Readerware Detail View

The Readerware detail view is used to:

Add new items to your database manually. Click on the Add Book toolbar button. To add based on an existing item, first search for it, make your changes and click on the Add button.
View items in your database. You can display the detail view from any of the main views. The Summary tab is displayed and you can see information about the item.
Edit items in your database. You can display the detail view from any of the main views. Select the Edit tab and the fields are editable. Click on the Update button to apply your changes.
Check items in and out - Select the Loan button to open the loan dialog.

There are at least 4 tabs in each detail view:

Summary tab - Display a formatted summary of the item. The summary page is template driven and it is possible to develop your own templates to the display the data you need.
Edit tab - Display the item in edit mode, click on the Update button to apply your changes.
Images tab - Display the images that have been added to this item. You can also edit the images. Right click on an image to display the popup menu. Mac users Control-Click on the image. You can copy/paste images, load in a new image, export images etc.
Contents tab - There will be at least 1 contents tab, more if there are multiple volumes, discs etc. You can edit the contents, right click on the item number to display the popup menu. Mac users Control-Click. You can copy/paste items, insert new items, insert breaks etc.
User tab - This is an optional tab and only appears when you have added user defined columns to your database. The user defined columns appear on this tab and can be edited.

Editing an item

The Edit tab displays the full item and most fields are editable. The exceptions are fields like date added and last updated which are set automatically.

The Edit tab includes both the image and data in a split panel.

You can also edit the image, right click on the image to display the popup menu. Mac users Control-Click.

You can change the position of the image panel, the number of images displayed etc. in Preferences. If you need more space to edit the data you can adjust the split by dragging it with the mouse. You can collapse it completely if you don't need to see the image. Click on the buttons on the divider to collapse and restore the split.

You can control the level of detail displayed on the Edit tab, choose between Full, Standard, Brief and Seller. You can set the default display type in Preferences. Normally the display type is used globally and applies to all records but you can save a different setting for each record if you want. For example if your music library is mostly jazz or rock you are probably not interested in fields like Composer, Conductor, Work etc. So you choose the standard display mode as the default as it does not include this information. You do have some classical albums though. For these you would like to see this information. Select the full display type and then click on the Update button. Readerware will save this setting in the record and always display the full listing for this item.

Many fields in the Edit tab will have a specific editor to help you enter an appropriate value. Some are plain text, you just enter the data, others will have specific editors:

Contributors - Authors, artists, actors, directors etc. are contributors. The contributor editor is a drop down list. You can select the contributor from the list or enter the first few characters of their name. Use the cursor keys to move up and down the list and the Enter key to select. You can click on the green enter icon to display the contributor dialog where you can record personal information, a biography, picture etc. You can also use this dialog to add a new contributor.
Lists - Fields like format, category, rating etc. are lists. You can select a value from the list, type in the first few characters of the entry you are looking for to display it. You can add new entries by just typing them in. You can maintain the list by selecting the Edit item from the popup menu.
Dates - Dates can be entered by selecting from the drop down panels. You can also just enter a date if you prefer.
Values - These fields use a spinner to increment/decrement the value. The arrow buttons are sensitive to the cursor location. The can click on the dollar component before the decimal point and use the arrows to adjust the dollar amount, click in the cents component to adjust the cents. You can also type in new values.
Numbers - These fields use a spinner to increment/decrement the value. You can also type in new values.
Media - Click on the ... button to select a media file. Click on the Play button to play it.
Keywords - Keywords are comma separated. Type in your keywords followed by a comma.

Many fields include a search item on the popup menu. For example right click in the author field to display the popup menu. Mac users Control-Click. Select Search from the popup menu and Readerware will search the database and display all books by this author. This can be a very useful feature when editing a record, you might want to make changes to other books by this author, items in this category etc. You can also access the clipboard functions from the popup menu.

Finally at the bottom of the panel is the button bar:

Add - Add a new item to the database.
Update - Update an item in the database
Delete - Delete an item from the database
Clear - Clear all fields
Loan - Open the loan dialog to check books in and out

The Update button is actually a group of three buttons. Click on the main Update button to update the current item. The updated item is still displayed and you can make further changes or use the toolbar Home button to return to the parent view, the Back and Forward buttons to move to another item. Click on the <+ button to the left of the main Update button to update the current item and move to the previous item. Similarly click on the +> button to the right of the main Update button to update the current item and move to the next item.

Editing item contents

Each item in your database can have a list of contents. Books can have Volumes and Chapters, videos can have discs and episodes, albums can have discs and tracks. You edit these entries the same way regardless of the product.

Using an album as an example, display the album in the detail view and click on one of the disc tabs. The tracks on that album are displayed. All fields can be edited, just click in the field.

There can be any number of discs in an album, you can create additional discs using the Add disc button.

There can be any number of tracks on a disc. A powerful track editor is included, you can right click on a track number to access the editor. Control-Click on a Mac. Select the desired function from the popup menu.

You can insert and delete tracks, copy/paste tracks.

You can insert a disc break. This can be useful if a site does not include disc breaks in their listings, some sites might list a double album as a list of 38 tracks. If track 20 is the first track on disc 2, right click on track 20 and select Insert Disc Break. Readerware will create a new disc and move the remaining tracks on to it.

If you are cataloging vinyl you can insert side breaks to keep track of which tracks are on each side of the LP.

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