[GUI Plugin] Kindle Collections (old)

[OtakuGer]

Hi guys,

I hope I can get some help on creating a collection for News feed items.
My Kindle 4 is brand new, so I'm a newbie to Calibre and this plugin - please be patient

So far, I successfully created collections based on the Author sort and some more based on a custom field. Exactly as described in the first post of this thread.

But as shown in the examples on creating a collection for News feeds, none of the options is working for me. [PDOC] added to the mobi output options and as a additional feed tag.
This will add the [PDOC] to the tags, but won't create a new collection.

Am I missing any additional steps?
My goal is having the News feeds in a "News" collection on my kindle.

And is it normal that the collections are created on the device but won't be visible in the Calibre device view? For me all books are in collections on the kindle, but the device view of Calibre shows all books, but the collection column is empty.

[nynaevelan]

Thanks, I wonder if it is stored somewhere else. Is there a program to find out what files are associated with an installed program??

[Faw]

Originally Posted by nynaevelan

Thanks, I wonder if it is stored somewhere else. Is there a program to find out what files are associated with an installed program??

Well I used the task manager to monitor the resources K4PC was using. It used those 2 files and requests to Amazon servers.

[nynaevelan]

Originally Posted by Faw

Well I used the task manager to monitor the resources K4PC was using. It used those 2 files and requests to Amazon servers.

I bet you it is something in those two files that is linking to the info on Amazon's servers because k4pc has that annoying habit of constant syncing, I wish there was a way to turn that off without unregistering the program.

[bonzi]

Originally Posted by Faw

I see no book information anywhere in the databases though.

They seem to be in table collection_item_v1_0.

Edit: entries for Amazon content seem to be simply book file names (ASIN and type, mostly); other items look like Microsoft object IDs, though.

create table collection_item_v1_0 ( 
    collection_id integer not null,
    item_uid varchar(32) not null,
    create_ts datetime not null,
    primary key(collection_id, item_uid),
    foreign key(collection_id) references collection(collection_id)
)

[Kyrsyan]

Ok, quick question that I can't seem to locate the answer to. I've created a custom column that lists the Kindle Collection a book was in when I imported it. But I want that column to empty when the book is removed from the Kindle. I don't mind doing this manually but can't seem to do it. Editing metadata doesn't work. So help please, how would I do this? I use several collections to let myself know where I got a book at and if I read it and I don't need that information once I've got the books in Calibre and their metadata edited.

[meme]

Originally Posted by Kyrsyan

Ok, quick question that I can't seem to locate the answer to. I've created a custom column that lists the Kindle Collection a book was in when I imported it. But I want that column to empty when the book is removed from the Kindle. I don't mind doing this manually but can't seem to do it. Editing metadata doesn't work. So help please, how would I do this? I use several collections to let myself know where I got a book at and if I read it and I don't need that information once I've got the books in Calibre and their metadata edited.

If you've used the plugin to Import Collections from the Kindle to a custom column, then to remove the entry from the custom column just edit the column (or import from the Kindle again to re-read the collections - but this will overwrite anything else in that column). Editing the column/custom metadata should work - its your column so you can put what you want in it.

[meme]

Originally Posted by OtakuGer

But as shown in the examples on creating a collection for News feeds, none of the options is working for me. [PDOC] added to the mobi output options and as a additional feed tag.
This will add the [PDOC] to the tags, but won't create a new collection.

Am I missing any additional steps?
My goal is having the News feeds in a "News" collection on my kindle.

Check for any messages in the detailed report after running Create Collections. Or run a View Report and look at the specific news item.

And is it normal that the collections are created on the device but won't be visible in the Calibre device view? For me all books are in collections on the kindle, but the device view of Calibre shows all books, but the collection column is empty.

Yes, this is normal - the device view doesn't show Amazon books in collections.

[Kyrsyan]

Thank you. Reimporting the collections worked. Direct editing does not. I updated everything just to make sure it wasn't an "old" version thing. I'll just remember to reimport after I get everything done.

Thank you again.

[bonzi]

Originally Posted by meme

Yes, this is normal - the device view doesn't show Amazon books in collections.

Why is this so? Sounds counterintuitive...

[meme]

Originally Posted by bonzi

Why is this so? Sounds counterintuitive...

Simply because the code to recognize and deal with Amazon books (since they use an ASIN number as their code in the collections file instead of a hash key) hasn't been added to calibre. We looked at adding it before, but it was low on calibre's pending list. Now that Amazon have switched collection file formats for their newest touch model, its probably going to stay on the pending list.

[OtakuGer]

Thanks for the reply meme.

Originally Posted by meme

Check for any messages in the detailed report after running Create Collections. Or run a View Report and look at the specific news item.

I did. No errors or anything suspicious there. Just no News collection being created.

=== Kindle Collections Report


Collections saved to the Kindle:

Collection Managed By Books Change
---------- ---------- ----- ------
_A Calibre 8 Replaced (from column Author Sort)
_B Calibre 18 Replaced (from column Author Sort)
_C Calibre 12 Replaced (from column Author Sort)
...

No collections selected to delete from the Kindle.



=== Settings:

Column: Author Sort
Action: Create
Prefix: _
Suffix: ""
Minimum: ""
Ignore: ""
Include: ""
Rename from: ^(.).*$
Rename to: \1
Split on: ""

Column: Kindle Collection
Action: Create
Prefix: ""
Suffix: ""
Minimum: ""
Ignore: ""
Include: ""
Rename from: ""
Rename to: ""
Split on: ""

Never delete/modify these Kindle collections:
Action when toolbar icon is clicked: Show menu (default)
Preserve existing Kindle-only collections: False
Ignore prefix/suffix when comparing Calibre names: True
Ignore case when pattern matching: True
Reset collection times: True
Calibre Personal doc tag: [PDOC]
Kindle collections file: G:\system\collections.json
Plugin customization file: C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Roaming\calibre\plugins\Kindl e Collections.json
System Encoding: mbcs

Run View Report to see collection and book details.

The plugin message when creating the collections is finished:
"25 collections, 184 books, 6 newspapers, 2 magazines found on the Kindle"
The news items get assigned to my "_C" author collection.

[meme]

Originally Posted by OtakuGer

I did. No errors or anything suspicious there. Just no News collection being created.

Look further down in the details list (in particular View Report) for your specific News items, and see what it says about PDOC, etc. for the particular books/items.

This may be a case of some missing instructions on the first post. Been a long time since I did the news items - way back when it almost just handled tags. I think what is missing is that you have to tell the plugin to actually create the collection. Right now you are only telling it to create collections for Authors - so your news items end up in C since the author is calibre. You need to tell it to create collections for Tags as well - but probably put [PDOC] in the include field so only that tag is used. And if your personal docs are using [PDOC] and not News and you want the collection named News, then you probably need to rename the collection from [PDOC] to News (since you are only including just the one tag [PDOC] you can just put .* in the rename from field and News in the rename to field.

[lb14]

Hi, I am new to Calibre and although I've tried several times after installing the Collections plug-in I just can't work out how to get my books into simple collections by Author. Some are how I'd expect but for instance, I have 75 books by one author, some show up in a Collection with the authors name and a lot of others are shown as separate collections with just one book in each. How do I set it to put all books by the one author in a single collection? I'm sure it should be simple and I'm just not clever enough to understand all the options.
Sorry if this is a really basic question

[meme]

What are the settings you are using (they are listed in the Detailed Report after you run Create)?