[GUI Plugin] Generate Cover

[Dsquared125]

P.S.
sometimes when I make changes to a preset, the save button is also grayed out. For example, I changed the Author to the top and the Title to the bottom with the image in the middle, and I can't save it, 'cause the button is greyed out.

[transmitthis]

Is it possible to have Transparancy with the covers, tried adding pngs but end up with either white or black background.

The default black/brown cover does this - as it shows up with a black background in Coverflow, and gray in the details bar.

What I'm trying to do, is have a generic cover for all my short stories, and would like it to be off kilter, at an angle, so not flat - which means if I can't use transparancy it will either look real bad in coverflow or in the details panel.

As a side note, what do others tend to use as covers for short stories that have no generic cover.

[kiwidude]

@transmitthis - no, I don't believe so. Covers for books are always saved in jpg format, which means no transparency capability. The "brown book" you refer to is a bit of a "kludge" if you like in Calibre, where a book does not have a cover. In that situation the calibre code displays the brown book .png file instead, which does have transparency.

So what I do is use a black background, which gives a nice effect on the cover browser. I don't mind the background being black on the book details panel.

In answer to your question on short stories, what I do is have a bunch of images which represent different genres, and have those embedded in the cover. So there is not a "short story" image as such, just a genre one. The reality has been for the books I have that in 99% of cases if it isn't a short story then there is an official cover for the book.

In terms of the choice of images, what I did was usually find some classic old magazine covers from google images, where the name of the magazine reflects the genre.

[transmitthis]

That could be quite useful if Calibre had a few of these Default covers, and gave us access to them, to replace them with our own PNG, then we could have a nice image with transparancy, which would work in all instances - But I guess thats asking for something only a few would want.

Ok, working with what we have got, yes I think I'll go with black BG but am worried that in future caliber may change to a white coverflow BG and mess up all our book covers. Don't really feel like going through 14G books and redoing them.... so I may just go with a flat image.

I seem to have a quite a few short stories, novellas and aritcles that have no generic cover, despite much searching, and can do wonders in PS so making my own is no problem. You do have a nice idea with your genres though.

Thanks for the reply, will keep this on the back burner while I ponder.

[garcle]

Question Suggestion:-
Would it be possible to add a feature to this plugin to grab the first page of a pdf file as the cover image?
I often find that the cover is already there in the file, bu that it cant be found via metadata lookups. This would be a very handy shortcut.
Thansk for the good work !

[kiwidude]

@garcle - I have no interest in adding PDF logic into this plugin sorry. Calibre has the ability to grab what looks like the first page of the PDF as a cover, when you do edit metadata, click the PDF format and click the brown book icon. If that isn't getting the cover for you then you are out of luck...

[garcle]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

@garcle -... Calibre has the ability to grab what looks like the first page of the PDF as a cover, when you do edit metadata, click the PDF format and click the brown book icon. If that isn't getting the cover for you then you are out of luck...

Wow, I did not know that I could to this, thanks for the heads up/tip !! It works well
PS silly request withdrawn

[transmitthis]

Just as an update my thoughts on covers for novellas / short stories with no cover...
see attachment


If you want me to make you a specific one just let me know.

(still think it would be a good idea if caliber let you choose between several of these default images, and edit them too - but this will suffice for now)

See Below for the folder to put this or your own image (Thanks kiwidude)

[kiwidude]

@transmitthis - if you are going to replace a calibre icon/image there is a better way to do it (that will not get replaced when you next install the msi).

Go to Preferences->Miscellaneous, click on "Open the calibre configuration directory", and instead put the image in a resources\images folder from that directory.

See http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/cust...lates-etcetera

[DASTRAL]

Thank you very much for this amazing plugin !

Q1 : Why have you not added a "left margin ?
Q2 : For custom text "how do we put the title with align center (like MSWord) and extra parameters ?

For example i have a book with :
Author : Forgotten Realms
Title : Drizzt Do'Urden I - The Dark Elf Trilogy 02 - Exile

I'd like the title to be "aligned in the center between the borders"
while "removing the minus/- and adding half a line for every minus/- removed".

I have almost reached perfection but its damn hard

PS : THANK YOU AGAIN FOR THIS AMAZING PLUGIN !

[theducks]

@DASTRAL
Center would apply to the WHOLE cover space, not your pictures title space. (I can see where a Text Margin might be useful )

Title will contain what is in the Title field of your library
You appear to have series information included with the title instead/in addition to the series section

[DASTRAL]

Yeah, i ended up with the series in the title because i can't write a conditional regular expression

When importing books, using just the file name for metadata :
(?P<author>[^-]+) - (?P<title>.*) works only if there is no series
(?P<author>[^-]+) - (?P<series>[^-]+) - (?P<title>.*) works only with series.

Nothing i've tried can identify "2 fields=no series" "3 fields=series) to work with :
Warhammer 40K - Atlas Infernal.rtf
Warhammer 40K - Bastion Wars 01 - Emperor's Mercy.rtf

[theducks]

Originally Posted by DASTRAL

Yeah, i ended up with the series in the title because i can't write a conditional regular expression

When importing books, using just the file name for metadata :
(?P<author>[^-]+) - (?P<title>.*) works only if there is no series
(?P<author>[^-]+) - (?P<series>[^-]+) - (?P<title>.*) works only with series.

Nothing i've tried can identify "2 fields=no series" "3 fields=series) to work with :
Warhammer 40K - Atlas Infernal.rtf
Warhammer 40K - Bastion Wars 01 - Emperor's Mercy.rtf

I can't write a decent one either

I just fix them later with the bulk Metadata Search and Replace where WYSIWYG before you commit

[DASTRAL]

I did some looking around and found someone that got it working : http://regexadvice.com/forums/thread/52271.aspx
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...0&postcount=29

Using : (?P<author>((?!\s-\s).)*)\s-(?:\s(?P<series>((?!\s-s).)*)\s-)?\s(?P<title>.*)

It will identify correctly :
Warhammer 40K - Atlas Infernal.rtf
Warhammer 40K - Bastion Wars 01 - Emperor's Mercy.rtf

Since i think many people have used this in windows, i'm posting (a bit out of topic).
Please forgive me for that

[Gary_M_Mugford]

Hi all,

Once again I have to parrot the sage advice of Jerry Pournelle. "I do the stupid things so you won't have to."

It's been awhile since I had to avail myself of the GenerateCovers plug-in. It didn't work. But I chalked it up to a new version and expected it to be corrected yesterday. It wasn't so I looked more carefully. The error message is located below:

Spoiler:

calibre, version 0.8.35
ERROR: Unhandled exception: <b>IndexError</b>:list index out of range

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "calibre_plugins.generate_cover.action", line 48, in generate_cover
File "calibre_plugins.generate_cover.dialogs", line 912, in __init__
File "calibre_plugins.generate_cover.dialogs", line 1093, in display_preview
File "calibre_plugins.generate_cover.draw", line 195, in generate_cover_for_book
File "calibre_plugins.generate_cover.draw", line 44, in get_textline
File "calibre_plugins.generate_cover.draw", line 38, in get_font_or_default
IndexError: list index out of range

The key phrase was get_font. I had recently installed a utility to prune my font list (and get them back temporarily if I found myself wanting the 17th variation on a san serif font or the rarely used [by me] cyrillic font). Unfortunately, one of the things I pruned was that 17th variation of a san serif font that I had used in creating one of my cover variants. The Shadow Magazine variant.

And that waylaid the whole GenerateCovers plugin. I made two mistakes in trying to fix it.

The first was in trying to edit the Generate Cover.json file and replace each instance of the now non-existent font with Arial by visually scanning and replacing it as I saw it. Global Replace is your friend, use it. The second, was trying to edit the file while Calibre was open. Do. Not. Do. That.

A second try while Calibre wasn't running and using Global Replace was successful.

What lesson can be learned while watching me head off the cliff? Well, fiddling with fonts to keep them to a minimum is better in theory than in practice. Oh, and sticking to the traditional fonts for the book covers is a good idea too.