[GUI Plugin] Open With

[kiwidude]

Thx for the steer - did you mean os.path.expandvars()?

[kovidgoyal]

No, I just meant that the OP could add the sigil directory to the PATH environment variable on both his machines, the just use Sigil.exe as the executable in his calibre setup.

[kiwidude]

Ahhh, that PATH... you had me scrambling into the python docs this morning...

I'll do some experimentation if I get time this weekend with os.path.expandvars since you unintentionally caused me to find that, provided it "works" then it sounds a better solution that useShell.

[kovidgoyal]

Apologies, I forget that windows users are not as used to manipulating PATH as linux ones.

[kiwidude]

No probs, I took your uppercase as emphasis rather than twigging you meant the environment variable.

You are absolutely right that modifying the PATH variable is not something your average Windows user fiddles with. Though those of us doing development particularly in corporates with loads of applications/tools installed still end up battling with the stupid one-line text box Microsoft insist is all that is required to manage a variable that is equally stupidly constrained to an inadequate length...

[kovidgoyal]

Rather than manipulating PATH another alternative is to use symlinks, though I don't know what level of support windows has for those. I do vaguely recall that NTFS has them.

[kiwidude]

Changes in this release:

• Support environment variables in paths to the applications
• Add an Edit... right-click for the path to an application to allow manual editing of the path.

@kintrupf - this should let you do what you asked for. As I have the editing of configuration locked down so that double click opens the file chooser dialog, I had to add a new edit menu option on the right click menu to allow people to manually edit the paths.

So if you choose you can replace "C:\Program Files" with "%ProgramFiles%" or "%ProgramW6432%" as appropriate for the particular 32/64-bit system/application.

[loximuthal]

When I opened Calibre after several days not on it I saw a notice of a new update to "Open With". When I installed it I got the following error:

Spoiler:

calibre, version 0.8.36
ERROR: Install Plugin Failed: A problem occurred while installing this plugin. This plugin will now be uninstalled. Please post the error message in details below into the forum thread for this plugin and restart Calibre.

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages/calibre/gui2/dialogs/plugin_updater.py", line 731, in _install_clicked
File "site-packages/calibre/gui2/preferences/plugins.py", line 387, in check_for_add_to_toolbars
File "site-packages/calibre/customize/__init__.py", line 543, in load_actual_plugin
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'OpenWithAction'

I don't know for sure what version of the plugin I had before, but when I opened Calibre again it had the latest version (1.5.2)

I can't tell if I have a problem or not.

[kiwidude]

@loximuthal - if you can't tell, I sure can't

If the plugin is on your context menu/toolbar and working - then you don't have a problem.

If it isn't there (and you definitely have added it via Preferences -> Toolbars), try installing it again. If it still doesn't appear after restarting calibre, restart in debug mode and post the output of that. I have no idea what that error message means (it is not specific to this plugin) but perhaps there was some sort of issue when it tried to download the plugin update (maybe AV or something).

[loximuthal]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

@loximuthal - if you can't tell, I sure can't

Well, I still don't know. I tried uninstalling the plugin, restarting calibre, re-installing the plugin, restarting calibre again and then using the plugin. Through all of that I got no error messages. All good.

When I tried using the plugin it works fine for opening with Preview (opens the cover), Gimp (also opens the cover) and Reader (opens books in PDF format). However, when I select Sigil (for books with epub formats) I keep getting the same weird stuff. Sigil opens, but only shows "����". This happens for each book I try. Unfortunately, I don't know if this is new behavior, since I don't remember if I've used that particular choice before. I did try running in debug mode, and got this output:

Spoiler:

andy's mac > calibre-debug
WARNING: help() not available - check site.py

[~]|1> calibre
Failed to initialize plugin: '/Users/andy/Library/Preferences/calibre/plugins/Goodreads Covers.zip'
Failed to initialize plugin: '/Users/andy/Library/Preferences/calibre/plugins/Goodreads Metadata.zip'
Open: /Applications/Sigil.app (file): /Users/andy/Documents/Books/John Scalzi/The Shadow War of the Night Dragons, Book One_ The Dead City (Excerpt) (288)/cover.jpg (args):
Open: /Applications/Sigil.app (file): /Users/andy/Documents/Books/Rachel Swirsky/The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen's Window (416)/cover.jpg (args):
[~]|2> quit
-----> quit()
andy's mac >

I can still get a book into Sigil fairly easily, going directly to the directory with the epub file, but still. It would be nice if the plugin did what I wanted.

[EDIT] OK. It would help if I actually looked at the plugin configuration. I had Sigil set to open the cover, so of course it didn't open the book. When I switch from "COVER" to "EPUB" all works as it should. Thanks for trying to help.

[kintrupf]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

Changes in this release:

• Support environment variables in paths to the applications
• Add an Edit... right-click for the path to an application to allow manual editing of the path.

@kintrupf - this should let you do what you asked for. As I have the editing of configuration locked down so that double click opens the file chooser dialog, I had to add a new edit menu option on the right click menu to allow people to manually edit the paths.

So if you choose you can replace "C:\Program Files" with "%ProgramFiles%" or "%ProgramW6432%" as appropriate for the particular 32/64-bit system/application.

Thank you very much! It works like a charm!!!

BTW, since that works now, you may want alter the included config.py to use the %programfiles% variable by default. This will make the default configuration valid on many different language-versions of Windows.

[kintrupf]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Rather than manipulating PATH another alternative is to use symlinks, though I don't know what level of support windows has for those. I do vaguely recall that NTFS has them.

Links do exists on NTFS and I tried to use them by placing a link to Sigil into a folder that exists on both systems.
However, when startet by the link Sigil could not find it's home directory, because the current directory was the directory where the link resides, and not the directory where the link points to.

But meanwhile the new version of the plugin supports environment variables, and that works very well!

[dmcd]

Thanks for a very useful plugin.

I don't know if I'm missing something, or even if it is possible, but I'd like to be able to open a .dox, .docx or .rtf file in Word, using the Open With plugin. This would be great for changing the doc and docx files to rtf that Calibre can then convert.

Not sure if the MS proprietrary format makes this impossible, but I can Open my Adobe Acrobat 9.0 Pro by altering your AAcr., 10.0 file path and they are a greedy mob too.

Am I missing something really simple?? - Probably.

Dale

[kkc0923]

Hi, thanks for very cool plugin.

I have a lot of zip archive which has text file (HTML like but different format) and some of iamges. And I have viewer for this format. But in open with setting, there is no file format "zip". how to change "zip" file viewer?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by kkc0923

Hi, thanks for very cool plugin.

I have a lot of zip archive which has text file (HTML like but different format) and some of iamges. And I have viewer for this format. But in open with setting, there is no file format "zip". how to change "zip" file viewer?

You don't need Openwith if your system has the default handler for Zip set to open with your program. Go to Preferences: Behavior: Scroll down and remove the tick next to Zip on the 'Use Internal Viewer' list.
Note, this will always send ALL Zips to the external viewer(?)