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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
You can still use the old method (below). But there is an easier approach (assuming you have space on an sdcard):
On old phone
- Go to 'Admin & Prefs'->'Backup to Archive' and save the archive to your phone, preferably on a removable storage card
On the new phone
- install 'Book Catalogue' if not already installed
- copy the archive file created above to your new phone (via a PC or by inserting the removable card if possible)
- Go to 'Admin & Prefs'->'Import Archive' and navigate to and select the archive file
All your books, covers, settings and preferences will be restored.
On old phone
- Go to 'Admin & Prefs'->'Export Books'
- Copy the entire 'bookCatalogue' directory from your phone to a PC or other device. This should contain the 'export.csv' file created in the previous step as well as all the cover images.
On the new phone
- install 'Book Catalogue' if not already installed
- copy the export.csv and all .png or .jpg files from the PC to the 'bookCatalogue' directory on the new phone
- Go to 'Admin & Prefs'->'Import Books'
When I authorize with goodreads I just get a blank page; when I try to sync, it says I need to authorize. What should I do?
First, try another browser. The default internet client has been known to cause problems. Try Firefox or Chrome.
If that does not work, then check is if the app is authorized, and the best way to do that is use a web browser (preferably on your phone), to go to the goodreads site, log in (preferably not via Facebook), click on the profile icon in the top right, and select 'Edit Profile'. Then go to the 'Apps' tab and you should see a section entitled "Applications You've Given Access To", and Book Catalogue will be in the list if it is authorized.
If after trying different browsers, the app is still not registered, send us an email!
When I try to add book with scan barcode it gives me an unexpected error, fails, or never returns. What's going on?
There are a variety of reasons for this, but the most common are:
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You are using an unusual third party scanner. We recommend the Zxing scanner. Other scanners will respond to the Zxing API but fail to behave in the same way.
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You have a phone with a fixed focus (or front facing) camera. Not even the Zxing scanner can help here; fixed focus lenses are not good at recognizing barcodes. Version 4.2.4 (or 4.3) supports the pic2shop scanner which is capable of working in lower light or with fixed focus lenses but is only available as a beta as of 19-Jan-2013.
If you have a variable focus camera and already have Zxing installed, try uninstalling and reinstalling; if it is not installed, then install it.
Note: Google goggles has the capability to recognize books from their covers but the API is largely useless to us as of the time of writing because it will not return the ISBN or barcode to us.
If you experience problems not listed here, send us an email.
When I add a book, it appears more than once in the list. If I delete one of them, they are all deleted. What's going on?
This is most likely because you have selected a list that sorts by Author or series. Books can have multiple authors and be in multiple series. Depending on your preferences this means that the book may appear under each author or series, and can thus appear more than once in the list.
Further, BookCatalogue gets its data from multiple sources and it is possible that two sources list the same author in different ways: eg. 'Isaac Asimov' and 'I. Asimov'. In this case you can edit the book to remove one of the authors, or you can long-click on the author name to edit it -- if you edit an author name to match an existing name, it will be merged with that name.
We do! It's called 'Bookshelves'. OK, it's not well named, but simply create a bookshelf called 'Wishlist' or 'To Read' and start putting books on it. Books can be on multiple shelves.
We rely on freely available book data that supports some kind of API that allows programatic access to that data. Currently we use Amazon (US), Google, goodreads and LibraryThing.
We have two difficulties in supporting book databases from other countries: (1) we need to be able to read the API documentation (chances are, we can't), and (2) there are a lot of countries out there.
The good news is that this is an open source project: if someone from one of those countries wants to build the relevant search interface for the app (we'll help), we will most likely include it in the app.
You are probably running a Samsung Galaxy. This is a known bug with some of their firmware:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=978012
http://kmansoft.com/2011/04/10/js5-firmware-for-samsung-galaxy-s-i9000-is-garbage/
We'd like to add it. Technically it would be easy. But...from a UI design, it is really complex. Feel free to submit a design, but have a look at this thread first
https://github.com/eleybourn/Book-Catalogue/issues/10
We could, but each integration takes considerable time and we have to prioritize. We did goodreads because (a) they were very supportive and helpful and (b) we used their service.
We do provide a CSV export, perhaps it's worth asking XXX service to support CSV files?
If anyone comes up with an open standard for a 'bibliographic interchange format', and if the major sites support it, we'll support it.
Ideally we would like to have "Sync with Desktop" implemented via some means.
We add the ones that seem useful in general, especially if they relate to data we can retrieve from our sources, but there are many such requests.
We are looking into a way to allow 'user-defined fields', but that is currently a low priority.
Yes. Put it in your gallery. Anything in the gallery can be used to replace/set a book cover. You can also use the camera in the phone to add new covers.
This is a fake FAQ question. It is rarely asked. But the answer is we don't know.
We can say that the upgrade from 3.8 to 4.0 took more than 370 hours development time, and added more than 30,000 lines of code. It's anybodies guess what versions 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 took. And that does not include support.
This is still a work-in-progress.