[GUI Plugin] Generate Cover

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by dwanthny

Font color, just in time.

Haha. I am not sure how flexible to make this one. Kovid said there was a stroke and a fill color. Do I need to offer both individually as options or shall I just offer a single color option? Also, is there a need for individual title/author/series colors, or just a single foreground color?

One thing I am going to add is a checkbox for allowing a user to "link" the fonts for title/author/series. So when checked if you want them all the same changing one combo will change the others to match. In theory I could do something similar for text on the cover.

Just got to figure out how to fit everything into the dialog Maybe I should give up on the 3 pane approach, and use 2 panes with the left pane being a tabbed one for all the pages of options and the right an image preview.

Is there the possibility of using a books existing cover as the image, resizing it and using it as the image for a modified book cover?

I take it you mean the image at the front of the EPUB, in a similar way to how it can be pulled out of a format on the Edit Metadata dialog? I guess in theory it would be possible to do that. Though you would have the same problem it has of needing the user to choose which format to pull the image from if there is one available?

[Perkin]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

Kovid has kindly made some additions to the API with 0.7.49 to allow me to set font color so I will be adding Perkin's suggestions as well.

Nice one.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

Haha. I am not sure how flexible to make this one. Kovid said there was a stroke and a fill color. Do I need to offer both individually as options or shall I just offer a single color option? Also, is there a need for individual title/author/series colors, or just a single foreground color?

A single font color would suffice for me

Originally Posted by kiwidude

One thing I am going to add is a checkbox for allowing a user to "link" the fonts for title/author/series. So when checked if you want them all the same changing one combo will change the others to match.

Sounds great.

Originally Posted by kiwidude

I take it you mean the image at the front of the EPUB, in a similar way to how it can be pulled out of a format on the Edit Metadata dialog?

Actually I'm just referring to using the cover.jpg that is already in the books directory. I guess I can already do this by drilling down to the correct directory. I have around 200 books that would benefit from the cover generation plugin, it'd be nice to easily select the existing cover as the image to use.

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by dwanthny

Actually I'm just referring to using the cover.jpg that is already in the books directory. I guess I can already do this by drilling down to the correct directory. I have around 200 books that would benefit from the cover generation plugin, it'd be nice to easily select the existing cover as the image to use.

Oh, ok. That would be even easier. I could for instance just force an {Existing Cover} entry in the list of image files. Though you realise it would be a "one shot" thing, in that the cover.jpg will get overwritten with your new generated one as soon as you click ok, right? So if you made a mistake, you will have to either re-download the cover or extract it from the book again?

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

Though you realise it would be a "one shot" thing, in that the cover.jpg will get overwritten with your new generated one as soon as you click ok, right? So if you made a mistake, you will have to either re-download the cover or extract it from the book again?

Too true. I would love this and be willing to accept that risk, but many folks would most likely complain after they screwed things up. I think it might be best to leave this option out. I'll just do a save to disk and grab the covers from that directory.

Thanks for listening.

Update: If this was a check-able option and not available by default it might minimize the complaint factor.

[kiwidude]

What is the actual reason you wanted to surround an existing cover? I'm just curious...

If I didn't implement the feature above then one thing I can do is add drag/drop to the images list. So you could hit O to open the folder, bring up the cover generator, drag the cover onto the list in the dialog and then hit ok. You would also presumably want to delete it from the list the next time you opened the dialog if it is not a reusable cover. It's a couple more steps but you could do the same thing.

Or I could implement the extract from book option - which is "safer" in that it can be run repeatedly.

Though it is the actual use case scenario that intrigues me the most as to whether I add that in to see how useful others would find it - so, what are you up to Walt?

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

What is the actual reason you wanted to surround an existing cover? I'm just curious...

Though it is the actual use case scenario that intrigues me the most as to whether I add that in to see how useful others would find it - so, what are you up to Walt?

The case use is limited, mostly for short stories.

One example is Michael Swanwick's Periodic Table series of stories. I have been grabbing up images like the attached to use as covers for the various short stories. They lack the Author name and often the title. I then usually add the author and title to the images down the line. Your cover generation plugin will be great for adding (especially now that you are adding color fonts) the title and author to these covers.

Originally Posted by kiwidude

If I didn't implement the feature above then one thing I can do is add drag/drop to the images list. So you could hit O to open the folder, bring up the cover generator, drag the cover onto the list in the dialog and then hit ok.

Drag n drop sounds like a good work around.

Originally Posted by kiwidude

Or I could implement the extract from book option - which is "safer" in that it can be run repeatedly.

Since most of my current projects aren't in a book, extracting them wouldn't work.

[kiwidude]

Ok, cool, thanks for the clarification. Drag 'n drop sounds the way forward.

[Loeffel]

Strange, I installed it on Callibre 0.7.48 but I got no cover option. :-( I tried to update to 0.7.49 after this nothing changed. So I removed the plugin, but reinstalling wasn't possible. Everytime Callibre says it is no zip-file.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by Loeffel

Strange, I installed it on Callibre 0.7.48 but I got no cover option. :-( I tried to update to 0.7.49 after this nothing changed. So I removed the plugin, but reinstalling wasn't possible. Everytime Callibre says it is no zip-file.

It has to be a zip file. Redownload the plugin and make sure your browser isn't unzipping it for you. If your browser is unzipping it try another browser.

[Loeffel]

If have downloaded it twice, I can unzip the file without error. I even tried to zip it again and use this zip file, but no change. He still states that it is no zip file. With 0.7.48 I can install it, with 0.7.49 not.

calibre, version 0.7.49
ERROR: Unhandled exception: <b>ZipImportError</b>:not a Zip file

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\preferences\plugins.py", line 285, in add_plugin
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\preferences\plugins.py", line 355, in check_for_add_to_toolbars
File "<string>", line 59, in load_actual_plugin
File "<string>", line 42, in get_base_module
ZipImportError: not a Zip file

[kiwidude]

See this page on the Kindle Collections plugin thread for suggestions from Kovid:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...118635&page=14

It sounds like you have either a corrupted install or a corrupted plugins directory. Try making sure there is no Generate Cover.* files in the Calibre "plugins" subfolder (Preferences->Miscellaneous->Open calibre configuration directory) and try it again. If that doesn't work, follow all of Kovid's instructions in the above thread.

[kiwidude]

Download from the first post in this thread as per usual:

New features in v1.1:

• Rewrite of the UI for a tabbed appearance
• Ability to save multiple settings with a name to quickly recall completely different appearances
• Images are now copied to a subdirectory within your Calibre user profile, rather than just linked to
• Option to customise the text fill and stroke colors
• Option to link the title/series/author fonts together for faster changing of all three
• Option to use an image as the background for the cover
• Supports drag/drop of images onto the image list

Notes for users upgrading:

• I have intentionally not migrated your settings to this new version, the changes I made internally were too significant. If you want to remember your previous settings, I suggest taking a screenshot of the configuration screen before you upgrade.

Some examples of the sorts of covers you can now generate and the options available are shown in the screenshots below. Special thanks to dwanthny and perkin for their feedback and help with testing.

[Perkin]

Thanks kiwidude.

[Perkin]

Sorry (should have found this earlier)

Just had an idea for another 'handy' feature.

If Title/Series/Author is wider than Coverwidth - auto resize font so it fits (on one line).


No rush