So that is where my 2005 wine encyclopedia has gone! Mon Dieu, François, I've been looking for that everywhere. Wait a minute. That's my Parisienne cookbook, my Tuscan creations cookbook, and my Provencal herbs reference. How many of my books do you have here? Non, mon ami, I am not suggesting anything other than I have been looking for these for some time now. Yes, you are right, at least they weren't lost. I think you had better prepare the tables, ,mon ami, our guests will be here any moment. Too late, they are already here. Welcome, mes amis to Chez Marcel, where fine Linux fare is always on the menu and the wine cellar is always among the greatest in the world. Please sit and make yourselves comfortable while François fetches the wine. Please, mon ami, head down to the north wing of the cellar and bring back the 2000 Bordeaux we were, ahem, subjecting to quality control earlier. It's next to the Margaux labeled "don't open until 2010". Vite, François. Vite! While we wait for my faithful waiter to return with the wine, let me tell you about today's menu. As you know, Chez Marcel has served up a great number of recipes in the years that we have been here. We've also served up a great deal of wine. Much as I would like to think that I can remember all this information, the truth is somewhat more realistic. That's why there are shelves of books on Linux, cooking, and wine in the kitchen, cellar, and office. The problem becomes one of management and that's why we need a database. But what kind of database? How about something easy and extremely flexible. Meet Tellico. Robby Stephenson's Tellico is billed as a collection manager though I like to think of it as a very versatile personal library system. It's a great tool for keeping track of your many cookbooks as well as Linux books, science fiction books, mysteries, and so on (see figure 1). That in itself would make it an extremely useful tool for keeping track of what books various friends and family have. I don't know about you, mes amis, but I have lent out numerous books over the years that have never come back. The people who borrowed them forgot who they borrowed it from and I forgot who I lent them to with the exception of François. I keep a special list for him.
Figure 1 Tellico makes a great personal library system, and it looks good doing it." I see that François has returned, looking a little guilty, non? Don't worry, mon ami, I am not angry. As they say, I know where to find you. Please, relax and refill our guests' glasses. As I was saying, there's more. Tellico has templates to track other forms of collections as well. These include videos, music, coins, stamps, and more. There's even a template for your wine cellar. You can even create your own collections or modify existing forms. I'll show you more and tell you how to work with it shortly. Let me start, however, by telling you that you can get Tellico at http://www.periapsis.org/tellico/. Pre-built packages are available for a number of the major distributions such as Fedora, SUSE, Mandrake, Slackware, and others. You can also download the source and build it using our famous extract and build five-step. tar -xzvf tellico-0.13.1.tar.gz Tellico is a KDE 3.1 (or greater) package requiring the associated QT and KDE development libraries. If you are working from source, you may also want to consider building using a couple of additional, but optional, libraries. The taglib development libraries are the first option and this one lets you read information from audio files (more on this shortly). Another optional library is yaz. Build Tellico with that and you have access to Z39.50 searches. When you start Tellico (by running the command tellico), you'll be starting with the proverbial clean slate. Expand the program window to a comfortably size and start by defining a collection. To create a book collection, click File on the Tellico menu bar, then New, and select New Book Collection. I mentioned that Tellico is a great personal library system, to let you record your books, keep track of when and where you got them, as well as who has borrowed them. Before we get to that stage, however, we need to enter the information from our collection (figure 2).
Figure 2, Entering a new title into your book collection. Under the various tabs, you can enter the obvious title and author information as well as publisher, publishing date, edition, genre, series number, condition, whether the book is signed, whether it is currently loaned out, and whether you have even read it. There are many more fields and I'll let you explore that yourself but I do want to mention that you can also enter a cover image (as you saw in figure 1). If this seems like a lot of work and you don't feel like adding all this information yourself, there is another way. No, you don't have to hire anyone -- don't worry, François -- all you need is a connection to the Internet and Tellico offers the ultimate in convenience. Just click Edit on the menu bar and select Internet Search.
Figure 3 With an Internet connection, entering book information is a breeze. When the Internet Search dialog appears (figure 3), you can enter the book's title, author, ISBN number, or any keyword you wish. Searches are done on Amazon.com's database (although you can also search on the UK, Japan, and Germany sites). If you searched by ISBN, you'll likely have only one entry returned but other searches will likely return more than one title. Click to select the one your want, then click Add Entry. Your database is automatically updated along with a nice cover image. Tellico provides an intelligent search dialog to find a particular title or range of titles. You can also get this information at a glance by adding or removing columns reflecting the various fields from the listings on the right-hand side. For instance, if you always want to know what is out, just right click on the fields bar and add "Loaned". Titles with that field checked will have a green check mark in that position. There are other options for bringing data into your Tellico collections besides those described here. Click on File and look under the Import sub-menu. You'll find options there to use data from simple CSV files, Alexandria, Bibtex, and more. The export function is even more interesting since this is where we enter into reporting. At any time, it's possible to print an entry but the export function is somewhat more powerful than this. For example, by selecting HTML export, you can generate an HTML page of all your books with whatever display fields your particular view uses. You'll be asked for an HTML file name, whether you want to format all fields, selected entries only, and on on. The result is a clean HTML formatted page (figure 4).
Figure 4, An HTMl formatted report. Before we move on, I'd like to tell you about one other export function that I'm particularly fond of. Choose Export to PilotDB from the list and you can generate a PDB format report readable by your favorite Palm document reader. Just hotsync to install your document and you have everything your need at your fingertips. When I started telling you about Tellico, I mentioned that there were templates for other collections as well, including music collections. If you don't already have a collection on the go, click File, then select New Music Collection. To enter a new CD title, the process is similar to that of entering a book although the fields will be different. That said, adding your CD collection to your library can be frighteningly easy if you have the taglib extensions on your system. Just enter a music CD into your CD-ROM or DVD drive, click File, then select Import and choose "Import Audio CD Data" (figure 5). The program will read the information from your CD and import it into your collection.
Figure 5, Tellico can read the title, artist, and track information directly from your CDs. Once your titles are entered, you can go back and fine tune any information that might be missing. Of course, if your collection is on vinyl or tape, you still have to enter everything manually. As with the book collection, you can enter whether an album has been loaned to a friend. Knowing what books and music you have and where they are at the moment, you can sit back with a glass of wine and relax. And now, we find ourselves back at wine, not a bad place to be. What about your wine cellar? Incredibly, Tellico has something for the home wine cellar as well. In the same way that you created a book and music collection, you can also create a wine collection. Click File, then New, and select New Wine Collection. Now, click Collection, then New Entry and start adding your wines one by one (figure 6).
Figure 6, But, of course, we can build a wine cellar database as well. Unfortunately, there is no magical entry system for building a database of your wine collection . . . no fanciful way to scan the labels and have all the information magically appear. Each bottle must be entered manually (figure 5). Still, spending a little time in the wine cellar, studying and recording your collection should not be seen as chore, but a labor of love. Finally, for those who have been asking themselves for a package that will allow them to create simple, custom databases, this package is also for you. Instead of using one of the pre-defined templates, choose instead to create a custom collection. The default collection fields are extremely simple here (title only) so you will want to modify it. After creating your custom collection, click Collection on the menu bar and select Collection fields. Here, you can define additional fields, whether text, numeric, or whatever your needs might be. On that note, mes amis, I see by the clock on the wall that closing time has once again arrived. Since our wine cellar is entirely up to date, François has you complete attention and will happily refill your glasses. Until next time, mes amis, let us all drink to one another's health. A votre santé! Bon appétit! Resources |
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By Marcel Gagné
