Plugin ideas... add yours here

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by dwanthny

Bulk metadata edit does this now it allows the renaming of a large series quickly by just selecting the series in order before opening the metadata edit window.

Yeah I deliberately stayed away from mentioning the bulk metadata screen to edit series. I don't use it often enough to ever remember the right combination of settings to get it to do what I want, and inevitably end up with the series not starting at the number I want or other undesired behaviour. Also relying on the order of selection isn't exactly the most user friendly way to approach ordering since you have no visual feedback on what order it thinks you have. The .1 issue also kills it as a possibility for me too as I use that quite a lot for related short stories to a series.

I also think the rest of your ideas sound good.

Thanks for the encouragement to you and ElizabethN. I'll let it percolate a while longer before I rush into it. In a perfect world some sort of web page scraping from FantasticFiction in conjunction available from this dialog could make it even more useful, but it's all just random ideas at this point to see if they appeal enough to others to justify the dev effort...

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by Perkin

This would be a good plugin.
I have another 'feature', as well as the left/right to add small increments, how about one feature to skip some numbers (for when you've got books missing and haven't got 'dummy' records) and then all subsequent numbers are adjusted as well.

Ahh yes, that had crossed my mind but I didn't mention it for not wanting to get into too much design detail for fear I would be embarassed by a deathly silence of lack of demand for the plugin at all...

The challenge I see with that particular feature (which I agree would be useful) is how to handle a user moving a row that they have locked/assigned a particular series number on.

You also have to handle the situation of a user moving "too many" rows before that assigned value such that the numbering overlaps. A visual warning on screen may suffice like an icon with a tooltip on such rows. Not insurmountable problems though - and as you have suggested a useful addition for those who don't create empty books.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

Ahh yes, that had crossed my mind but I didn't mention it for not wanting to get into too much design detail for fear I would be embarrassed by a deathly silence of lack of demand for the plugin at all...

This would be an excellent addition.

[Dopedangel]

I use a custom column for marking books I have read. My reader uses folders and currently my folders are

Ebooks/{authors[0]}/{authors}/{series}/{series_index:0>2s} - {title}

now when I mark a book as read in calibre I want to be able to send it to

Ebooks/Read/{authors[0]}/{authors}/{series}/{series_index:0>2s} - {title}

[JvdW]

Hi Kiwidude,

First of all thanks for you currently slew of plugins, nice work!.

As the title suggests a plugin which would do that would be great for some people. Saw a question in the Frequently Asked Questions thread by ArmorDog and quite liked the idea.

Question was:
--
Is there a way to flag books to transfer when the reader is next connected?

Often, when working in Calibre, I don't have my reader hooked up. When I finish fixing up a book, I'd like to flag it to be copied to the reader when it's next connected.
--

I used something like it while I downloaded the NRC epub using a script and used a bit of python code to set the News flag for the imported epub. This has the effect that on next connect of my reader it was automatically sent to it.
This is the relevant line:

calibre-debug -c "from calibre.library import db; db=db(); from calibre.utils.config import prefs; ids = db.prefs.get('news_to_be_synced', []); ids.append(%id%); db.prefs.set('news_to_be_synced', ids)"

Where %id% is the id of the book that you want flagged.

Might have a try at it myself but you're free to grab the idea and beat me to it

Regards,

Joop

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by JvdW

Hi Kiwidude,

First of all thanks for you currently slew of plugins, nice work!.

Thanks!

As the title suggests a plugin which would do that would be great for some people. Saw a question in the Frequently Asked Questions thread by ArmorDog and quite liked the idea.

Question was:
--
Is there a way to flag books to transfer when the reader is next connected?

Often, when working in Calibre, I don't have my reader hooked up. When I finish fixing up a book, I'd like to flag it to be copied to the reader when it's next connected.
--

I used something like it while I downloaded the NRC epub using a script and used a bit of python code to set the News flag for the imported epub. This has the effect that on next connect of my reader it was automatically sent to it.
This is the relevant line:

calibre-debug -c "from calibre.library import db; db=db(); from calibre.utils.config import prefs; ids = db.prefs.get('news_to_be_synced', []); ids.append(%id%); db.prefs.set('news_to_be_synced', ids)"

Where %id% is the id of the book that you want flagged.

That sounds a cool idea. A question - when you sync a book to your device in this way, is it the same result as if you were to choose send to device in terms of it applying save template and metabooks? (I've never used news myself).

Pretty trivial to code up assuming I am thinking the same as you about what it needs to do. Presumably you just want a menu with suboptions allowing you to add a book to the news sync list, and another to remove from it? The only "difficult" part I see is coming up with sexy names for the menu items/plugin and the icons .

Is there any configuration required for the plugin? e.g. is this a plugin that needs to have keyboard shortcuts or is its use infrequent enough that a context menu/toolbar action menu is sufficient?

Might have a try at it myself but you're free to grab the idea and beat me to it

If you want I could knock this up pretty quickly, up to you. I've got a long todo list but I happily sidetrack myself with small projects like this that only take an hour or two to let the "hard stuff" percolate in the background. I'm only doing this for fun after all...

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by Dopedangel

I use a custom column for marking books I have read. My reader uses folders and currently my folders are

Ebooks/{authors[0]}/{authors}/{series}/{series_index:0>2s} - {title}

now when I mark a book as read in calibre I want to be able to send it to

Ebooks/Read/{authors[0]}/{authors}/{series}/{series_index:0>2s} - {title}

I have to admit this isn't something I personally would find a use for - not saying it is a bad idea, I'm just struggling to think of the use case for it. Once I have read a book, I would be excluding it from sending it to the device again. If I was re-reading an author or series, then I wouldn't want the books to be "specially flagged" on the device when I send them to it.

But hey, that's just me - perhaps others feel differently

[JvdW]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

Thanks!

That sounds a cool idea. A question - when you sync a book to your device in this way, is it the same result as if you were to choose send to device in terms of it applying save template and metabooks? (I've never used news myself).

I don't know since I don't use ,yet, those features myself. Only thing I ever changed/looked at were the settings for the Sony 505 Device Interface plugin.
Maybe Kovid can answer that one.

Pretty trivial to code up assuming I am thinking the same as you about what it needs to do. Presumably you just want a menu with suboptions allowing you to add a book to the news sync list, and another to remove from it? The only "difficult" part I see is coming up with sexy names for the menu items/plugin and the icons .

Yep, there is not much more to it.

Is there any configuration required for the plugin? e.g. is this a plugin that needs to have keyboard shortcuts or is its use infrequent enough that a context menu/toolbar action menu is sufficient?

I can live without a keyboard shortcut since I would use it only once in a while but the original poster might use it daily and then a keyboard shortcut might come in handy.

Go ahead get sidetracked for a couple of minutes since I haven't got any time for some coding the coming weeks Besides it was just the idea in the other thread that I didn't want get lost.

Regards,

Joop

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by JvdW

I don't know since I don't use ,yet, those features myself. Only thing I ever changed/looked at were the settings for the Sony 505 Device Interface plugin.
Maybe Kovid can answer that one.

I guess I'll have to experiment, shouldn't be hard to - after all just have to run that command line you gave me and plug my Kindle in to see what happens if anything.

Go ahead get sidetracked for a couple of minutes since I haven't got any time for some coding the coming weeks Besides it was just the idea in the other thread that I didn't want get lost.

Ok, cool, I'll probably take a look in the next few days.

[Zeebra]

Calibre has added a method of putting page numbers for Kindle books by generating the .APNX file while transferring your book to the Kindle from Calibre. Would somebody be willing to look at developing a plugin that will allow you to save this .APNX file to a harddrive without having to transfer your book from Calibre to the Kindle. This way you can save the .apnx file in a directory together with your .mobi books for those who like to keep their libraries on a harddrive and maintain the page number information.

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by JvdW

I don't know since I don't use ,yet, those features myself. Only thing I ever changed/looked at were the settings for the Sony 505 Device Interface plugin.
Maybe Kovid can answer that one.

I figured out the answer and it is all good - there seems to be no difference in terms of where the books end up on your device, metadata applied etc when you make use of this automatic news list sync feature versus a right-click Send to Device.

I wrote the Book Sync plugin implementing this today. Great plugin suggestion, one of those you don't realise how convenient it really is until the idea came up...

[schuster]

hy @ all,
as discussed in this thread

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=121236

i want to ask if it is possible to make a plugin for the (at the moment) most problematic thing's for me.
__________________________
1:
at the moment i want to clear my database from ugly covers (pixel blocks, blurred and so on).
right, the jpg is too small in size.

My approach is, I'm looking with an external program if some files are less than 40k. if so, take a look in calibre and grab a new cover by hand.
Or find covers calibre recognizes as being able to be trimmed
it would be much easier if the search for small cover files can be done in calibre. maybe it is set a flag to a new column or so.
__________________________
2:
plugin to search for invalid isbn numbers that are marked with a red backround.
i have no idea to do it. this is at the moment a hard work by hand.
__________________________
3:
search for entrys in:
title -> title_sort

and

author -> author_sort

which are not valid and shows the red backround (so they have different entrys)
__________________________

if anyone can make this plug-in it would be great!
by myself i don't know about this programming things.

regards schuster

[kiwidude]

@schuster - I do like the idea of being able to track down books that need larger covers or invalid metadata. It could indeed be fairly easily done as a plugin. Does anyone else have any other suggestions for criteria by which they would like to isolate books that isn't available with the current search?

I'll add a couple more plugin ideas here so I don't forget them...

• A "Cover Generator" plugin. Calibre has one built in, but it isn't flexible for people who want to have their own cover images. Quite often particularly for the likes of short stories there is no commercial/official cover available. I remember seeing a ticket ages ago for someone wanting to the ability to have different covers for different genres. I think a plugin that let you define a bunch of possible images, and you then choose one when you generate would be useful to me at least (not a fan of the default image). Potentially there could be more control over the text that appears on it as well - any suggestions for what you might want to see let me know.
• I mentioned on another thread an idea for a "Tag Cleaner". It would use a similar approach to that in the Goodreads Metadata download plugin of defining a mapping between input tags and tags you want to use in your library. You would have a gui allowing you to customise and control which tags map to each and discard any you do not have a mapping for. It would work across metadata sources (including the ability to remap the Goodreads tags) as you would do it as a separate step after your normal Ctrl+D download. So if you are frustrated with getting a dozen variants of "sci-fi, scifi, science fiction" this would automatically resolve them rather than manually retyping the tags yourself.

[ThePage]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

As you have discovered Calibre has no direct support for audiobooks. If it consists of a single mp3 file, you can just drag/drop this into Calibre like any other book format, it appears in the list of formats in the book details window etc.
---
So I can't think of a direct way for a plugin to help you. I would suggest posting in the main Calibre forum and asking others if they store audiobooks in Calibre and if so how they approach it.

---
I have several, that were purchased accidentally, and expect to add data on them to Calibre, but they are actually stored with my Musicmatch 9.0 which makes more sense since it is intended for handling audio.

[ThePage]

I've apparently been under a false impression for some months, while consolidating 7,000+ books in calibre, from multiple directories (including 4,000+ IMP's), I've not had occasion up to now to work with my existing book-reader, so that I've only just discovered that while I can send a book to my storage card while it's plugged into the computer, I can't do anything else, nor does my reader see the file after I've put the card back into it.

Would it be possible for someone to take the driver used by my dedicated Library software (for the eBookwise) and construct a plug-in for Calibre, allowing of transferring books from one to the other, and would anyone be interested/inclined to do it?

I have no doubt, from the quantity of .imp files offered on mobileread, that others would find it of use.

Also, see FAQ for my adventures in giving both Library Programs advanced indigestion.