Hello all,

I was searching around for what we (the heavy users) are using for generating hands-on / catalogue based on the exported database (CSV/XML). With kilos of songs it makes life harder and harder to make actually a choose what to play

So the question: What are people using to end-up with a nice handy printed overview of songs sorted by artist and/or albums?

I'm fidling around in MS-Word using VBA (), to end up with two table of contents with all artists and albums which are jumping deeper into the document listing the songs. The macro just asks for the CSV-file. VBA... yuk... I'm more a C/C++ guru.
I keep you in touch of this, but I'm very interested in the answers.

Cheers,

EiSl

When I've wanted to do this (very rarely!) I've just imported the CSV file into Access, then made a simple report from a query which selects the artist / album / year information.

Quick, dirty, but adequate.

I've also done something similar in Excel, using the AutoFilter function, but I normally do my best to avoid using Excel whenever possible..!

Bryan.

If you've been watching the Programming forum, you'll know that I'm developing a DSSSL stylesheet for playlist printing.

Unfortunately, I needed to change the XML writer in jEmplode, and I happened to do it at the same time as Mike introduced some destabilising changes, which will take some time for the bugfixing. When he releases v42, I'll post my code. In the meantime, I'm adding features and making it as easy as possible to use.

A note about platforms: I develop on Debian, so it's easy to use on other Debian systems. Other GNU variants should be fine; non-GNU systems will probably want some GNU tools or lose functionality (e.g. booklet printing). I'm hoping that someone will come up with an alternate makefile for Windows users, as I know there are a few here (though all you absolutely need is Jade, and I think that's available as a pre-built Windows binary somewhere). MS-Word hacking is beyond my patience - I know, I did enough to discover that much, and have kept it at a happy distance ever since

I would like something too... I don't even care so much about individual songs... I just want a list of albums...

Well...
I've just finished an example VBA-word macro, but it used preprocessed csv-files as input. The next step is putting this preprocessing also inside a script.

Some info about the preprocessing step:
- Using Excel to sort on Albums and artist
- Stripping irrilevant info
- End product a simple csv-file

End result in word:
All albums with there songs (songs sorted on tracknr if possible), using HEADER-2 style for album name and NORMAL-style for the songs. After the albums it does the same for artists (so all songs by artist). At the end you only have to generate a table of contents. Et voila (oh yep.. I'm also using 2 columns to effectively use my page)

As I said: I will try to put all in one macro. Maybe everything is going to run as Excel-macro generating a Word document.

Progress of this all? Well... In 1 week I'm going on holiday so currently I'm only having the simple stuff, because I want my booklet before going away.
Oh man... what do I hate this VBA-stuff. It's so different from embedded software in C/C++. But I have to be fair: with VBA you can interfacing with other office packages very nice.

Keep you informed. If you realy need a overview, just mail me a zipped version of your database in CSV format. Then I will return you a word (6.0) doc including table-of-contents you can fine-tune further. But be fast

EiSl