I just put out version 0.6 of Bookcase. It’s got several signification additions since 0.5.2a. First, though, I still didn’t get the kio_z3950r slave working correctly. The error handling isn’t working right, and I don’t like my first take on the dialog/GUI. But on to 0.6…

Most significantly, custom fields are now allowed. Most of the email I receive from folks are requests to add this field or that field, such as a URL field for e-books, or room for quotations or whatever. Bookcase 0.6 allows the user to both modify default fields, to a limited extent, and to add more. Obviously, if new fields are added, the XML file doesn’t follow the default Bookcase DTD anymore. But, in any case, six different field type are supported:

• Simple Text is just the default text entry box.
• Paragraph is a large text entry box.
• List is a drop-down combo box, where the possible values are those defined in the allowed text.
• Checkbox is for boolean values.
• Year is a specialized text entry which limits the input to one or more 4-digit values.
• Finally, URL is for opening local files or network URL’s, using KDE’s default mimetype handling. The label is the hyperlink.

It’s now possible to filter the detailed view to only show the books which meet certain criteria. The Collection Toolbar holds a quick filter, which is instantly applied to the view and matches any field of the books. If a non-word character is used, the text is interpreted as a regular expression. The Advanced Filter dialog allows more complex combinations of up to eight different rules, with both boolean AND and OR supported. The dialog for this uses the KWidgetLister class from part of the kdepim package, which was written by Marc Mutz.

Multiple books can be editing at the same time now. If you have several books for which you want to change the Genre to Science Fiction, for example, select them all by holding down the Control key. The edit boxes now change to show an additional checkbox next to each field. If the field is enabled, that means that all the selected books have the same value. Clicking an un-checked button changes that field so that all of the books have the same value. That may be rather unclear, but if you play around with it, I hope it gets a little more obvious. It’s similar to the way that other applications like Juk or EasyTag work.

Several minor features and bug fixes are in version 0.6, too. When grouping by authors, a different icon is used. Column widths and orders are saved better, so that they maintain their position between sessions. Surname prefixes like ‘de’ or ‘von’ are supported. Bibtex export now defaults to the user’s locale character encoding rather than UTF-8. I’m not sure that this last item was a bug, but perhaps it wasn’t the expected behavior previously.

If you run across any crashes, bugs or what-have-you, feel free to let me know. Patches are always welcome. My TODO list is still full, I think, with the z39.50 access still my priority item. Import and export wizards are high on the list, as well.