[GUI Plugin] Embed Comic Metadata

[dickloraine]

Unfortunatly no. Rar is not free Software. They allow extraction but compression is only possible with Rar itself. I don't own it and even then, it would have to be called from outside calibre and would only work for people with rar.

Don't know why you have problems with zip. I don't own a mac, but zip is much more common than rar and should be working on every system. Maybe there is some error in the original files you use. Rezipping them could maybe help in the same way as compressing them to rar. Or you could zip them uncompressed. You don't save much space by compressing jpgs, because they are already compressed in a special way for pictures.

As I said, I don't know Mac OS, but the last possibility would be, to write a small batch script (action script on mac?) which you run via "open with" on the zips. Calibre has command line tools, with which you could add the cbr to the library. On windows it would look something like this:

md "%~dp1convert"
%~d1
cd "%~dp1"
7z.exe x "%~n1.cbz" "\convert"
cd convert
rar whatever
set dir=%~p1
for /F "tokens=2 delims=(" %%i in ("%dir%") do set id=%%i
set id=%id:~0,-2%
calibredb add_format %id% "%~n1.cbr"
cd..
rmdir /s /q convert

[ben_marko]

Yes, possible, I have had some problems with my HD lately. Four corrupted directories in a little over 5 months. I didn't think it could be related, though.

I didn't know that about rar, thanks for the tip.

[dickloraine]

I had some time and did a little work on the plugin. Apart from some major internal refactoring I added the possibility to embed the calibre cover into a comic (please be aware, that this is a rough solution, there could be edge cases), options to change the behaviour of the toolbar menu and translation support (currently only english and german).

[Aquamarine]

Thanks for the plugin. It worked great until now, but since Version 1.3 I get an "AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'title'" when I try to add the metadata to a cbz that has no metadata. Updating existing metadata still works.

Here is the traceback:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "calibre_plugins.EmbedComicMetadata.ui", line 94, in main_menu_triggered
File "calibre_plugins.EmbedComicMetadata.main", line 50, in embed_into_comic
File "calibre_plugins.EmbedComicMetadata.main", line 108, in iterate_over_books
File "calibre_plugins.EmbedComicMetadata.main", line 41, in _embed_into_comic
File "calibre_plugins.EmbedComicMetadata.comicmetadata" , line 83, in embed_cix_metadata
File "calibre_plugins.EmbedComicMetadata.comicinfox ml", line 56, in stringFromMetadata
File "calibre_plugins.EmbedComicMetadata.comicinfox ml", line 90, in convertMetadataToXML
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'title'

I have calibre 2.54.

[dickloraine]

Originally Posted by Aquamarine

Thanks for the plugin. It worked great until now, but since Version 1.3 I get an "AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'title'" when I try to add the metadata to a cbz that has no metadata. Updating existing metadata still works.

Here is the traceback:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "calibre_plugins.EmbedComicMetadata.ui", line 94, in main_menu_triggered
File "calibre_plugins.EmbedComicMetadata.main", line 50, in embed_into_comic
File "calibre_plugins.EmbedComicMetadata.main", line 108, in iterate_over_books
File "calibre_plugins.EmbedComicMetadata.main", line 41, in _embed_into_comic
File "calibre_plugins.EmbedComicMetadata.comicmetadata" , line 83, in embed_cix_metadata
File "calibre_plugins.EmbedComicMetadata.comicinfox ml", line 56, in stringFromMetadata
File "calibre_plugins.EmbedComicMetadata.comicinfox ml", line 90, in convertMetadataToXML
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'title'

I have calibre 2.54.

Thanks for the bug report. This is now fixed

[Aquamarine]

Great! Thanks a lot!

[dickloraine]

Works just fine for me. Can you provide more informations? The error message, what you tried to do etc?

[magphil]

When I embed metada in a cbz, ComicRack is unable to read the book.

I have to manually extract the cbz and recreate it with winrar to make it readable.

When the source file is a cbr, the cbz you convert on the fly does not have this issue.

So it seems that the code you are using to modify existing cbz files has an issue.

ComickRack is the only comic reader I know which is actually using the data in ComicInfo.xml to sort the books by series and I use it on my ipad.

[dickloraine]

Hm, looks like deleting files inside a zip file can lead to that problem. Only solution seems to be to extract the cbz and rebuild it. That will make embedding metadata much slower, but better than corrupted files. Shouldn't take too long implementing the changes.

[kovidgoyal]

@dickloraine: Look at the safe_replace() function in calibre.utils.zipfile this is what calibre uses to update the OPF inside EPUB files safely, and relatively efficiently.

[dickloraine]

Thanks, I'm now using that function
The new version is now available from the start post.

[magphil]

Originally Posted by dickloraine

Thanks, I'm now using that function
The new version is now available from the start post.

Thanks a lot.

It will make life easier for me

[JoshuaAryeh]

A plaintive request for guidance...

I'm migrating off of Win10 - since Comicrack (which I've been using extensively) doesn't play well with Linux, I wanted to find some way to get my painstakingly entered metadata preserved. Since I'd already been using Calibre for my ebook collection, this plugin seemes perfect!

Install worked like a charm and I configured it to "import metadata from comicinfo.xml". The issue is that the import seems to be hit-or-miss. Sometimes I get the comic summary from Comicrack showing up in Calibre's comments fields, sometimes nothing comes through. And I don't seem to be able to find where the genre and tag field info went after import...

All of my files are ain .cbz format, FWIW.

I'd appreciate any help you could offer - I appreciate all the work that's gone into this plugin and really want to make it work!

Many thanks, my friends!

[kovidgoyal]

THis plugin is for writing metadata not reading it. Reading of ComicRack metadata is builtin to calibre. If you find it is failing for some books, opena bug report and attach a couple of samples and I will take a look.

[JoshuaAryeh]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

THis plugin is for writing metadata not reading it. Reading of ComicRack metadata is builtin to calibre. If you find it is failing for some books, opena bug report and attach a couple of samples and I will take a look.

Thank you for your quick response, Kovid! I'm a big fan of your work.

I'll definitely submit a bug report later today.

I was confused since there is an option in the plugin: "import metadata from comicinfo.xml"...

Again, my thanks for your attention. Could you please clarify what kind of "samples" would be most useful? I assume you mean a couple of small comic files?

Cheers!