Suggestions

[CWatkinsNash]

Originally Posted by transmitthis

Additional Suggestion

Series - Have set Series entries for certain book types (or certain entrys have no number prefix)
Reason: When sorting through books you most likely have one of these;
A Novel
A Collection
An Omnibus
A Book in a Series
A Short Story (Novella, Chapterbook, Short Story, etc)

Series Books work fine, but what if you want to label your novels, as "Novels, so as not to get them mixed up with you short stories, and for easy reference?

It would be a real neat solution if the Series column could have some set titles, that have no Number associated. If this is possible in the scope of the program.
Just entering Novel or Collection yourself results in the books being incremented, and selecting a group of them results in them all having a [1]
Other way is to have another custom column. too many of those will melt your brain

Just my opinion, of course, but there are already so many ways of doing this (not all of which involve custom columns) and to me this would seem the least intuitive.

For ex, I use genres to classify "special" books:
Fiction-Anthologies & Collections
Fiction-Horror & Fantasy Anthologies (because there are enough in my collection to warrant separating them from all other anthologies)
Short Fic-Horror
... and so on.

The idea of the series column being anything other than series makes me a little twitchy. Plus, we have a series management plugin, and series are available to be used for collections management on Sony and some Kindles (with Kindle Collections plugin). I'm not in favor of anything that would complicate or potentially break the things we already do with the series column in order to make use of the new functionality.

Metadata plugboards are another example - either the devs would have to code it so that the plugboards ignore those particular designations, or it would break the way many people use the plugboards.

I promise you that custom columns will not melt your brain. Honest. I love that you like calibre enough to want to make it better, but don't mess with my Series.

[CWatkinsNash]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

I've added a restart button, the rest, I dont really agree with. They make sense for you, but not for everyone.

Love that restart button. If it's not too much trouble, can you tell me which version added it? I feel like I've been using it forever (adding it to the toolbar is a first step for me on a new install) but I think in reality I hunted it down and started using it at the same time the new plugin management was introduced. Now I'm just curious as to how long it's been available.

[kovidgoyal]

It will be in 0.8.37

Incidentally, I also added the checkbox to restrict the list of plugins to user installed ones, also in 0.8.37

[CWatkinsNash]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

It will be in 0.8.37

Incidentally, I also added the checkbox to restrict the list of plugins to user installed ones, also in 0.8.37

Ah, you're talking about a new one in a new place, then. I was referring to the one that's been available for a while that can be added to the toolbar.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by CWatkinsNash

Ah, you're talking about a new one in a new place, then. I was referring to the one that's been available for a while that can be added to the toolbar.

Yes, this restart button is in the dialog that pops up after changing some preferences telling you that you should restart calibre

[transmitthis]

Originally Posted by CWatkinsNash

For ex, I use genres to classify "special" books:
Fiction-Anthologies & Collections
Fiction-Horror & Fantasy Anthologies (because there are enough in my collection to warrant separating them from all other anthologies)
Short Fic-Horror
... and so on.


I promise you that custom columns will not melt your brain. Honest. I love that you like calibre enough to want to make it better, but don't mess with my Series.

- yes that one was a little out there - I just worried that too many custom collumns will slow calibre down (have issues with that now)

But anyway your right, was really hoping some peeps would pipe up and tell me how they handle those type of books.

I do like your idea of incorperating them into Genre, I though about sticking them in Tags, too.

I think though the best option would be another column.
Going to title it Type BookType something like that.
Then I can put in
Anthology
Collection
Series Novel
Stand Alone Novel
Short Story
Novella
Letters
Essays
Speeches
Articles
You get the idea, so much easy when deciding what to read or sorting, to see what you have when you can sort by book type.

Thanks again to Kovid for seeing merit in a few of the suggestions.
I hope more people will share their opinions on the others and suggest their own.

[CWatkinsNash]

Originally Posted by transmitthis

- yes that one was a little out there - I just worried that too many custom collumns will slow calibre down (have issues with that now)

I believe that this is really only an issue with the column type "column built from other columns".

Originally Posted by transmitthis

But anyway your right, was really hoping some peeps would pipe up and tell me how they handle those type of books.

Perhaps you could start a new thread in the "Library Management" subforum to get some suggestions on this specific conundrum.

Originally Posted by transmitthis

I think though the best option would be another column.
Going to title it Type BookType something like that.
(snip)
You get the idea, so much easy when deciding what to read or sorting, to see what you have when you can sort by book type.

I thought about doing it that way, but I ended up going with genres mostly because of my Kindle. Building the type into the genre works best for my Collections management. But that mostly has to do with the way I read - I start with an idea of what type of thing I want to read (ex, short horror story or maybe a vampire anthology), and I have to be able to find it easily. I find myself needing that ability more on the Kindle than within calibre.

However, if my selection of non-standard types grows, I might add a column to help things on that end too. So you've given me something to think about down the road.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

It is only used when doing a bulk download, i.e. when the user has no opportunity to select the cover manually.

No wonder I did not figure this out. I always been hand picking. Maybe I can trust Bulk after all

[transmitthis]

It May be good practice to do a bulk download, and then go through them manually, to weed out the ones that need attention, would probably be less work?

But then on mine, I need to sort out author and title on quite a few, so I'd have to do that before the bulk, so may as well do them individually...

Anyway, as far as that annoying white boarder you get around images, I now use an autohotkey script, and a light image app, I can then scroll through in coverbrowser, and when one crops up press a hotkey and its copied-pasted-trimed by 2pix-copied closed-repasted to calibre. which is awesome.

[transmitthis]

Just updating with 2 more.
Column Title - (Allow renaming of set titles or shrink on allingment or remove (MB) from heading)
Reason: The "Size" column, has "Size (MB)" 9 characters wide,
when you adjust it,it shrinks by keeping the colunn heading centered.
So, you end up with an unreadable Title heading or a unneeedfully wide column.



Default Book Cover - Can we have more of these or our own PNG with Transparancy)
Reason: Default cover, the one of a brown book with black spine, 3d look. is great,
it allowe transparancy, shows up in the Book details window on Grey background, and in cover browser on black
It always looks good.
Our Covers are flat and can not have transparancy, Any costom cover we use can never be 3d, or anything but a flat rectangle
We could make one but it would either have to have black or grey background to match either the Coverbowser view or the bookdetails view.
Suggestion is to either allow transparancy for our covers, if thats possible,
or have several user defineable Default covers with transparancy, which we could then use for books with no generic cover.