Plugin ideas... add yours here

[meme]

It's very readable. Although I don't know if the name/link/description will be as easily parseable as the version/date/etc. I agree that having a separate spoiler section would be extra unnecessary work, and the two would inevitably go out of sync.

[megahunter]

I've got an idea for a plugin which I think would be very useful to everyone.
When a book doesn't have a cover in the online databases (random current books, old books, freely available books...), we have the possibility to generate one based on the metadata. Would it not be possible to write a plugin that would give you the ability to extract the first page of the book file and convert it as an image to be used as the cover in one click?
I know one commercial ebook library software does it from PDFs (though I can't remember which) and it was one of the few assets that made me hesitate between Calibre and that software.

I hope someone with the knowledge required to do this will find this idea useful and code it (even if only for select file types).

Have a nice day all.

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by megahunter

I've got an idea for a plugin which I think would be very useful to everyone.
When a book doesn't have a cover in the online databases (random current books, old books, freely available books...), we have the possibility to generate one based on the metadata. Would it not be possible to write a plugin that would give you the ability to extract the first page of the book file and convert it as an image to be used as the cover in one click?
I know one commercial ebook library software does it from PDFs (though I can't remember which) and it was one of the few assets that made me hesitate between Calibre and that software.

Did you realise you can do this already in Calibre? From the individual Edit Metadata screen for a book, on the right side of "Available Formats" you can click on the icon up the top left to pull an image out of a book format (if the book has one). You can also do the same thing from the bulk metadata dialog, if you look at the bottom where it says "Change cover" and choose "Set from ebook file(s)".

Your other option if the book has none is to generate a cover using the book metadata (title/author/series). Calibre has a very basic version of that ability built in (look for "Generate default cover". There is also an enhanced customisable alternative available as a plugin on this forum called "Generate Cover".

[megahunter]

God, I'm stupid.
Sorry for the stupid proposition then, I somehow hadn't seen that feature...

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by megahunter

God, I'm stupid.
Sorry for the stupid proposition then, I somehow hadn't seen that feature...

No problem - Calibre has such an enormous number of features that many of them take a while to discover or wrap your head around.

[TdeV]

Is there a feature in Calibre where you can have the titles of books which you want to add to a wish list?

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by TdeV

Is there a feature in Calibre where you can have the titles of books which you want to add to a wish list?

The normal way people approach this is to use the ability of Calibre to "Add an Empty Book" (see the split arrow on the Add button in the toolbar, or use Ctrl+Shift+E). Give it a tag like "Wishlist". This will show up in your catalogs, or you can do normal searching/filtering of it etc.

[PeterT]

Recently I have found some comic collections of TinTin and Asterix. One problem I have encountered is that some of the comics have mislabelled files (ie a RAR compressed file identified as a CBZ or a ZIP compressed file as a CBR).

While ComicRack does not have a problem with this, Calibre is not so forgiving.

Maybe a plugin to look for files with incorrect extensions?

[jairlie]

I'd love to see a nice visual way to search for and select book covers within Calibre.

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by jairlie

I'd love to see a nice visual way to search for and select book covers within Calibre.

Have you tried the Cover Browser built into Calibre? Click the black & white arrow button down the bottom right where the three buttons are (or use Shift+Alt+B).

[jairlie]

I am thinking of getting covers for books that don't have one or have bad covers.

The 'Search The Internet' plugin makes the process a lot easier, but it is still a lot of jumping back and forth.

[kiwidude]

Here is another minor idea that I want (but not yet sure how to do). I've already made the "Search the Internet" plugin for books, but I also want a "Search local drive" plugin. This would let me configure a root directory (to my stash of unprocessed GBs of books) and then spawn a windows explorer search for an author.

For instance I currently do stuff like type "name:child name:lee" into the search box in windows explorer to get it to show all the directories and files for that author, which I will then drag to a working folder for processing.

Unfortunately Microsoft don't seem to make it very easy to automate this. I know it is theoretically possible to create a saved search file and launch that with explorer but the internal complexity of it seems immense and struggling to find documentation for it. If anyone has done/knows of anything doing this let me know...

Using third party search alternatives could be another option I guess. Again if anyone has any recommendations let me know.

[Manichean]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

For instance I currently do stuff like type "name:child name:lee" into the search box in windows explorer to get it to show all the directories and files for that author, which I will then drag to a working folder for processing.

Why not crawl the folder tree in Python, display a list of hits to the user and let the plugin open up a file manager window to the containing folder if a hit is double clicked? That would have the added benefit of being relatively platform independent.

[kiwidude]

Hi Manichean,

My main concern is performance. WIndows search (once indexed) is very fast when you have a colossal number of files. A non-indexed crawler in Python would be very very slow, to the point of unusability I suspect.

Were that not a concern, then yes indeed it could offer a lot of cool stuff, such as a button click to move all the files/folders to a working directory for importing and taking care of all the duplicate folder names etc.

I know I'm being very niche by only bothering to address Windows - but it is a niche plugin idea . For instance unless it had some "direct" modes one of it's flaws is that you couldn't really use it to search for an author you haven't yet added to Calibre (you would have to create an empty book first).

[Manichean]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

My main concern is performance. WIndows search (once indexed) is very fast when you have a colossal number of files. A non-indexed crawler in Python would be very very slow, to the point of unusability I suspect.

Depends largely on the size of the folder tree to be searched, doesn't it? I don't think it'd be that bad- you wouldn't have to do much for each file, unless it'd fit your search criteria, then you'd have to store its path in your found files.

You'll have to keep in mind, though, that I'm very unlikely to actually use that plugin (I see no need for it now), and I'm on Windows, so I'm only arguing this point because I feel a cross-platform plugin would be better out of principle