[GUI Plugin] Kobo Utilities

[rtiangha]

I'm not sure where to put this, so I'll try here first.

I only really noticed this today, so I don't know if this is a new issue or if it's been around for a while.

I'm running 4.13.12638 on a Glo HD.

I was going through my old books that have been on my device for years and noticed that a bunch of series had the wrong series numbers on the Glo HD. Nothing has changed on the calibre end, so I tried running the update metadata feature just for those books and while the pop up said that the books were updated, looking on the Kobo, the numbers hadn't changed. So I deleted one of the series of books, rebooted to be safe, and then Sent them back to the device again (this was a series of 9 books). Unplugged the device, replugged it in to get the second database update, etc, and then looked at the information on the Kobo again.

Books 1-7 have the right series number, but the index number for book 8 is listed as 3 on the Kobo and book 9 is listed as 4 (so basically, Kobo thinks I have two book 3s and two book 4s even though they have different titles).

ALL of my different series on the Kobo are weirdly numbered like now this even though I haven't touched anything (there doesn't seem to be a pattern like the example above, for example in one of my old series, there seems to no longer be a book #1 as it is now listed as book #3), and sending metadata updates from Calibre doesn't seem to overwrite or correct anything. Any hints as to what may be happening? I don't really want to factory reset everything as a last resort, but since re-sending a series that I erased didn't do anything, I'm not sure that starting from scratch would necessarily fix anything yet. I did run the database validator in the plugin and it said 'OK' so I'm assuming my database is fine.

EDIT: Poking around in the Kobo database, the SeriesNumber listing for the various books seems to be correct, so unless there's another place where nickel is pulling the series number from to display it to the user, I'm not sure what's happening here. As a sanity check, I'm going to disable all patches and see if the problem persists.

EDIT 2: Disabling patches by flashing a stock firmware upgrade file overtop everything did nothing. So still not sure what's going on.

EDIT 3: OK, this is weird; swiping from left to right and back again (still on stock firmware) makes it seem like the series number doesn't refresh; for example, when switching pages, some of the books will display the number of the book that was in the same position on the previous page, but when you swipe the other way, it'll display the number from that previous page instead. Firmware bug? I'll post this over there, just in case.

[davidfor]

@rtiangha: I replied to your post in the Kobo forum. This is a firmware problem and there is nothing that can be done in the plugin.

[Sonofrobot]

Please disregard. My error is actually not specific to Kobo Utilities but to calibre.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Sonofrobot

Please disregard. My error is actually not specific to Kobo Utilities but to calibre.

No, it wasn't specific to the plugin, but, the error showed me something was happening that I didn't realise was. And probably explains why the startup of some of the actions is slow. It should be a simple change that will make things faster.

[Exculturae]

I encounter a problem for the first time today as I tried to fetch annotations.

I received the following error message:

* * *

calibre, version 3.41.2
ERREUR : Exception non gérée: <b>ValueError</b>:No value provided for new tag's name.

calibre 3.41.2 embedded-python: True is64bit: True
Darwin-16.7.0-x86_64-i386-64bit Darwin ('64bit', '')
('Darwin', '16.7.0', 'Darwin Kernel Version 16.7.0: Wed Feb 27 00:29:57 PST 2019; root:xnu-3789.73.43~1/RELEASE_X86_64')
Python 2.7.15
OSX: ('10.12.6', ('', '', ''), 'x86_64')
Interface language: fr
Successfully initialized third party plugins: DeDRM (6, 5, 4) && Inept Epub DeDRM (0, 1, 7) && KePub Output (3, 0, 0) && Kobo Utilities (2, 7, 0) && Annotations (1, 8, 0)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "calibre_plugins.koboutilities.action", line 1906, in getAnnotationForSelected
File "calibre_plugins.koboutilities.action", line 2653, in _getAnnotationForSelected
File "site-packages/bs4/element.py", line 830, in __init__
ValueError: No value provided for new tag's name.

* * *

What could be the problem? How can I solve it?

Thanks

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Exculturae

I encounter a problem for the first day today as I tried to fetch annotations.

I received the following error message:

* * *

calibre, version 3.41.2
ERREUR : Exception non gérée: <b>ValueError</b>:No value provided for new tag's name.

calibre 3.41.2 embedded-python: True is64bit: True
Darwin-16.7.0-x86_64-i386-64bit Darwin ('64bit', '')
('Darwin', '16.7.0', 'Darwin Kernel Version 16.7.0: Wed Feb 27 00:29:57 PST 2019; root:xnu-3789.73.43~1/RELEASE_X86_64')
Python 2.7.15
OSX: ('10.12.6', ('', '', ''), 'x86_64')
Interface language: fr
Successfully initialized third party plugins: DeDRM (6, 5, 4) && Inept Epub DeDRM (0, 1, 7) && KePub Output (3, 0, 0) && Kobo Utilities (2, 7, 0) && Annotations (1, 8, 0)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "calibre_plugins.koboutilities.action", line 1906, in getAnnotationForSelected
File "calibre_plugins.koboutilities.action", line 2653, in _getAnnotationForSelected
File "site-packages/bs4/element.py", line 830, in __init__
ValueError: No value provided for new tag's name.

* * *

What could be the problem? How can I solve it?

That's due to a change in calibre. I'll try and fix it over the weekend.

[davidfor]

I have just released version 2.8.0 of the plugin. This is mainly to fix a bug with the annotations support introduced by change in the version of BeautifulSoup used in calibre starting with version 3.41.1. But, I have also fixed the layout of the annotations.

The changes are:

• Fix: Missed a change in the annotation builder to handle recent change in BeautifulSoup in calibre.
• Fix: Improve layout of results when displaying annotations.
• Update: Add new font "AR UDJingxihei" to font settings dialog.

As usual, calibre will announce the update in the next hour or so. And if there are any problems, please report them here.

[Exculturae]

Originally Posted by davidfor

I have just released version 2.8.0 of the plugin. This is mainly to fix a bug with the annotations support introduced by change in the version of BeautifulSoup used in calibre starting with version 3.41.1. But, I have also fixed the layout of the annotations.

The changes are:

• Fix: Missed a change in the annotation builder to handle recent change in BeautifulSoup in calibre.
• Fix: Improve layout of results when displaying annotations.
• Update: Add new font "AR UDJingxihei" to font settings dialog.

As usual, calibre will announce the update in the next hour or so. And if there are any problems, please report them here.

Thank you so much for fixing the problem so fast!

The new layout of the annotations is great!

[Frenchdummy]

Sorry David, I'm lost with Calibre + Kobo devices and then with all the plugins too.
I have been away too long to follow and participate. Especially since I am forced to spend too much time mentally translating into French the publications here. Just FYI.

[lumpynose]

This might not be the best place to ask this but ...

I had a book on my Kobo where the formatting was wacko so I downloaded the epub again from a web page and did my usual of tweaking the css so it had a ragged right margin and then used Calibre to transfer it to the Kobo. But in my rush I forgot to set the series for the book. So I deleted the book on the Kobo, fixed its metadata in Calibre, and transferred it again to the Kobo but the series was never there on the Kobo. I kept doing that with slightly different permutations (how I deleted it, etc.) but no cigar. I finally used the Kobo Utilities plugin and its Update metadata function and checked the box for series and that finally did it.

Why was that necessary?

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by lumpynose

This might not be the best place to ask this but ...

I had a book on my Kobo where the formatting was wacko so I downloaded the epub again from a web page and did my usual of tweaking the css so it had a ragged right margin and then used Calibre to transfer it to the Kobo. But in my rush I forgot to set the series for the book. So I deleted the book on the Kobo, fixed its metadata in Calibre, and transferred it again to the Kobo but the series was never there on the Kobo. I kept doing that with slightly different permutations (how I deleted it, etc.) but no cigar. I finally used the Kobo Utilities plugin and its Update metadata function and checked the box for series and that finally did it.

Why was that necessary?

The mistake was that you deleted the book. The device does not read the series info from the book. The driver will update metadata, including the series info, in the database for all books already on the device and matching to a book in the library. So, send the book to the device, disconnect and let it import the book, reconnect the device and the series info will be updated.

If you did reconnect while the book was on the device, it was probably the configuration isn't right.

[lumpynose]

Originally Posted by davidfor

The mistake was that you deleted the book. The device does not read the series info from the book. The driver will update metadata, including the series info, in the database for all books already on the device and matching to a book in the library. So, send the book to the device, disconnect and let it import the book, reconnect the device and the series info will be updated.

If you did reconnect while the book was on the device, it was probably the configuration isn't right.

Ok, thanks. I figured out the disconnecting thing updating stuff after I saw that in another thread. But prior to that, and after posting this query, I did a factory reset and uploaded all of my books again because I ignorantly was assiduously changing the author names to LN, FN when I should have added an author_sort column to Calibre and hidden the authors column. I spent some time yesterday fixing the names back to FN LN.

[theducks]

Lumpy
REPLACE the book file in the MDE formats area (drop the new version there and it will replace the older on) and all the metadata remains.
There is a setting in the Kobo driver to treat all books added as NEW <<< You don't want that if you are replacing books on the device

[lumpynose]

Originally Posted by theducks

There is a setting in the Kobo driver to treat all books added as NEW <<< You don't want that if you are replacing books on the device

If I want the book's metadata on the kobo to match what's in calibre wouldn't I want them added as new?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by lumpynose

If I want the book's metadata on the kobo to match what's in calibre wouldn't I want them added as new?

If you send again, I think it should update the device, but leave your reading position.
(to be honest, I mainly fix typos and format issues, so I don't know how metadata behaves and rarely look at it on the device)