www.abebooks.com

[thomfred]

Would be great to tie Bookpedia into the abebooks.com database...

[Nora]

abebooks.com is already on my list of plug-ins. I've fallen behind on those a bit but I'll try and speed things up again..

Nora

[Sir Robin]

If not a "sell via abebooks" plugin, I would really like an option to import and export ABE's homebase file format. The folk at ABE really don't seem to give a damn about Mac users. The latest Mac version of Homebase requires Classic, which makes it not an option for Intel Mac owners (and a pretty awful one for everyone else). I can run the Windoze version via Parallels but really don't want to use it for full-time cataloguing. Meanwhile, I have a few thousand more books than I need and ABE is a much better venue for selling the rare and collectible than Amazon.

[druid]

Second the motion! I am cataloging 5,000 books, most of which will go to a research institute library, but I have several firsts and rare editions that I'd like to sell via ABE. Also, all Mac users of ABE should petition them to update Homebase to OS X compliance.

[cholula69]

I have the format required for ABE books (see below) but for the life of me cannot figure out how to set it up to export, any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Our conversion contains the following fields:
Field 1: collection = Book ID/Number
Field 2 Title
Field 3 author
Field 4 Publisher
Field 5 pages = fields empty where no info given. Please add "pages" or "p" after number
Field 6 Genre
Field 7 Condition
Field 8 Format = Binding
Field 9 ISBN
Field 10 On sale = Yes = For Sale
Field 11 Price
Field 12 Release = Publisher Date
Field 13 Edition

[Conor]

Here is what a template would look like (I am not sure if they mean that it should say "field..." or not but I give you both versions). Add this to a text file and save it under ~/Library/Application Support/Bookpedia/Templates

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<!--BeginRepeat-->
Field 1: [Key:ISBN] 
Field 2: [Key:Title] 
Field 3: [Key:Author] 
Field 4: [Key:Publisher] 
Field 5: <!--IFPages[Key:Pages]pENDPages-->
Field 6: [Key:Genre] 
Field 7: [Key:Condition] 
Field 8: [Key:Format] 
Field 9: [Key:ISBN] 
Field 10: <!--IFOnSaleYESENDOnSale--> 
Field 11: [Key:ListPrice]
Field 12: [Key:Release] 
Field 13: [Key:Edition]
<!--EndRepeat-->

or without "Field..":

Code: Select all

<!--BeginRepeat-->
[Key:ISBN] 
[Key:Title] 
[Key:Author] 
[Key:Publisher] 
<!--IFPages[Key:Pages]pENDPages-->
[Key:Genre] 
[Key:Condition] 
[Key:Format] 
[Key:ISBN] 
<!--IFOnSaleYESENDOnSale--> 
[Key:ListPrice]
[Key:Release] 
[Key:Edition]
<!--EndRepeat-->

What I find strange is they have no character to delimit the end of one book and the beginning of another. At the moment this output will add two returns betweeen books, the one after the <!--BeginRepeat--> and the one before the <!--EndRepeat-->. So if they are counting on there being 14 lines exactly for each book, you have to remove the first return in the loop like this:

Code: Select all

<!--BeginRepeat-->[Key:ISBN] 
[Key:Title] 
[Key:Author] 
[Key:Publisher] 
<!--IFPages[Key:Pages]pENDPages-->
[Key:Genre] 
[Key:Condition] 
[Key:Format] 
[Key:ISBN] 
<!--IFOnSaleYESENDOnSale--> 
[Key:ListPrice]
[Key:Release] 
[Key:Edition]
<!--EndRepeat-->

[Sir Robin]

I have the format required for ABE books (see below) ...

No, you don't. That's just part of an hypothetical example as a part of ABE's description of how to send them information so that they can convert data into their format for you. It's not even the format they want, it's the example of what you might be using before you mung it into something they would accept (as described here).

The real Homebase import/export file format is quite a bit more complicated than that. There are header and footer blocks, book start and end tags and several fields which don't seem to directly correspond to any data fields in Homebase.

I have spent the last couple of days manually creating book records in the windows version of Homebase, exporting them, deducing what the various fields mean and building a Bookpedia export template from what I have learned. I can now consistently produce files from Bookpedia that look identical to those produced by Homebase and which successfuly crash Homebase on importing 100% of the time.

I will keep bashing my head against it. When I am back nearer the computer that has the files, I will post an example here.

[Sir Robin]

Several days later....

After a bit of experimentation it turns out that the file headers and footers that Homebase tacks on to its export files are completely unnecessary. This makes things quite a bit easier.

Here's where I'm at now:

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<!--BeginRepeat-->
BOOS|
BOOK|[Key:Collection]
ANAM|[Key:Author]
TNAM|[Key:Title]
PBLS|[Key:Publisher]
SUB1|[Key:Subjects]
DESC|[Key:Summary]
PRIC|[Key:AskingPrice]
SIGN|[Key:Signed]
UPDT|[Key:DateAdded]
ISBN|[Key:ISBN]
SGNT|[Key:Signed]
EDNT|[Key:Edition]
BNDC|[Key:Format]
PBPL|[Key:PlacePublished]
PBYR|[Key:Year]
BOOC|[Key:Condition]
INAM|[Key:Illustrator]
SIZE|[Key:Dimensions]
STAT|
PPRC|[Key:PaidPrice]
PDSC|[Key:Notes]
LOCA|[Key:Location]
BOOE|
<!--EndRepeat-->

Pop that in a text file, save it in the ~/Library/Application Support/Bookpedia/Templates and you should be able to export most of your basic data into something that Homebase 2.3 will read via its Import option.

There are more possible fields in Homebase files and I am still working out what all of them are (updates will follow). Most, if not all seem to be optional so long as each book starts with BOOS and ends with BOOE.

This isn't without issues. First, the SUB1 field corresponds to Keywords in Homebase. I figured Subjects was the closest match. Your preferences might be different. Feel free to change it.

Multi-line descriptions, lists of subjects etc do import (it seems Homebase reads everything after a field label as data until it comes to another field label) but carriage returns at ends of lines don't seem to translate well so you get everything in one block with mystery characters where line breaks should be.

The STAT field is the book status. Homebase wants this to have one of three possible values: For Sale, On Hold or Sold. I'm not sure how to pull this off so I have left that line blank for now in the hope that someone will come along and scribble in a solution.

[Conor]

carriage returns at ends of lines don't seem to translate well

Bookpedia uses the regular linefeed (\n) for a newline, since Homebase is originally a Windows software in might be looking for the carriage return (\r). Do a find and replace, using a program like TextWrangler, for

Code: Select all

\n

to

Code: Select all

\r\n