GCstar
Encyclopedia
GCstar is an open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

 application for managing personal collections. Detailed information on each item can be automatically retrieved from the Internet and the user can store additional data, such as the location or whom he/she has lent them to. The user may also search and filter the collection by criteria.

Current version manages these kind of collections:
  • Movies
  • Video games
  • Books
  • Music
  • Numismatic
  • Wines
  • Board games
  • Comic books
  • TV shows episodes
  • Stamps
  • Periodicals
  • Mini vehicles
  • Smart cards
  • User defined collections


GCstar is the successor to GCfilms
GCfilms
GCfilms is an application for managing a movie collection, now replaced by GCstar. Detailed information on each movie can be automatically retrieved from the Internet and the user can store additional data, such as the location, format or whom he/she has lent them to...

 which only managed collections of movies.


Automatic retrieval

Information concerning an item (from one of the default collection types) can be automatically retrieved from various Internet websites. Only a few pieces of information, such as movie title or ISBN are required to perform the search.

Import and export

GCstar supports importing collections created by other programs such as Tellico
Tellico
Tellico is a KDE application for organizing various collections. It provides default templates for books, bibliographies, videos, music, video games, coins, stamps, trading cards, comic books, and wines. Released under the GNU General Public License, Tellico is free software.-See also:* Alexandria...

, Alexandria
Alexandria (software)
Alexandria is a GNOME application that keeps a database of books. Users can search by title, author, keywords, or ISBN number, or with a barcode reader...

 or Ant Movie Catalog. It can also import lists made in more standard formats such as CSV
Comma-separated values
A comma-separated values file stores tabular data in plain-text form. As a result, such a file is easily human-readable ....

 or a simple list of items names.

The collections may aso be exported to various formats including HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....

, XML
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....

 or SQL
SQL
SQL is a programming language designed for managing data in relational database management systems ....

.

Lending managements

For each item in a collection, it is possible to set it as loaned to someone. GCstar manages an history of all the borrowers. It could also send an email to the person that get the item.

The mascot

The GCstar mascot is the same as the one that GCfilms used. It is a blue periscope named Péri. He was created by LE SPEKTRE.


Platforms

GCstar may be used on any system for which Gtk2
GTK+
GTK+ is a cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. It is licensed under the terms of the GNU LGPL, allowing both free and proprietary software to use it. It is one of the most popular toolkits for the X Window System, along with Qt.The name GTK+ originates from GTK;...

-Perl
Perl
Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular...

 is available. It is included in many Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

 distributions (Debian
Debian
Debian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software primarily under the GNU General Public License along with other free software licenses. Debian GNU/Linux, which includes the GNU OS tools and Linux kernel, is a popular and influential...

, Fedora Extras, Ubuntu Linux Universe, Mandriva Linux
Mandriva Linux
Mandriva Linux is a Linux distribution distributed by Mandriva. It uses the RPM Package Manager...

 contribs) and FreeBSD
FreeBSD
FreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...

. A version for Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

 also exists.

License

GCstar is released under the GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....

. Images associated with the project, for example Péri, are released under a dual license: GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....

 (to be used in GCstar) and Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...

Attribution ShareAlike License v. 2.5 (to let other designers use it).

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK