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A comment on the problem "Bad file format exporting semicolons to Excel/SYLK" in Delicious Monster:

Hi Ash,

I suggest you download and install OpenOffice.org 3.0 (http://www.openoffice.org/) and use it's Calc application to view the SYLK files exported from Delicious Library. You can then copy the data and paste it into Excel. It's a hack workaround but I believe it works, although it's been a while since I worked on that, so it's possible I'm misremembering. – Greg L., on July 08, 2009 23:06
Greg L. replied on July 03, 2009 06:33 to the question "iPhoto '09 faces don't = tags and don't export to Flickr, but will to Facebook?" in Apple:

I'm sure some people will appreciate workarounds that export to Flickr or other proprietary systems, but what iPhoto should really do is support the industry standard metadata format so that ANY software can make use of the information. In this case, it should be able to save the face name to the list of keywords associated with the image, which would then be saved in the Keywords metadata field. It's just like how iPhoto refuses to export the standard City, State-Province, and Country codes even if tell it the location information. Very, very disappointing. I really want to like Apple software, but I'm afraid it's another of their not playing well with others.

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A comment on the question "Bluetooth Scanner Wont Connect!!!" in Delicious Monster:

Hi Murray,

I'd recommend calling the manufacturer, Microvision, and my guess is they'll tell you to exchange it. Good luck! – Greg L., on June 24, 2009 00:02
Greg L. replied on June 03, 2009 00:34 to the problem "2.1 upgrade crashes during library file conversion" in Delicious Monster:

I have emailed the system.log entries to support@delicious-monster.com. Hope that helps!

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Greg L. replied on June 02, 2009 23:25 to the problem "2.1 upgrade crashes during library file conversion" in Delicious Monster:

Let me know if anything else would help. If you would like to look at the lines from /private/var/log/system.log containing the string "Delicious Library 2" emitted during the attempted upgrade, would you prefer that I post them here or email them to you?

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Greg L. replied on June 02, 2009 23:15 to the problem "Publish to Folder fails silently if destination folder does not exist" in Delicious Monster:

Ahh, thanks! I'll try to remember to email first and then post, rather than the other way around.

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Greg L. reported a problem in Delicious Monster on June 02, 2009 21:28:

2.1 upgrade crashes during library file conversion
I tried upgrading from 2.0.7 (v10915) to 2.1 Beta (v11409), which is the advised route to work around Exception 10 crashes when using Publish (see link below). Unfortunately, when trying to start it for the first time it attempts to convert my library from 2.0 format to 2.1 format, and crashes with the following error message:

!
Operation could not be completed. Due to an internal error (Uncaught system exception: signal 10), I cannot upgrade your library file at '/Users/greg/Library/Application Support/Delicious Library 2/Delicious Library Items.deliciouslibrary2' from version '2.0' to version '2.1'. Your original 2.0 file has been unchanged, but Delicious Library 2.1 cannot continue.
OK

Any advice on how to debug/diagnose/work around this?

(I was upgrading to 2.1 beta to work around the Exception 10 crashes when using Publish, per the advice in posting "I'm unable to publish to mobile me after newest software update.")
Greg L. reported a problem in Delicious Monster on June 02, 2009 18:21:

Publish to Folder fails silently if destination folder does not exist
If the destination folder for "Publish to Folder" does not exist, the "Publishing Setup...", "Publish to Folder", and "Visit Published Site" operations all fail with no error message, warning, or other explanation.

To be specific, "Visit Published Site" does absolutely nothing, while "Publishing Setup..." and "Publish to Folder" both bring up the same dialog box wherein you choose which method to publish (MobileMe, iWeb, FTP, Folder), what to publish (Everything, Selected Shelves), and the template (Paper Stencil or Library Shelves), and an action (Publish Now, Done). In my case, Folder is selected, and nothing there indicates that there is a problem, but choosing the "Publish" button simply dismisses the dialog box.

This came about because I'd last published to a network volume which was no longer connected, but it could have been for any number of reasons. In fact, I'd forgotten that DL2 let you specify the output folder name, as it's hidden away under that little (i) icon, and was just assuming it would put it in the default location as it had the first few times I'd run it.

Delicious Library should:

1) Avoid this by having the current destination displayed in the "Publishing Setup" dialog box, preferrably right under the line of buttons indicating different destination types, and

2) Explain the problem with an error message box if the publishing operation or the Visit Published Site operation fail.
Greg L. replied on June 02, 2009 04:31 to the question "Dragging cover art onto shelf isn't working!" in Delicious Monster:

Several people have been unable to drag certain images from Web pages into Delicious Library 2, but were able to work around the problem by dragging the image to the desktop, and then dragging it from there into Delicious Library. No idea why, but it seems to work.

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Greg L. reported a problem in Delicious Monster on June 02, 2009 03:14:

Bad file format exporting semicolons to Excel/SYLK
When I export my library to Excel (SYLK) text file format, the resulting file gives errors when read into Microsoft Excel 2003 for Windows or 2004 for Mac (although not into OpenOffice.org Calc). My library gives 79 such errors, one for every field that contains a semicolon. This is because Delicious Library fails to heed the requirement for SYLK files that semicolons in quoted strings need to be preceded by a second semicolon. Here is a description of the requirement:

SYmbolic LinK (SYLK) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SYmbolic...(SYLK)
Mon Jun 01 2009 19:42:44 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time)
Also note that if a character string in the SYLK file is to contain a semicolon (;) then it should be prefixed with another semicolon so the string would appear as i.e.; "WIDGET#04;;AXC1254". MS Excel will strip the first semicolon on import and the data element will appear as "WIDGET#04;AXC1254". It appears that the semicolon acts as an escape character of sorts.

(Unfortunately, this only explains 87 of the 79 errors I get exporting my .slk file into Excel; I'll continue researching the other problems.)

To Reproduce:

Running Delicious Library 2

Make sure you have at least one item whose text includes a semicolon. (E.g. For the book Lila the Werewolf by Peter S. Beagle, the "illustrator" field has the value "1 b/w illus; dec b/w vignts".)

From the File menu choose "Export", then "Export to Another Application", select the application Excel..., select to export "Entire Library", separate multiple values with "Comma", and leave all "Export Fields" checked. Choose the "Export..." button.

DL2 creates a file named like "Library Export 2009-06-01.slk". Unfortunately, trying to open this in Excel 2004 for the Mac or Excel 2003 for Windows gives the same result: a message box pops up saying

Microsoft Excel
Cannot read record 5401.
Continue reporting each error?
<yes> <no> <cancel>

Choosing "Yes" continues to pop these up (one for every field with a semicolon) until you say "No", then it pops up a message saying:

Microsoff Excel
Microsoft Office Excel cannot convert some of the cells. The total number of errors found is 79.
<ok>
</ok></cancel></no></yes>
Greg L. replied on April 04, 2009 06:16 to the problem "Intermittent crash when dragging cover image from iPhoto" in Delicious Monster:

After starting it usually takes about eight new photos before it crashes, if that's any help. Do you have any idea why it would fail to create the crash logs, even though it says it was creating them?

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Greg L. replied on April 01, 2009 20:34 to the problem "Intermittent crash when dragging cover image from iPhoto" in Delicious Monster:

Ping! Checking in, were the logs I posted any help? It's still crashing all the time...

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Greg L. reported a problem in Delicious Monster on March 19, 2009 19:03:

Intermittent crash when dragging cover image from iPhoto
Took digital images of covers lacking on Amazon, rotated and/or cropped them in iPhoto, then dragged them from iPhoto onto the image placeholder in DL2's "Summary" tab, and a message comes up saying:

"Program Bug Encountered
<uncaught system exception: signal 11>
Would you like to report this bug?"

Once we click Yes, DL2 closes.

After restarting DL2 we can drag the same photo without any problem, so it's not the specific image triggering it.

Over two days we've added around a 120 images this way, and the crash has happened five times so far.

Any ideas, or suggestions as to how we could help debug it?

Thanks!
Greg
Greg L. replied on February 24, 2009 22:18 to the question "Using BT Scanner w/DL2, Leopard-What's the Deal???" in Delicious Monster:

Check out the thread at http://getsatisfaction.com/deliciousmonster/topics/bluetooth_scanner_wont_connect. Yes, the documentation is out of date, the process now works smoothly for me after I exchanged the defective ROV scanner.

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Greg L. replied on February 24, 2009 22:14 to the question "How can I inject a barcode into DL?" in Delicious Monster:

There is a script on http://yarbars.blogspot.com/2008/06/applescripts-for-delicious-library-2.html for doing this, but it doesn't work correctly for me with DL2--it adds the items but doesn't look up their details. I've posted there asking for assistance. Someone more comfortable with AppleScript might be able to figure out the problem.

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Greg L. replied on February 24, 2009 22:05 to the idea "A way to give a little help when delicious library fails to find the item." in Delicious Monster:

An excellent idea! But another, perhaps easier way to achieve the same goal would be to have an option for DL2 to add a new item *even if the lookup failed*. The new item would have the barcode but nothing else, and then by sorting your library by Creation Date you'll see all the identified and unidentified items in the correct order you scanned them. In fact, I would prefer to make that the default behavior.

Then we could also get rid of that incredibly annoying failed lookup window...

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Greg L. replied on February 13, 2009 23:19 to the question "DL2 and Region 4?" in Delicious Monster:

Wil, it seems the best solution would be if you could define an API to a lookup engine, and allow other people to provide "drivers" for searching other data sources. Then you could get a lot of the user community contributing, a win-win situation.

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A comment on the idea "Third party sources and scripts for adding items (DVDs)" in Delicious Monster:

I usually use Wikipedia's BookSources tool, which is a portal to other ISBN/EAN lookup sites. Usually at least a few of them will have details on the book in question. – Greg L., on February 13, 2009 23:17
Greg L. replied on February 13, 2009 23:05 to the idea "Adding other sources" in Delicious Monster:

You'll find there are lots of threads on this board requesting this feature. I wonder if it would be possible to use Readerware or one of the other cataloging program that supports the bar code scanner, and export the information for import into DL2?

When DL2 can't find a book's ISBN I usually end up doing is using Wikipedia's BookSource tool to find the info from another database, and manually enter it into DL2. As you can imagine, it's quite a pain.

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A comment on the question "Bluetooth Scanner Wont Connect!!!" in Delicious Monster:

Terry and Maja, thank you for your help. I visited Microvision today and they quickly determined that my new scanner had a defective Bluetooth chip that was incorrectly identifying itself to the computer. Thus, OS X saw it but it wasn't compatible with DL2. They replaced it and everything is fine now.

The key test for this in the future is that when I paired it through the OS X Bluetooth settings, it should have shown up at "Cordless" rather than "081101125904.625". Thus, I would add that to your support checklist for customers having trouble getting DL to work with their scanner. If it doesn't show up as "Cordless", the back panel with the Bluetooth chip needs to be replaced.

Thanks,
Greg – Greg L., on February 13, 2009 22:50

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