Feature Request: Media Type field

[kevjs1982]

It would be very handy to have a field where we can record the media type of a book rather than having to overload the tags.

Ideally this would be tag based as some books come in multiple formats for a single purchase

In my relatively small collection, so far, I have identified books in the following formats:-

• Paperback
• Hardback
• Spiral Bound
• Map (A folding sheet)
• eBook
• Audiobook
• Audio CD
• Audio Cassette
• Unlocks Digital Content in Publishers App
• Magazine

and those books which comes in multiple formats are:-

• Travel Guidebooks which are a combination of Paperback and Map
• Travel Guidebooks which are a combination of Paperback and eBook
• Phrasebooks which are a combination of Paperback and Audio CD
• Maps which are a combination of Map and Unlocks Digital Content (e.g. in this case unlocks the same map in the Ordnance Survey app) - I'd probably record as Map and Ordnance Survey App
• Books which were part of a magazine partwork so had a companion magazine - so Hardback and Magazine
• EBooks which are linked to an Audiobook (i.e. Amazon Whispersync) so would be eBook and Audiobook

I also have a handful of duplicate books which were separate purchases so are now owned in multiple formats (e.g. Paperback and Audiobook) - I'm keeping these separate, but others may wish to tag all the formats they own under one entry.

Note, this was mentioned in regards to the Narrator feature request #139

[bayang]

I'm wondering if this could not be achieved through tags as you mention in your request ?

As I said in other issues, tags in jelu are not designed to only fit the genre as it is often the case.
I use tags to mark books in my reading list that I need to buy, you can also use tags to specify the location of the book (eg bedroom bookshelf etc...).
Maybe you could tag your travelguides as paperback and map
Tags can be used to build queries so I guess you could easily retrieve your books by media type.

I see another benefit is that each user could use their favourites tags instead of having to pre-populate the jelu DB or even maintain an enum in the code.

Also, you can use the "shelf" feature of jelu to pin some tags on your homepage, which means you could have your favourites media types in a dedicated menu on your home.

What do you think of this ?

[kevjs1982]

Before I upgraded to 0.59 I was finding that searching for multiple tags - which would allow this sort of functionality to be emulated - wasn't working so assumed that wasn't possible. However I now realise this was caused by bug #143 .

With the tags being multi-purpose, what would make this feature request redundant is if those tags could be added on the filter rather than having to type a manual search query each time.

e.g. once in the following view being able to add a tag of "Audiobooks" would allow you to narrow it down (missing from this feature request was adding the media type to this left hand panel!). As you add more tags (e.g. "Formula 1") it would further reduce the number of books shown to those which contain the original search criteria (e.g. the tag Motorsport), Audiobook, and "Formula 1".

[bayang]

Now that the bug is fixed, I will start thinking about this one.
If I understand correctly the major remaining pain point is that filtering by tag has to be done manually in the search field ?
You suggest that the side filter bar should provide a convenient and graphical way to selct tags to filter by ?

[kevjs1982]

Apologies for the delay in getting back to you. I've been finishing cataloguing the rest of my books and thinking about this more - especially now searching for Tags works correctly on recently added books.

The biggest pain point I found was searching for those books which weren't tagged - however using a scheme like "Media - Paperback" or "Location - On Loan to John Smith" with a common prefix allows you to work around this (e.g. search for NOT tag:Media), but see #145 for an annoying limitation this approach presents at presents.

A consideration for the future might be to allow "tag groups" - where the user can create their own hierarchy - e.g. Location which has various locations, Media which has various types and so on

This would lend itself to a search UI along the following lines:-

(Unset = I don't care about the media tag group; Not Added = Items without a tag from the media tag group)