[GUI Plugin] Favourites Menu

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Comfy.n

wait, isn't @kiwidude in Australia?

He deserves holiday, rainy season SYD-CNX round trip flights are about $USD400

[Comfy.n]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

He deserves holiday, rainy season SYD-CNX round trip flights are about $USD400

[kiwidude]

Lol. I did indeed relocate to Australia, no idea where Thailand came in the mix

[kiwidude]

[Release Notes]
https://github.com/kiwidude68/calibr...es_menu-v1.3.1

[Comfy.n]

I wish any action available to Favourites Menu could be added directly to Calibre toolbars! But I sense this would require another plugin, perhaps? Maybe on some rainy day?

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by Comfy.n

I wish any action available to Favourites Menu could be added directly to Calibre toolbars! But I sense this would require another plugin, perhaps? Maybe on some rainy day?

I don't get what you are asking for - each plugin already has its own capability to specify what calibre toolbars it can be supported on. What else is there?

[Comfy.n]

For instance, there are Preferences sub-menu items that aren't available to be added directly to the toolbars, such as Toolbars & Menus, Shortcuts, Plugins, Look & Feel... Then you also have all Action Chains, Reading Lists, Saved Searches and other actions whose buttons, despite being available to Favourite Menus as menu items, can't be added directly to Calibre toolbars

[kiwidude]

You will have to ask Kovid elsewhere for that sort of capability i.e. specifically to allow a plugin to return multiple top-level shortcuts rather than a single one.

[Comfy.n]

thanks, I'd thought about maybe something hackish that wouldn't imply a change in base-calibre

[kiwidude]

The built-in toolbars are all part of the base calibre UI/codebase - plugins are at the mercy of what API points Kovid has exposed. Favorites Menu is as far as the "hack" approach can be taken while a plugin is limited to a single menu action in those toolbars.

[Comfy.n]

Sometimes I feel I'm so addicted to Calibre that I wouldn't mind having it command some IOT maid robot to get me a beer upon a single toolbar button click

[BetterRed]

Two enhancements I'd like to see in Favourites, sub-menu's, and shortcut display if the action has one.

BR

[chaley]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

I don't get what you are asking for - each plugin already has its own capability to specify what calibre toolbars it can be supported on. What else is there?

Originally Posted by Comfy.n

For instance, there are Preferences sub-menu items that aren't available to be added directly to the toolbars, such as Toolbars & Menus, Shortcuts, Plugins, Look & Feel... Then you also have all Action Chains, Reading Lists, Saved Searches and other actions whose buttons, despite being available to Favourite Menus as menu items, can't be added directly to Calibre toolbars

Originally Posted by kiwidude

You will have to ask Kovid elsewhere for that sort of capability i.e. specifically to allow a plugin to return multiple top-level shortcuts rather than a single one.

Unfortunately, this can't happen. Calibre's infrastructure allows adding "Actions" to toolbars etc, one instance of an action per destination. Action sub-menus and sub-commands cannot be added. You can see a list of bona fide actions in the "All GUI actions" menu.

It is in theory possible to make a UI plugin that executes a sub-action or sub-menu -- a variant of the favorites plugin. The user would choose which operation the plugin should do when triggered. The biggest problem: finding a way to get more than one of them, because the plugin is itself a single action. One would require multiple instances of the plugin to get multiple actions.

[kiwidude]

Thanks chaley yes that is all as I expected being intentional limitations.

To me if the api cant be extended to support multiple actions, then the other alternative is building directly in calibre the equivalent of a “customize toolbar” command that some apps have like Visual Studio. Where the user is presented with a list of all the possible actions reported by plugins and each one they choose to add gets wrapped by this customize feature into a button action for the toolbar. That would be the ultimate to me - it does annoy me for instance that my #1 most frequent menu in calibre of viewing a reading list has to be navigated via a submenu so I can understand the request. But writing dedicated plugins for every example like that clearly is not scalable/practical.

[Comfy.n]

Originally Posted by chaley

It is in theory possible to make a UI plugin that executes a sub-action or sub-menu -- a variant of the favorites plugin. The user would choose which operation the plugin should do when triggered. The biggest problem: finding a way to get more than one of them, because the plugin is itself a single action. One would require multiple instances of the plugin to get multiple actions.

Originally Posted by kiwidude

But writing dedicated plugins for every example like that clearly is not scalable/practical.

Thanks for your detailed explanation! I had also thought of a plugin similar to FM, as chaley explains, but it would work more like a custom "plugin builder". User would choose which action they want to add to the toolbar, then this "plugin builder" would insert the toolbar buttons accordingly... Anyway, some restrictions need to be enforced by design on any software, I can understand that.