[Conversion Plugin] KFX Input

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by miss_p1nky

Star Wars Bestiary, Vol. 1_ Cre - S.T. Bende.kfx (440 MB)

That file is quite large. I would expect conversion of it to be slow.

Originally Posted by miss_p1nky

Just clicking the KFX Input, my computer started to slow down (mouse pointer becomes "heavy" to move).

You are obviously using the "From KFX" feature of this plugin which bypasses calibre's regular conversion system.

Pressing the From KFX button normally results in a pause because the plugin has to process the KFX file in order to determine what conversion options are appropriate for it. The delay will be longer for large or complex books such as the one you have indicated.

Originally Posted by miss_p1nky

6The KFX Input has a dialogue pop-up saying 'Conversion' (it didn't use to in the past but maybe it's the new feature of it?)

A dialog box will pop up saying "Conversion in progress - please wait". While that is happening you will be unable to do anything in calibre until it completes. That can take several minutes (or possibly hours) for a large book.

Originally Posted by miss_p1nky

Then it becomes 'not responding', Calibre also becomes whiten out, freezing, then Windows dialogue saying Calibre not responding and whether I want to wait it out or close it now. I tried it 3 times before deciding to uninstall this.

Unfortunately that is to be expected because the calibre user interface is locked out while conversion is going on. It does not mean that the conversion has failed. You just need to keep waiting.

The way From KFX works now was a quick and dirty implementation. I have plans to change it so that conversion is done as a background job instead of locking out the user interface. However I don't know when I will have the free time to work on that.

Originally Posted by miss_p1nky

I guess since the file has been de-DRM-ed I can send it to you for testing. Please check your PM.

Thank you. I tried and it takes several minutes to convert to EPUB it on my relatively fast system. Conversion to PDF is much faster because that book actually contains PDF resources.

[miss_p1nky]

I see, thank you for answering. I guess it must have eaten quite a big chunk of my comp's RAM then. OK I tried to wait it out and conversion was successful. I guess I'll stay with this version.

Originally Posted by jhowell

You are obviously using the "From KFX" feature of this plugin which bypasses calibre's regular conversion system.

Pressing the From KFX button normally results in a pause because the plugin has to process the KFX file in order to determine what conversion options are appropriate for it. The delay will be longer for large or complex books such as the one you have indicated.

And what is the other method to use the plugin besides clicking the button? I tried right click but no option that seems to come from From KFX.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by miss_p1nky

And what is the other method to use the plugin besides clicking the button? I tried right click but no option that seems to come from From KFX.

There are two other ways to use the KFX Input plugin.

You can invoke it by using calibre's standard "Convert books" feature. However conversion will fail for fixed-layout books, such as the one you indicated, unless you select the "Allow conversion to complete even if errors are detected" option in the KFX Input tab. If you chose that option the results will be generally inferior to using From KFX for this type of book since calibre's conversion function is not designed to handle fixed-layout books.

You can also use the KFX Input command line interface (CLI) as described in the first post of this thread. The result will be the same as using From KFX. It just takes more steps to do the conversion that way.