[GUI Plugin] EpubSplit

[Waylander]

Hi JimmXinu,
i still have the same sort of problem: I can only send three split-off books to my kindle, and no more. They all have different names, so that's not it. Once again, they are all in azw3 format.

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by Waylander

Hi JimmXinu,
i still have the same sort of problem: I can only send three split-off books to my kindle, and no more. They all have different names, so that's not it. Once again, they are all in azw3 format.

I've tried splitting a book into 5 parts with different names, converting to azw3 format and sending to my Kindle(3g) and they worked fine.

Something to do with how the files end up named on your Kindle remains the only idea I have. That's effected by what you name the books as well as your Kindle plugin and metadata plugboard settings.

Try running calibre in debug mode (ctrl-shift-R) and sending the files. Then post what the error is in the debug output.

Or if you want to post the ebook files that are giving you problems (ideally, both the source epub and converted azw3 splits), I might be able to help further.

But as it is, I just don't have any information to work with.

[JimmXinu]

Version 2.0.3 - 17 Mar 2015

• Switch to github for source repository.
• Normalize line endings on windows standard.

[OhDear]

Hi JimmXinu. I've split up a number of omnibuses with your plugin. I like it a lot!

There is one thing EpubSplit isn't so good at though, because each split has to be done one by one: splitting up large collections of short stories.

There's several reasons why splitting short story collections into individual stories is useful to me so I won't go into that unless you actually want me to.

Anyway, sometimes collections by an author conveniently have one story per href, and even have the name in the toc. Example: http://i.imgur.com/lxBTuBw.png

In cases like that it would save so much time to be able to tell EpubSplit to make one epub per selected href, automatically using the toc name as the story name, and the book's author name as the author. Then the cover would just have to be chosen once and all the stories could be split off in one go.

Any chance something like that might be added?

Edit: Forgot to mention a minor bug. On the edit metadata screen, hitting Cancel or the X in the top corner makes a new epub even though you canceled.

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by OhDear

Hi JimmXinu. I've split up a number of omnibuses with your plugin. I like it a lot!

There is one thing EpubSplit isn't so good at though, because each split has to be done one by one: splitting up large collections of short stories.
...

Try the attached version and see if that meets your needs.

It won't stop and ask you to edit metadata for each new book because that would be problematic for somebody who hit the wrong button and is stuck hitting 'cancel' 50 times.

I'm open to suggestions for GUI placements and wordings.

Originally Posted by OhDear

Edit: Forgot to mention a minor bug. On the edit metadata screen, hitting Cancel or the X in the top corner makes a new epub even though you canceled.

All you are cancelling at that point is the metadata edit--you're already committed to the book create.

[OhDear]

I used it on the book I showed before and it split off 100+ short stories without any problems.

Actually, there was one error the first time I used it. "IndexError:list index out of range"

Turns out there was a story that was split into three hrefs, with the two later parts having a blank toc. It stopped splitting when it reached the first blank toc. Making sure no blank tocs were selected the second time, it worked perfectly.

Here's the full error, if it's useful:

Spoiler:

calibre, version 2.27.0
ERROR: Unhandled exception: <b>IndexError</b>:list index out of range

calibre 2.27 Portable isfrozen: True is64bit: False
Windows-8-6.2.9200 Windows ('32bit', 'WindowsPE')
32bit process running on 64bit windows
('Windows', '8', '6.2.9200')
Python 2.7.9
Windows: ('8', '6.2.9200', '', 'Multiprocessor Free')
Successfully initialized third party plugins: K4PC, K4Mac, Kindle Mobi and Topaz DeDRM && Inept Epub DeDRM && EpubMerge && EpubSplit && Ignoble Epub DeDRM && FanFicFare && Favourites Menu && Inept PDF DeDRM && eReader PDB 2 PML
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "calibre_plugins.epubsplit.dialogs", line 108, in new_books
File "calibre_plugins.epubsplit.epubsplit_plugin", line 174, in _do_splits
IndexError: list index out of range

I can think of a few ways of dealing with blank tocs but I'm not sure what's best.
1. Assume they're part of the previous non-blank toc (That often is true for short story collections, I think), and include them in that split.
2a. Make a split, but use the name of the .xhtml file for the story name.
(The xhtml names in that book are actually useful. And at the end of the book there's a few interviews with the author, but with blank tocs. So potentially this could be a useful option.)
2b. Make a split, but give names like "untitled 1, untitled 2, etc."
3. Just skip them so there's no error.

As there's no single best way of handling it, maybe before the splitting starts a window could pop up which lets you choose what to do in case a blank toc is encountered during the splits.

If that window also let you choose the cover to be used for all the splits, that would also be a plus. (I'd always choose to have no cover for short stories myself.)

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

I'm open to suggestions for GUI placements and wordings.

Hmm. With as similar as they are now maybe "New Books" could say something like "Split to Multiple Books", just so people don't accidentally click the wrong thing.

The only other suggestion I could make is with as long as a 100+ stories split takes, an abort button could be handy if you realize during the splitting that you did something wrong.

Anyway, what you've added is already very useful. Thank you very much for making EpubSplit in the first place, and for putting in the multi split.

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

All you are cancelling at that point is the metadata edit--you're already committed to the book create.

Ah, now I see. On occasion I've realized I had a wrong or extra href selected just after hitting New Book, and then hit cancel to go back and select the right thing. I guess I got confused because it seemed like there was no difference between Ok and Cancel, until that was specifically pointed out.

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by OhDear

Turns out there was a story that was split into three hrefs, with the two later parts having a blank toc. It stopped splitting when it reached the first blank toc. Making sure no blank tocs were selected the second time, it worked perfectly.

Good catch, I didn't think of that.

Originally Posted by OhDear

I can think of a few ways of dealing with blank tocs but I'm not sure what's best.

While good suggestions, they are a bit complex. My first thought is to simply not allow split sections that don't have a TOC text.

In your case of a story that spans three sections, you'd have to use the pre-existing 'New Book' button separately.

Originally Posted by OhDear

As there's no single best way of handling it, maybe before the splitting starts a window could pop up which lets you choose what to do in case a blank toc is encountered during the splits.

If that window also let you choose the cover to be used for all the splits, that would also be a plus. (I'd always choose to have no cover for short stories myself.)

I consider that outside scope for this plugin. There are other tools for doing covers. You can disable copying the original book's cover in the EpubSplit plugin config.

Originally Posted by OhDear

The only other suggestion I could make is with as long as a 100+ stories split takes, an abort button could be handy if you realize during the splitting that you did something wrong.

I'll look into that.

Attached is a test version that doesn't allow separate split sections that don't have a TOC that can be used for the title.

[OhDear]

There is one weird thing I've now noticed. Apostrophes (or possibly single quotes?) in the toc become ’ in the story's title.

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

Attached is a test version that doesn't allow separate split sections that don't have a TOC that can be used for the title.

The message which pops up when there's a blank toc is a very good way of handling it, especially as it mentions that you can double click to edit a toc.

That made me think of something which has nothing to do with the multi-book splitting. The preview that shows up when you have the mouse over a href, would it be possible to make that text selectable? Maybe something like double clicking the href could bring up the preview in a way the lets you select what you want with the mouse?

(I've realized that when there's blank tocs I very often end up having to open a book outside of EpubSplit, then click around a bunch to find each individual story's name within the book, so I can copy and paste them into the Edit Metadata window for each split. However, almost always the story's name shows up in the href preview. So being able to select text to copy from that preview would be pretty convenient.)

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

You can disable copying the original book's cover in the EpubSplit plugin config.

Wow, I can't believe I didn't know that. Thanks for the tip.

Now that I think about it, a config setting for playing a sound notification when a multi-book split finishes could be useful, simply because splitting large numbers of stories takes so long.

Sorry for all the requests in such a short time. I'm pretty sure I've run out of things to request, at least.

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by OhDear

There is one weird thing I've now noticed. Apostrophes (or possibly single quotes?) in the toc become ’ in the story's title.

Good catch. This version should fix that.

Originally Posted by OhDear

That made me think of something which has nothing to do with the multi-book splitting. The preview that shows up when you have the mouse over a href, would it be possible to make that text selectable? Maybe something like double clicking the href could bring up the preview in a way the lets you select what you want with the mouse?

This version lets you double click the HREF cell to bring up a dialog with the sample you can copy from.

Originally Posted by OhDear

Now that I think about it, a config setting for playing a sound notification when a multi-book split finishes could be useful, simply because splitting large numbers of stories takes so long.

I don't think calibre uses sound notifications for anything.

This version, however, gives you a progress dialog with a time estimate and allows canceling.

[OhDear]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

This version lets you double click the HREF cell to bring up a dialog with the sample you can copy from.

FYI Copy to Clipboard copies the entire preview (including "Double click to copy from sample.") even if you have some text selected. I'm guessing that's not intended, but if it is then maybe the button could say something like "copy whole preview".

Ctrl+C does properly copy just the selected text, so that's definitely working right.

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

I don't think calibre uses sound notifications for anything.

That's too bad, just because it would be awesome to be able to start a large split, do something else not on the computer, and then hear when it was done. But the new time estimate is very good too.

I haven't seen any more bugs other than the href preview's copy button behavior. These new additions are really turning out great.

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by OhDear

FYI Copy to Clipboard copies the entire preview (including "Double click to copy from sample.") even if you have some text selected. I'm guessing that's not intended, but if it is then maybe the button could say something like "copy whole preview".

Ctrl+C does properly copy just the selected text, so that's definitely working right.

That is the expected behavior, actually. I'm reusing an existing Calibre dialog to save code. I really just don't see this being used so much that it needs lots of polishing.

Originally Posted by OhDear

I haven't seen any more bugs other than the href preview's copy button behavior. These new additions are really turning out great.

Okay, thanks.

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

That is the expected behavior, actually. I'm reusing an existing Calibre dialog to save code. I really just don't see this being used so much that it needs lots of polishing.

On second thought, that is kinda ugly and it isn't saving that much code.

Attached is hopefully the last test version before release. Just waiting a couple days for translations.

[JimmXinu]

Version 2.1.0 - 12 May 2015

• New feature: Split individual sections into separate books.
• New feature: Double-click HREF column to bring up a dialog of the section sample that can be copied from.
• Update translations, include more partial translations.

[mclien]

Originally Posted by Waylander

Hi JimmXinu,
i still have the same sort of problem: I can only send three split-off books to my kindle, and no more. They all have different names, so that's not it. Once again, they are all in azw3 format.

a bit late might be, but I only discovered the plugin today.
When splitting, you basicly "extract" a new smaller book from the bundle. When you edit the title, you also have to "push it over" to the "title sort" field. I missed that in the first run and when I saved the 7 new books to disk, all the names were the same, except they had numbers at the end. If the identical part of the new books is ling enought kindle might run in a to lomńg name, cutting the rest and end up with all te same names by that.

For me it worked like a charm. Splitted the Outlander bundle of 7 books, because my little trekstore reader couldn't load the otherwise 12.3 MB.

[shamanNS]

@JimmXinu: Is it possible to make future version of plugin copy embedded and referenced font files (CSS declaration of font-family remains in CSS after splitting, but .ttf files are left behind) or at least notify user when splitting that omnibus has some font files embedded? So that user knows that he should add those font files manually post-split.