Tellico 3.4 Released

Tellico 3.4 is available, with several new features, updated data sources, bug fixes and build changes. I’m excited about this release. It pulls together a few different things that I’d been working on. I’ve got a few more ideas about charts and reports to be added. The additional coin and stamp data sources really fill a niche. Everything seems to be working really nicely together, so I’m happy to put 3.4 out.

Features

  • Colnect can now be searched for stamp results.
  • The Group View can now be sorted by fields other than the title.
  • The MultiFetcher data source was improved to “daisy-chain” results from multiple sources, merging them together. For example, a UPC search with UPCitemdb could be connected such that the result has additional information from TMDb.
  • Entries can now be filtered using minimum or maximum image size.
  • Importing from the Collectorz software family was added.
  • Graphical chart reports were added (requires compiling with QtCharts).

Improvements and Bug Fixes

  • The default toolbar layout for adding new entries to the collection was finally changed.
  • Data sources for Douban, Discogs, MusicBrainz, IGDB, OMDb, TheGamesDB, and TMDb were updated.
  • Overall, the entry updating and merging was also improved to both make a better search request as well as match existing results more efficiently.
  • Batch searching was added for ISBNdb.
  • Barcode searching and updating was added to DVDfr, Discogs and MusicBrainz.
  • The AnimeNFO data source was removed.
  • PlayStation5 and Xbox Series X were added to the list of default game platforms.
  • The entry and report templates were improved for mobile layouts.
  • A crashing bug on Windows was fixed (Bug 422468).
  • The “Filter by Group” command was again improved to better match table fields.
  • Tellico will now build against QtWebEngine instead of KHTML, if available, since KHTML is deprecated.
  • Bibtex parsing with the included btparse library is now a compile-time option, which allows Tellico to build with MSVC.
  • Many other updates were done to prepare Tellico for the eventual shift to Qt6 and KDE Frameworks 6, moving away from deprecated classes and methods.

There were some additional improvements in image loading which should speed things up. As always, please backup your data file periodically and especially when moving to a new version like this. The easiest method is to export the collection as a Zip file.

Please do let me know of any regressions in functionality, compilation problems, bug in the behavior, or suggestions for improvement!

Tellico 3.3.5 Released

Tellico 3.3.5 is available, with a few minor fixes. I expect to have version 3.4 ready in a week or so, but it has some build changes, and I wanted to make sure I had a final release from the 3.3.x series to catch the last few fixes.

Improvements

  • Template colors are automatically updated when the style or palette is changed.

Bug Fixes

  • Correct reading of audio file metadata and .directory information (Bug 429803).
  • Updated “Filter by Group” to properly match table fields.

Entry Templates From KDE Store

Some changes in the implementation of what used to be kde-apps.org several years ago went past me and I neglected to update Tellico with the changes. Prompted by a Tellico user sharing a new entry template with me, I went back to figure out what was going on.

Tellico knows where to look for new user templates by checking the options in the tellico-template.knscrc file. If you add the changes from a recent commit to the .knscrc file, you should be able to run Tellico and then once again, select new templates to download.

Tellico’s Dialog For Downloading New Templates

The templates are also available directly from store.kde.org. The recent one I uploaded, with permission from the user, is called ZAP Group Narrow. Within Tellico, the download dialog shows a description of the template along with a button the install it locally.

The fix for the download location itself will be included in Tellico version 3.4.

Colnect Data Source Added

Starting in version 3.3, Tellico will be able to search Colnect, an online community for collectibles providing personal collection management. As of right now, Tellico can search for coin information only.

Colnect Search Options

Colnect has information in a variety of languages. Tellico has defined options for a few of the most popular; however, you are free to enter whatever language you like.

Obverse and reverse images on Colnect are not specific to the year. If you do have multiple coin entries referencing the same image, Tellico will only save one copy of that image.

The Colnect data model does not map directly to Tellico so the search may not be as fruitful as you might expect. At least as far as I’ve used it, the best results will likely be from searching with a year and the coin name. Mintmarks are not included in the search.

Colnect Search Results

I don’t know how many people use Tellico for coin collections. Please let me know what you think of the Colnect search, if you do use it. As always, if you have suggestions for improvement, please send them to the mailing list or forum. Thanks!

Searching Amazon may not work after March 9, 2020

Amazon search will stop working in previous and current versions of Tellico on or after March 9, 2020. Tellico has been using their Product Advertising API v4, and they’re going to shutdown v4 down in favor of v5. There’s a FAQ about the change and a general information page.

I’ve been working on updating Tellico to use the new API. It’s been challenging since I don’t actually have much access to it with Amazon throttling usage depending on how many sales are made using tracking numbers. I’m basing the new code primarily from the documentation and examples which, as any programmer might tell you, is rather dangerous. 🙂