BOOKCASE 0.3
A personal reading tracker for Palm OS

Keep a record of the books you read, with title, author, publication year,
genre, star rating, and notes or a short review. Create custom shelves
such as Favorites or Worth Rereading, and assign a book to several shelves.
Bookcase works offline.

INSTALLATION
1. Extract this ZIP on a computer with Palm Desktop and HotSync Manager.
2. Open Palm Desktop's Install Tool or Palm Quick Install.
3. Choose your Palm user and add Bookcase.prc to the installation list.
4. Select the handheld's internal memory as the destination.
5. Connect your Palm and perform a HotSync.
6. Open Applications, choose the All category, and launch Bookcase.

This PRC includes the NS Basic runtime; no separate runtime installation
is required. The PRC is the application file. This README stays on your
computer and does not need to be installed on the Palm.

Developed for the Palm Tungsten E2 using NS Basic/Palm 6.0.
Emulator testing has been reported. Physical-device compatibility and
other Palm OS versions have not yet been independently verified.

GETTING STARTED
Tap New to add a book. A title is required; other fields may be blank.
Enter a four-digit publication year, or leave it blank.
Tap the rating button to cycle through Unrated and one to five stars.
Stars are displayed with asterisks (*).
Tap Review to write notes. Tap Back, then Save on Book Details to save.
Save before leaving the application; unsaved edits are not recovered.

SHELVES
From the main screen, tap Shelves to open Manage Shelves.
Enter a name and tap Save to create a shelf.
Tap New before creating another shelf.
To rename a shelf, select it, edit its name, and tap Save.
Shelf changes save immediately. Renaming preserves book assignments.
Deleting a shelf removes its label while keeping the books and reviews.

To place a book on shelves, open the book and tap Choose beside Shelves.
Tap shelf names to tick or untick them. More than one may be selected.
Tap Done, then Save on Book Details to commit the book's choices.
Cancel on the checklist discards changes made in that checklist.
Manage opens shelf management from the checklist.

FINDING BOOKS
Select a shelf from the main dropdown to filter your books.
Choose All Books to show books from every shelf.
Find + Go searches title, author, and genre within the selected shelf.
All clears both the search and shelf filter.
Select a book in the list, then tap Open to view or edit it.
The list displays up to 50 matches per page. Paging arrows appear only
when another page is available. The list follows creation order.

UPDATING AND BACKUP
Back up your data before installing an update.
Install the replacement PRC over the existing application. Do not delete
Bookcase in the Palm launcher first: deletion may also remove its data.

Books and shelf definitions are stored separately from the application:
- PLibrary-Books-v1
- Bookcase-Shelves-v1

After HotSync, verify that BOTH databases are present in your Palm user's
Backup folder. Keep a separate copy of those personal backups.
The application PRC does not contain your book entries or shelf catalog.
Installing it on another Palm does not transfer your personal library.

LIMITS
Up to 200 active shelves; shelf names up to 40 characters.
Titles up to 160 characters; authors up to 120; genres up to 60.
Notes/reviews up to 3,000 characters. No CSV import/export is included.

THE WAYSIDE JOURNAL
Visit The Wayside Journal website for more projects.

Built with NS Basic/Palm.
