[GUI Plugin] Reading List

[kiwidude]

@Japes - I understand what you mean but I am in no hurry to implement it sorry. It would significantly complicate the whole move up/down logic. All I can suggest is that if you are reordering a list is that you do it as you go - your most recent additions will of course be at the bottom.

@Stampercam - neither I nor this plugin know anything about content server. As for the iTunes changes, given the replies with very good points in them on that thread in the devices forum I would not be surprised if Kovid rethinks that. Or perhaps even makes it an option in Calibre. The majority of iTunes users don't give a jot about cloud storage, but do care about not having multiple copies of their stuff and having iTunes manage everything which sucks. He hasn't responded on that thread as yet so will be interesting to see when he does so if his mind can be changed at all.

[Japes]

Ok, thought I would give it a shot, as it's a major drawback of this particular plugin. Your plugins, I've found, are usually all-encompassing, but, this one falls a little short because of this.

Would it complicate things also, to make the custom column feature which is already there, a numerical value corresponding to the ranking on the list? That would fix the problem.

[kiwidude]

I would hardly call it a "major drawback" given no-one else has shown the slightest interest out of the thousand+ users of this plugin. You have workarounds - you could always remove/add the book to the list again and find it that way. To my mind arranging the order of a list is a case of looking your way down it and rearranging as you go to put your next few you want to read at the top. Perhaps one day I might feel motivated to allow alternate sorting, but right now it is not on my TODO list.

As for putting the order in a custom column, indeed it would complicate things. Particularly since the user could completely screw things up by typing into that column.

[Japes]

The plugin has been released officially for all of what, two weeks? So, the fact that nobody (and I am certainly somebody) has requested it, until now, really doesn't mean much, does it?

Secondly, yes, there are work arounds, but, they are hardly optimal, and, I think you would agree with that, given the quality of your work (and you have done custom work for me, so I know the high quality of your work).

Thirdly, what "to your mind" arranging the order of a list means, doesn't always translate to how OTHER people work. It simply means we have different work flows. And, while most of the time, looking up and down a list will suffice, sometimes it won't (like in the case of having a list with a few hundred, or even a couple thousdand titles in it). Do you think that trying to find a particular title in a list of say, 2,000 books (for purposes of moving it up or down the list), by "looking up and down said list" is optimal? I think you would agree it is not.

The way I ran into the problem was that someone recommended a book to me very highly and, it was already on my reading list. I wanted to move it to the top but it took me ten minutes just to find where it was ranked, to do so. Again, not optimal.

I realize fully this is still a very young plugin, but, make no mistake, whether or not anyone has, as yet, run into this issue, more and more people will, as their lists begin to grow, and, it is a major drawback to this plugin.

[itimpi]

A small suggestions for improvement!

On the "View List" menu item including in brackets the count of bo0oks on all lists? The difference between this count and the one for the default list would then make it obvious that there are items on non-default lists?

The rational behind this is that I do most of my reading on my Sony, and this is set as the default list. However some items I think would be better on the iPad so it would make it more obvious that there is something waiting to be synced to the iPad.

Related to this, when the "Sync Now" item is active because a specific device is connected, then the count of how many items would be synced if that option is selected could be added to the menu item?

Do you think either of the above ideas have merit?

[Stampercam]

I maintain our calibre database, and use the reading list plugin to control lists for several users. The problem comes in with how we get our books onto the various idevices via itunes.

I send my titles to itunes and put on my ipad that way, but my hubby puts them onto itunes in his profile on our computer. This is where the problem is. Each user profile on the computer needs to have the plugins and updates done independently and when he sends books to his itunes it doesn't update the settings as per my reading list settings.

What I want to do is have all the settings EXACTLY the same across all the users on the computer so that when I update calibre (including his sync list) on my profile all the changes are there on his, and he can just sync his list to itunes. Can I set up the lists on another user profile and have them be the same?

[itimpi]

The problem will be that by default the Calibre User configuration information is stored at the user level. To achieve what you want, you need all users to use the same configuration information. This can be done by setting the CALIBRE_CONFIG_DIRECTORY environment to point to where Calibre should find its configuration information.

One way I can see to achieve this is to use a script/batch file (you do not mention what OS you are running) to launch Calibre. If you look in the resoruces sub-folder of the Calibre installation location there is a batch file called calibre-portable.bat that shows how the location of all the files used by calibre can be excplicitly controlled. The batch file is extensively commented so it should be reasonably clear how it works, but feel free to ask questions on anything that is not clear. The batch file supplied is for Windows, but the principles would apply regardless of the OS.

If you are running Windows and the configuration information is all you want to control then instead of using the batch file you could instead simply set the environment variable at the system level by:

• Go to Control Panel->System
• Select Advanced System Settings
• Select Environment Variables
• In the System variables at the bottom select New
• Set the name to CALIBRE_CONFIG_DIRECTORY and the value to the name of a folder to be used to store the Calibre configuration information

Make sure the location is a folder that has read/write permissions for all users. You will have to reset up the settings the next time you use Calibre and re-install your plugins as it will act as if it is a new install, but this time they should now apply to all users.

In theory it would be possible to initially populate the chosen configuration folder with the settings for an existing user by copying that users existing configuration (its location is available via Preferences->Advanced->Miscellaneous) but I think that plugins need re-installing if you do so.

[Stampercam]

Thanks itimpi, that should solve my problem nicely. I'll fix that up and look into the batch file option. We are running windows so regardless it sound painless.

[itimpi]

Kiwidude: Did you ever spot the items I raised in Post 155 of this thread? Bearing in mind how responsive you tend to be I wondered if they got lost amongst the later messages in the thread?

[kiwidude]

@itimpi - I was away on holiday last week, so top priority when I got back went to the plugins that got broken by Calibre 0.8.8. I had seen your post, but haven't had time to comment.

The first part of a grand total on the View list menu is no problem.

The second part is a little more problematic. A total of all items on the lists is easy enough. However perhaps what you are after is a "true" sync count? This requires a fair bit of computation, as it requires querying to identify what books are already on the list(s) if the list(s) are set to force overwriting, looking up the books to see what have formats available etc. In turn this would slow down the appearance of the right-click menu, making Calibre a little more sluggish.

So if you just want a total of books on lists for the connected device/folder I can do that. But the "more useful" count of exactly how many books it anticipates sending in a sync operation I am hesitant to do? Thoughts?

[itimpi]

I was interested in the total count, not the true 'sync' count. In my case I tend to just be queuing new books so the two end up being the same. However I can see that others might have a different workflow - particularly those who retain items in the list after sucking.

If at a future date you work out a way to do the more complicated case of a genuine sync count that would also be fine. I guess an early case might be to ignore any books that have their 'on device' column set if hat is not too expensive to calculate.

Any improvements along these lines would be welcomed. However as they are ergonomic improvements rather than major functional ones I would see you not doing anything that had 'hard' use cases.

[kiwidude]

Changes in this release:

• On the View menu item, put a total of items on all lists on the top level menu item
• On the Sync now menu item, put a total count from all the lists that would be synced

@itimpi - as I mentioned above, this is the "easy" implementation of the sync now count, that simply totals the items on your lists. So by the sounds of it this should do what you wanted.

[itimpi]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

Changes in this release:
@itimpi - as I mentioned above, this is the "easy" implementation of the sync now count, that simply totals the items on your lists. So by the sounds of it this should do what you wanted.

Yes it will meet my needs (thanks very much) - but so would the complicated variant I hope that adding what I requested will not lead to a flood of other requests trying to get the 'complicated varaiant' implemented.

[GB20]

Thanks

[kiwidude]

@GB20 - Glad you found it useful, and welcome to MobileRead.