Calibre Companion V3.1 HTML Comments

[Purple Lady]

I do not have font size or style in my comments and the size is still too small in CC. Is there anything I can do or do I need to revert to the previous version? I saw someone said they thought it was because the comments were wrapped in div tags, but I removed the div tags and Calibre put them back. Here's from the html source of my comments:

<div><p class="description"><b>There's more than one kind of monster.</b></p><p class="description"> When Chase Daniels first sees the little girl in umbrella socks tearing open the Rottweiler, he's not too concerned. As a longtime meth addict, he’s no stranger to horrifying, drug-fueled hallucinations. </p><p class="description"> But as he and his fellow junkies soon discover, the little girl is no illusion. The end of the world really has arrived. </p><p class="description"> The funny thing is, Chase’s life was over long before the apocalypse got here, his existence already reduced to a stinking basement apartment and a filthy mattress and an endless grind of buying and selling and using. He’s lied and cheated and stolen and broken his parents’ hearts a thousand times. And he threw away his only shot at sobriety a long time ago, when he chose the embrace of the drug over the woman he still loves. </p><p class="description"> And if your life’s already shattered beyond any normal hopes of redemption…well, maybe the end of the world is an opportunity. Maybe it’s a last chance for Chase to hit restart and become the man he once dreamed of being. Soon he’s fighting to reconnect with his lost love and dreaming of becoming her hero among civilization’s ruins. </p><p class="description"> But is salvation just another pipe dream? </p><p class="description"> Propelled by a blistering first-person voice and featuring a powerfully compelling antihero, Fiend is at once a riveting portrait of addiction, a pitch-black love story, and a meditation on hope, redemption, and delusion—not to mention one hell of a zombie novel.</p></div>

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

I do not have font size or style in my comments and the size is still too small in CC. Is there anything I can do or do I need to revert to the previous version? I saw someone said they thought it was because the comments were wrapped in div tags, but I removed the div tags and Calibre put them back. Here's from the html source of my comments:

<div><p class="description"><b>There's more than one kind of monster.</b></p><p class="description"> When Chase Daniels first sees the little girl in umbrella socks tearing open the Rottweiler, he's not too concerned. As a longtime meth addict, he’s no stranger to horrifying, drug-fueled hallucinations. </p><p class="description"> But as he and his fellow junkies soon discover, the little girl is no illusion. The end of the world really has arrived. </p><p class="description"> The funny thing is, Chase’s life was over long before the apocalypse got here, his existence already reduced to a stinking basement apartment and a filthy mattress and an endless grind of buying and selling and using. He’s lied and cheated and stolen and broken his parents’ hearts a thousand times. And he threw away his only shot at sobriety a long time ago, when he chose the embrace of the drug over the woman he still loves. </p><p class="description"> And if your life’s already shattered beyond any normal hopes of redemption…well, maybe the end of the world is an opportunity. Maybe it’s a last chance for Chase to hit restart and become the man he once dreamed of being. Soon he’s fighting to reconnect with his lost love and dreaming of becoming her hero among civilization’s ruins. </p><p class="description"> But is salvation just another pipe dream? </p><p class="description"> Propelled by a blistering first-person voice and featuring a powerfully compelling antihero, Fiend is at once a riveting portrait of addiction, a pitch-black love story, and a meditation on hope, redemption, and delusion—not to mention one hell of a zombie novel.</p></div>

It doesn't matter what html you have in the comments, the font size still shows up smaller than everything else. I removed all html and made it plain text and the only difference is the bold and blank lines are gone - no change in font size (still small).

[PatNY]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

It doesn't matter what html you have in the comments, the font size still shows up smaller than everything else. I removed all html and made it plain text and the only difference is the bold and blank lines are gone - no change in font size.

I think it depends on what type of device you have (screen resolution?) and how large you've set your system fonts.

Do you have the new Nexus 7 with the 300+ dpi? Or do you have your system fonts set for large?

At least on my Nook HD, the inclusion of a specified type size made a huge difference. When it had a tag for 12 px for the font size, the type appeared about half the size of what you see in this post. When I deleted references to font sizes, the type went back to normal -- the way it was before the latest version -- and matches all other type sizes on the page.

--Pat

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by PatNY

I think it depends on what type of device you have (screen resolution?) and how large you've set your system fonts.

Do you have the new Nexus 7 with the 300+ dpi? Or do you have your system fonts set for large?

At least on my Nook HD, the inclusion of a specified type size made a huge difference. When it had a tag for 12 px for the font size, the type appeared about half the size of what you see in this post. When I deleted references to font sizes, the type went back to normal -- the way it was before the latest version -- and matches all other type sizes on the page.

--Pat

I am waiting for the LTE, so I have the old Nexus 7. I have my font size set to large, so no matter what format the comments are in, they are smaller than everything else. When I first saw DoctorOhh's comments I tried using my Galaxy S3 and everything was the same size, but I have the font set to normal there.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by chaley

We have the choice of respecting the HTML in the comment or doing as it did before.

Folks that use calibre often simply download metadata without regard to comment formatting. Thus creating great inconsistencies in formatting. If they are obviously too small folks edit that and remove the font size, but for normal div and P tags within calibre there is a tweak to adjust the book details page font size higher or lower as required.

Since there are scores of different android devices out there, from an accessibility point of view, if an option in the settings to handle the html the new or old way is too complicated or time consuming to code then I would return to the previous method.

Your previous method created a uniform predictable viewing on the Book details page. Allowing folks with aging eyes easy access to the proper size font.

Respecting the html in comments may be more trouble than it is worth.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by PatNY

Here I ask you for an enhancement to CC, and it darn near breaks the layout for some! I hope it's not impacting too many of your customers.

Don't worry about it. It is a customer's job to ask for enhancements. It is my job not to break things.

My problem here: I didn't know that a system font size existed. I had never seen it, and all the Android text controls except WebView respect it automatically so had no reason to look for it. This isn't a *good* excuse. It just is.

Originally Posted by PatNY

After a little investigation tonight, I finally discovered what was inserting the font style & size tags into my comment sections. It happened whenever I copied and pasted text from a field inside of Calibre into the comments section. I often do that using the "Title" field when a book has a long subtitle. It has been happening for a long time, and though I had noticed this code before, I never had a clue how it got there.

I also discovered that if I pasted the text right next to existing normal text in the comments field (without spacing in between) then the font style and size tags would not be inserted. So at least there's a workaround.

Is this expected behavior for Calibre? Is it desirable? If not, is it something that can be even fixed? Or is it a Windows or Windows XP thing? I can’t imagine the intent was ever to insert a font family and font size when simply copying text from one of Calibre’s user fields into the comments box.

Sorry, but I don't know if it is expected or why it does it. Given that no one has noticed up to now it almost certainly isn't something that will be changed.

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

I do not have font size or style in my comments and the size is still too small in CC. Is there anything I can do or do I need to revert to the previous version?

You have three choices:
1) Revert
2) Live with it until the next CC release, probably in around 2 weeks
3) Change the system font size to Normal and up CC's font sizes. Yes, I know that this will break other apps so isn't very practical.

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

It doesn't matter what html you have in the comments, the font size still shows up smaller than everything else. I removed all html and made it plain text and the only difference is the bold and blank lines are gone - no change in font size (still small).

The problem is caused by changing the system font size. For example, if you change the font size to "Small" then the comments will be too large.

Originally Posted by DoctorOhh

Folks that use calibre often simply download metadata without regard to comment formatting. Thus creating great inconsistencies in formatting. If they are obviously too small folks edit that and remove the font size, but for normal div and P tags within calibre there is a tweak to adjust the book details page font size higher or lower as required.

Div and P tags don't cause any problem. Explicit font size tags in the comments may or may not be a problem. For example, I can easily imagine someone using larger font sizes for heading styles and wanting to see that larger font size.

Originally Posted by DoctorOhh

Since there are scores of different android devices out there, from an accessibility point of view, if an option in the settings to handle the html the new or old way is too complicated or time consuming to code then I would return to the previous method.

Your previous method created a uniform predictable viewing on the Book details page. Allowing folks with aging eyes easy access to the proper size font.

Respecting the html in comments may be more trouble than it is worth.

Two points here:
1) Respecting the system font size. I now know how to do that, and will add it.
2) Adding an option to go back to rich text. That is probably also worth doing. The question: which should be the default? My feeling is that HTML should not be the default, because people who see what they consider to be a problem are much more motivated to find a solution than are people who notice something odd but don't care that much. Also, this preserves/reverts to the old behavior.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by chaley

Div and P tags don't cause any problem. Explicit font size tags in the comments may or may not be a problem. For example, I can easily imagine someone using larger font sizes for heading styles and wanting to see that larger font size.

I was just referencing things as they stand. If I were to remove all tags, <div> and <p> etc... Then what is in the comments section seems to match up fine with the system font size. But obviously there isn't even basic formatting.

Originally Posted by chaley

Two points here:
1) Respecting the system font size. I now know how to do that, and will add it.

Respecting the system font size might solve most of the issues.

Originally Posted by chaley

2) Adding an option to go back to rich text. That is probably also worth doing. The question: which should be the default? My feeling is that HTML should be the default (with the fix), because people who see what they consider to be a problem are much more motivated to find a solution than are people who notice something odd but don't care that much.

I agree, if you have the option to go to Rich text then the default should be HTML for the comments.

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by DoctorOhh

I was just referencing things as they stand. If I were to remove all tags, <div> and <p> etc... Then what is in the comments section seems to match up fine with the system font size. But obviously there isn't even basic formatting.

When I removed all tags and had just plain text, the font size stayed small. I reverted to the previous version on my Nexus so I can only check this on my Galaxy S3 now, but on there too the size stays small. How did you do this? I copied the text to Notepad and pasted it into the html source tab. This doesn't get rid of the p tag though - when you go back in after saving it Calibre has added the p tag back. Is that the only difference?

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

When I removed all tags and had just plain text, the font size stayed small. I reverted to the previous version on my Nexus so I can only check this on my Galaxy S3 now, but on there too the size stays small. How did you do this? I copied the text to Notepad and pasted it into the html source tab. This doesn't get rid of the p tag though - when you go back in after saving it Calibre has added the p tag back. Is that the only difference?

I seems like I was wrong. The ones that weren't small had basic html. Specifically:

<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>"Anna Latham didn't know how complicated life could be until she became a werewolf.</p>

However with exactly the same code some books show small font and some show normal size. Obviously it is getting the info for the class description from somewhere, but I have no idea where.

If it is critical to you I would use the previous version until a new release comes out.

[chaley]

The two fixes for the HTML problems, respecting the system font size and the preference to turn off full html, have been released. See Calibre Companion V3.1.1 released

@PatNY: I accidentally discovered that the Remove Formatting button in calibre's comments editor removes font and size changes. Select the entire comment and tap the button. It leaves all the paragraph, header, and div tags, but it removes centering. It is probably easier to add the centering back than to remove the font changes one by one.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by chaley

The two fixes for the HTML problems, respecting the system font size and the preference to turn off full html, have been released. See Calibre Companion V3.1.1 released

You tease us by announcing the new version before Google Play is willing to admit it is actually there.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by DoctorOhh

You tease us by announcing the new version before Google Play is willing to admit it is actually there.

Yea, aren't I evil?

It is hard to know how long it will take to be available after publishing. Sometimes people see it in 15 minutes, sometimes hours. And apparently it can depend on which google play server your device happens to ask.

Moderator Notice
Discussion about font label sizes and row overwriting moved to Calibre Companion V3.1.1 released

[chaley]

@DoctorOhh: I moved our discussion about label sizes and the row overwriting in CC 3.1.1 to the Calibre Companion V3.1.1 released thread. You are probably not subscribed to that thread, so you might not have seen my latest response.

[PatNY]

Originally Posted by chaley

@PatNY: I accidentally discovered that the Remove Formatting button in calibre's comments editor removes font and size changes. Select the entire comment and tap the button. It leaves all the paragraph, header, and div tags, but it removes centering. It is probably easier to add the centering back than to remove the font changes one by one.

Thanks for the tip. I thought that trash can was just to delete the comments altogether. That certainly makes my task easier. However for some comments with a lot of italics or bold portions, it's easier to just download the metadata from the cloud once again. I stopped trying to manually delete the font size tags as they just seem to pop up in another part of the comments when I did that. It's weird.

By the way, images and bullet points look great in CC's comments when html is enabled. I'm keeping it that way. The image I used was just picked up during a copy and paste from the Amazon website. When I used the Calibre function to insert an image link the other day, only the URL showed up despite Calibre saying if an image URL is used "it will be inserted as an image," which I took to mean an actual image would show up. Either I misunderstood that or it is not working properly.

--Pat

[chaley]

Originally Posted by PatNY

By the way, images and bullet points look great in CC's comments when html is enabled. I'm keeping it that way. The image I used was just picked up during a copy and paste from the Amazon website. When I used the Calibre function to insert an image link the other day, only the URL showed up despite Calibre saying if an image URL is used "it will be inserted as an image," which I took to mean an actual image would show up. Either I misunderstood that or it is not working properly.

Experimenting a bit indicates that calibre inserts the image as a URL pointing at the original image. This means that the original image must be visible to clients that show the comments. If the image is somewhere on the web then you will be able see it. If it is in a file on your computer than you won't.

IIRC calibre does some processing when creating book jackets to embed local images into the book so that they display in the jacket. This processing doesn't help CC because the images aren't in the metadata for the book.