Plugboard, template, and custom composite column recipes

[alphane]

You keep giving us the Template and Destination, but you fail to give us format and device. Have you selected Format: ePub an Device: save_to_disk? Also did you save the plugboard?

I had to delay solving my plugboard problem, sorry for giving no earlier answer...

Anyhow, the format I save is indeed epub and the device is save_to_disk and, of course, I saved the plugboard. But I have another peace of information. It did not appear earlier to me as I am more often downloading my ebooks on device via Dropbox. But the plugboard works fine when Device is PB622 (my device). Only when Device is save_to_disk does it not work.

So am I the only one or does it not work for save_to_disk and others don't bother?

[Accel]

I wrote template for new column to table view:

{author_sort:re(, ([^\s.])[^\s.]*(?:(?:$|\s|\.)+),, \1. }

but receive an "TEMPLATE ERROR: invalid conversion specification"
Anybody know why? What's wrong?

[eschwartz]

You have three () commas in that template. Commas separate arguments in the function. re() takes three arguments -- val, pattern, replacement -- and the first is inferred as author_sort from the template. (val is only used in general and template program mode, not single-function mode which is what we are using here). You have also left args 1 & 3 empty.

More on this in the calibre template tutorial: http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/template_lang.html

Function reference: http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/template_ref.html

Try:

{author_sort:re(([^\s.])[^\s.]*(?:(?:$|\s|\.)+), \1. }

[Accel]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

You have three () commas in that template. Commas separate arguments in the function. re() takes three arguments -- val, pattern, replacement -- and the first is inferred as author_sort from the template. (val is only used in general and template program mode, not single-function mode which is what we are using here). You have also left args 1 & 3 empty.

There is another formula and had the same result: ERROR
Of course, I read the manual. And did some help script on Python,
but still need help.
Why this template have an ERROR?

Spoiler:

# coding: utf-8

# if you have Python
# just run in terminal 'python re4calibre.py'

import re

print '\n'
print '\t For help use Online regex tester and debugger http://regex101.com/#python'


pattern = ur', ([^\s.])[^\s.]*(?:(?:$|\s|\.)+)'

replacement = ur', \1. '

str1 = u'Wood, Sir John & Vivekananda & Krisna, R. O. & Ball, Harry'
str2 = u'Wood, Sir & Warner, Brother'
str3 = u'Vivekanda & Shivananda'
str4 = u'Wood, Sir John & Vivekananda & McDonalds, G. B. & Warner, Brother & Braun'
str5 = u'Wood, Sir & McDonalds, Alex Jonathan'

print '\n'

print '\t1. '+str1+' -->'
print '\t   '+re.sub(pattern, replacement, str1, flags=re.I)
print '\t2. '+str2+' -->'
print '\t   '+re.sub(pattern, replacement, str2, flags=re.I)
print '\t3. '+str3+' -->'
print '\t   '+re.sub(pattern, replacement, str3, flags=re.I)
print '\t4. '+str4+' -->'
print '\t   '+re.sub(pattern, replacement, str4, flags=re.I)
print '\t5. '+str5+' -->'
print '\t   '+re.sub(pattern, replacement, str5, flags=re.I)

print '\n'
print 'Copy template for Calibre column:'
print '{author_sort:re('+pattern+','+replacement+')}'
print '\n'

[eschwartz]

I just noticed the closing parenthesis in re() was missing too. There seems to be few problems, really.

What are you trying to do?

EDIT: It looks like you want to abbreviate all author first names?

"Wood, Sir John" becomes "Wood, S. John"
but
"Ball, Harry" becomes "Ball, H."

[eschwartz]

You will need to escape the comma as "\," (but in the python script, since the pattern was quoted, escaping wasn't necessary).

It still errors, I'm not sure why, but it is more complex than it needs to be, so...

Try this template, which I rewrote from scratch:

{author_sort:re(\, (\w)\w*,\, \1.)}

Explanation:

Search for:
comma, space, letter (captured), letters. [Stop at the first non-letter value.]

Replace with:
comma, space, captured first letter, period

[chaley]

@eschartz: this call to re is a prime candidate for template program mode. There are too many ways that the single function mode parser can get confused by the embedded parens and commas. Using TPM eliminates all of that.

[Accel]

Originally Posted by chaley

There are too many ways that the single function mode parser can get confused by the embedded parens and commas. Using TPM eliminates all of that.

What is this TPM?
May be you can help me to write template that make from 'Doyle, Arthur Conan' --> Doyle, A. C. ?

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Accel

What is this TPM?
May be you can help me to write template that make from 'Doyle, Arthur Conan' --> Doyle, A. C. ?

TPM is Template Program Mode.

A template that produces what you want for the example you provided is

{author_sort:'re($, '([, ]+)(\w)\w*', '\1\2.')'}

I don't know it it will produce the right answer in all cases.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by chaley

TPM is Template Program Mode.

A template that produces what you want for the example you provided is

{author_sort:'re($, '([, ]+)(\w)\w*', '\1\2.')'}

I don't know it it will produce the right answer in all cases.

It truncates everything after the first word. Including the second author's first name (since it includes "& LN,[...]").

This should work, though:

program:

re(
	field('author_sort'),
	'(\w)\w+\b(?!,)',
	'\1.'
)

At some point I thought I'd try list_re to fix your example.

But I discovered this:

program:

list_re(
	field('author_sort'),
	'&',
	'(.*)',
	'\1'
)

gave me "LN1&FN1&LN2&FN2" -- isn't it supposed to search for "(.*)" and replace with "\1" on each list element where "&" is the separator? I cannot imagine what I might be doing wrong. But this looks completely crazy.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

At some point I thought I'd try list_re to fix your example.

But I discovered this:

program:

list_re(
	field('author_sort'),
	'&',
	'(.*)',
	'\1'
)

gave me "LN1&FN1&LN2&FN2" -- isn't it supposed to search for "(.*)" and replace with "\1" on each list element where "&" is the separator? I cannot imagine what I might be doing wrong. But this looks completely crazy.

It works fine for me. The names come out exactly as they went in, except that the spaces are gone from around the &. I have no idea why you are seeing what you are seeing.

BTW: a better fix would be to use the new function list_re_group so you can separate the identification of which names to include from the munging of the names.

[eschwartz]

Hmm, weird.

Anyway, I thought the only thing list_re_group() did was to apply templates and stuff to replacements in a list -- I just realized you can limit what gets passed to the re_group with a separator AND a regex.

P.S. The documentation for all three functions you added is a little weird, indented plus list_re_group is referred to as list_re (the second one???) in template_ref.html.

The indents I believe are because the documentation builder does hierarchical bulleted lists when it sees tabs. You indented with tabs, which is usually reasonable. All of Kovid's functions are indented with four spaces.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/calibre/+bug/1339296

[BetterRed]

How can the Series number be shown in Roman Numerals in the Book Jacket.

The setting in Look & Feel does not appear to have any effect on the Book Jacket. So wondered if it's possible to overcome with something in

%CALIBRE_CONFIG_DIRECTORY%\resources\catalog\template.xhtml

See this thread for discussion Roman Numerals for series and on book jacket

BR

[nynaevelan]

Hi All:

I have been having trouble with a save_to_disk plugboard that does not seem to be working but I cannot figure out why.

This is my plugboard:  {#purchased1:.7} - {title_sort} - {author} - {tags}

For whatever reason it is not working. Could I have some conflicting setup that is overriding the plugboard or maybe something is wrong with it??

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by nynaevelan

Hi All:

I have been having trouble with a save_to_disk plugboard that does not seem to be working but I cannot figure out why.

This is my plugboard:  {#purchased1:.7} - {title_sort} - {author} - {tags}

For whatever reason it is not working. Could I have some conflicting setup that is overriding the plugboard or maybe something is wrong with it??

What are you getting instead?

(The template itself is valid.)

I cannot think of anything that would override Preferences ==> Import/Export ==> Saving books to disk.