Calibre can't download Slate

[wendy5]

For the past week or so, Calibre has failed to download Slate. I installed version 1.5 but this didn't fix the problem. Here is the error message:

Fetch news from Slate
Resolved conversion options
calibre version: 1.5.0
{'asciiize': False,
'author_sort': None,
'authors': None,
'base_font_size': 0,
'book_producer': None,
'change_justification': 'original',
'chapter': None,
'chapter_mark': 'pagebreak',
'comments': None,
'cover': None,
'debug_pipeline': None,
'dehyphenate': True,
'delete_blank_paragraphs': True,
'disable_font_rescaling': False,
'dont_compress': False,
'dont_download_recipe': False,
'duplicate_links_in_toc': False,
'embed_all_fonts': False,
'embed_font_family': None,
'enable_heuristics': False,
'extra_css': None,
'extract_to': None,
'filter_css': None,
'fix_indents': True,
'font_size_mapping': None,
'format_scene_breaks': True,
'html_unwrap_factor': 0.4,
'input_encoding': None,
'input_profile': <calibre.customize.profiles.InputProfile object at 0x03527950>,
'insert_blank_line': False,
'insert_blank_line_size': 0.5,
'insert_metadata': False,
'isbn': None,
'italicize_common_cases': True,
'keep_ligatures': False,
'language': None,
'level1_toc': None,
'level2_toc': None,
'level3_toc': None,
'line_height': 0,
'linearize_tables': False,
'lrf': False,
'margin_bottom': 5.0,
'margin_left': 5.0,
'margin_right': 5.0,
'margin_top': 5.0,
'markup_chapter_headings': True,
'max_toc_links': 50,
'minimum_line_height': 120.0,
'mobi_file_type': 'old',
'mobi_ignore_margins': False,
'mobi_keep_original_images': False,
'mobi_toc_at_start': False,
'no_chapters_in_toc': False,
'no_inline_navbars': True,
'no_inline_toc': False,
'output_profile': <calibre.customize.profiles.KindleOutput object at 0x036D4030>,
'page_breaks_before': None,
'personal_doc': '[PDOC]',
'prefer_author_sort': False,
'prefer_metadata_cover': False,
'pretty_print': False,
'pubdate': None,
'publisher': None,
'rating': None,
'read_metadata_from_opf': None,
'remove_fake_margins': True,
'remove_first_image': False,
'remove_paragraph_spacing': False,
'remove_paragraph_spacing_indent_size': 1.5,
'renumber_headings': True,
'replace_scene_breaks': '',
'search_replace': None,
'series': None,
'series_index': None,
'share_not_sync': False,
'smarten_punctuation': False,
'sr1_replace': '',
'sr1_search': '',
'sr2_replace': '',
'sr2_search': '',
'sr3_replace': '',
'sr3_search': '',
'start_reading_at': None,
'subset_embedded_fonts': False,
'tags': None,
'test': False,
'timestamp': None,
'title': None,
'title_sort': None,
'toc_filter': None,
'toc_threshold': 6,
'toc_title': None,
'unsmarten_punctuation': False,
'unwrap_lines': True,
'use_auto_toc': False,
'verbose': 2}
InputFormatPlugin: Recipe Input running
Using custom recipe
Found section: News & Politics
Python function terminated unexpectedly
'NoneType' object has no attribute 'findAll' (Error Code: 1)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site.py", line 132, in main
File "site.py", line 109, in run_entry_point
File "site-packages\calibre\utils\ipc\worker.py", line 189, in main
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\convert\gui_conversion.py", line 25, in gui_convert
File "site-packages\calibre\ebooks\conversion\plumber.py", line 1027, in run
File "site-packages\calibre\customize\conversion.py", line 241, in __call__
File "site-packages\calibre\ebooks\conversion\plugins\recipe_ input.py", line 114, in convert
File "site-packages\calibre\web\feeds\news.py", line 980, in download
File "site-packages\calibre\web\feeds\news.py", line 1145, in build_index
File "<string>", line 52, in parse_index
File "<string>", line 69, in slate_section_articles
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'findAll'

[kovidgoyal]

Are you using a custom recipe? use the builtin recipe and you should be fine. At least I just tried it and it worked for me

[wendy5]

Thanks for your quick reply. I was using a custom recipe. I just switched to the builtin recipe and it worked fine. However, it is 39 MB, and files that large sometimes cause problems with my K3. I think I modified the recipe to make it smaller, which obviously no longer works with Calibre.

Can you suggest any changes that will do that without interfering with the fetch process? I don't care about image size, if that helps. Thanks again.

[kovidgoyal]

You will just need to make the same modifications again. Drop some sections or limit the number of articles. I have modified the builtin recipe to compress the images more which should help.

[wendy5]

It worked - today's download was much smaller at 6 MB. Thanks for making such quick changes, and for creating this great program in the first place. Calibre completely changed how I read news and made my Kindle so much more useful than I imagined.