Calibre Companion prerelease 3.3.0e

[chaley]

CC prerelease 3.3.0e has been published and will available soon to people who are members of the CC prerelease program.

his prerelease contains the following enhancements and bug fixes over CC prerelease 3.3.0d:

• Support sending books to Google Books and to other apps such as cloud sync and email using menu items in book details. Restores the Upload to Google Books functionality removed in V3.3.0d, but in a way that I hope reduces confusion.
• Support clearing the date read (in book details)
• [BUG FIX] Make long-press searching in the grouping pane ignore searching on group names
• [BUG FIX] Correctly restore the date read after going to settings from book details
• [BUG FIX] Permit emptying the read and date read sync lookup names in settings
• [BUG FIX] Fix crash in book details when there are no authors
• [BUG FIX] Reduce performance slowdown introduced by adding the count of items under a first letter

This prerelease completes the functionality intended for this cycle (I really mean it this time ). My intention is to release this version to production in the next seven days or so. There may be bug fix releases.

If you have already installed CC 3.3.0d then this prerelease does not require a database upgrade.

I would appreciate people trying the new "Send book to app" function (on the menu in book details). I have tried it on the apps that I have, but as I do not have any social media apps I am sure that there are many opportunities for strange things to happen.

[kaufman]

This doesn't appear to have the change to spread the top level groups out a little more. Did that not make it in? Also, is it just me, or is the word "Title" slightly higher then is should be. All the others are centered in their box, but Title seems a bit higher than then midline.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by kaufman

This doesn't appear to have the change to spread the top level groups out a little more. Did that not make it in? Also, is it just me, or is the word "Title" slightly higher then is should be. All the others are centered in their box, but Title seems a bit higher than then midline.

That change got temporarily lost. I was testing something else and "shelved" the layout changes (put them aside temporarily), then forgot to unshelve them. Fortunately these changes cannot cause crashes or change CC's functionality, so I don't have a problem including them for the production release without another beta.

As for the box containing "Title": the first box is slightly smaller than the boxes following it. Reason: the second through Nth boxes have top and bottom margins, so that the bottom margin of box 1 is added to the top margin of box 2. There is no box above box 1, so we see only its top margin. I took care of this by adding the bottom margin to the line below the "Groups" box. As above, there is no way that this change can cause a crash or change functionality, so it won't delay the production release.

[Purple Lady]

Upload to Google Books works fine for me. I tested a few send to app that worked fine - Dropbox and K-9 mail worked. Send to app had gReader came up in the list and tried to add a subscription which obviously did not work. Send to app for ES File Explorer send by LAN did not work as expected. I have it set up to my pc by LAN and sent a book manually, but using CC I got the error in the screen shot.

[kaufman]

Originally Posted by chaley

• Support sending books to Google Books and to other apps such as cloud sync and email using menu items in book details. Restores the Upload to Google Books functionality removed in V3.3.0d, but in a way that I hope reduces confusion.

Instead of just greying this out, can you hide it for people who don't have google reader installed?

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by kaufman

Instead of just greying this out, can you hide it for people who don't have google reader installed?

I don't use Google Books, But I think this should remain visible so folks may be aware of what options exist. This way they may choose to try Google Books or if a friend is having a problem I might be able to point him to the link under the menu because I have seen it and I know it exists.

[kaufman]

Originally Posted by DoctorOhh

I don't use Google Books, But I think this should remain visible so folks may be aware of what options exist. This way they may choose to try Google Books or if a friend is having a problem I might be able to point him to the link under the menu because I have seen it and I know it exists.

That would make more sense if lots of people were likely to use the option. Now I think its just going to confuse a lot of people and cause extra support emails. Is anyone going to install Google Books just because they saw they saw they greyed out option. My guess is that most people who use the app already have a book reader installed. If its Google Books, then show it in the menu. If it isn't, it just makes no sense to clutter the menu with something people aren't using.

Should he also include a bunch of greyed out icons in the "Send book to app" dialog? That might help people see all the different kinds of apps they might send their books to.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by kaufman

That would make more sense if lots of people were likely to use the option.

Seeing how it comes pre-installed on many tablets and phones ...

Personally I could care less and the issue is in chaley and his team's hands. Certainly hiding the Google Books link, unless present, may be a viable compromise to the original problem Steve described.

Originally Posted by kaufman

Should he also include a bunch of greyed out icons in the "Send book to app" dialog? That might help people see all the different kinds of apps they might send their books to.

The analogy to the Send book to app feature though is flawed because that option says it all by saying the word App. There is no way to list every possible app currently in existence and those that might be created tomorrow.

[kaufman]

I was just kidding about the greyed out icons in the send to dialog. That's why I included the

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by kaufman

I was just kidding about the greyed out icons in the send to dialog. That's why I included the

Even with emoticons it is often hard to determine inflection or sarcasm in print.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

Upload to Google Books works fine for me. I tested a few send to app that worked fine - Dropbox and K-9 mail worked. Send to app had gReader came up in the list and tried to add a subscription which obviously did not work. Send to app for ES File Explorer send by LAN did not work as expected. I have it set up to my pc by LAN and sent a book manually, but using CC I got the error in the screen shot.
Attachment 120067

Good to hear that the connections are working.

As for apps not doing what you expect, I don't see how I can do anything about that. All CC does is ask android for a list of apps that claim to be able to do "something" with the book related to SENDing it. The user picks one, and that app is given the file path to the book. What it does next is totally out of CC's control.

The basic question is "Does having access to apps that do something trump having access to apps that do strange things?" It is hard to know. In the first case, sometimes the only way to do something is by passing the book to an app. In the second case we (CC) will possibly be blamed, leading to difficulties. I am still not sure whether I should leave this functionality in CC.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by kaufman

Instead of just greying this out, can you hide it for people who don't have google reader installed?

It is greyed out for discoverability. Hiding things that aren't currently available is generally considered worse than disabling them.

You are right that having it disabled could create questions, but I don't think there will be lots of them. A person who does not have google books installed will see that s/he cannot send to an app s/he doesn't have. That person may in fact decide to install google books, given the possibility. People who do have google books installed will have seen it on the reader selection.

Also note that it's availability depends on the format. Google books can accept epub and pdf, nothing else. I don't think that having the menu item gone when looking at a .mobi would be better than disabling it.

For me, this one is easier than send to app, because its functionality is clear and we know what google books will do with the book. As Purple Lady showed in her testing, it isn't always clear what an app will do, or even if it will do anything.

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by chaley

Good to hear that the connections are working.

As for apps not doing what you expect, I don't see how I can do anything about that. All CC does is ask android for a list of apps that claim to be able to do "something" with the book related to SENDing it. The user picks one, and that app is given the file path to the book. What it does next is totally out of CC's control.

The basic question is "Does having access to apps that do something trump having access to apps that do strange things?" It is hard to know. In the first case, sometimes the only way to do something is by passing the book to an app. In the second case we (CC) will possibly be blamed, leading to difficulties. I am still not sure whether I should leave this functionality in CC.

I let you know about gReader because it can't do anything with an epub so I figured you would want to remove it from the list. For ES File manager, I didn't know if you were passing the correct data to it since it works manually. Maybe my setup in ES File manager isn't correct when coming from another app. I'll take another look at it.

[kaufman]

Originally Posted by chaley

It is greyed out for discoverability. Hiding things that aren't currently available is generally considered worse than disabling them.

I'm not arguing for myself (I didn't even know there was a menu there until this came up), but this seems backwards to me. It would be one thing if most people were going to be using Google Books. Then greying it out would be a way of telling them that they can't do this now, but here is the option when you have finished installing Google Books.

But, isn't Google Books a fairly obscure use-case? Are a lot of people really going to go - Calibre->Calibre-Companion->Google-Books->Cloud? Won't most people go: Calibre->Cloud->Google Books. If that is true, then this is going to be an option that's just greyed out all the time for most of your users.

This is just as academic question, for my own use, I really don't mind either way.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

I let you know about gReader because it can't do anything with an epub so I figured you would want to remove it from the list. For ES File manager, I didn't know if you were passing the correct data to it since it works manually. Maybe my setup in ES File manager isn't correct when coming from another app. I'll take another look at it.

Re gReader: we don't build the list so we can't remove anything from it. When the user clicks on the menu line in CC, we ask Android to display a "Chooser" and give Android the file (the book) in a standard way. Android looks at the file and then asks every app on the device whether or not it can handle the operation on that file, then displays a dialog showing those that answer "yes". The only control we have is the operation Android asks about. Here we are doing a SEND, while for readers we do a VIEW.

As for ES, one experiment would be to try it from a different file manager. It that other file manager has a "Send" or "Share" button. One of the options presented should be the ES file manager operation. Don't bother with the experiment unless you are curious.