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The native document type created by BookMacster is the Bookmarkshelf – a container for bookmarks and folders, and their attributes. Besides this Content, a Bookmarkshelf also contains Settings to configure its behavior, and Reports – information derived from the content. Bookmarkshelf filenames end in the extension .bkmslf.
Most users want all of their bookmarks in one place, and if this applies to you, you should create only one Bookmarkshelf. This single Bookmarkshelf can be set (and is so set, by default), to be opened whenever you launch BookMacster.
After OKing our warning, though, you can create multiple Bookmarkshelf Documents if you want to. Some reasons for multiple Bookmarkshelf documents are:
The Bookmarkshelf’s content, settings and report information is displayed in a document window which is your primary interface to BookMacster. This document window has three major tabs which you select with tools in the toolbar to display a tab view. Those views are described in the subsidiary pages.
You can also select a tab by selecting it in the Window menu, or using the keyboard shortcuts ⌘1, ⌘2, ⌘3.
The “bottom line” of the Bookmarkshelf window, visible below the tab view, is the Status Bar which shows the result of the most recent command. If additional commands are executed within a few seconds, the results of prior recent commands are also listed.
After an Import or Export operation, the numbers +, Δ, ↕ and - respectively indicate the number of additions, updates, slides or deletions as a result of the operation.
When you Save As a Bookmarkshelf Document, it copies the Content and the General, Sorting and Structure settings of the original document from which it was saved, but it the Local Settings – Open/Save, Clients, and Agents will be empty. This is to avoid conflicts with the original document. You must re-set these manually if desired. (See Save As Move, below.)
If you re-set a same Client as the original Bookmarkshelf had, and then Import or Export with this Client, you will typically see that small number of items have been deleted (-) and then added (+) back in, and a large number of items have been moved (↖). This is because the new Bookmarkshelf no longer has the external identifiers which associates items between the Bookmarkshelf and the Client. The small number of items deleted and added are the folders; in effect, the old folders are deleted in the Bookmarkshelf, and new folders are created. However, bookmarks are generally not recreated because, by default, BookMacster imports Merge by URL, and even without the identifiers, the URLs still match. So instead of being deleted and re-added, the bookmarks are moved from the old folders into the new folders, and this accounts for the large number of moves.
In the File menu, besides the familiar Save and Save As items, you’ll see a Save As Move. This is a simply a convenient way to move and/or rename a document without having to open a Finder window and edit it. Unlike a Save As, because there is no original document left behind to conflict with, the Local Settings and any Clients’ external identifiers are retained.
The Bookmarkshelf Menu contains commands and other shortcuts which generally affect the entirety of the frontmost Bookmarkshelf document window. This is in contrast to the Selection menu which contains commands affecting selected content items – (bookmarks, folders and separators).
This is simply a shortcut to display the Reports ▸ Find tab of the frontmost Bookmarkshelf Document.
This is another way to toggle the Display Folders switch at the upper left of the Content tab of the Bookmarkshelf.
These commands are how you initiate the Import or Export operation with the Clients configured in the Settings ▸ Clients tab. The menu items also show the Clients which are currently active for this command.
This command sorts the content of the frontmost Bookmarkshelf Document according to the order you have prescribed, and observing which folders you have marked as sorted or unsorted. This command is disabled if the document is currently sorted. Like most actions, sorting is un-doable by clicking menu ▸ Edit ▸ Undo Sort.
This command will refresh the duplicate groups you see in the Reports ▸ Duplicates tab. This command is disabled if no duplicates can exist.
After clicking this command, you will choose whether to verify either
This operation can take more than a few minutes, although it proceeds in the background and you can still be editing a document while it is running.
This menu item executes a command which processes the current set of Duplicate Groups and, in each group, deletes all except one. This command is only enabled if there are Duplicate Groups to be deleted, and if the Duplicates Report is currently up to date, showing all duplicates.
Deletes all bookmarks, soft folders and separators. This is useful when you’d like to start from scratch and re-import from the document’s Import Clients. (You can get the same effect by importing with the Delete Unmatched Items option on.) Hard Folders are not deleted. To delete a Hard Folder, remove all of its children and then un-check its box in Settings ▸ Structure.
Simply rolls down a sheet with some general information about the document that may be useful to our Support team when things don’t work as expected.
This menu item is active if BookMacster detects one or more content items with artifacts attached by our older application, Bookdog. The number of such content items is shown in parentheses after the menu item title, and if it is 0 the item is disabled.
Possible Bookdog artifacts are:
Because BookMacster stores your bookmarks content independently of the Client, it does not need these artifacts. If you have decided that you will not be using Bookdog any more, click this item to remove these artifacts from your document.
If you would like to launch BookMacster without having it open any of the Bookmarkshelves set to Open … after BookMacster Launches, hold down the ‘option’ (‘alt’) key while launching. This also inhibits another housekeeping activitiy which is normally done at launch, checking each of your active Agents to make sure that their .bkmslf files are still accessible.
If you would like to open a document without triggering any of the Auto Import, Sort, or Find Duplicates actions which are checked on in its Open/Save Settings, quickly hit the ‘option’ (‘alt’) key after commanding the document to be opened, and keep it held down until the confirmation sheet rolls down over the window.
When opening a Bookmarkshelf, BookMacster does some checks to see if a Bookmarkshelf is corrupt. If it is very corrupt, it aborts opening and displays an error. If the corruption is only orphaned items or untyped items, and silently performs a corrupt file recovery. If you would like to disable these actions and open a document even if corruption is found, hold down the ‘shift’ key while opening it. It will still generate and display the error, but then it will open the Bookmarkshelf anyhow.
If you hold down the ‘option’ (‘alt’) key and ‘shift’ keys together while clicking in the menu Bookmarkshelf ▸ Import or Export, the operation will begin with Apple’s submarine alert sound, and will trace the actions performed on each item (bookmark, folder, etc.) to a …Trace… on your Desktop. These files are occasionally useful to our Support team in resolving issues.
An operation executed in this way will execute more slowly than normal.
If one day you see a mysterious extra Bookmarkshelf file with one or more tildes (~) between the filename and “.bkmslf”, and BookMacster is working fine for you, you may trash these tilde files. They were created by previous versions of BookMacster and are no longer readable. For more info, read on…
A Bookmarkshelf file, such as Bookmarkshelf-001.bkmslf is actually a little database, with tables defined by the BookMacster application version which created it. As BookMacster is updated to new versions, sometimes news “rows”, “columns” or “tables” may be added to support new features. When a newer version of BookMacster with such table changes opens a Bookmarkshelf which was created by an older version, it immediately renames the Bookmarkshelf file by apending a tilde (~) to its name, and then converts the file to the new table and saves it with the old name. It’s a built-in “feature” of Apple’s Core Data framework which is used by BookMacster. The reason is that, on the rare occasion that the new version of BookMacster doesn’t work for you, and you downgrade back to the older version, you won’t be able to open the new file, but will still be able to open the old tilde file.
If one day you see a mysterious extra Bookmarkshelf file with one or more # characters between the filename and “.bkmslf”, and BookMacster is working fine for you, you may trash such these # files. They are corrupt. For more info, read on…
Internal errors, particularly in early beta versions of BookMacster, or system crashes or power failures can leave orphaned items or untyped items in a Bookmarkshelf file. When BookMacster opens a bookmarkshelf file, therefore, it examines the file for corruptions which it can fix. If any are found, BookMacster moves the corrupt document to a different name, fixes the corruptions, and saves the file. The old, corrupt file now has one or more # characters added between the filename and “.bkmslf”. If it turns out that the removed items are of value to you, our Support team may be able to recover the removed items from a # file.
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