[GUI Plugin] Book Sync **Deprecated**

[kiwidude]

This plugin is now deprecated and will no longer be supported. Instead all of its functionality has been incorporated into the Reading List plugin, which does everything this plugin does plus a number of other features.

This plugin allows you to add books to a special list in Calibre which is automatically sent to your ereader device the next time it is connected. This is a very convenient way to flag books for your device as you add/process/search for them in your workflow, without requiring your device connected at the time.

As soon as your device is next plugged in, the list of books can be automatically copied to your device the same as if you had selected them and chosen "Send to Device". Alternatively you can turn off the automatic syncing and instead manually sync your list of books when it is convenient to you.

Main Features of v1.3.7:

• Supports multiple device independent lists
• Automatically sync to devices, folders or iTunes
• Add/remove books to the sync list using a right-click menu and/or toolbar button
• View the contents of the sync list in the library view
• Optionally force a sync to the device of your list if adding while it is connected
• Optionally force Kindle Collections to be recreated after a sync (Kindle owners only, requires the Kindle Collections plugin)
• Configure device names, which devices to have sync lists for, and whether books should automatically be synced to the device when it is connected
• Customisable keyboard shortcuts for add/view actions

Special Notes:

• Requires Calibre 0.8.2 or later.

Installation Steps:

1. Download the attached zip file and install the plugin/restart Calibre/add to context menu or toolbar as described in the Introduction to plugins thread.
2. Ensure a device you would like to sync to is connected.
3. Select Customize plugin from the plugin menu (or via Preferences -> Plugins). Click the Add connected device button.
4. If you want to rename the device you should do so now. If it has multiple card locations, uncheck any you do not want to create a sync list for.
5. Close the configuration dialog. You should now see menu items appear allowing you to add to the list.
6. If you have multiple devices, disconnect your first device, plug the second in and repeat the steps above to add it to your Book Sync known device list via the configuration dialog.

Kindle Collections:

• To automatically recreate Kindle Collections after a sync to your Kindle, follow the following steps:

Spoiler:

1. Ensure you have the Kindle Collections plugin installed and configured. You can find further information on this plugin here
2. In the Book Sync configuration dialog, change the dropdown in the Collections column for your Kindle to "Y"
3. Force a sync to your device, either by connecting if you have autosync turned on or manually using the Sync Now menu option
4. After your collections have been recreated, the Kindle Collections summary dialog will appear. Follow the instructions on it to disconnect and restart your Kindle to see the new book collections.

Paypal Donations:

• If you find this or any of my other plugins useful please feel free to show your appreciation. I have spent many hundreds of unpaid hours in their development and support so any encouragement for me to continue is appreciated!
  

Version History:

Spoiler:

Version 1.3.7 - 07 Jun 2011
Fix bug of incorrect function name when device disconnected with config open
Fix bug of remove menu displayed when no devices configured

Version 1.3.6 - 05 Jun 2011
Add options to remove from lists (forgot about when removed the dialog in 1.3.5)
Add menu options to add to all lists and remove from all lists
When removing from a list and currently viewing, refresh the search to update the view

Version 1.3.5 - 04 Jun 2011
Add option to automatically recreate collections after syncing to a Kindle (if meme's plugin installed)
Remove the separate dialog for viewing a sync list, display in the library view instead.

Version 1.3.4 - 15 May 2011
Bug-fix for Sync Now being enabled in a circumstance it should not be

Version 1.3.3 - 13 May 2011
Bug-fix for multiple card devices to translate location code into a card
When syncing, books with no formats will be kept on the list
Update the Sync Now enabled status every time the menu is dropped down

Version 1.3.2 - 12 May 2011
Bug-fix for when have less than two devices configured

Version 1.3.1 - 10 May 2011
Bug-fix for first time upgraders who did not have the sync now keyboard shortcut

Version 1.3 - 10 May 2011
Rewritten to support multiple devices for device independent lists
Allow renaming of devices
Allow specifying a device to not automatically be synced to
Allow syncing to a device manually while it is connected

Version 1.2.1 - 09 Apr 2011
Support skinning of icons by putting them in a plugin name subfolder of local resources/images

Version 1.2 - 03 Apr 2011
Rewritten for new plugin infrastructure in Calibre 0.7.53

Version 1.1 - 22 Feb 2011
Handle situation where user deletes the book to be synced

Version 1.0 - 07 Feb 2011
Initial release of Book Sync plugin

[JvdW]

Hi Kiwidude,

You're a real good dude


Joop

[adrian1944]

This sounds like a great feature but I run both a sony 650 and a Kindle and would like to have different lists to send to each. Can it be personalised in some way to cope with two devices


adrian

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by adrian1944

This sounds like a great feature but I run both a sony 650 and a Kindle and would like to have different lists to send to each. Can it be personalised in some way to cope with two devices


adrian

It is constrained to the same limitations that the news sync feature has I'm afraid. AFAIK it is not possible to set different new feeds for different devices, and hence it is equally not possible to have sync book lists for different devices.

Unless someone more knowledgable corrects me I suggest raising a ticket in the Calibre bug tracker for an enhancement request to allow a device being specified when sending news (if there isn't such a ticket already). Once/if that gets fulfilled, I will enhance the plugin to support this too.

[jtintle]

Hey kiwidude,
I installed this plugin on my calibre .0.7.45, on a Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit, I got the toolbar Book Sync added, and I am able to add books to the sync list, but when I connect my Black Pandigital Novel, it clears the the sync list but no books are move to my device...Calibre says: connected PD Novel(Kobo)

Just thought i would bring it up

[nynaevelan]

I am getting the same results as jtintle.

[jtintle]

I worked with it a little more and got it to work, I had to go to Preferences/Behavior, and make sure the box is checked next to Automatically send downloaded news to ebook reader.

Sorry I posted my problem without testing everything....
My new question is it possible to set which disk it automatically sends the book to? I've tried to set the Set default send to device action to Send to storage card A, but it keeps sending it to the Main device....would that have to be a news setting change?

EDIT: After doing a search on default send, I found that Calibre sends news to which ever storage has the most room available...guess I should search before I ask questions...

Thanks for all the hard work...

[nynaevelan]

Originally Posted by jtintle

I worked with it a little more and got it to work, I had to go to Preferences/Behavior, and make sure the box is checked next to Automatically send downloaded news to ebook reader.

Thanks for the tip, now it is working. This is fantastic.

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by jtintle

I worked with it a little more and got it to work, I had to go to Preferences/Behavior, and make sure the box is checked next to Automatically send downloaded news to ebook reader.

Sorry I posted my problem without testing everything....
My new question is it possible to set which disk it automatically sends the book to? I've tried to set the Set default send to device action to Send to storage card A, but it keeps sending it to the Main device....would that have to be a news setting change?

EDIT: After doing a search on default send, I found that Calibre sends news to which ever storage has the most room available...guess I should search before I ask questions...

Thanks for all the hard work...

Glad you got it all worked out. Thanks for feeding back here with your issue/solutions. I will update the installation instructions on the first post.

Enjoy

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

It is constrained to the same limitations that the news sync feature has I'm afraid. AFAIK it is not possible to set different new feeds for different devices, and hence it is equally not possible to have sync book lists for different devices.

Unless someone more knowledgable corrects me I suggest raising a ticket in the Calibre bug tracker for an enhancement request to allow a device being specified when sending news (if there isn't such a ticket already). Once/if that gets fulfilled, I will enhance the plugin to support this too.

I do have one idea for one way to support this if there is no change to Calibre. Note that I currently have no idea whether Kovid or the other Calibre developers has interesting in making the changes if a ticket were raised as I mentioned above.

Plan B is that I could allow this plugin to switch in/out the current sync list. So you could define multiple device lists in the plugin. The add/view actions would display a submenu if you have multiple devices allowing you to choose which list. This is all behaviour I would do if Calibre did have multiple device news support so is reusable.

However this is still a kludge, because you would need to specify which of your device lists is the "active" one. I would have on the plugin menu a list of your defined "device lists" and a checkmark next to whichever you last selected as the "active" device. When you plug your device into Calibre, it is going to download the last selected active list. Also at the time your news is generated, that will go on whichever list is active (though I could add the ability to move items between lists from the view dialog).

So if after carefully preparing your "Sony" and your "Kindle" sync lists, if you forgot to switch lists in the menu before you plugin the device or generate news, the wrong list of stuff will get sent to that device. I have no control/validation I can put in place since that is all done within the Calibre code and this is a plugin it knows nothing about.

That's a pretty painful limitation. However it might be the only "option" a user could have for a while until/unless Calibre is changed. If people think it is still worth the effort despite the serious limitation above I'll add it to the plugin.

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by jtintle

My new question is it possible to set which disk it automatically sends the book to? I've tried to set the Set default send to device action to Send to storage card A, but it keeps sending it to the Main device....would that have to be a news setting change?

EDIT: After doing a search on default send, I found that Calibre sends news to which ever storage has the most room available...guess I should search before I ask questions...

That seems like one of those "surprising" answers to me and the behaviour obviously surprised you too. Was this on a forum thread or in the documentation? I've raised an enhancement request ticket here to see if we could get an option at least for it to use the default storage for news.

[EDIT] Kovid has closed the ticket indicating the actual behaviour is as follows:

The current behavior is to preferentially send to the main memory as long as the main memory has enough space and only otherwise to send to the location with the most free space.

So you are correct in saying it does not consider the "default" setting for a device, however not quite correct in terms of which storage area it considers first.

[jtintle]

Sorry about the statement on the storage terms, I must of read it wrong, but thanks for looking into it, and great job on the plugin

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by jtintle

EDIT: After doing a search on default send, I found that Calibre sends news to which ever storage has the most room available...guess I should search before I ask questions...

Auto send recently changed and works as follows based on calibre's What's new page.

Release: 0.7.45 [11 Feb, 2011]

New Features

• When automatically sending news to device, send to main memory preferentially, if it has enough space.

[BakerBug]

I seem to have broken this plugin.

Here are the steps that caused the problem.
1. Load a PDF into Calibre.
2. Convert the PDF to Mobi.
3. Add the Mobi to the Book Sync List.
4. Remove the PDF from Calibre. (Ops.. this removes the Mobi book too).
5. Look at the Book Sync list.

Then you get:
TypeError: 'NoneType' object is not subscriptable

I've tried uninstalling the plugin and reinstalling. It's still broke. Is there any way to delete the sync list (there were two other books on the list before I hosed things up)? I suspect that the list is corrupt since it contains an entry to a book that I removed from Calibre. When I re-added the book, Book Sync was still broke.

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by BakerBug

I seem to have broken this plugin.

Here are the steps that caused the problem.
1. Load a PDF into Calibre.
2. Convert the PDF to Mobi.
3. Add the Mobi to the Book Sync List.
4. Remove the PDF from Calibre. (Ops.. this removes the Mobi book too).
5. Look at the Book Sync list.

Then you get:
TypeError: 'NoneType' object is not subscriptable

I've tried uninstalling the plugin and reinstalling. It's still broke. Is there any way to delete the sync list (there were two other books on the list before I hosed things up)? I suspect that the list is corrupt since it contains an entry to a book that I removed from Calibre. When I re-added the book, Book Sync was still broke.

Ok, there are two things going on here.

There is clearly a "bug" in Book Sync when displaying the contents of the list. I'll post a new version in a few minutes so that any time you try to view the list it checks each id is still valid and removes any that are not, as is the case when you have deleted the record.

I had assumed integrity of that list when deletes occur but clearly there is not. I suspect that if you were to connect your device now, any faulty ids would be flushed out and you should no longer have a problem. This exact same "flaw" would occur for creating and then deleting news, but because there is no way to display the list of pending news items without this plugin you are not able to see invalid items in your list.