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Bibliotheca - a virtual library manager

Bibliotheca (it means "library" in latim) is a program to manage a big collection of books, which can be arranged in sections, classified by subjects, and chosen by clicking at the picture of its cover. This is better than a regular file manager, as you may recall easily the book from its cover image. You may also rearrange books by just dragging and releasing it in its new place.

Screenshots

Here are screenshots of bibliotheca with some of its bookshelves showing, fully populated. In my filled installation, there are currently about 1700 books in 43 bookshelves. This is not a static count, as I add new books at least once each week.

Here is my "scripting languages" (except ruby and javascript, which have other special pages) bookshelf.

Installation and usage

There is no need to install the program, just download it and move to somewhere in your path. Please read the downloads section below. Moreover, you must have already installed the following programs, need to actually read the books: Adobe Acroread (xpdf can be used, but you will need to edit the script inside the starkit), xchm, djview, and gv; ImageMagick (to capture book covers).

The books must be copied to a directory (default /opt/biblio) and the book cover images will be placed in a subdirectory named "book-icons" (default /opt/biblio/book-icons). The defaults may be changed by clicking the button labelled "config" in the toolbar.

Start adding books in the current bookshelf, then use the last menu entry (ADD PAGE) to create a new custom bookshelf. Now you may move any book to the new bookshelf by clicking it with "Control right-mouse-button" (see binding table below). If you introduced a bookshelf by mistake, select it and remove it with the appropriate button at the "config" dialog.

Some useful bindings:

MouseBtnLeft	Read book
MouseBtnLeft click-n-drag	Move book to another place
Control-MouseBtnRight	Change bookshelf of a book
Shift-MouseBtnRight	Add a new booki (same as the button in the toolbar)
Control Insert	Install a new book (copy from other directory, without the need for a file manager to do that)
Left	Navigate to the previous bookshelf
Right	Navigate to the next bookshelf
Control q	Exit

Beside that there are usual bindings for PageUp, PageDown, Up, Down, the scrolling wheel, and some obscure binding for my own use. (don't even try! :-)

Downloads

Get you bibliotheca here.

It is distributed as an unpopulated starkit (no books, you add them), which require tclkit to run, in linux only. Grab your tclkit at http://www.equi4.com/tclkit/