Calibre just destroyed my hard drive data

[MildBill]

Not to be left out here, I will say that I have seen some programs that were obviously designed to help guard the user from him/herself by putting in one confirm dialog, then (once the user has in fact confirmed) a second confirm dialog (Are you REALLY REALLY sure?). However, this always seemed like a PITA to me. You just have to be able to read the dialogs before you blindly click 'OK' and therefore do something stupid.
And, then again, sometimes there is no better lesson that to have to deal with the mess when you type 'rm -rf *' in the root dir and hit enter without looking at what you have done. Teaches you to look before you leap, and does it the hard way.
Kovid, you have done all you can, your dialog change probably wasn't really necessary, but is evidence that you are trying. But there will always be some folks who want 'Big Brother' (in whatever form) to be ever vigilant to protect them from themselves! And, they will whine when they feel that 'Big Brother' has failed them.
But, in no way should you be concerned that it is your fault that some users have absolute-zero sense of personal responsibility.

MildBill

[theducks]

A few thing bother me about the 'error'
Can you create a New Library On the desktop and Not have it be a Single folder?

The Desktop would have to be 'empty' for Calibre to make a New library. The user would then see all the Authors folders and Metadata.db as books were added.
The other case, I see is the user copied the contents of an existing Library and dropped it onto the desktop . The Calibre would not stop them from switching to a 'existing' library (or removing it).

[Ron.]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

So that this thread does not go to waste, I've improved the confirmation dialog, see attached screenshot.


Any suggestions on how to make it even clearer are most welcome.

Red blinking text

after you click "OK" another box pops up asking "are you really, really sure ?"

click "OK" and another box pops up saying "OK if you are really sure, by clicking OK the operation will be preformed and you promise not to whine to the developers for it carrying out your instructions"

[kovidgoyal]

@theducks: The feature of disallowing the use of a non empty folder as a new library is relatively recent, it may well be that the OP created their library before it was implemented.

[twowheels]

I think this should serve as a warning to those who are not as familiar with computers... never mix data managed by you with data managed by a program -- the program will often assume that it has full ownership of the location that it is managing.

I dislike the recycle bin idea, mostly because it's not portable... (What do you do on Linux if the user is just using a window manager w/o a desktop environment (and thus no recycle bin concept)? Do you support every last DE? No!)

That said, the delete was implemented exactly as I would have... I would have assumed that library folders were for the unique use of the program (which is enforced at creation -- must be an empty folder), and thus I can just blindly delete that folder.

Perhaps a viable solution (with some performance impact, possibly significant for large libraries) would be to only delete files referenced by the metadata file, only remove subfolders that are empty after the deletion, then finally delete the metadata file. This would be a safer library delete in case the user decided to repurpose their library folder (for example, pointing a reader application directly at the folder, which stores annotations in the same folders).

[CazMar]

This rather reminds of a time when I was doing some work with young offenders, trying to get them to make some changes. One of them wanted to learn to use a computer so I gave him an old one of mine to try. He then came back after a week and said it wasn't working - turns out he saw a whole lot of files in thing called a "window" or something like that? Anyhow he deleted them. I just told him the computer must have been faulty and suggested he stick to packing boxes for a living....
And before we laugh, I also worked at a scientific institute - where a very degreed-up person spent hours writing a report, didn't press the "save" button once, then tripped over the computer power cable -
can you restore my document?
got auto-save turned off eh?
Uhh - yes.I didn't know what it was
better start writing it again!

[mwheinz]

Originally Posted by chaley

The first time I saw something like this was in 1975 at Berkeley. A student typed "rm -rf ." in his home directory, then went ballistic when all his files were deleted.

You haven't lived till you've typed "rm -rf .*" as super user - because ".." matches that pattern....

[mwheinz]

@Kovid -

I've been meaning to ask you this; are there limitations or concerns about using Calibre with a case-sensitive file system? I ran into a self-inflicted problem where my own library appeared to have become corrupted. What I eventually figured out is that I had multiple copies of each book to be stored with variations in the case of their folder names.

Now, this was not Calibre's fault - I was running on a Mac (case-insensitive) but storing on iDisk (which turns out to be case-sensitive) and, worse, accessing that library from a Windows copy of Calibre as well.

No idea how it happened, if it was because I was mixing operating systems or because of the network drive, it just caught me off guard. I keep independent copies of all my stuff anyway, so I took the opportunity to start from scratch - on a local HD.

[Ron.]

How about a user mode and administrator mode, user mode can browse send to device etc.. admin mode can delete, convert, create, edit etc...

[kovidgoyal]

@mwheinz: If you mix running calibre on the same library on case insensitive and case sensitive file systems you will have problems. That particular use case is impossible to support robustly. When you get in trouble the library maintenance tools in calibre should help.

[mwheinz]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

@mwheinz: If you mix running calibre on the same library one case insensitive and case sensitive file systems you will have problems. That particular use case is impossible to support robustly.

I can believe it - I actually didn't realize iDisk was case-sensitive till I found the problem.

[mwheinz]

Originally Posted by Ron.

How about a user mode and administrator mode, user mode can browse send to device etc.. admin mode can delete, convert, create, edit etc...

The problem you end up with is that people just give themselves "admin" rights all the time, because they believe they are "smart enough".

IMHO, the only way to prevent the kind of thing the original author was whining about would be for Calibre to implement support for each kind of "trash can", "recycle bin", et cetera that it encounters - which would be quite difficult given its platform independence.

[Ron.]

Originally Posted by mwheinz

The problem you end up with is that people just give themselves "admin" rights all the time, because they believe they are "smart enough".

IMHO, the only way to prevent the kind of thing the original author was whining about would be for Calibre to implement support for each kind of "trash can", "recycle bin", et cetera that it encounters - which would be quite difficult given its platform independence.

It's good if you want to allow friends or family to access your library, you can start calibre in usermode and let them have at it without worrying about them destroying your library.

[jgaiser]

Originally Posted by mwheinz

You haven't lived till you've typed "rm -rf .*" as super user - because ".." matches that pattern....

Did it one time at / as superuser. It's amazing how fast rm is. Luckily /home hadn't been hit when I pulled the power cord and I *only* had to reinstall the system and all applications.

[hidari]

Perhaps: Warning! This will delete ALL of the books, comics, etc. in said file