rickdude's dashboard

rickdude replied on September 10, 2009 03:54 to the question "Are user-defined citation formats possible in DL2?" in Delicious Monster:

For better or worse, the makers of book cataloguing software like Delicious Library or Bookpedia and the makers of reference management software like Sente and Bookends consider themselves as being in two totally separate markets. It might be possible to hack something together, but I don't think it's likely to be very successful, and I would advise just accepting that, if you're an academic, you need a proper reference management application. If you can't afford to buy one, Mendeley is free software with a web and a desktop component.
If you've never heard of these programs, ask again, and I'll give more details and links.

rickdude started following the question "How Can I Make a Template That is Available to DL2" in Delicious Monster.

rickdude started following the problem ""Help isn't available for Library."" in Delicious Monster.

rickdude shared an idea in atebits on September 10, 2009 01:16:

Customize the font

Allow us to customize the font (not just the font size), to make it look more "modern Mac" (or whatever we want).

rickdude replied on September 01, 2009 00:02 to the idea "Add tagging possibilities." in Delicious Monster:

Note that Bookpedia has tags, though they are not OpenMeta, and a number of user-definable fields.

rickdude started following the idea "Add tagging possibilities." in Delicious Monster.

rickdude started following the idea "print page layout and setup" in Delicious Monster.

rickdude replied on June 23, 2009 04:16 to the question "Can I include notes in web export?" in Delicious Monster:

Thanks, Stu, I guess I'd better leave it alone. Yes, the ability to add fields to pre-designed templates sounds ideal to me.

I must say I sometimes find Delicious Monster difficult to understand. I think of DL as a kind of information-sharing app: it reads in my books through barcodes or hand-input ISBNs and I share the info about the books via the web or by printing. I find it difficult to fathom the design decisions behind making it impossible to add your own fields, or to decide which ones you want to show. (Ditto if I view it as a specialized database software, a kind of Bento for books.)

Sorry to bring the mood down in here, and I do realize that software development is hard work. I also think that the improved scanning alone makes DL2 worth the upgrade price. It's just that DL has generated an incredible amount of publicity and I guess I bought into the hype a bit; it's beginning to seem like rather unambitious software to me. Maybe I'm misreading what it's intended to be, or am assuming to be mainstream features that are really only fringe?

rickdude replied on June 23, 2009 03:51 to the idea "Many suggestions" in Postbox, Inc.:

Thanks for expanding, Rob. Your points make sense.

rickdude shared an idea in Get Satisfaction on June 12, 2009 11:21:

Remove Ma.gnolia links.

The "Bookmark in Ma.gnolia" bookmark on many Get Satisfaction pages should be removed, surely!?

rickdude replied on June 12, 2009 11:13 to the question "Can I include notes in web export?" in Delicious Monster:

I don't really want to fiddle around under the hood, but I've just found the index.library.html file in the application bundle. In that file I see:

span class="rating"$ratingspan
span class="description"$primaryDescriptionAttributedStringspan

Now if between those 2 lines I added
span class="notes"$notesspan

would that do the trick, and what damage might I do if I get it wrong?

[Sorry the code isn't really very readable. I had to delete the triangular bracket things and the slash to make Get Satisfaction show the code at all.]

rickdude gave praise in Delicious Monster on June 12, 2009 10:51:

Nice work on 2.1

Just so that the Monsters don't think we're all an ungrateful bunch, let me say that I've very encouraged by the recent activity with DL. I'm one of the few people who really quite liked the details pane on the bottom, but I applaud the decision to follow the majority opinion in this case. And I'm very glad to see that attention is being paid to obvious usability refinements, such as putting newly scanned items into the selected shelf. A flood of new requests has already started of course, in addition to any new problems that the update might have thrown up, but give yourselves a quick pat on the back for your recent achievements.

rickdude replied on June 12, 2009 10:39 to the idea "Many suggestions" in Postbox, Inc.:

I'm also interested to know what "it's too enamored of its bells and whistles" means.

rickdude replied on June 12, 2009 10:38 to the idea "Many suggestions" in Postbox, Inc.:

It would be great if this could be broken up into the separate points mentioned. That would allow people to comment on the points separately, as well as giving the "I like this idea" button some meaning.

rickdude asked a question in Delicious Monster on June 12, 2009 10:32:

Can I include notes in web export?

I want to include the contents of the notes field in the web pages generated by Delicious Library 2. Is this possible?

rickdude started following the question "MobileMe vs. dot Mac" in Delicious Monster.

rickdude started following the idea "Add custom fields (which can be used for searching and Smart Shelves)" in Delicious Monster.

rickdude started following the idea "Would love to be able to stacks my series" in Delicious Monster.

rickdude replied on May 06, 2009 03:58 to the idea "Web Publish Feature: Add the ability to create new templates." in Delicious Monster:

Thanks for explaining. But is a Transform something that you imagine there being a thriving third-party business opportunity for? Or is this something that competent users would create and share with other users? (Note that I doubt I would be one of those "competent users".)

rickdude replied on May 05, 2009 01:15 to the idea "Web Publish Feature: Add the ability to create new templates." in Delicious Monster:

What's a Transform?