Hari's Corner

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BiaCV - an open source, cross-platform résumé editor/creator in Python

Filed under: My software by Hari
Posted on Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 15:11 IST (last updated: Tue, Dec 6, 2011 @ 15:13 IST)

I'm currently developing a résumé/CV editor creator in Python and PyQt4. Like most of my software, it is licensed under the GNU GPL v3.

Here are some of the screenshots of the GUI:

Personal information tab

Educational qualifications tab

Professional/career history tab

Career objectives tab

Skill sets tab

Additional information tab

While I have implemented saving and loading files in the native BiaCV format (which is a JSON file), I am planning to include an export functionality which will allow the document to be converted to more usable formats like text, HTML and also OpenDocument flat ODT (no Microsoft Word, though you can use OpenOffice to convert the FODT file to DOC if you want to).

You can follow the progress at my gitorious repository. As always feel free to check it out if you have the time and provide your feedback. :)

6 comment(s)

  1. Excellent work, hari! It looks extremely detailed and well thought out. Might I recommend a PDF output as well?

    I'm stuffed with activities this week, but will checkout from the repo this weekend and give you more detailed feedback.

    Comment by Dion Moult (visitor) on Tue, Dec 6, 2011 @ 19:45 IST #
  2. Hi Dion, I thought of PDF, but it is a non-text format and it won't be possible to use a templating system for output. Besides since I'm planning an OpenOffice FODT export filter as well, it will be trivial simply to use the OO.org export filter to get a PDF file.

    Thanks for the comments. Hopefully people will find this useful. :)

    Comment by Hari (blog owner) on Tue, Dec 6, 2011 @ 21:04 IST #
  3. Tried it out today (sorry for the delay!) and it was very good and easy to use but unfortunately I can't export! It says:

    dion@epicbox /home/drive/hari/biacv $ ./biacv
    kfilemodule(26194) KSambaSharePrivate::findSmbConf: KSambaShare: Could not find smb.conf!
    Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "/home/drive/hari/biacv/biacv_mainwindow.py", line 55, in on_file_export
    exp.set_template_directory (unicode (templatedir.toUtf8(), "utf-8";))
    File "/home/drive/hari/biacv/biacv_exporter.py", line 217, in set_template_directory
    lst_file_meta = (codecs.open (file_meta, 'r', "utf-8";).read ()).splitlines ()
    File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/codecs.py", line 881, in open
    file = __builtin__.open(filename, mode, buffering)
    IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: u'/home/drive/hari/biacv/META-INFO'

    Comment by Dion Moult (visitor) on Fri, Dec 16, 2011 @ 11:34 IST #
  4. Hi, Dion,

    I think you haven't chosen the export directory properly in the "Export Template" path.

    Did you get the dialog that asked for the export template path when you chose to export the file?

    You should choose either templates/default_fodt or templates/default_xhtml directory when prompted for the export template directory. Then you choose the export file.

    Comment by Hari (blog owner) on Fri, Dec 16, 2011 @ 11:51 IST #
  5. Sorry for the late reply again :)

    Aha, I didn't realise I had to choose templates/defualt_*, instead I just picked whatever directory I wanted, thinking that it should know what to do. Did I miss this instruction somewhere?

    Anyways, I tried exporting to fodt and it worked very well, unfortunately it doesn't handle missing fields very well and ends up adding extra commas or semicolons in the exported file. Perhaps an improvement for a future update?

    What I would _really_ like to see is an export to LaTeX option using one of the more popular LaTeX CV packages out there (I've seen a few lurking around)

    Comment by Dion Moult (visitor) on Wed, Dec 28, 2011 @ 19:04 IST #
  6. Dion, yes, that wasn't quite obvious. I need to write a documentation guide for this.

    Yes, it doesn't handle missing fields well but that's because of the limitations of the templating system itself. As it is, it would be very hard to simply handle this in code because that would introduce too many formatting commands into the code. The best solution to remove fields, if you don't want is to remove it from the actual template and save as a new template or simply edit the final output to remove the unwanted formatting. Trying to handle the formatting or lack of it in the code will make the templating system too complex and not generic enough.

    Comment by Hari (blog owner) on Wed, Dec 28, 2011 @ 19:39 IST #

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