Templates: various questions not worth their own thread

[chaley]

You are missing end-of-statement semicolons on lines 5, 16, 23, and 30.

[ownedbycats]

Thank you That's a silly mistake

[ownedbycats]

Question: is there a way to check for a transient mark with a template? I would like to display a pushpin icon instead of polish.png.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Question: is there a way to check for a transient mark with a template? I would like to display a pushpin icon instead of polish.png.

Do you mean this?

program:
	if is_marked() then 'marked.png' fi

[ownedbycats]

that works! Thank you

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by chaley

Do you mean this?

program:
	if is_marked() then 'marked.png' fi

@chaley - curious: would that be the default marked.png or would it pick up the override at <config>/resources/images/marked.png

Also, I've 'acquired' a folder named tb_icons in <config>. I assume its where custom tab browser icons are stored. There is only one file in it: icon_#oncloud.png. However I restored the default icon for the oncloud category shortly after I added the custom icon, should the custom icon have been removed, along with the resultant empty tb_icons folder. I've deleted the folder will no ill effect.

BR

[ownedbycats]

Does the column icons editor have access to anything outside of the cc_icons folder? That would be useful...

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Does the column icons editor have access to anything outside of the cc_icons folder? That would be useful...

For instance the icons in the Calibre install location:

You could try dropping a symlink to the png in <install location>\app\resources\images into the cc_icon folder, it may survive caiibre updates, whereas a hardlink probably wouldn't survive as a hardlink, but as a copy.

But if the symlink does survive an update and the icon changes in the update (e.g. to a flat escher-inspired etching), the symlink instance will change too, and that may not be desirable.

BR

[ownedbycats]

{title_sort:'uppercase(re($, '^\W*(\w).*$','\1'))'}

For this, is it possible to combine digits to a single 0-9 category?

[ownedbycats]

Also, is there any particular advantages of an template rule with several if statements vs. several non-composed basic rules? The context is for my Cleanup VL:



I've got a template half-made but I am not sure if it is worth.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

@chaley - curious: would that be the default marked.png or would it pick up the override at <config>/resources/images/marked.png

If the template is being evaluated in a column-icon context then the image file must be in 'config_dir/cc_icons'. I don't think there is a context where the template is returning the name of a 'standard' image, but if there is then the standard override rules would apply.

Also, I've 'acquired' a folder named tb_icons in <config>. I assume its where custom tab browser icons are stored. There is only one file in it: icon_#oncloud.png. However I restored the default icon for the oncloud category shortly after I added the custom icon, should the custom icon have been removed, along with the resultant empty tb_icons folder. I've deleted the folder will no ill effect.

The custom icons and the containing folder (tb_icons, cc_icons) are not removed when they are no longer used. Doing so would be problematic because calibre can't know if a plugin uses the images. The folders themselves can be removed if they are empty, as calibre recreates them when needed.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Does the column icons editor have access to anything outside of the cc_icons folder? That would be useful...

No. Same for emblems.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

{title_sort:'uppercase(re($, '^\W*(\w).*$','\1'))'}

For this, is it possible to combine digits to a single 0-9 category?

Sorry, but I don't understand what you want to do.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Also, is there any particular advantages of an template rule with several if statements vs. several non-composed basic rules? The context is for my Cleanup VL:
[...]
I've got a template half-made but I am not sure if it is worth.

It goes both ways.

First, note that all rules are templates. The templates for basic rules are generated by calibre.

So ...

• A sequence of basic rules will be slightly faster if the first rule succeeds almost all the time, e.g., 99%.
• A single template will be faster if the succeeding rule isn't usually the first because it avoids the overhead of sequentially executing the basic templates looking for a result.
• There are many situations where an advanced rule is needed, such as when you need the "or" of conditions. Basic rules implement 'and'.
• Depending on what you are doing, one technique or the other might be easier to understand and maintain.
• And finally, you might prefer one over the other.

FWIW: a sequence of non-composed rules is equivalent to a single template that returns the first qualifying result. For example, assume you want a 'foo.png' icon on the author column if the author is "Joe Blogs" but a 'bar.png' icon if the author is 'Fred Flintstone'. This could be done with two non-composed basic rules, or with this template:

program:
	if str_in_list($authors, '&', 'Joe Blogs', '1', '') then return 'foo.png' fi;
	if str_in_list($authors, '&', 'Fred Flintstone', '1', '') then return 'bar.png' fi

The template is easier if the searched field is comma separated, for example tags, because you can use the 'inlist' operator. Assuming you are searching for 'ondevice' or 'bar', the template would be:

program:
	if '^ondevice$' inlist $tags then return 'foo.png' fi;
	if '^bar$' inlist $tags then return 'bar.png' fi;

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by chaley

Sorry, but I don't understand what you want to do.

Sorry, not too clear. Currently this returns the first alphanumeric character of title_sort. I thought it'd be possible to combine all the numeric characters into a single 0-9 category.