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 Post subject: Export MyPlot, MyReview, and MyNotes
PostPosted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 7:19 am 
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I have a lot of experience with writing, but I don't have much experience with movie databases. Indeed, I am interested in movie databases only insofar as they support my writing about films and television shows. Consequently, I am interested in Coollector particularly because of its MyPlot, MyReview, and MyNotes features.

However, it would appear that Coollector cannot yet export writing from the MyPlot, MyReview, and MyNotes sections. If I cannot backup what I write in Coollector, then I won't write in Coollector, which defeats my purpose. I simply cannot trust any writing tool that presents even the slightest possibility of becoming a single point of failure in my workflow.

Thus my questions: Does the development path for Coollector include support for exporting user-generated writing in the MyPlot, MyReview, and MyNotes sections of the database? If no, why not? If yes, how far down the development pipeline is this feature likely to appear?


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 Post subject: Re: Export MyPlot, MyReview, and MyNotes
PostPosted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 11:47 am 
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Derpmond_Blergson wrote:
Thus my questions: Does the development path for Coollector include support for exporting user-generated writing in the MyPlot, MyReview, and MyNotes sections of the database?

Of course MyPlot, MyReview, and MyNotes must be exported! After reading your message, I've had to check because I was convinced it was already the case. My mistake, it's a stupid oversight :(


Derpmond_Blergson wrote:
If yes, how far down the development pipeline is this feature likely to appear?

Unfortunately it's too late for the next version which I'll release in a few days, but I'll do it with the version after ;)

Thank you for your feedback!


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 Post subject: Re: Export MyPlot, MyReview, and MyNotes
PostPosted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 8:56 pm 
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Wonderful! Thank you. I just purchased a license for the portable version of Coollector to support your work.

Someday, it would be terrific if you could build rich text functions into the MyPlot, MyReview, and MyNotes sections. If you did, I reckon you could tweak your marketing copy accordingly to attract more clients like me.

On that note, you might take a look at how Literature and Latte promote their program, Scrivener. The two of you would never compete because your programs serve entirely different needs, but you might learn a couple of things from their approach. Firstly, Scrivener integrates source materials directly into its writing interface. Secondly, Scrivener serves merely as a drafting space; that is, Scrivener provides a place to hammer out the rough contours of a document's structure and content before polishing it up later in some other program (like Microsoft Word) to tidy up the final draft. Moreover (and thirdly), Scrivener appeals strongly to writers of fiction, including script writers, who are also likely to be interested in film and television (and thus also be interested in a database like Coollector).

In my opinion, Coollector is quite close now to engaging with all three of Scrivener's approaches to writing; but of course, Coollector's expansive and efficient database structure gives it the potential to be much more useful than Scrivener for the particular purpose of drafting texts about television and film. Rich text support for the MyPlot, MyReview, and MyNotes sections (after building in support for their export) sometime down the line would really seal the deal.


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 Post subject: Re: Export MyPlot, MyReview, and MyNotes
PostPosted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 10:04 pm 
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Derpmond_Blergson wrote:
I just purchased a license for the portable version of Coollector to support your work.

Thank you very much!


Derpmond_Blergson wrote:
Someday, it would be terrific if you could build rich text functions into the MyPlot, MyReview, and MyNotes sections. If you did, I reckon you could tweak your marketing copy accordingly to attract more clients like me.

Which rich text functions do you need? If it's bold, italic, underlined, and hyperlinks, maybe we could use html tags like with this forum. If it's something more elaborate, it won't render well when the movie description is minimized, and it'll be hard to export as XML.


Derpmond_Blergson wrote:
you might take a look at how Literature and Latte promote their program, Scrivener.

I doubt that Coollector will someday become an elaborate text editor.


Derpmond_Blergson wrote:
Scrivener appeals strongly to writers of fiction, including script writers, who are also likely to be interested in film and television (and thus also be interested in a database like Coollector).

In my opinion, Coollector is quite close now to engaging with all three of Scrivener's approaches to writing; but of course, Coollector's expansive and efficient database structure gives it the potential to be much more useful than Scrivener for the particular purpose of drafting texts about television and film.

Why would someone write a script for a new movie in the MyPlot field of an existing movie? MyPlot doesn't mean it's your own script, it just means that it's a plot different from the one provided by our movie database.


Derpmond_Blergson wrote:
Rich text support for the MyPlot, MyReview, and MyNotes sections (after building in support for their export) sometime down the line would really seal the deal.

Maybe it's because I'm not a writer myself, but I don't see the point of all this :worried:


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 Post subject: Re: Export MyPlot, MyReview, and MyNotes
PostPosted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 10:15 pm 
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(cool) Hector wrote:
hyperlinks

Talking about hyperlinks, it's on my todo list to add a MyLinks tab. Of course the links would be clickable, even when shown in Coollector (outside the editing window).

The program would provide some basic help to collect some links more conveniently, by making a search on some famous movie websites (rottentomatoes, wikipedia, metacritics, etc...).


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 Post subject: Re: Export MyPlot, MyReview, and MyNotes
PostPosted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 12:24 pm 
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(cool) Hector wrote:
Talking about hyperlinks, it's on my todo list to add a MyLinks tab. Of course the links would be clickable, even when shown in Coollector (outside the editing window).


I like that idea! After I watch a movie, I almost always read reviews of it online. It would be very handy to save links to the reviews I read in Coollector for later reference.


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 Post subject: Re: Export MyPlot, MyReview, and MyNotes
PostPosted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 12:59 pm 
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(cool) Hector wrote:
Which rich text functions do you need? If it's bold, italic, underlined, and hyperlinks, maybe we could use html tags like with this forum.


Html tags should work fine. In addition to bold, italic, underline, and hyperlinks, it would also be helpful to have bullets and numbered lists.

(cool) Hector wrote:
I doubt that Coollector will someday become an elaborate text editor.


That's fine. I'm not expecting it to.

(cool) Hector wrote:
Why would someone write a script for a new movie in the MyPlot field of an existing movie? MyPlot doesn't mean it's your own script, it just means that it's a plot different from the one provided by our movie database.


Yes, of course. I wasn't trying to suggest that authors would write scripts in Coollector. I was only trying to suggest that writers will appreciate being able to add their own writing to the database.

(cool) Hector wrote:
Maybe it's because I'm not a writer myself, but I don't see the point of all this.


Well, I don't have any hard evidence to prove that my point applies to anyone other than myself, but my basic idea is that Coollector includes better support for writers than its competitors, which suggests to me that you might want to emphasize Coollector's support for writers in your marketing copy.

For example, after I watch a movie, I like to think about it. When I think, I like to write. But because I do so much writing, it's all too easy to lose track of what I've written or where my writing is located. Coollector helps me with those problems because I know that my writing about movies and television are filed away in my movie and TV database (Coollector). Then, if I want to watch another movie, I know exactly where to find my notes about movies I've already seen. After reviewing them in Coollector, I can use the database functions in Coollector to identify the next movie I want to watch.

If I write in Coollector about every movie I see, in a few weeks, months, and years, Coollector will be as much a database of my writing about movies and television as it is a database of the shows themselves. Gradually, as I review my writing in Coollector, I identify themes that I want to develop in greater length in longer pieces of writing elsewhere.

In other words, in addition to remaining a robust database of shows that can be used equally well for either entertainment or research purposes, Coollector can also become like a notebook or journal about those shows. Most writers use notebooks and journals to sketch out their ideas before committing them to writing in greater depth later.

So, I'm not proposing that Coollector try to become a text editor. I'm just saying that if you keep developing support for writers (through exporting, rich text, and hyperlinks), more writers are going to become interested in Coollector because it has built-in support for our workflow.

Must not there be other writers out there who would appreciate these functions in Coollector?


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 Post subject: Re: Export MyPlot, MyReview, and MyNotes
PostPosted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 1:46 pm 
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Derpmond_Blergson wrote:
In addition to bold, italic, underline, and hyperlinks, it would also be helpful to have bullets and numbered lists.

That's reasonable. I can't give any date, but it's now on my todo list.


Derpmond_Blergson wrote:
Well, I don't have any hard evidence to prove that my point applies to anyone other than myself, but my basic idea is that Coollector includes better support for writers than its competitors, which suggests to me that you might want to emphasize Coollector's support for writers in your marketing copy.

When I've allowed users to write reviews, it was in fact the first part of a bigger plan... As you know, you can publish your coollection online. For the moment, your reviews are not displayed, but in the future, you'll be able to make some of your reviews public (when they're finished writing, and you're proud of the result).

For each movie, you'll have access to the list of all the public reviews. This list can be ordered in several ways:

1) listed first are your favorite reviewers (because reviewers can be rated).

2) listed first are the reviews with the best average rating (because reviews can be rated).

3) listed first are the reviewers that think the more like you (because Coollector has access to your coollection and the reviewer's coollection, it can compare them and determine your affinity).

This would fix an eternal problem: the subjectivity of the reviews... We all know that a same movie can be good for some, and bad for others. So let's get crazy and imagine that our system becomes so successful that even the professional reviewers record their movie taste inside Coollector (it's like their ADN signature). You'd be able to effortlessly find out the reviews that really tell you if you should watch a movie or not.

:V:


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 Post subject: Re: Export MyPlot, MyReview, and MyNotes
PostPosted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 2:34 pm 
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Of course, the reviewers with their own website would just provide a link to the review webpage.


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 Post subject: Re: Export MyPlot, MyReview, and MyNotes
PostPosted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 6:40 pm 
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(cool) Hector wrote:
Derpmond_Blergson wrote:
In addition to bold, italic, underline, and hyperlinks, it would also be helpful to have bullets and numbered lists.


That's reasonable. I can't give any date, but it's now on my todo list.


Yay!

(cool) Hector wrote:
When I've allowed users to write reviews, it was in fact the first part of a bigger plan... As you know, you can publish your coollection online. For the moment, your reviews are not displayed, but in the future, you'll be able to make some of your reviews public (when they're finished writing, and you're proud of the result).

For each movie, you'll have access to the list of all the public reviews. This list can be ordered in several ways:

1) listed first are your favorite reviewers (because reviewers can be rated).

2) listed first are the reviews with the best average rating (because reviews can be rated).

3) listed first are the reviewers that think the more like you (because Coollector has access to your coollection and the reviewer's coollection, it can compare them and determine your affinity).

This would fix an eternal problem: the subjectivity of the reviews... We all know that a same movie can be good for some, and bad for others. So let's get crazy and imagine that our system becomes so successful that even the professional reviewers record their movie taste inside Coollector (it's like their ADN signature). You'd be able to effortlessly find out the reviews that really tell you if you should watch a movie or not.

:V:


Very nice! I like it!


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 Post subject: Re: Export MyPlot, MyReview, and MyNotes
PostPosted: Mon Jan 05, 2015 12:44 pm 
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Version 4.3.6 is released, with export of MyPlot, MyReview, and MyNotes.

8)


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