Question: I am trying to create a database from a .csv file, how do I do this?
Answer: There is a program called listdb.exe which is part of the download for List. It is a DOS program that can convert .csv format files into List format .pdb files.
Its not terribly user friendly, and there isn’t really any good documentation.
- From the Start menu on windows – select Run, use this to execute the ‘cmd’ program.
- Navigate to the folder where you have the listdb.exe program using the ‘cd’ command.
- If you run listdb on its own, you’ll see some mini-help:
C:\Documents and Settings\Andrew Low\My Documents\list>listdb.exe
Version 0.97a
Usage: listdb.exe -[p|c|x]
-p => create private (non-beamable) database
-c => create database
-x => extract database
At this point – if you are totally lost – you’ll need to find some help. Hopefully someone can give you a hand wrangling a DOS program.
The .csv format needs to have some special formatting in it (mostly the first line). Let’s look at an example .csv file to get an idea of what is involved here.
C:\Documents and Settings\Andrew Low\My Documents\list>type cd_list.csv
CD List,Artist,Title,Home,Work,Car,,,,,,,,,,,,
Home,Download,Furnace,A breakthrough album
Home,Skinny Puppy,Too Dark Park,Classic puppy album
Home,Skinny Puppy,Inquisition,Single remixes
Basically its:
Database Name,Field 1 Name,Field 2 Name,Category1,Category2,…
Then all other rows are:
Category,Field 1 Text,Field 2 Text,Note Text
Extra commas in the note field, are converted into carriage returns.
Hint: If you use the -x (extract) flag to take apart an existing database, it will dump things in the correct format giving you a template of sorts to work from.
August 19th, 2006
I’ve now heard two reports that installing List 1.1.1 on a Treo causes crashes requiring a device reset when you try to launch List. This crash is immediately on launch of List – so if you’ve got the problem, you’ll know right away.
One user was able to just delete List – and re-install List 1.1.1 and the problems appear to have gone away. The other user was able to install List 0.99 (thus replacing the 1.1.1 version) and recover all of their data. So there are options if you run into this problem.
I don’t have a Treo650, so I need your help to track this down. I’m looking for someone who’s willing to experiment and try to recreate this problem on their Treo and report the steps to me. Alternatively, if anyone can reproduce a similar problem on another device – I’d like to hear about that too.
July 7th, 2006
A lot of people send me notes that praise List for its simplicity, and functionality. However, there are at least as many people who ask for just one more feature. There are certainly a few that are very popular and are near the top of the wish list:
- SDCard support, or any extended storage solution
- Support for more fonts
- Higher resolutions (320×480)
I’d also like to improve the 5-way navigation support. Devices that have one-handed navigation should work nicely now (the Treo for example) [Edit: my friend Ken just pointed out that the Treo doesn’t have nice one-handed navigation, grr.. apparently the Simulator and the Treo behave quite differently – something else to fix] but those that have a 5-way navigator like the LifeDrive are still sort of clunky to use.
There are some features I won’t likely add: More fields, support for non-PalmOS devices, images, hyperlinks, … (mostly things that go beyond the “simple database” idea)
Some of the wish list items have been on the list a long time, so it may be a long while before I get to them.
May 23rd, 2006