Subgroup Displays wrong/different to Calibre

msitekkie · 10-06-2015, 01:24 PM

I recently purchased CC to organise my manuals and reference books (mostly PDFs)
As User Categories don't seem to be present in CC I followed the instructions here:
http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/sub_groups.html
to create a group/custom column called Manuals with subgroups like Photography, Tools, Kitchen, IT.
This works fine in Calibre (Windows). If I click on my Manuals group at the top level I see all my manuals and for a sub-group the relevant subset.

In CC however when I select my Manuals group CC actually displays all my books not just my manuals

(the subgroups are fine).
My custom metadata field for manuals against the other (non manual) books is empty, so they definitely shouldn't be in the Manuals grouping.

Is this a bug, or am I doing something wrong? Note: "All #manual" is shown in the top left corner when I select my Manuals group.

chaley · 10-06-2015, 04:07 PM

CC does behave differently from calibre. Tapping on a group (a category) returns all books sorted by the auto-sort of that category. The effect: the empty value is returned like any other category so all books are shown.

I interpret your question as saying that you want to see all values that are not empty, ln that case, long press on the <<>> line and select "Not matching". Then tap the group/category again. You will see only the items that actually are in #manual.

I am open to changing CC to return only non-empty values if the CC setting "Show empty values in groups" is unchecked. My problem is that this would be a rather significant change in behavior. I need to be convinced that the large majority of other users would accept the change before I can make it.

msitekkie · 10-07-2015, 08:21 AM

Thanks Chaley, I would suggest selecting a group and seeing all books rather than the group is unexpected behaviour and counter-intuitive (unlike Calibre which works as you would expect).

Thanks for the long press suggestion which did give me all the manuals, although this again produced non-intuitive results as selecting a different grouping now has no effect and I can no longer see the sub-groups. I eventually realised I had to clear the search before anything else would work, but this wasn't obvious.

I do believe most users would welcome the behaviour more closely matching that of Calibre. 8-)

Any intention to bring User Categories to CC? At first glance anyway, it appears a much simpler method than using Custom Columns for what I believe should be a mainstream feature (sub-grouping) a lot of people would use.

P.S. I'm very impressed with Calibre and it's ability to edit metadata and do other things in bulk (Mantano is laborious by comparison but does have sub-groups). Thanks and keep up the good work.

chaley · 10-07-2015, 10:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by msitekkie

Thanks Chaley, I would suggest selecting a group and seeing all books rather than the group is unexpected behaviour and counter-intuitive (unlike Calibre which works as you would expect).

One reason CC behaves like this is that it shows the <<>> line, meaning that all the books in the library are in the category one way or the other. I am changing CC so that if that line is removed (there is an option in Settings / Grouping drawer to do that) then the "empties" won't be shown when a category is tapped. This change will be in the next beta.

Quote:

Thanks for the long press suggestion which did give me all the manuals, although this again produced non-intuitive results as selecting a different grouping now has no effect and I can no longer see the sub-groups. I eventually realised I had to clear the search before anything else would work, but this wasn't obvious.

A long-press does a search (as you figured out). It is intended to be used like a calibre virtual library. You long press on something to restrict CC to books matching that something, then you can use any other grouping to explore further.

Quote:

Any intention to bring User Categories to CC? At first glance anyway, it appears a much simpler method than using Custom Columns for what I believe should be a mainstream feature (sub-grouping) a lot of people would use.

Nope. Calibre user categories require access to calibre information that CC doesn't have.

Regarding subgroups: CC supports calibre subgroups to 2 levels. See CC FAQ Can CC support calibre's hierarchical items such as #genre?

msitekkie · 10-08-2015, 03:27 PM

Many thanks for the planned beta changes - I assume if the "empties" are not shown that means you plan to show everything in the Group instead when you select the top level. I'll wait and see how that pans out.

Hopefully that will allow me to use CC for my needs, but can I give some feedback that yes I worked my way through the different steps and screens in the #Genre tutorial and got it to work and it's brilliant that customisation flexibility is there for IT Pros like you and I, but from my support experience I would say for a lot of users I think that would be too complex/too much effort to create subgroups and they woud give up on it.

10-06-2015, 01:24 PM	#1
msitekkie Junior Member Posts: 3 Karma: 10 Join Date: Oct 2015 Device: none	Subgroup Displays wrong/different to Calibre I recently purchased CC to organise my manuals and reference books (mostly PDFs) As User Categories don't seem to be present in CC I followed the instructions here: http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/sub_groups.html to create a group/custom column called Manuals with subgroups like Photography, Tools, Kitchen, IT. This works fine in Calibre (Windows). If I click on my Manuals group at the top level I see all my manuals and for a sub-group the relevant subset. In CC however when I select my Manuals group CC actually displays all my books not just my manuals (the subgroups are fine). My custom metadata field for manuals against the other (non manual) books is empty, so they definitely shouldn't be in the Manuals grouping. Is this a bug, or am I doing something wrong? Note: "All #manual" is shown in the top left corner when I select my Manuals group.

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10-06-2015, 04:07 PM	#2
chaley Grand Sorcerer Posts: 11,742 Karma: 6997045 Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: Notts, England Device: Kobo Libra 2	CC does behave differently from calibre. Tapping on a group (a category) returns all books sorted by the auto-sort of that category. The effect: the empty value is returned like any other category so all books are shown. I interpret your question as saying that you want to see all values that are not empty, ln that case, long press on the <<>> line and select "Not matching". Then tap the group/category again. You will see only the items that actually are in #manual. I am open to changing CC to return only non-empty values if the CC setting "Show empty values in groups" is unchecked. My problem is that this would be a rather significant change in behavior. I need to be convinced that the large majority of other users would accept the change before I can make it.

10-07-2015, 08:21 AM	#3
msitekkie Junior Member Posts: 3 Karma: 10 Join Date: Oct 2015 Device: none	Thanks Chaley, I would suggest selecting a group and seeing all books rather than the group is unexpected behaviour and counter-intuitive (unlike Calibre which works as you would expect). Thanks for the long press suggestion which did give me all the manuals, although this again produced non-intuitive results as selecting a different grouping now has no effect and I can no longer see the sub-groups. I eventually realised I had to clear the search before anything else would work, but this wasn't obvious. I do believe most users would welcome the behaviour more closely matching that of Calibre. 8-) Any intention to bring User Categories to CC? At first glance anyway, it appears a much simpler method than using Custom Columns for what I believe should be a mainstream feature (sub-grouping) a lot of people would use. P.S. I'm very impressed with Calibre and it's ability to edit metadata and do other things in bulk (Mantano is laborious by comparison but does have sub-groups). Thanks and keep up the good work.

10-08-2015, 03:27 PM	#5
msitekkie Junior Member Posts: 3 Karma: 10 Join Date: Oct 2015 Device: none	Many thanks for the planned beta changes - I assume if the "empties" are not shown that means you plan to show everything in the Group instead when you select the top level. I'll wait and see how that pans out. Hopefully that will allow me to use CC for my needs, but can I give some feedback that yes I worked my way through the different steps and screens in the #Genre tutorial and got it to work and it's brilliant that customisation flexibility is there for IT Pros like you and I, but from my support experience I would say for a lot of users I think that would be too complex/too much effort to create subgroups and they woud give up on it.

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