Minor UI improvement - retry button

[whismerhill]

Hi,
when a book inside the calibre library is opened by another process, if correcting the Author or something else then calibre will complain that the book can't be moved/renamed which is perfectly normal.
However it just provides an OK button afterward & that is all.

A retry button could be convenient.

Thanks for reading.

[eschwartz]

But the process will still be holding the file open...

[whismerhill]

Yes of course it is then waiting for user input. At which point the user has the choice to close the problematic process/window & retry or alternatively cancel.

This just skips having to redo by hand the "failed" action, allowing to retry with a simple click. This is how most of windows OS behaves when it can't copy/delete/move files around AFAIK.

PS: Sorry I didn't precise this stuff, it just seemed too "obvious" to me therefore I didn't think about mentioning it.

[eschwartz]

Hmm, AFAIK it isn't really a problem since the database will still record the old location and everything will be well -- at least as far as database integrity goes.

File copying dialogs allow retrying for general errors, of which there are many, but since calibre knows the move should work the only good explanation is a process locking the file. Which can be difficult to deal with, since locks can accidentally persist when they shouldn't and require file unlocking software to fix. Alternatively, obscure background processes can be holding the lock.
So I am not sure how useful a retry facility would be -- but I guess if @Kovid adds one, it certainly won't hurt.

[whismerhill]

well a simple pdf viewer can hold a file locked if you forgot to close it so I thought it would be handy to be able to retry but whatever.

Also I'm not saying it's a "problem" because it's not, it just doesn't do anything when the file is locked.

[kovidgoyal]

A retry button where? If you mean int he edit metadata dialog, IIRC, you can always click the OK button again to retry. If you mean when editing single fields ata time in the book list, since all you are editing is a single field, I dont see much point.

[whismerhill]

What I had in mind was to replace this dialog right here :


in which the OK button doesn't retry, with a similar dialog allowing to retry/cancel.

that is all.
It's fine if you think it's not worth it though.
As I said it's a minor UI thingy I thought about.

Translation of french parts :

ERROR access denied
unable to modify file location. Is it open in another program ?

[kovidgoyal]

Sure, it would be nice to have a retry button there, but, as I said, given that it is for only a single field, it isn't worth the effort for me, patches are welcome.