had solved my problem or some subset of it since I first
> wrote my application.
>
> The application is called Alibi, and resides here:
>
> http://alibi.nslug.ns.ca/
>
> The user base is extremely small (my own family and one other family,) and
> all of my great ideas for it have been in never-neverland for a few years.
> The problem is, it meets just enough of my own needs so that I've never been
> inspired to put the time into extending it further.
>
> That being said, the application is fully functional for use with two
> local libraries here in Halifax: our public library, and the university
> library network.  The public library is supported via web scraping, similar
> to how alexandria providers are implemented.  The university library is
> implemented by pairing an expect script with some screen scraping applied
> after the data is collected from that session.  If I have to reimplement the
> university library in Ruby, I might decide to abandon the screen scraper in
> favour of a new web scraping module for use with the university's new
> web-based system.
>
> I think what I'll start out trying to do with alexandria is to simply make
> alexandria know how to use my personal username and password to access my
> local public library to inject books currently out on my card into a "on
> loan from" library in alexandria.  When books are returned, they should
> remain in this library, but should be hidden from view.  I won't be able to
> replace alibi with this, because alibi also checks due dates and tells me
> when my books are due.  But eventually, I would want alexandria to do that,
> too, or at least communicate with an agent that handles those tasks.  I
> haven't decided yet whether such functionality even belongs in alexandria,
> or whether I should continue to keep alibi separate, and just use some
> common data format to exchange data between the two applications.
>
> I'd like to know if these ideas align with any of your development
> efforts, and if I put the work into making alexandria operate in this way
> for my own public library, if any of you would be interested in adapting it
> to work with other providers.
>
> Ben
>
>
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From pterjan at linuxfr.org  Thu Jan 18 11:46:16 2007
From: pterjan at linuxfr.org (Pascal Terjan)
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2007 17:46:16 +0100
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Stopgap release
In-Reply-To: <167b6aa00701180815u332ef58cgb96c2719e1a504a6@mail.gmail.com>
References: <167b6aa00701171519h20aa3e24w466c666900cc67f7@mail.gmail.com>
	<c2c16f990701172037x62085d00tf6c5fdfe9e279e6a@mail.gmail.com>
	<167b6aa00701172134g3efe9432j98d3e4ed3b3179fa@mail.gmail.com>
	<c2c16f990701180752o50f720kac21f919a144b856@mail.gmail.com>
	<167b6aa00701180815u332ef58cgb96c2719e1a504a6@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <1169138776.6869.36.camel@plop>

Le jeudi 18 janvier 2007 ? 11:15 -0500, Joseph Method a ?crit :
> > And first of all did you have any contact with the current package
> > maintainer? with the people of alandria? Do you know if they have any
> > interest in the project?
> >

The original author, Laurent, has no more time to work on alexandria
but, I'm sure, is still interested in this great app.
I contributed to this software (and use it) but have no more time due to
my numerous Free Software activities.

> I sort of figure that they would be reading the list and responding to
> these efforts if they were still interested. But of course I am going
> to write them. We need to get some people added to the project page so
> we can commit to the repository and create new releases. Anyone out
> there with project privileges?

I think only Laurent has Admin privilege on the project, but as he said
me few monthes ago he would like to find someone with enough time to
resurrect the project and I think he will be OK add to the project
people producing nice code or willing to review patches.

I can review and commit some patches from time to time if needed but I
currently no longer really follow the list and don't participate in
design discussions :(


From tristil at gmail.com  Thu Jan 18 21:45:10 2007
From: tristil at gmail.com (Joseph Method)
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2007 21:45:10 -0500
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Local libraries as providers & patron support
In-Reply-To: <3f1ae6620701181013q5d7faae5p524acf91698a54f1@mail.gmail.com>
References: <3f1ae6620510190849w7fc59c5cp1ddabf6b74356c3c@mail.gmail.com>
	<3f1ae6620701181013q5d7faae5p524acf91698a54f1@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <167b6aa00701181845p668c4032l6e75a92706f23886@mail.gmail.com>

> But I was unclear about how this would fit into the current architecture of
> Alexandria.  Perhaps this should be my starting point for a mockup?
>
> Ben

I think this is pretty straightforward. Like you mentioned, there
needs to be an authentication mechanism. But adding a Library Account
Library would show you a dialog similar to the Smart Library dialog in
the new tarball/soon-to-be-cvs.  What else would it need?

A mockup could just be a png or svg sketch, or it could be the actual
glade file.

-- 
-J. Method

From tristil at gmail.com  Thu Jan 18 22:18:50 2007
From: tristil at gmail.com (Joseph Method)
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2007 22:18:50 -0500
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Changes
Message-ID: <167b6aa00701181918i74ca58d1iac13bb11706dea77@mail.gmail.com>

Laurent Sansonetti has added me as a project Admin. This basically
means the power to assign Developers who can commit to the cvs
repository and change tracker item status. I don't really regard this
as a leadership role. At least, the only thing I want to assert is
this: 6.2 should be a quote-unquote bug-free release. So the focus
should be on chasing down the bulk of the existing bugs in the
tracker. After this release, we can choose a release leader for 6.3,
and so on.

If you want to be a Developer let me know the name of your Rubyforge
account so I can add you.

So my own short-term agenda:

* Commit the changes I've made to cvs (tonight, hopefully).
* Compose a broadcast message for the ruby list(s). I'll send this to
the list here for a short comment period.
* Work on chasing down the segfault bugs (which I'll describe in the
next email).

When I'm working on Alexandria, I'll be in the IRC channels #ruby-lang
and #alexandria on a freenode.net server. It seems like between 1400
GMT and 1700 GMT (9-12 EST) may be the best time to catch everyone
together.

(In case anyone hasn't used IRC before, it's an easy setup with
xchat-gnome. Be sure to type the handle of whoever's in the
#alexandria chatroom to get his attention.)

-- 
-J. Method

From tristil at gmail.com  Fri Jan 19 00:20:42 2007
From: tristil at gmail.com (Joseph Method)
Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2007 00:20:42 -0500
Subject: [Alexandria-list] The Show-Stoppers
Message-ID: <167b6aa00701182120u18cf9f6h74b5b252e8fdfb90@mail.gmail.com>

There's a lot of weird behavior in Alexandria at the moment. The more
I play with it, the more strange behaviors I find. The most important
category of bug facing us now is that of seemingly random segmentation
fault crashes.

Here are the three flavors of segfault crash bugs that I've identified.

1) Crashes that look like this:

/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/rexml/parsers/xpathparser.rb:285: [BUG] Segmentation fault
ruby 1.8.5 (2006-08-25) [i486-linux]

Aborted (core dumped)

2) Crashes that look like this:

*** glibc detected *** /usr/bin/ruby1.8: corrupted double-linked list:
0x0897c878 ***

[long backtrace and memory map info]

3) Crashes that look like this:
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/open-uri.rb: line 211
   Pango-WARNING **:Invalid UTF-8 string passed to pango_layout_set_text()
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/open-uri.rb: line 211
   Pango-WARNING **:Invalid UTF-8 string passed to pango_layout_set_text()
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/open-uri.rb: line 211
   Pango-WARNING **:Invalid UTF-8 string passed to pango_layout_set_text()
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/open-uri.rb: line 211
   Pango-WARNING **:Invalid UTF-8 string passed to pango_layout_set_text()
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/open-uri.rb: line 211
   Pango-WARNING **:Invalid UTF-8 string passed to pango_layout_set_text()
*** glibc detected *** /usr/bin/ruby1.8: free(): invalid pointer: 0x081d608f ***

[long backtrace and memory map info]

I've spent a good chunk of time chasing these, and I admit to being a
bit at a loss for how to track these reliably, let alone fix them. I
think I understand the basic problem, though: in 1) and 2) an array is
being accessed at the same time by two threads leading to a "corrupted
double-linked list". In 1) I think the array is associated with the
glade xml files and 2) occurs after a book search before or during the
book add, so I think it has to do with the async business in
new_book_dialog. 3) means what it says: somewhere a series of invalid
UTF-8 strings get passed to Gtk, probably from a book provider, but
it's not clear how the strings become invalid.

Anyways, does someone have an idea either about the problems
specifically, or about a better way to go about investigating them?

-- 
-J. Method

From laurent.sansonetti at gmail.com  Fri Jan 19 05:53:23 2007
From: laurent.sansonetti at gmail.com (Laurent Sansonetti)
Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2007 11:53:23 +0100
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Changes
In-Reply-To: <167b6aa00701181918i74ca58d1iac13bb11706dea77@mail.gmail.com>
References: <167b6aa00701181918i74ca58d1iac13bb11706dea77@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <1be7247c0701190253u4e80adcfk2ba1ec50a15751b2@mail.gmail.com>

Hi all,

Just a quick note. As you could see I didn't have the time to work on
Alexandria since more than a year now. Most of my time is spent on
other projects, and to be honest, I didn't boot on GNOME since years.

I am very happy to see Joseph and others taking the project to life
again. Alexandria was one of my favorite personal projects, and I am
so glad to see that it won't die.

So, a big thank you to everyone involved!

Practically speaking, just some random thoughts:

- you may perhaps want to remove some of the developers (there are too
many developers) ;
- the Debian packager is Dafydd Harries, so he's the one to be
contacted after each release ;
- you may probably want to remove the Mac version from the repository,
as it's now obsolete (RubyCocoa changed a lot in the past couple of
years) ;
- I don't see more at the moment, but please contact me (privately) if
you have any issue.

Thanks,
Laurent

On 1/19/07, Joseph Method <tristil at gmail.com> wrote:
> Laurent Sansonetti has added me as a project Admin. This basically
> means the power to assign Developers who can commit to the cvs
> repository and change tracker item status. I don't really regard this
> as a leadership role. At least, the only thing I want to assert is
> this: 6.2 should be a quote-unquote bug-free release. So the focus
> should be on chasing down the bulk of the existing bugs in the
> tracker. After this release, we can choose a release leader for 6.3,
> and so on.
>
> If you want to be a Developer let me know the name of your Rubyforge
> account so I can add you.
>
> So my own short-term agenda:
>
> * Commit the changes I've made to cvs (tonight, hopefully).
> * Compose a broadcast message for the ruby list(s). I'll send this to
> the list here for a short comment period.
> * Work on chasing down the segfault bugs (which I'll describe in the
> next email).
>
> When I'm working on Alexandria, I'll be in the IRC channels #ruby-lang
> and #alexandria on a freenode.net server. It seems like between 1400
> GMT and 1700 GMT (9-12 EST) may be the best time to catch everyone
> together.
>
> (In case anyone hasn't used IRC before, it's an easy setup with
> xchat-gnome. Be sure to type the handle of whoever's in the
> #alexandria chatroom to get his attention.)
>
> --
> -J. Method
> _______________________________________________
> Alexandria-list mailing list
> Alexandria-list at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/alexandria-list
>

From anwendt at users.sourceforge.net  Fri Jan 19 06:10:39 2007
From: anwendt at users.sourceforge.net (=?ISO-8859-15?Q?Andr=E9_Wendt?=)
Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2007 12:10:39 +0100
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Localization strings and German Amazon provider
Message-ID: <45B0A72F.4020009@users.sourceforge.net>

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hi,

it's good to see that Alexandria is coming back to life.

I don't know if that's an issue for you, but I'm having a hard time
using alexandria on Debian since the last couple of releases since many
menu items are unreadable. See also
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=387217

I've tracked the problem down to a Unicode issue. You see, my system is
on ISO-8859-15, not UTF-8, and the .mo files are obviously UTF-encoded.
For some reason, all German umlauts appear as question marks. Some of
the l10n strings do not even appear in the menu. (Or message boxes, for
that matter -- I just encountered a blank one with two buttons that read
something like "Cancel" and "Proceed." Luckily, I knew what the question
was.)

I'm also having trouble using providers other than uk/us Amazon. If I
select German Amazon, all my requests never return anything.

I would gladly see these issues resolved. If there is anything I can do
to help, let me know. Please bear with me, I could use a hint where to
start.

Regards,
Andr?
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFFsKcvkDGKfHXexj8RAjlFAJ0deqsCUB7hCnOo2PivTer93coeAACfUelH
mkrQLw7y7zr4InYqyp968b0=
=Bol0
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

From pterjan at linuxfr.org  Fri Jan 19 07:22:55 2007
From: pterjan at linuxfr.org (Pascal Terjan)
Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2007 13:22:55 +0100
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Localization strings and German
	Amazon	provider
In-Reply-To: <45B0A72F.4020009@users.sourceforge.net>
References: <45B0A72F.4020009@users.sourceforge.net>
Message-ID: <1169209375.5079.5.camel@plop>

Le vendredi 19 janvier 2007 ? 12:10 +0100, Andr? Wendt a ?crit :
> Hi,
> 
Hello,

> it's good to see that Alexandria is coming back to life.
> 
> I don't know if that's an issue for you, but I'm having a hard time
> using alexandria on Debian since the last couple of releases since many
> menu items are unreadable. See also
> http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=387217
> 
> I've tracked the problem down to a Unicode issue. You see, my system is
> on ISO-8859-15, not UTF-8, and the .mo files are obviously UTF-encoded.
> For some reason, all German umlauts appear as question marks. Some of
> the l10n strings do not even appear in the menu. (Or message boxes, for
> that matter -- I just encountered a blank one with two buttons that read
> something like "Cancel" and "Proceed." Luckily, I knew what the question
> was.)
> 
> I'm also having trouble using providers other than uk/us Amazon. If I
> select German Amazon, all my requests never return anything.
> 
> I would gladly see these issues resolved. If there is anything I can do
> to help, let me know. Please bear with me, I could use a hint where to
> start.

The issue is a change in the recent versions of gettext.

I think we need something like :

-    bindtextdomain(Alexandria::TEXTDOMAIN, nil, nil, "UTF-8")
+    bindtextdomain(Alexandria::TEXTDOMAIN)
+    GetText.set_output_charset("UTF-8")

But I did not commit as I would like to first ensure this will still
work with older ruby-gettext


From tristil at gmail.com  Fri Jan 19 13:09:27 2007
From: tristil at gmail.com (Joseph Method)
Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2007 13:09:27 -0500
Subject: [Alexandria-list] DRAFT: Call for developers: Alexandria project
Message-ID: <167b6aa00701191009n6e3d8955vcca8aa5954562f13@mail.gmail.com>

Here's what I got. Any input, and any idea what the appropriate lists
are to send this to?
----
The Alexandria project (http://alexandria.rubyforge.org/), a project
to develop a book-and-other-media management application written in
Ruby for Gnome, is
undergoing a minor renaissance after going dormant for a while. Halted at
version 6.1 since mid-2005, the project is seeking to take the currently
unstable repository code and release a stable version 6.2 suitable for
inclusion in
major distributions. After this release, the assembled development
team will pursue
ambitious plans to increase the utility and visibility of Alexandria,
with the ultimate
goal of default inclusion in major distributions. Some ideas that have
been discussed:

* integration with deskbar-applet/beagle.
* integration with OpenOffice for bibliography management.
* network-shareable book libraries (similar to iTunes DAAP)
* ability to access public library borrowing systems.
* new client/server architecture
* social/collaborative book rating/suggestion

Alexandria is an excellent example of a well-designed, fully-conceived
Ruby-Gnome2
application (thanks to the great work of Laurent Sansonetti and
others)  that has the
potential to match and surpass other closed-source applications in this
application niche, and to become a showcase product for Linux/Gnome and
Ruby-Gnome2.

The project currently needs Ruby developers of all shapes and stripes.
We welcome
any short-term assistance to help us bugfix for the 6.2 release, and
any assistance and
design input for the future.

In addition, there is a sub-project leadership position for anyone who
would like to
resurrect the (already mostly implemented) RubyCocoa MacOS port of Alexandria.

-- 
-J. Method

From tristil at gmail.com  Fri Jan 19 13:12:42 2007
From: tristil at gmail.com (Joseph Method)
Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2007 13:12:42 -0500
Subject: [Alexandria-list] DRAFT: Call for developers: Alexandria project
In-Reply-To: <167b6aa00701191009n6e3d8955vcca8aa5954562f13@mail.gmail.com>
References: <167b6aa00701191009n6e3d8955vcca8aa5954562f13@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <167b6aa00701191012nf168b7fv98bbfc5750242bd1@mail.gmail.com>

Without the freaky line breaks, I hope.
---
The Alexandria project (http://alexandria.rubyforge.org/), a project
to develop a book-and-other-media management application written in
Ruby for Gnome, is undergoing a minor renaissance after going dormant
for a while. Halted at version 6.1 since mid-2005, the project is
seeking to take the currently unstable repository code and release a
stable version 6.2 suitable for inclusion in major distributions. After
this release, the assembled development team will pursue ambitious plans
to increase the utility and visibility of Alexandria, with the ultimate
goal of default inclusion in major distributions. Some ideas that have
been discussed:

* integration with deskbar-applet/beagle.
* integration with OpenOffice for bibliography management.
* network-shareable book libraries (similar to iTunes DAAP)
* ability to access public library borrowing systems.
* new client/server architecture
* social/collaborative book rating/suggestion

Alexandria is an excellent example of a well-designed, fully-conceived
Ruby-Gnome2 application (thanks to the great work of Laurent Sansonetti and
others)  that has the potential to match and surpass other closed-source
applications in this application niche, and to become a showcase product
for Linux/Gnome and Ruby-Gnome2.

The project currently needs Ruby developers of all shapes and stripes.
We welcome any short-term assistance to help us bugfix for the 6.2 release,
and any assistance and design input for the future.

In addition, there is a sub-project leadership position for anyone who
would like to resurrect the (already mostly implemented) RubyCocoa MacOS port
of Alexandria.

-- 
-J. Method

From arrak at arrak.org  Fri Jan 19 14:10:59 2007
From: arrak at arrak.org (Mathieu Leduc-Hamel)
Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2007 14:10:59 -0500
Subject: [Alexandria-list] DRAFT: Call for developers: Alexandria project
In-Reply-To: <167b6aa00701191009n6e3d8955vcca8aa5954562f13@mail.gmail.com>
References: <167b6aa00701191009n6e3d8955vcca8aa5954562f13@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <c2c16f990701191110j708a9d08w46abf37ffa558c95@mail.gmail.com>

I Think it's a great call for developers!

By the way, I vote for you as the next project leader! ;-)

I already start to take a loog a the sourcecode and I want to invest
myself in this project. I will start by taking a look at the book
providers architecture and make sure everything is working....

And after I have many idea of what we could implement in alexandria I
would to participate!

Long life to Gnome, Long life to Ruby, Long life to Alexandria!

;-)

Mathieu Leduc-Hamel
And sorry I wanted to talk with you about all that on irc today but
everybody need my
On 1/19/07, Joseph Method <tristil at gmail.com> wrote:
> Here's what I got. Any input, and any idea what the appropriate lists
> are to send this to?
> ----
> The Alexandria project (http://alexandria.rubyforge.org/), a project
> to develop a book-and-other-media management application written in
> Ruby for Gnome, is
> undergoing a minor renaissance after going dormant for a while. Halted at
> version 6.1 since mid-2005, the project is seeking to take the currently
> unstable repository code and release a stable version 6.2 suitable for
> inclusion in
> major distributions. After this release, the assembled development
> team will pursue
> ambitious plans to increase the utility and visibility of Alexandria,
> with the ultimate
> goal of default inclusion in major distributions. Some ideas that have
> been discussed:
>
> * integration with deskbar-applet/beagle.
> * integration with OpenOffice for bibliography management.
> * network-shareable book libraries (similar to iTunes DAAP)
> * ability to access public library borrowing systems.
> * new client/server architecture
> * social/collaborative book rating/suggestion
>
> Alexandria is an excellent example of a well-designed, fully-conceived
> Ruby-Gnome2
> application (thanks to the great work of Laurent Sansonetti and
> others)  that has the
> potential to match and surpass other closed-source applications in this
> application niche, and to become a showcase product for Linux/Gnome and
> Ruby-Gnome2.
>
> The project currently needs Ruby developers of all shapes and stripes.
> We welcome
> any short-term assistance to help us bugfix for the 6.2 release, and
> any assistance and
> design input for the future.
>
> In addition, there is a sub-project leadership position for anyone who
> would like to
> resurrect the (already mostly implemented) RubyCocoa MacOS port of Alexandria.
>
> --
> -J. Method
> _______________________________________________
> Alexandria-list mailing list
> Alexandria-list at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/alexandria-list
>

From tristil at gmail.com  Sat Jan 20 01:48:06 2007
From: tristil at gmail.com (Joseph Method)
Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2007 01:48:06 -0500
Subject: [Alexandria-list] DRAFT: Call for developers: Alexandria project
In-Reply-To: <c2c16f990701191110j708a9d08w46abf37ffa558c95@mail.gmail.com>
References: <167b6aa00701191009n6e3d8955vcca8aa5954562f13@mail.gmail.com>
	<c2c16f990701191110j708a9d08w46abf37ffa558c95@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <167b6aa00701192248i34635f56hd437092125a696d1@mail.gmail.com>

Thanks, Mathieu.

I sent the call out on ruby-talk at ruby-lang.org, also added it as
"news" on the Rubyforge page. In other news, I put out a support
request to convert the cvs repository to svn and to have commits
reported to the new alexandria-commits at rubyforge.org list. This help
out a lot with communication.

On 1/19/07, Mathieu Leduc-Hamel <arrak at arrak.org> wrote:
> I Think it's a great call for developers!
>
> By the way, I vote for you as the next project leader! ;-)
>
> I already start to take a loog a the sourcecode and I want to invest
> myself in this project. I will start by taking a look at the book
> providers architecture and make sure everything is working....
>
> And after I have many idea of what we could implement in alexandria I
> would to participate!
>
> Long life to Gnome, Long life to Ruby, Long life to Alexandria!
>
> ;-)
>
> Mathieu Leduc-Hamel
> And sorry I wanted to talk with you about all that on irc today but
> everybody need my
> On 1/19/07, Joseph Method <tristil at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Here's what I got. Any input, and any idea what the appropriate lists
> > are to send this to?
> > ----
> > The Alexandria project (http://alexandria.rubyforge.org/), a project
> > to develop a book-and-other-media management application written in
> > Ruby for Gnome, is
> > undergoing a minor renaissance after going dormant for a while. Halted at
> > version 6.1 since mid-2005, the project is seeking to take the currently
> > unstable repository code and release a stable version 6.2 suitable for
> > inclusion in
> > major distributions. After this release, the assembled development
> > team will pursue
> > ambitious plans to increase the utility and visibility of Alexandria,
> > with the ultimate
> > goal of default inclusion in major distributions. Some ideas that have
> > been discussed:
> >
> > * integration with deskbar-applet/beagle.
> > * integration with OpenOffice for bibliography management.
> > * network-shareable book libraries (similar to iTunes DAAP)
> > * ability to access public library borrowing systems.
> > * new client/server architecture
> > * social/collaborative book rating/suggestion
> >
> > Alexandria is an excellent example of a well-designed, fully-conceived
> > Ruby-Gnome2
> > application (thanks to the great work of Laurent Sansonetti and
> > others)  that has the
> > potential to match and surpass other closed-source applications in this
> > application niche, and to become a showcase product for Linux/Gnome and
> > Ruby-Gnome2.
> >
> > The project currently needs Ruby developers of all shapes and stripes.
> > We welcome
> > any short-term assistance to help us bugfix for the 6.2 release, and
> > any assistance and
> > design input for the future.
> >
> > In addition, there is a sub-project leadership position for anyone who
> > would like to
> > resurrect the (already mostly implemented) RubyCocoa MacOS port of Alexandria.
> >
> > --
> > -J. Method
> > _______________________________________________
> > Alexandria-list mailing list
> > Alexandria-list at rubyforge.org
> > http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/alexandria-list
> >
>


-- 
-J. Method

From slamboy at gmail.com  Sat Jan 20 07:38:34 2007
From: slamboy at gmail.com (Jason Mayer)
Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2007 06:38:34 -0600
Subject: [Alexandria-list] newbie here
Message-ID: <5ae8cc980701200438p3385f2b7pf7c80657c8941855@mail.gmail.com>

I really like the idea of this project based on what I've read in some of
the archives.  I'm kind of a newbie to programming (but I *love* Ruby), so
I'm just going to lurk on the list for a while as I gain more knowledge of
the project through reading the archives.  I was wondering, however, if
anyone had recommendations on where a newbie could start to contribute to
the project.
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From slamboy at gmail.com  Sat Jan 20 08:30:36 2007
From: slamboy at gmail.com (Jason Mayer)
Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2007 07:30:36 -0600
Subject: [Alexandria-list] todo list?
Message-ID: <5ae8cc980701200530k42718aedgf750fa7252e1c32d@mail.gmail.com>

Unsure if anyone's mentioned this (I'm still working my way through the
archives), but the todo list at http://alexandria.rubyforge.org/ has no
entries.
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From tristil at gmail.com  Sat Jan 20 11:24:44 2007
From: tristil at gmail.com (Joseph Method)
Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2007 11:24:44 -0500
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Newbie Tips
Message-ID: <167b6aa00701200824w7a42a047xf7f0615d99c16249@mail.gmail.com>

Here is the recipe for contributing. I'm generalizing this for anyone
who may be wondering about how to contribute.

INGREDIENTS

* cvs (soon you'll need svn). Follow the directions on
http://rubyforge.org/scm/?group_id=205 for checking out code, where
'modulename' is 'alexandria'.

* irc client (I suggest xchat-gnome). Connect to a freenode.net server
(happens automatically in Ubuntu). Type: /join #alexandria and /join
#ruby-lang. Remember that many people in IRC leave their computers
logged in all the time, so be sure to type the handle of the person
whose attention you want to get (most clients alert you when your name
is typed).

* In the future you will want to be subscribed to
alexandria-commits at rubyforge.org. At the moment it doesn't do
anything, but later it will email the commit messages and diffs, to
keep on top of the most recent developments.

* Gobby (optional)

BASIC PROCEDURE

* Look over the code, peruse the code, examine the code, read the
code, learn the code, internalize the code, map the code, diagram the
code, make friends/peace/be one with the code. (I found it useful to
print out the huge file /lib/alexandria/ui/main_app.rb and go over it
with a pen in hand).

* Pick a bug/support feature/feature request from
http://rubyforge.org/tracker/?group_id=205 and investigate how/whether
to implement a solution to the posed problem.

* Code it!

* If you're unsure about the changes you made, type cvs diff >
newfilename.diff in the 'lowest' directory where you've made changes.
You can paste the text of newfilename.diff directly into an email
message to the list.

* Otherwise, if you're confident that your changes are sound (meaning:
they solve the addressed problem and don't knowingly introduce new
bugs) ask for a Developer account, and check the changes in yourself.

* Note: In a perfect XP/Agile world, every time you write new code
that adds new functionality, you would write some unit tests that go
in /tests. It's great self-discipline if you can manage it, and great
for the project, but not required.

* Talk to people in IRC and on the list. They'll let you know what
they're working on, and may make suggestions for where you can pitch
in. Offer to divide up a problem so that you can both work on it.
HINT: Gobby is a neat program that will allow you to work on the same
code with another person. This is especially useful if one person
wants to mentor another person.

Btw, I opened up the project docs section at
http://rubyforge.org/docman/?group_id=205 for FAQs and other notes
like this.

-- 
-J. Method

From tristil at gmail.com  Sat Jan 20 12:13:49 2007
From: tristil at gmail.com (Joseph Method)
Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2007 12:13:49 -0500
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Book Providers
Message-ID: <167b6aa00701200913p346ca3b1i7c985936abddc605@mail.gmail.com>

Welcome, Jason! Great to have you with us. Your email inspired me to
write the other post "Newbie Tips", but those might have been both
below your level and also not concrete enough.

An area that really needs attention is the book providers for
Alexandria. These are the Barnes & Noble, Amazon, etc. connections for
doing book searches. At present, several of the book providers don't
work, or don't seem to work. There is a test_suite called
test_providers.rb that claims that 6 of the providers don't return
search results for known ISBN numbers. It may be that they actually
work, but the tests don't, or they work partially, but the search
method isn't good enough, or they just don't work at all. The best way
to find out would be to break the unit tests in test_providers into
several steps to check at different stages of the search process. For
example, does the url work, or does it return a 404 or 500? What about
the response form? Is that a 404 or 500? Etcetera.

The goal would be to have all the tests pass (You just run `ruby
test_providers.rb` to find out) and have this be meaningful
confirmation that the book providers work. This is relatively
low-hanging fruit that could be good practice for anyone who wants to
take a crack at it.

Btw, the tests in the checkout directory are actually run on the file
in the /usr/lib/ruy/1.x directory, so be sure to run `ruby install.rb
install` before testing.

On 1/20/07, Jason Mayer <slamboy at gmail.com> wrote:
> I really like the idea of this project based on what I've read in some of
> the archives.  I'm kind of a newbie to programming (but I *love* Ruby), so
> I'm just going to lurk on the list for a while as I gain more knowledge of
> the project through reading the archives.  I was wondering, however, if
> anyone had recommendations on where a newbie could start to contribute to
> the project.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Alexandria-list mailing list
> Alexandria-list at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/alexandria-list
>
>


-- 
-J. Method

From tristil at gmail.com  Sat Jan 20 14:04:05 2007
From: tristil at gmail.com (Joseph Method)
Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2007 14:04:05 -0500
Subject: [Alexandria-list] todo list?
In-Reply-To: <5ae8cc980701200530k42718aedgf750fa7252e1c32d@mail.gmail.com>
References: <5ae8cc980701200530k42718aedgf750fa7252e1c32d@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <167b6aa00701201104g40e8c40fye61682dd365b5036@mail.gmail.com>

Thanks. I've fixed all the links.

On 1/20/07, Jason Mayer <slamboy at gmail.com> wrote:
> Unsure if anyone's mentioned this (I'm still working my way through the
> archives), but the todo list at
> http://alexandria.rubyforge.org/ has no entries.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Alexandria-list mailing list
> Alexandria-list at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/alexandria-list
>
>


-- 
-J. Method

From tristil at gmail.com  Mon Jan 22 01:18:21 2007
From: tristil at gmail.com (Joseph Method)
Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2007 01:18:21 -0500
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Anyone Know Mono?
Message-ID: <167b6aa00701212218u4e4f0574tc07bfacefd7891af@mail.gmail.com>

I just realized that a plugin for Tomboy is the way to go: a lot of
gain for very little effort.

Of course, the devil is in the implementation, but there are two
possible aspects to such a plugin:

* Creates a note that lists all Unread books, so the GTD people can
list them and cross them off.
* Automatically creates a link when a title of a book in the library is typed!
* Linked page is populated with attributes from Alexandria.

I created a sub-project at alexandria/trunk/alexandria-tomboy * and
put a file called ReadingPlugin.cs in there, that is actually
GalagoPresence.cs from the Tomboy plugins 5.4 source deb. It should be
used as a model for making the plugin.

If somebody is shaky with Ruby but a wiz with Mono (or perhaps is more
comfortable with typed languages in general) this is a great way to
help out/make your mark. This could be huge! :)

* I'll explain about the svn and other changes tomorrow.

-- 
-J. Method

From marrakis at gmail.com  Mon Jan 22 09:09:24 2007
From: marrakis at gmail.com (Arrakis Muadib)
Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2007 09:09:24 -0500
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Anyone Know Mono?
In-Reply-To: <167b6aa00701212218u4e4f0574tc07bfacefd7891af@mail.gmail.com>
References: <167b6aa00701212218u4e4f0574tc07bfacefd7891af@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <c2c16f990701220609r3f121870xd5f4a04e9a55e5e2@mail.gmail.com>

I'm not sure I understand totaly what you are proposing.

Tomboy is written in C-sharp (mono) and alexandria is in Ruby. Are you
planning to release alexandria a mono module or to use the ruby
compiler of mono?

And by the way I think tomboy is using dbus to communicate with the
desktop, maybe it would be a better way to communicate with it?

And for the contacts, the borrowers,  we could retrieve their
informations (name, telephone, ...)  from Evolution-data-server. The
people from openedHand (http://projects.o-hand.com/contacts) made a
great little app, contacts, that communicate with eds to retrieve and
save contacts information. Maybe we could use the same method.

I already start to take a look at the unitest for the bookprovider, I
will try to release some patch during the week...

mathieu

On 1/22/07, Joseph Method <tristil at gmail.com> wrote:
> I just realized that a plugin for Tomboy is the way to go: a lot of
> gain for very little effort.
>
> Of course, the devil is in the implementation, but there are two
> possible aspects to such a plugin:
>
> * Creates a note that lists all Unread books, so the GTD people can
> list them and cross them off.
> * Automatically creates a link when a title of a book in the library is typed!
> * Linked page is populated with attributes from Alexandria.
>
> I created a sub-project at alexandria/trunk/alexandria-tomboy * and
> put a file called ReadingPlugin.cs in there, that is actually
> GalagoPresence.cs from the Tomboy plugins 5.4 source deb. It should be
> used as a model for making the plugin.
>
> If somebody is shaky with Ruby but a wiz with Mono (or perhaps is more
> comfortable with typed languages in general) this is a great way to
> help out/make your mark. This could be huge! :)
>
> * I'll explain about the svn and other changes tomorrow.
>
> --
> -J. Method
> _______________________________________________
> Alexandria-list mailing list
> Alexandria-list at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/alexandria-list
>

From tristil at gmail.com  Mon Jan 22 10:54:57 2007
From: tristil at gmail.com (Joseph Method)
Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2007 10:54:57 -0500
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Anyone Know Mono?
In-Reply-To: <c2c16f990701220609r3f121870xd5f4a04e9a55e5e2@mail.gmail.com>
References: <167b6aa00701212218u4e4f0574tc07bfacefd7891af@mail.gmail.com>
	<c2c16f990701220609r3f121870xd5f4a04e9a55e5e2@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <167b6aa00701220754x70460e55p874431bcb8595f37@mail.gmail.com>

On 1/22/07, Arrakis Muadib <marrakis at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm not sure I understand totaly what you are proposing.
>
> Tomboy is written in C-sharp (mono) and alexandria is in Ruby. Are you
> planning to release alexandria a mono module or to use the ruby
> compiler of mono?

I just mean the Tomboy plugin system. All of the plugins are written
in C-Sharp, I guess, and compiled into .dlls. Maybe ruby would work
just as well. A plugin doesn't have to know anything about Alexandria
itself, because it can just parse the yaml files in .alexandria. Or,
like you say, it could use dbus to communicate with Alexandria, but
then the plugin would only work while Alexandria is running (right?).

(*On the other hand*, if Tomboy has note with a book title it got from
Alexandria, the text in the note could be communicated to Alexandria
through dbus.)

> And by the way I think tomboy is using dbus to communicate with the
> desktop, maybe it would be a better way to communicate with it?

> And for the contacts, the borrowers,  we could retrieve their
> informations (name, telephone, ...)  from Evolution-data-server. The
> people from openedHand (http://projects.o-hand.com/contacts) made a
> great little app, contacts, that communicate with eds to retrieve and
> save contacts information. Maybe we could use the same method.

Absolutely. The borrowers should be populated from those sources, with
any pictures displayed as well.

> I already start to take a look at the unitest for the bookprovider, I
> will try to release some patch during the week...

Cool.

-- 
-J. Method

From tristil at gmail.com  Tue Jan 23 15:15:02 2007
From: tristil at gmail.com (Joseph Method)
Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2007 15:15:02 -0500
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Recent Changes to the Project
Message-ID: <167b6aa00701231215yc2d41a6v4bde58d6f5412231@mail.gmail.com>

So I made a couple changes to the project a bit, umm, unilaterally.
The one I feel bad about is the change from cvs to svn. This is
definitely the kind of decision that should be made by the group. I
hope that this won't inconvenience anyone unduly and apologize for
being too hasty. On the positive side, I hope that you'll find that
subversion is easier to work with, especially for creating development
branches and tagged revisions for releases. This becomes useful when
the project matures to a point where experimental features should be
developed in a separate branch before being merged into the trunk, or
when following the practice of first making a proposal, then
demonstrating feasibility with actual code before the project as a
whole commits to work on the features of the proposal (in the Plone
world they call these PLIPs). Needless to say, that's much farther
down the road.

To make the switch to svn, you need to do a new checkout with

svn checkout svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/alexandria/trunk/alexandria

Note: If you've made local changes to your cvs checkout, you can still
diff them and apply them to the svn checkout (right?)

In addition, if you're interested in working on the Tomboy plugin, you
can checkout

svn checkout svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/alexandria/trunk/alexandria-tomboy

You can even make changes to the website at ... /alexandria/trunk/www
(the files would then need to be uploaded to the actual web directory
on the server)

If you're a developer be sure to do the checkout using

svn checkout svn+ssh://developername at rubyforge.org/var/svn/alexandria/trunk/alexandria

so you can authenticate when you `svn commit`. Btw, I find it useful
to co each of the project directories and a directory called
alexandria-tree that contains the entire repository tree.

Other changes are:

* We have an alexandria-commits list at
http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/alexandria-commits that you
can/should subscribe to. This is really important for active
collaboration.

* We have a  DocManager area now at
http://rubyforge.org/docman/?group_id=205 . We could also have a Wiki
area as well/instead if there's popular demand.

* I started adding logging to the code to make it easier to follow
what's going on. What do you think about this? Is it just clutter, or
is it useful? At release time, this logging code can fairly easily be
hidden away from casual users (who only see it on the command line
anyway). A bigger question is whether there will be performance issues
from this.

Finally, I want to make some Developers! Just send me your Rubyforge
username, and you're in, pretty much.

-- 
-J. Method

From tristil at gmail.com  Thu Jan 25 13:14:49 2007
From: tristil at gmail.com (Joseph Method)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 13:14:49 -0500
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Alexandria Deb Package
Message-ID: <167b6aa00701251014ga38c6a5jdc447503d35a6852@mail.gmail.com>

There's a "secret" Alexandria deb package at
http://alexandria.rubyforge.org/alexandria_0.6.2_all.deb

In other news, I found that by simply install gnome2-ruby 0.16 all the
segfault bugs seem to just go away. That means we need to get them to
release a new package, or package it ourselves; many of the bugs were
reported by people running Debian/Ubuntu.

I'm not getting a lot of feedback on this list, so I'd just as soon
issue a 0.6.2 release next Friday, to generate new publicity and
hopefully attract developers.
-- 
-J. Method

From waldner at waldner.priv.at  Thu Jan 25 15:33:31 2007
From: waldner at waldner.priv.at (Robert Waldner)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 21:33:31 +0100
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Alexandria Deb Package
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 25 Jan 2007 13:14:49 EST."
	<167b6aa00701251014ga38c6a5jdc447503d35a6852@mail.gmail.com> 
References: <167b6aa00701251014ga38c6a5jdc447503d35a6852@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20070125203338.68A281BB5C@fsck.waldner.priv.at>


On Thu, 25 Jan 2007 13:14:49 EST, "Joseph Method" writes:
>There's a "secret" Alexandria deb package at
>http://alexandria.rubyforge.org/alexandria_0.6.2_all.deb

Thanks!

>In other news, I found that by simply install gnome2-ruby 0.16 all the
>segfault bugs seem to just go away.

Hmm, that's not in Debian, or do you mean libgnome2-ruby, which's only 
 available as 0.15.0-1.1 in Debian testing&unstable?

cheers,
&rw
-- 
-- everyone connected to the internet acts globally.
-- it is wildly foolish to think locally.
--                                     - Paul Vixie


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From tristil at gmail.com  Thu Jan 25 16:18:52 2007
From: tristil at gmail.com (Joseph Method)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 16:18:52 -0500
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Alexandria Deb Package
In-Reply-To: <20070125203338.68A281BB5C@fsck.waldner.priv.at>
References: <167b6aa00701251014ga38c6a5jdc447503d35a6852@mail.gmail.com>
	<20070125203338.68A281BB5C@fsck.waldner.priv.at>
Message-ID: <167b6aa00701251318y7417291tc274797bb73a6751@mail.gmail.com>

Installed from source, from here:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=53614

That's why we need to get it packaged.

On 1/25/07, Robert Waldner <waldner at waldner.priv.at> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 25 Jan 2007 13:14:49 EST, "Joseph Method" writes:
> >There's a "secret" Alexandria deb package at
> >http://alexandria.rubyforge.org/alexandria_0.6.2_all.deb
>
> Thanks!
>
> >In other news, I found that by simply install gnome2-ruby 0.16 all the
> >segfault bugs seem to just go away.
>
> Hmm, that's not in Debian, or do you mean libgnome2-ruby, which's only
>  available as 0.15.0-1.1 in Debian testing&unstable?
>
> cheers,
> &rw
> --
> -- everyone connected to the internet acts globally.
> -- it is wildly foolish to think locally.
> --                                     - Paul Vixie
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Alexandria-list mailing list
> Alexandria-list at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/alexandria-list
>
>
>


-- 
-J. Method

From waldner at waldner.priv.at  Thu Jan 25 17:43:40 2007
From: waldner at waldner.priv.at (Robert Waldner)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 23:43:40 +0100
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Alexandria Deb Package
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 25 Jan 2007 16:18:52 EST."
	<167b6aa00701251318y7417291tc274797bb73a6751@mail.gmail.com> 
References: <167b6aa00701251014ga38c6a5jdc447503d35a6852@mail.gmail.com>
	<20070125203338.68A281BB5C@fsck.waldner.priv.at>
	<167b6aa00701251318y7417291tc274797bb73a6751@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20070125224400.317471BD5A@fsck.waldner.priv.at>


On Thu, 25 Jan 2007 16:18:52 EST, "Joseph Method" writes:
>>>In other news, I found that by simply install gnome2-ruby 0.16 all the
>>>segfault bugs seem to just go away.

>> Hmm, that's not in Debian, or do you mean libgnome2-ruby, which's only
>>  available as 0.15.0-1.1 in Debian testing&unstable?

>Installed from source, from here:
>
>http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=53614
>
>That's why we need to get it packaged.

There's already a bug filed that suggests moving to 0.16, see
 http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=405434

I built a *very* crude libgnome2-ruby 0.16 with the Debian files from 
 0.15 - works but alexandria has issues with some menu items having no 
 text, and the bug when manually adding a book is still there:

/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/gettext/textdomain.rb: line 141
   Pango-WARNING **:Invalid UTF-8 string passed to pango_layout_set_text()
I, [2007-01-25T23:37:17.248945 #13796]  INFO -- : New Book Dialog
I, [2007-01-25T23:37:34.117811 #13796]  INFO -- : New Book Dialog
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/fileutils.rb: line 1281
   GLib-CRITICAL **:g_utf8_casefold: assertion `str != NULL' failed

Or maybe I misunderstood, and you meant it fixes other bugs which I'm 
 not aware of ;)

Though if anyone wants my libgnome2-ruby .deb regardless, yell.

cheers,
&rw
-- 
-- "I'm attracted by the potential for reckless abuse of power."
-- - Dogbert (Adams)


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From tristil at gmail.com  Thu Jan 25 22:15:41 2007
From: tristil at gmail.com (Joseph Method)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 22:15:41 -0500
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Alexandria Deb Package
In-Reply-To: <20070125224400.317471BD5A@fsck.waldner.priv.at>
References: <167b6aa00701251014ga38c6a5jdc447503d35a6852@mail.gmail.com>
	<20070125203338.68A281BB5C@fsck.waldner.priv.at>
	<167b6aa00701251318y7417291tc274797bb73a6751@mail.gmail.com>
	<20070125224400.317471BD5A@fsck.waldner.priv.at>
Message-ID: <167b6aa00701251915h7d6b0f6dr956dc29c0949f615@mail.gmail.com>

Robert,

My theory is that it addresses the bugs I described at
http://rubyforge.org/pipermail/alexandria-list/2007-January/001159.html
. I didn't understand at the time that it could just be something
wrong with ruby-gnome2. The most noticeable difference between 0.15
and 0.16 is that it no longer generates:

/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/glib2.rb: line 55
  GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **:g_boxed_type_register_static: assertion
`g_type_from_name (name) == 0' failed
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/glib2.rb: line 55
  GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **:g_param_spec_boxed: assertion
`G_TYPE_IS_BOXED (boxed_type)' failed
  GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **:g_object_class_install_property: assertion
`G_IS_PARAM_SPEC (pspec)' failed
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/glib2.rb: line 55

on require 'gtk2'

> /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/gettext/textdomain.rb: line 141
>    Pango-WARNING **:Invalid UTF-8 string passed to pango_layout_set_text()
> I, [2007-01-25T23:37:17.248945 #13796]  INFO -- : New Book Dialog
> I, [2007-01-25T23:37:34.117811 #13796]  INFO -- : New Book Dialog
> /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/fileutils.rb: line 1281
>    GLib-CRITICAL **:g_utf8_casefold: assertion `str != NULL' failed
>

I haven't been able to reproduce this bug yet. I created a German user
to test with (I'll go check on him now). These errors occur with the
0.16 ruby-gnome2 and the 0.6.2/svn Alexandria?

-- 
-J. Method

From waldner at waldner.priv.at  Fri Jan 26 06:24:02 2007
From: waldner at waldner.priv.at (Robert Waldner)
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2007 12:24:02 +0100
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Alexandria Deb Package
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 25 Jan 2007 22:15:41 EST."
	<167b6aa00701251915h7d6b0f6dr956dc29c0949f615@mail.gmail.com> 
References: <167b6aa00701251014ga38c6a5jdc447503d35a6852@mail.gmail.com>
	<20070125203338.68A281BB5C@fsck.waldner.priv.at>
	<167b6aa00701251318y7417291tc274797bb73a6751@mail.gmail.com>
	<20070125224400.317471BD5A@fsck.waldner.priv.at>
	<167b6aa00701251915h7d6b0f6dr956dc29c0949f615@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20070126112409.8ECBC1BDD1@fsck.waldner.priv.at>


On Thu, 25 Jan 2007 22:15:41 EST, "Joseph Method" writes:
>> /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/gettext/textdomain.rb: line 141
>>    Pango-WARNING **:Invalid UTF-8 string passed to pango_layout_set_text()
>> I, [2007-01-25T23:37:17.248945 #13796]  INFO -- : New Book Dialog
>> I, [2007-01-25T23:37:34.117811 #13796]  INFO -- : New Book Dialog
>> /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/fileutils.rb: line 1281
>>    GLib-CRITICAL **:g_utf8_casefold: assertion `str != NULL' failed

>I haven't been able to reproduce this bug yet. I created a German user
>to test with (I'll go check on him now). These errors occur with the
>0.16 ruby-gnome2 and the 0.6.2/svn Alexandria?

Yes, ruby-gnome2 0.16 and the alexandria 0.6.2 .deb you mentioned 
 upthread.

Usually I'm working with LC_ALL=de_AT at euro, but the g_utf8_casefold
 error stays the same for every locale available (according to
 `locale -a`), incl. all the utf8 ones.
Now I'm far from competent wrt. locale, so maybe it'd help to know what
 you're using (LANG(UAGE), LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE).

cheers,
&rw
-- 
-- Die Geschichte der Ethernet Autonegotiation ist eine Geschichte
-- voller Missverstaendnisse...                    - Daniel Roesen


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From bel8 at lilik.it  Fri Jan 26 09:59:58 2007
From: bel8 at lilik.it (Claudio Belotti)
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2007 15:59:58 +0100
Subject: [Alexandria-list] italian provider bug
Message-ID: <45BA176E.7030400@lilik.it>

Hi everybody,
I'm happy to notice that Alexandria project is back to life!
I'm the author of the Italian book provider ibs_it.rb, I'm not able to
work on new Alexandria features at the moment but I would like to keep
on maintaining my code.

An Italian user wrote me signalling a bug in the way accented chars are
handled, so I filed myself a bug in rubyforge but I'm no more on the
list of assignees.

Joseph can you add me to the list?

Claudio




From tristil at gmail.com  Sat Jan 27 01:03:08 2007
From: tristil at gmail.com (Joseph Method)
Date: Sat, 27 Jan 2007 01:03:08 -0500
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Alexandria Deb Package
In-Reply-To: <20070126112409.8ECBC1BDD1@fsck.waldner.priv.at>
References: <167b6aa00701251014ga38c6a5jdc447503d35a6852@mail.gmail.com>
	<20070125203338.68A281BB5C@fsck.waldner.priv.at>
	<167b6aa00701251318y7417291tc274797bb73a6751@mail.gmail.com>
	<20070125224400.317471BD5A@fsck.waldner.priv.at>
	<167b6aa00701251915h7d6b0f6dr956dc29c0949f615@mail.gmail.com>
	<20070126112409.8ECBC1BDD1@fsck.waldner.priv.at>
Message-ID: <167b6aa00701262203q7a7ffd34r2c6618c2cd57a05c@mail.gmail.com>

The German test account uses

LANG="de_DE.UTF-8 at euro"
LANGUAGE="de_DE.UTF-8 at euro"

but actually, right now there's a new bug (that I thought I filed!)
where simply clicking on a book that has been manually added crashes
the application. That has to do with a book_provider. But in general,
I am able to:

1) Edit the title (including backspacing and rewriting, etc.)
2) Add the required authors, publisher and binding
3) Add the book itself.

One thing to investigate tomorrow, there is a "_" in front of the
titlebar in the dialog.

On 1/26/07, Robert Waldner <waldner at waldner.priv.at> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 25 Jan 2007 22:15:41 EST, "Joseph Method" writes:
> >> /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/gettext/textdomain.rb: line 141
> >>    Pango-WARNING **:Invalid UTF-8 string passed to pango_layout_set_text()
> >> I, [2007-01-25T23:37:17.248945 #13796]  INFO -- : New Book Dialog
> >> I, [2007-01-25T23:37:34.117811 #13796]  INFO -- : New Book Dialog
> >> /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/fileutils.rb: line 1281
> >>    GLib-CRITICAL **:g_utf8_casefold: assertion `str != NULL' failed
>
> >I haven't been able to reproduce this bug yet. I created a German user
> >to test with (I'll go check on him now). These errors occur with the
> >0.16 ruby-gnome2 and the 0.6.2/svn Alexandria?
>
> Yes, ruby-gnome2 0.16 and the alexandria 0.6.2 .deb you mentioned
>  upthread.
>
> Usually I'm working with LC_ALL=de_AT at euro, but the g_utf8_casefold
>  error stays the same for every locale available (according to
>  `locale -a`), incl. all the utf8 ones.
> Now I'm far from competent wrt. locale, so maybe it'd help to know what
>  you're using (LANG(UAGE), LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE).
>
> cheers,
> &rw
> --
> -- Die Geschichte der Ethernet Autonegotiation ist eine Geschichte
> -- voller Missverstaendnisse...                    - Daniel Roesen
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Alexandria-list mailing list
> Alexandria-list at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/alexandria-list
>
>
>


-- 
-J. Method

From waldner at waldner.priv.at  Sat Jan 27 09:13:35 2007
From: waldner at waldner.priv.at (Robert Waldner)
Date: Sat, 27 Jan 2007 15:13:35 +0100
Subject: [Alexandria-list] Alexandria Deb Package
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 27 Jan 2007 01:03:08 EST."
	<167b6aa00701262203q7a7ffd34r2c6618c2cd57a05c@mail.gmail.com> 
References: <167b6aa00701251014ga38c6a5jdc447503d35a6852@mail.gmail.com>
	<20070125203338.68A281BB5C@fsck.waldner.priv.at>
	<167b6aa00701251318y7417291tc274797bb73a6751@mail.gmail.com>
	<20070125224400.317471BD5A@fsck.waldner.priv.at>
	<167b6aa00701251915h7d6b0f6dr956dc29c0949f615@mail.gmail.com>
	<20070126112409.8ECBC1BDD1@fsck.waldner.priv.at>
	<167b6aa00701262203q7a7ffd34r2c6618c2cd57a05c@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20070127141351.335061BF25@fsck.waldner.priv.at>


On Sat, 27 Jan 2007 01:03:08 EST, "Joseph Method" writes:
>The German test account uses
>
>LANG="de_DE.UTF-8 at euro"
>LANGUAGE="de_DE.UTF-8 at euro"
<...>
> But in general, I am able to:
>
>1) Edit the title (including backspacing and rewriting, etc.)
>2) Add the required authors, publisher and binding
>3) Add the book itself.

Doesn't work for me even with your locale settings :(

cheers,
&rw
-- 
-- Schaetzungsweise Billiarden Workstations schuften (unterbezahlt,
-- von der Welt verachtet) mit Serverdiensten in dunklen
-- Serverraeumen und der Admin schaemt sich derer...
--                                                - Michael S?heer


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From waldner at waldner.priv.at  Sun Jan 28 09:00:06 2007
From: waldner at waldner.priv.at (Robert Waldner)
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2007 15:00:06 +0100
Subject: [Alexandria-list] A couple wishlist items
Message-ID: <20070128140025.5B0111C003@fsck.waldner.priv.at>


Since I'm not a programmer, I can't do anything myself, but maybe 
 someone else will find it useful.

"What I wish for" ;)
 - some kind of sorting (by author at least) when HTML-exporting
 - a "serial-add" feature: input ISBN, press enter, auto-present the 
   add-dialog again (on lookup-failure, display a big exclamation-mark 
   or beep or whatever) - esp. useful with barcode-scanners, as it's 
   quite impractical to constantly switch between scanner/keyboard/mouse

cheers,
&rw
-- 
-- Anke [Engelke] und besoffen sein, das vertraegt sich
-- nicht. Nuechtern haette ich die Fernbedienung allerdings
-- wohl frueher gefunden.                   - Ingo Nadzeyka


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From costanti at science.unitn.it  Sun Jan 28 18:51:36 2007
From: costanti at science.unitn.it (Marco Costantini)
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2007 00:51:36 +0100
Subject: [Alexandria-list] two crash reports
Message-ID: <200701290051.36434.costanti@science.unitn.it>

Dear all,

here are two reports of crashes of Alexandria.
The version used is the Stopgap release 
http://files.dererum.com/alexandria-0.6.1.1-stopgap.tar.gz of mid January.



I had selected some books in one library, I was moving them to another 
library. During the move, I clicked on "update", and Alexandria crashed with 
the following message.

-----------------------
Alexandria just crashed
-----------------------
Timestamp: ven gen 26 20:20:24 UTC 2007
Message: undefined method `[]' for nil:NilClass
Backtrace:
/usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/main_app.rb:797:in `book_from_iter'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/fileutils.rb:243:in `find'
/usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/main_app.rb:797:in `book_from_iter'
/usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/main_app.rb:834:in `selected_books'
/usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/main_app.rb:829:in `selected_books'
/usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/main_app.rb:183:in 
`on_books_selection_changed'
/usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/main_app.rb:675:in 
`setup_books_listview'
/usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/main_app.rb:726:in `refresh_books'
/usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/main_app.rb:272:in `on_refresh'
/usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/main_app.rb:1344:in `initialize_ui'
/usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui.rb:55:in `main'
/usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria.rb:69:in `main'
/usr/bin/alexandria:10
Release: 6.1.2

Uname -a: Linux ubuntu 2.6.15-23-386 #1 PREEMPT Tue May 23 13:49:40 UTC 2006 
i686 GNU/Linux
--
Please report this dump to 'alexandria-list at rubyforge.org' with some 
additional
information, such as the description of the crash and the steps to reproduce 
it
(if it's possible).

#################################################
Second report

I was importing a list of ISBN, and as usual, a dialog window have appeared, 
showing progress. During the importing, I closed the dialog window, by 
clicking on the cross at top right of the window, and Alexandria crashed with 
the following message.

-----------------------
Alexandria just crashed
-----------------------
Timestamp: ven gen 26 20:27:54 UTC 2007
Message: destroyed GLib::Object
Backtrace:
(eval):13:in `get_property'
(eval):13:in `visible?'
/usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/import_dialog.rb:97:in `initialize'
/usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/execution_queue.rb:62:in `iterate'
/usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/import_dialog.rb:148:in 
`initialize'
/usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/main_app.rb:1171:in `initialize_ui'
/usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui.rb:55:in `main'
/usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria.rb:69:in `main'
/usr/bin/alexandria:10
Release: 6.1.2

Uname -a: Linux ubuntu 2.6.15-23-386 #1 PREEMPT Tue May 23 13:49:40 UTC 2006 
i686 GNU/Linux
--
Please report this dump to 'alexandria-list at rubyforge.org' with some 
additional
information, such as the description of the crash and the steps to reproduce 
it


Greetings,
Marco Costantini

From costanti at science.unitn.it  Sun Jan 28 18:47:10 2007
From: costanti at science.unitn.it (Marco Costantini)
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2007 00:47:10 +0100
Subject: [Alexandria-list] New provider deastore.com, and request of help
Message-ID: <200701290047.10367.costanti@science.unitn.it>

Dear all,
there is an online bookshop, deastore.com, with a very big database of books. 
I'm trying to implement the code to use this provider with Alexandria, but I 
need some help.


deastore.com claims:
"In deastore.com it is possible to find all books available in the English and 
American markets, some of those published in European Countries, Australia, 
Asia and Latin America. The total number of titles available in deastore.com 
is 3.000.000. In the next future, the database will be increased with titles 
published in French, German, Spanish and Italian, up to reach 8.000.000 
titles." 
(see http://deastore.com/help.asp?level=capitolo&id=A6&cookie%5Ftest=1 )

For Italian books, for instance, deastore.com have in its database even very 
old books no more on sale, and can be very useful to catalogate in Alexandria 
existing collections of books.


I have tried to implement the code to use this provider with Alexandria, but 
there is the following problem.
deastore.com requires the cookies. When one ask deastore.com for the web page 
about a book, deastore.com replies with a page that provides the cookies and 
redirects to a second page with the book information. In order to see this 
second page, the cookies are required.

I hope that someone of you, that unlike me knows ruby language, can help me 
about how to handle cookies.

A draft for the code for this provider is attached.

Greetings,
Marco Costantini


-------------- next part --------------
# Copyright (C) 2007 Marco Costantini
# based on ibs_it.rb by Claudio Belotti
#
# Alexandria is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
# modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
# published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the
# License, or (at your option) any later version.
#
# Alexandria is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
# General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public
# License along with Alexandria; see the file COPYING.  If not,
# write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330,
# Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.

require 'net/http'
#require 'cgi'

module Alexandria
class BookProviders
    class DeaStore_itProvider < GenericProvider
        BASE_URI = "http://www.deastore.com"
        def initialize
            super("DeaStore_it", "DeaStore Italia")
            # no preferences for the moment
        end
        
        def search(criterion, type)
            req = BASE_URI + "/"
            req += case type
                when SEARCH_BY_ISBN
#                    "product.asp?cookie%5Ftest=1&isbn="
                    "product.asp?isbn="

                when SEARCH_BY_TITLE
                    "ricerche.asp?quick_search=ok&order_by=relevance&query_field=allbooks&query_string="

                when SEARCH_BY_AUTHORS
                    "ricerche.asp?quick_search=ok&order_by=relevance&query_field=allbooks&query_string="

                when SEARCH_BY_KEYWORD
                    "ricerche.asp?quick_search=ok&order_by=relevance&query_field=allbooks&query_string="

                else
                    raise InvalidSearchTypeError

            end
            
            req += CGI.escape(criterion)
puts URI.parse(req)
	        data = transport.get(URI.parse(req))
puts data
            if type == SEARCH_BY_ISBN
req += "&cookie%5Ftest=1"
puts URI.parse(req)
data = transport.get(URI.parse(req))
puts data

                to_book(data) rescue raise NoResultsError
            else
                begin
                    results = [] 
                    each_book_page(data) do |code, title|
                        results << to_book(transport.get(URI.parse("http://www.internetbookshop.it/ser/serdsp.asp?c=" + code)))
                    end
                    return results 
                rescue
                    raise NoResultsError
                end
            end
        end

        def url(book)
            return nil unless book.isbn
            "http://www.deastore.com/product.asp?cookie%5Ftest=1&isbn=" + book.isbn
        end

        #######
        private
        #######
    
        def to_book(data)
puts "started to_book"
            raise unless md = /0F238C"><strong>([^<]+)/.match(data)
            title = CGI.unescape(md[1].strip)
            authors = []
	    
	        md = /<strong>by<\/strong><\/font><font face="Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1" color="#000000" style="font-size:8pt"><strong>:<\/strong><\/font> <font face="Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1" color="#000000" style="font-size:8pt"><strong>\ ([^<]+)/.match(data)
            md[1].split('; ').each { |a| authors << CGI.unescape(a.strip) }
            raise if authors.empty?

            raise unless md = /<strong>ISBN: <\/strong><\/font><font face="Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1" color="#000000" style="font-size:8pt"><strong>([^<]+)/.match(data)
            isbn = md[1].strip

            raise unless md = /<strong>Publisher<\/strong><\/font><font face="Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1" color="#000000" style="font-size:8pt"><strong>:<\/strong><\/font> <font face="Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1" style="font-size:8pt" color="#000000"><strong>([^<]+)/.match(data)
	        publisher = CGI.unescape(md[1].strip)

            raise unless md = /<strong>More info<\/strong><\/font><br><font face="Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-size : 7.5pt;" size="1">([^<]+)/.match(data)
            edition = CGI.unescape(md[1].strip)

            if data =~ /Ingrandire immagine/
	    	    small_cover = "http://www.deastore.com/covers/ie_cd1/batch1/" + isbn + ".jpg"
	    	    medium_cover = "http://www.deastore.com/covers/ie_cd1/batch2/" + isbn + ".jpg"
	    	    # big_cover = "http://www.deastore.com/covers/ie_cd1/batch3/" + isbn + ".jpg"
	            return [ Book.new(title, authors, isbn, publisher, edition),medium_cover ]
            end
	        return [ Book.new(title, authors, isbn, publisher, edition)]
        end

        def each_book_page(data)
	        raise if data.scan(/<a href="http:\/\/www.internetbookshop.it\/ser\/serdsp.asp\?shop=1&amp;c=([\w\d]+)"><b>([^<]+)/) { |a| yield a}.empty?
        end
    end
end
end

From tristil at gmail.com  Sun Jan 28 20:14:01 2007
From: tristil at gmail.com (Joseph Method)
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2007 20:14:01 -0500
Subject: [Alexandria-list] New provider deastore.com, and request of help
In-Reply-To: <200701290047.10367.costanti@science.unitn.it>
References: <200701290047.10367.costanti@science.unitn.it>
Message-ID: <167b6aa00701281714s33c69621x86de7e22882d3f96@mail.gmail.com>

Hi, Marco. Thanks for working on this. There's good information about
cookies and sessions on this page:
http://www.rubycentral.com/book/web.html . When I get some time, I'll
try to work on this, but in the meantime maybe you can find a simple
solution. It sounds like it involves getting the cookie, then creating
a session based on it, then proceeding as usual.

In any case, I added your file and the test code to svn. This adds to
our stable of broken book_providers, so I hope you are able to fix it
:). If you would like to be able to work directly on the repository
code, I can make you a Developer if you tell me your Rubyforge
username.

On 1/28/07, Marco Costantini <costanti at science.unitn.it> wrote:
> Dear all,
> there is an online bookshop, deastore.com, with a very big database of books.
> I'm trying to implement the code to use this provider with Alexandria, but I
> need some help.
>
>
> deastore.com claims:
> "In deastore.com it is possible to find all books available in the English and
> American markets, some of those published in European Countries, Australia,
> Asia and Latin America. The total number of titles available in deastore.com
> is 3.000.000. In the next future, the database will be increased with titles
> published in French, German, Spanish and Italian, up to reach 8.000.000
> titles."
> (see http://deastore.com/help.asp?level=capitolo&id=A6&cookie%5Ftest=1 )
>
> For Italian books, for instance, deastore.com have in its database even very
> old books no more on sale, and can be very useful to catalogate in Alexandria
> existing collections of books.
>
>
> I have tried to implement the code to use this provider with Alexandria, but
> there is the following problem.
> deastore.com requires the cookies. When one ask deastore.com for the web page
> about a book, deastore.com replies with a page that provides the cookies and
> redirects to a second page with the book information. In order to see this
> second page, the cookies are required.
>
> I hope that someone of you, that unlike me knows ruby language, can help me
> about how to handle cookies.
>
> A draft for the code for this provider is attached.
>
> Greetings,
> Marco Costantini
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Alexandria-list mailing list
> Alexandria-list at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/alexandria-list
>
>
>


-- 
-J. Method

From tristil at gmail.com  Sun Jan 28 21:01:32 2007
From: tristil at gmail.com (Joseph Method)
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2007 21:01:32 -0500
Subject: [Alexandria-list] two crash reports
In-Reply-To: <200701290051.36434.costanti@science.unitn.it>
References: <200701290051.36434.costanti@science.unitn.it>
Message-ID: <167b6aa00701281801t1a40e45eg37dce8e03c86ef70@mail.gmail.com>

Thanks, Marco. Fixed the second problem (by removing the ability to
delete the dialog). I don't understand how the first one works
physically. Is it with a lot of books?

On 1/28/07, Marco Costantini <costanti at science.unitn.it> wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> here are two reports of crashes of Alexandria.
> The version used is the Stopgap release
> http://files.dererum.com/alexandria-0.6.1.1-stopgap.tar.gz of mid January.
>
>
>
> I had selected some books in one library, I was moving them to another
> library. During the move, I clicked on "update", and Alexandria crashed with
> the following message.
>
> -----------------------
> Alexandria just crashed
> -----------------------
> Timestamp: ven gen 26 20:20:24 UTC 2007
> Message: undefined method `[]' for nil:NilClass
> Backtrace:
> /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/main_app.rb:797:in `book_from_iter'
> /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/fileutils.rb:243:in `find'
> /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/main_app.rb:797:in `book_from_iter'
> /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/main_app.rb:834:in `selected_books'
> /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/main_app.rb:829:in `selected_books'
> /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/main_app.rb:183:in
> `on_books_selection_changed'
> /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/main_app.rb:675:in
> `setup_books_listview'
> /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/main_app.rb:726:in `refresh_books'
> /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/main_app.rb:272:in `on_refresh'
> /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/main_app.rb:1344:in `initialize_ui'
> /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui.rb:55:in `main'
> /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria.rb:69:in `main'
> /usr/bin/alexandria:10
> Release: 6.1.2
>
> Uname -a: Linux ubuntu 2.6.15-23-386 #1 PREEMPT Tue May 23 13:49:40 UTC 2006
> i686 GNU/Linux
> --
> Please report this dump to 'alexandria-list at rubyforge.org' with some
> additional
> information, such as the description of the crash and the steps to reproduce
> it
> (if it's possible).
>
> #################################################
> Second report
>
> I was importing a list of ISBN, and as usual, a dialog window have appeared,
> showing progress. During the importing, I closed the dialog window, by
> clicking on the cross at top right of the window, and Alexandria crashed with
> the following message.
>
> -----------------------
> Alexandria just crashed
> -----------------------
> Timestamp: ven gen 26 20:27:54 UTC 2007
> Message: destroyed GLib::Object
> Backtrace:
> (eval):13:in `get_property'
> (eval):13:in `visible?'
> /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/import_dialog.rb:97:in `initialize'
> /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/execution_queue.rb:62:in `iterate'
> /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/import_dialog.rb:148:in
> `initialize'
> /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/main_app.rb:1171:in `initialize_ui'
> /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui.rb:55:in `main'
> /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria.rb:69:in `main'
> /usr/bin/alexandria:10
> Release: 6.1.2
>
> Uname -a: Linux ubuntu 2.6.15-23-386 #1 PREEMPT Tue May 23 13:49:40 UTC 2006
> i686 GNU/Linux
> --
> Please report this dump to 'alexandria-list at rubyforge.org' with some
> additional
> information, such as the description of the crash and the steps to reproduce
> it
>
>
> Greetings,
> Marco Costantini
> _______________________________________________
> Alexandria-list mailing list
> Alexandria-list at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/alexandria-list
>


-- 
-J. Method

From tristil at gmail.com  Sun Jan 28 21:33:07 2007
From: tristil at gmail.com (Joseph Method)
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2007 21:33:07 -0500
Subject: [Alexandria-list] The encoding issues.
Message-ID: <167b6aa00701281833o33f520faw57b7d0ad0fdfb157@mail.gmail.com>

So I don't get this: a bug like #7486
(http://rubyforge.org/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=7486&group_id=205&atid=863)

says that the author can't alter the title with ? or ?, and that it
crashes. But I don't have any problem with either these symbols or
crashing. So to be clear: I'm using Ubuntu Feisty, svn trunk and
ruby-gnome2-0.16. I'm having trouble deciding whether these are
artifacts of the old ruby-gnome2, of bad .po files, incorrectly set
system locales, or what? Anyone have any more insight on this?

-- 
-J. Method

From tristil at gmail.com  Sun Jan 28 22:00:14 2007
From: tristil at gmail.com (Joseph Method)
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2007 22:00:14 -0500
Subject: [Alexandria-list] The encoding issues.
In-Reply-To: <167b6aa00701281833o33f520faw57b7d0ad0fdfb157@mail.gmail.com>
References: <167b6aa00701281833o33f520faw57b7d0ad0fdfb157@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <167b6aa00701281900h2632ce3anb3f62f930c5dd8dd@mail.gmail.com>

Also check out #5980. This is actually quite exciting, I think. He
must have added a book that had characters of death in them! (I'm
cleaning out the bugs).

"Up until a few days ago Alexandria worked perfectly. If I enter an
ISBN it still works okay but if it doesn't find the ISBN and I have to
enter the book manually it crashes. As soon as I type a character in
the Title data entry box it crashes. I can enter all the rest of the
data with no problem; it's just the Title that causes the problem.
There have been no changes to my system (Ubuntu 6.06) that could have
caused the change."

On 1/28/07, Joseph Method <tristil at gmail.com> wrote:
> So I don't get this: a bug like #7486
> (http://rubyforge.org/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=7486&group_id=205&atid=863)
>
> says that the author can't alter the title with ? or ?, and that it
> crashes. But I don't have any problem with either these symbols or
> crashing. So to be clear: I'm using Ubuntu Feisty, svn trunk and
> ruby-gnome2-0.16. I'm having trouble deciding whether these are
> artifacts of the old ruby-gnome2, of bad .po files, incorrectly set
> system locales, or what? Anyone have any more insight on this?
>
> --
> -J. Method
>


-- 
-J. Method

From slamboy at gmail.com  Sun Jan 28 22:24:52 2007
From: slamboy at gmail.com (Jason Mayer)
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2007 21:24:52 -0600
Subject: [Alexandria-list] New provider deastore.com, and request of help
In-Reply-To: <167b6aa00701281714s33c69621x86de7e22882d3f96@mail.gmail.com>
References: <200701290047.10367.costanti@science.unitn.it>
	<167b6aa00701281714s33c69621x86de7e22882d3f96@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <5ae8cc980701281924j4444ee27q904e98671e5bbe15@mail.gmail.com>

I think there is a ruby library that handles cookies very efficiently...
have you looked into WWW::Mechanize?

http://mechanize.rubyforge.org/
http://www.ntecs.de/blog-old/Blog/WWW-Mechanize.rdoc

I'll see if I can write some code to do this for you over the next week (no
promises though - calc 2 is kicking my ass).

On 1/28/07, Joseph Method <tristil at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi, Marco. Thanks for working on this. There's good information about
> cookies and sessions on this page:
> http://www.rubycentral.com/book/web.html . When I get some time, I'll
> try to work on this, but in the meantime maybe you can find a simple
> solution. It sounds like it involves getting the cookie, then creating
> a session based on it, then proceeding as usual.
>
> In any case, I added your file and the test code to svn. This adds to
> our stable of broken book_providers, so I hope you are able to fix it
> :). If you would like to be able to work directly on the repository
> code, I can make you a Developer if you tell me your Rubyforge
> username.
>
> On 1/28/07, Marco Costantini <costanti at science.unitn.it> wrote:
> > Dear all,
> > there is an online bookshop, deastore.com, with a very big database of
> books.
> > I'm trying to implement the code to use this provider with Alexandria,
> but I
> > need some help.
> >
> >
> > deastore.com claims:
> > "In deastore.com it is possible to find all books available in the
> English and
> > American markets, some of those published in European Countries,
> Australia,
> > Asia and Latin America. The total number of titles available in
> deastore.com
> > is 3.000.000. In the next future, the database will be increased with
> titles
> > published in French, German, Spanish and Italian, up to reach 8.000.000
> > titles."
> > (see http://deastore.com/help.asp?level=capitolo&id=A6&cookie%5Ftest=1 )
> >
> > For Italian books, for instance, deastore.com have in its database even
> very
> > old books no more on sale, and can be very useful to catalogate in
> Alexandria
> > existing collections of books.
> >
> >
> > I have tried to implement the code to use this provider with Alexandria,
> but
> > there is the following problem.
> > deastore.com requires the cookies. When one ask deastore.com for the web
> page
> > about a book, deastore.com replies with a page that provides the cookies
> and
> > redirects to a second page with the book information. In order to see
> this
> > second page, the cookies are required.
> >
> > I hope that someone of you, that unlike me knows ruby language, can help
> me
> > about how to handle cookies.
> >
> > A draft for the code for this provider is attached.
> >
> > Greetings,
> > Marco Costantini
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Alexandria-list mailing list
> > Alexandria-list at rubyforge.org
> > http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/alexandria-list
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> -J. Method
> _______________________________________________
> Alexandria-list mailing list
> Alexandria-list at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/alexandria-list
>
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From tristil at gmail.com  Sun Jan 28 22:57:50 2007
From: tristil at gmail.com (Joseph Method)
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2007 22:57:50 -0500
Subject: [Alexandria-list] The encoding issues.
In-Reply-To: <167b6aa00701281900h2632ce3anb3f62f930c5dd8dd@mail.gmail.com>
References: <167b6aa00701281833o33f520faw57b7d0ad0fdfb157@mail.gmail.com>
	<167b6aa00701281900h2632ce3anb3f62f930c5dd8dd@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <167b6aa00701281957q22ffab58p29f3cd77fbe3c7c9@mail.gmail.com>

Last update on this issue:

229030350X and 2020481707 are two books with characters of death in
them. *After you add these books, you cannot edit the title field of
books*! Why? Probably because of the autocompletion function. It's all
much clearer now.

I invite everybody to take a look at the bug tracker now. Most of the
bugs were actually the manual book bug. It's been whittled down to a
couple handfuls of pretty manageable bugs. Let's just tackle these,
and then move on.

http://rubyforge.org/tracker/index.php?group_id=205&atid=863

On 1/28/07, Joseph Method <tristil at gmail.com> wrote:
> Also check out #5980. This is actually quite exciting, I think. He
> must have added a book that had characters of death in them! (I'm
> cleaning out the bugs).
>
> "Up until a few days ago Alexandria worked perfectly. If I enter an
> ISBN it still works okay but if it doesn't find the ISBN and I have to
> enter the book manually it crashes. As soon as I type a character in
> the Title data entry box it crashes. I can enter all the rest of the
> data with no problem; it's just the Title that causes the problem.
> There have been no changes to my system (Ubuntu 6.06) that could have
> caused the change."
>
> On 1/28/07, Joseph Method <tristil at gmail.com> wrote:
> > So I don't get this: a bug like #7486
> > (http://rubyforge.org/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=7486&group_id=205&atid=863)
> >
> > says that the author can't alter the title with ? or ?, and that it
> > crashes. But I don't have any problem with either these symbols or
> > crashing. So to be clear: I'm using Ubuntu Feisty, svn trunk and
> > ruby-gnome2-0.16. I'm having trouble deciding whether these are
> > artifacts of the old ruby-gnome2, of bad .po files, incorrectly set
> > system locales, or what? Anyone have any more insight on this?
> >
> > --
> > -J. Method
> >
>
>
> --
> -J. Method
>


-- 
-J. Method

From bel8 at lilik.it  Mon Jan 29 04:28:15 2007
From: bel8 at lilik.it (Claudio Belotti)
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2007 10:28:15 +0100
Subject: [Alexandria-list] The encoding issues.
In-Reply-To: <167b6aa00701281833o33f520faw57b7d0ad0fdfb157@mail.gmail.com>
References: <167b6aa00701281833o33f520faw57b7d0ad0fdfb157@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <45BDBE2F.70301@lilik.it>

Hi Joseph, hi all,

on 29/01/2007 03:33 Joseph Method wrote:
> So I don't get this: a bug like #7486
> (http://rubyforge.org/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=7486&group_id=205&atid=863)
me neither,
I tried add manually books with accented chars, everything works smoothly
then I tried to add books with HTML-encoded chars like &agrave; &ntilde;
and so on, the book is added correctly but when I delete it the dialog
is empty, only the buttons are there but the book can be deleted safely.

CGI::unescapeHTML doesn't handle the mnemonic code for accented chars
but only the numeric

i.e.

irb(main):001:0> require 'cgi'
=> true
irb(main):002:0> str = "alexandria &egrave; un bel programma"
=> "alexandria &egrave; un bel programma"
irb(main):003:0> puts CGI::unescapeHTML(str)
alexandria &egrave; un bel programma
=> nil
irb(main):004:0> str = "alexandria &#232; un bel programma"
=> "alexandria &#232; un bel programma"
irb(main):005:0> puts CGI::unescapeHTML(str)
alexandria ? un bel programma
=> nil


so my idea is to create an associative array
char_map = {
	'&Agrave;' => '&#192;',
	'&Aacute;' => '&#193;',
	'&Acirc;'  => '&#194;',

...
and then

        str.scan(/&\w+;/).uniq.each do |b|
           mystr.gsub!(b,charmap[b])
        end

so that unescapeHTML will substitute the char properly
or we can use a map live
char_map = {
	'&agrave;' => '?',
	'&eacute;' => '?',
...


I already implemented this solution for the italian provider but I think
it would be better to have a method like that as an utility to be
accessed by other providers.

what do you think?

Claudio

From costanti at science.unitn.it  Mon Jan 29 12:34:30 2007
From: costanti at science.unitn.it (Marco Costantini)
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2007 18:34:30 +0100
Subject: [Alexandria-list] two crash reports
Message-ID: <200701291834.30325.costanti@science.unitn.it>

Yes, it is with say 100 books.
It is also with a live cd, which may be less responsive.
Marco

On Monday 29 January 2007 03:01, you wrote:
> Thanks, Marco. Fixed the second problem (by removing the ability to
> delete the dialog). I don't understand how the first one works
> physically. Is it with a lot of books?
>
> On 1/28/07, Marco Costantini <costanti at science.unitn.it> wrote:
> > Dear all,
> >
> > here are two reports of crashes of Alexandria.
> > The version used is the Stopgap release
> > http://files.dererum.com/alexandria-0.6.1.1-stopgap.tar.gz of mid
> > January.
> >
> >
> >
> > I had selected some books in one library, I was moving them to another
> > library. During the move, I clicked on "update", and Alexandria crashed
> > with the following message.
> >
> > -----------------------
> > Alexandria just crashed
> > -----------------------
> > Timestamp: ven gen 26 20:20:24 UTC 2007
> > Message: undefined method `[]' for nil:NilClass
> > Backtrace:
> > /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/main_app.rb:797:in
> > `book_from_iter' /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/fileutils.rb:243:in `find'
> > /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/main_app.rb:797:in
> > `book_from_iter'
> > /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/main_app.rb:834:in
> > `selected_books'
> > /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/main_app.rb:829:in
> > `selected_books'
> > /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/main_app.rb:183:in
> > `on_books_selection_changed'
> > /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/main_app.rb:675:in
> > `setup_books_listview'
> > /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/main_app.rb:726:in
> > `refresh_books'
> > /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/main_app.rb:272:in
> > `on_refresh'
> > /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/main_app.rb:1344:in
> > `initialize_ui' /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui.rb:55:in
> > `main'
> > /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/alexandria.rb:69:in `main'
> > /usr/bin/alexandria:10
> > Release: 6.1.2
> >
> > Uname -a: Linux ubuntu 2.6.15-23-386 #1 PREEMPT Tue May 23 13:49:40 UTC
> > 2006 i686 GNU/Linux
> > --
> > Please report this dump to 'alexandria-list at rubyforge.org' with some
> > additional
> > information, such as the description of the crash and the steps to
> > reproduce it
> > (if it's possible).
> >
> > #################################################
> > Second report


From tristil at gmail.com  Mon Jan 29 12:50:05 2007
From: tristil at gmail.com (Joseph Method)
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2007 12:50:05 -0500
Subject: [Alexandria-list] The encoding issues.
In-Reply-To: <45BDBE2F.70301@lilik.it>
References: <167b6aa00701281833o33f520faw57b7d0ad0fdfb157@mail.gmail.com>
	<45BDBE2F.70301@lilik.it>
Message-ID: <167b6aa00701290950j1a371b88x7d18dfcb5f39d871@mail.gmail.com>

The good news:

In lines 105-113 of amazon.rb:

                # Work around Amazon US encoding bug. Amazon US apparently
                # interprets UTF-8 titles as ISO-8859 titles and then converts
                # the garbled titles to UTF-8. This tries to convert back into
                # valid UTF-8. It does not always work - see isbn 2259196098
                # (from the mailing list) for an example.
                if req.locale == 'us'
                    title = title.convert('iso-8859-1','utf-8')
                end

!!! Commenting out the last three lines fixes a *lot* of encoding issues.

The bad news:

The book search as a whole doesn't seem very competent. I could be
very wrong about this, but it seems to me that it is satisfied if it
gets some results back from Amazon. If it *fails* to get results, then
it will try another provider, until it exhausts them all. I mean that
it seems that all the bad encoding errors were coming from these three
lines *in amazon.rb*, not anywhere else. Am I right about this, or
totally misguided?




On 1/29/07, Claudio Belotti <bel8 at lilik.it> wrote:
> Hi Joseph, hi all,
>
> on 29/01/2007 03:33 Joseph Method wrote:
> > So I don't get this: a bug like #7486
> > (http://rubyforge.org/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=7486&group_id=205&atid=863)
> me neither,
> I tried add manually books with accented chars, everything works smoothly
> then I tried to add books with HTML-encoded chars like &agrave; &ntilde;
> and so on, the book is added correctly but when I delete it the dialog
> is empty, only the buttons are there but the book can be deleted safely.
>
> CGI::unescapeHTML doesn't handle the mnemonic code for accented chars
> but only the numeric
>
> i.e.
>
> irb(main):001:0> require 'cgi'
> => true
> irb(main):002:0> str = "alexandria &egrave; un bel programma"
> => "alexandria &egrave; un bel programma"
> irb(main):003:0> puts CGI::unescapeHTML(str)
> alexandria &egrave; un bel programma
> => nil
> irb(main):004:0> str = "alexandria &#232; un bel programma"
> => "alexandria &#232; un bel programma"
> irb(main):005:0> puts CGI::unescapeHTML(str)
> alexandria ? un bel programma
> => nil
>
>
> so my idea is to create an associative array
> char_map = {
>         '&Agrave;' => '&#192;',
>         '&Aacute;' => '&#193;',
>         '&Acirc;'  => '&#194;',
>
> ...
> and then
>
>         str.scan(/&\w+;/).uniq.each do |b|
>            mystr.gsub!(b,charmap[b])
>         end
>
> so that unescapeHTML will substitute the char properly
> or we can use a map live
> char_map = {
>         '&agrave;' => '?',
>         '&eacute;' => '?',
> ...
>
>
> I already implemented this solution for the italian provider but I think
> it would be better to have a method like that as an utility to be
> accessed by other providers.
>
> what do you think?
>
> Claudio
> _______________________________________________
> Alexandria-list mailing list
> Alexandria-list at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/alexandria-list
>


-- 
-J. Method

From tristil at gmail.com  Mon Jan 29 15:44:31 2007
From: tristil at gmail.com (Joseph Method)
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2007 15:44:31 -0500
Subject: [Alexandria-list] New provider deastore.com, and request of help
In-Reply-To: <200701290047.10367.costanti@science.unitn.it>
References: <200701290047.10367.costanti@science.unitn.it>
Message-ID: <167b6aa00701291244g430b3443g747e0457bc645ad2@mail.gmail.com>

Per Jason Mayer's suggestion, changed to mechanize code in
dea_store_it.rb. I think this is an acceptable dependency, especially
if other BookProviders can use this, and *especially* if BookProviders
can move away from regex-based parsing to DOM-based.

Marco, right now the regexes don't work properly.

On 1/28/07, Marco Costantini <costanti at science.unitn.it> wrote:
> Dear all,
> there is an online bookshop, deastore.com, with a very big database of books.
> I'm trying to implement the code to use this provider with Alexandria, but I
> need some help.
>
>
> deastore.com claims:
> "In deastore.com it is possible to find all books available in the English and
> American markets, some of those published in European Countries, Australia,
> Asia and Latin America. The total number of titles available in deastore.com
> is 3.000.000. In the next future, the database will be increased with titles
> published in French, German, Spanish and Italian, up to reach 8.000.000
> titles."
> (see http://deastore.com/help.asp?level=capitolo&id=A6&cookie%5Ftest=1 )
>
> For Italian books, for instance, deastore.com have in its database even very
> old books no more on sale, and can be very useful to catalogate in Alexandria
> existing collections of books.
>
>
> I have tried to implement the code to use this provider with Alexandria, but
> there is the following problem.
> deastore.com requires the cookies. When one ask deastore.com for the web page
> about a book, deastore.com replies with a page that provides the cookies and
> redirects to a second page with the book information. In order to see this
> second page, the cookies are required.
>
> I hope that someone of you, that unlike me knows ruby language, can help me
> about how to handle cookies.
>
> A draft for the code for this provider is attached.
>
> Greetings,
> Marco Costantini
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Alexandria-list mailing list
> Alexandria-list at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/alexandria-list
>
>
>


-- 
-J. Method