Working on Selected Entries
Edit entries
- Select an entry and choose 'Edit...' from the Book menu.
- Alternatively click the 'Edit' button in the toolbar.
- Click on a field inside the Edit window to change the information.
- Click the 'OK' button to finish editing.
In the list view you can also edit information directly inside a column by selecting an entry and then clicking on the specific field to edit.
To edit an entry when you are in the grid view, double-click the cover to bring up the edit window.
To bring up the edit window from inside the details view, either click on the Edit link inside the template (depending on the template) or right-click (ctrl-click) anywhere inside the details view and choose 'Edit' from the contextual menu. Of course, the usual shortcut of Command-E works as well.
Edit multiple entries
To edit more than one entry at a time in the list or grid view,
- Select the entries and choose 'Edit' from the Book menu or click the 'Edit' button in the toolbar.
- Check the box next to the field(s) you'd like to edit.
- Add or delete the information you want (leave the field empty if you want to delete the information for all the entries).
- Click the 'OK' button to finish editing.
If the entries have information in common for a particular field such as the same author, this information will appear in the multiple edit window.
The tags field is special in this regard as it will always show you all the tags the selected entries have in common. This is because the tags field treats each tag as a separate value. So you can add tags to multiple entries or remove those the entries have in common.
To edit the information in the drop-down menus, such as the Genre field, go into the Bookpedia Preferences > Autofill, choose the field you're looking for and use the plus and minus button at the bottom of the window to add or delete entries in the menu.
Copy or duplicate entries
- Select the entry in the list or grid view.
- Choose 'Copy' from the Edit menu.
- Choose 'Paste' from the Edit menu.
- An exact copy of the entry will appear in the collection, with (Copy) amended to the title.
Create a bibliography
Bookpedia lets you automatically transform entries into MLA style bibliographies.
Note: The receiving application has to be able to handle rich text as the bibliography includes an underline. Try TextEdit in rich text format (when the ruler appears at the top of the window).
- Make sure that you have filled out all the relevant fields for a bibliography.
- In list view, select the books you want to include.
- From the Edit menu choose 'Copy As Bibliography'.
- Open your preferred text editing application and choose 'Paste' from the Edit menu or use the keyboard shortcut Command-V.
- The author's name will automatically be listed in the MLA style format (Last, First), regardless of how it appears in your database.
- Alternatively, select all the entries you want to include in the bibliography.
- Hold down the Option key and drag the entries into a text editor window.
(If you drag an entry to another application without holding down the option key, a link back to the Bookpedia entry will be created so that you can click on that link later and Bookpedia will automatically open that entry.)
Alternatively you can use the BibTex.bib and EndNote.txt export templates to use with the applications of the same names for bibliographies. You'll find the templates under the Text tab of the export window.
Rate your entries
Assign a star rating (0-5, including half stars) to an entry to indicate how much you like it.
- Select an entry and open the edit window.
- Under the cover image you'll see five grey dots for the star rating. Click on them to assign stars.
- Click twice to change it to a half star rating.
- To delete the stars assigned to an entry, click to the very left of the first star.
You can also use the list view to assign a rating to an entry.
- Choose 'View Options' from the View menu.
- Check the box next to 'My Rating' to display the column in the list view.
- Click inside the 'My Rating' field of the entry you'd like to assign the star rating to.
- To delete the stars assigned to an entry, click to the very left of the first star but still inside the field.
Add links to entries
You can link most types of files, URLs, images or movies to your Bookpedia entries.
- Open the details view by pressing the 'i' button in the toolbar or choosing 'Details' from the View menu.
- Select the entry you want to link something to.
- Drag the file, URL, image or folder to be linked over the details view.
To view a file, URL, image or movie that's been linked to an entry,
- click on the link in the details view (depending on the template),
- or use the 'View Links' feature under the Book menu,
- or click the 'View' button inside the Links tab of the Edit window,
- or click the 'Links' button in the toolbar.
To link a movie from your hard drive to an entry, you can link either the ISO image, the VIDEO_TS folder or a movie file such as .avi. That way the movie will launch automatically when you click on the link later.
Pro Users: If you'd like to set VLC as your default movie player in Bookpedia, open the application Terminal found in Applications/Utilities and type in the line below, followed by a return:
defaults write com.bruji.bookpedia "VLC for VIDEO_TS" -bool YES
To change the name of a link,
- Open the Edit window and choose the Links tab.
- Double-click the title of the link in the 'Name' column.
- Enter the new title and click the 'OK' button.
To link entries within the program to each other, for example entries belonging to a box set,
- Open the details view by pressing the 'i' button in the toolbar or choosing 'Details' from the View menu.
- In the list view, hold down the Command key and select all the entries to be linked.
- Hold down the Option key and drag the entries from the list view over the details.
- If you don't hold down the option key, the entries will only be linked to the entry that was selected last, i.e. the one showing in the details.
They won't automatically link themselves back to the other selected entries.
- If you want to link the entries to only one entry but the title has already been included in the selection (and it's not the one showing in the details view), command-click the title twice. The first time will de-select it, the second time will re-select it, making it last and showing in the details view.
To link entries across the Pedias to each other, follow the same procedure as described above.
To create a link to a Bookpedia entry in another application,
- Drag the entry from the list view over the other application's main window.
- Depending on the application, a link with the title of the entry will appear.
- Clicking the link will open the entry in Bookpedia.
Use Spotlight for searches
Using Spotlight for searches in your Bookpedia database means you don't even have to run the program to find a particular entry.
- Open Spotlight and type the title of the entry.
- To speed up the search, type 'Book:' before the keyword. This will narrow the search down considerably.
- Click the result to open Bookpedia with the search result selected.
- If you want to see your whole Bookpedia database in Spotlight, type 'PediaItemBook'.
Cover Flow
With Cover Flow in the Finder you have the option to display each file as a large preview of its first page, a view that most users will already be familiar with thanks to iTunes. To turn Cover Flow on, click the Cover Flow button in the Finder window toolbar.
Quick Look
Quick Look gives you a glimpse of a file without having to launch an application. For Bookpedia this means that you can browse your collections without actually having to run the program. Almost all of the information is available right in the Finder through Quick Look. To trigger Quick Look, tap the Space bar or click the Quick Look icon in the Finder window.
Smart folders
Store your Spotlight searches for your Bookpedia entries and flip through them at any time so you don't have to perform a new search in Spotlight every time. Do a Spotlight search using 'PediaItemBook' and then save the search via the 'Save' button in your Finder window.
To see these features in action, take a look at this
video on our website.
Create .bcards
Bcards are small XML files you can create, for example to email to a friend. To create a .bcard, select one or more entries in the list view and drag them out to your Desktop.
