calibre 0.7.0 released!

[Dopedangel]

Love the new look & options it does now almost all the things I want from it
(Almost cause I might want something more in the future )

by the way shouldn't this be in the news section of mobileread
A major new version of calibre is a big deal in the ebook world and should be given a frontpage news release

[traceylb]

Love the new upgrade and thank you to everyone that put time and effort into updating this application! I have been impressed with the new features that calibre has come out with the past few weeks as they are really useful.

I have already setup a few of the new features, particularly the column for what books I've read and my Favorite Authors category. I also like how you can adjust the size of the various sections.

Just one query that someone may be able to answer - there was mention that calibre can now optionally download tags/reviews/rating from amazon.com, but I cannot see how this option is selected?

Also, I found that when I tried renaming an authors name as per the video it just brought up a message that it was already in use. It would be helpful if this can prompted to ask if we would like to merge the authors. I often find that I have the same author listed twice in calibre as it could be listed as A.B. Brown or with spacing A. B. Brown which can be confusing when looking up books. But otherwise all is good!

Thanks!

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by traceylb

Just one query that someone may be able to answer - there was mention that calibre can now optionally download tags/reviews/rating from amazon.com, but I cannot see how this option is selected?

You can go to preferences - plugins - metadata download and customize each plugin. You can also go to Preferences - General and uncheck download social metadata or uncheck overwrite author and title.

Originally Posted by traceylb

Also, I found that when I tried renaming an authors name as per the video it just brought up a message that it was already in use.

Just a guess but did you have the book you were trying to change the author's name open in the Calibre viewer? If it was open it would already be in use.

Originally Posted by traceylb

It would be helpful if this can prompted to ask if we would like to merge the authors. I often find that I have the same author listed twice in calibre as it could be listed as A.B. Brown or with spacing A. B. Brown which can be confusing when looking up books. But otherwise all is good!

Just highlight all the books you want to ensure the authors have the same spelling and open the Edit meta information and paste the name in the Author box and check the automatically set author sort.

None of these items are new but they are useful.

[Zicon]

Yay! Lots of new features I've been waiting for! Joy! Happiness!

At least until I plug in my Sony PRS-600 and get plonked with "Error communicating with device." Sigh.

All strings must be XML compatible: Unicode or ASCII, no NULL bytes

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\device.py", line 58, in run
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\device.py", line 264, in _books
File "site-packages\calibre\devices\prs505\driver.py", line 97, in books
File "site-packages\calibre\devices\usbms\driver.py", line 143, in books
File "site-packages\calibre\devices\prs505\driver.py", line 114, in sync_booklists
File "site-packages\calibre\devices\prs505\sony_cache.py", line 329, in update
File "site-packages\calibre\devices\prs505\sony_cache.py", line 418, in update_text_record
File "lxml.etree.pyx", line 634, in lxml.etree._Element.set (src/lxml/lxml.etree.c:31509)
File "apihelpers.pxi", line 486, in lxml.etree._setAttributeValue (src/lxml/lxml.etree.c:13734)
File "apihelpers.pxi", line 1247, in lxml.etree._utf8 (src/lxml/lxml.etree.c:19727)
ValueError: All strings must be XML compatible: Unicode or ASCII, no NULL bytes

[chaley]

Originally Posted by traceylb

Also, I found that when I tried renaming an authors name as per the video it just brought up a message that it was already in use. It would be helpful if this can prompted to ask if we would like to merge the authors.

Yea, I thought about how to do this. Turns out to be reasonably hard, so I opted for safety.

The process isn't really a merge, but is instead a book-by-book modification.The difficulty is one must delete the old author from all the books referencing it, then apply the new author (which already exists) back to these same books. The trick is to be sure not to change the order of the authors in the process. This was complicated enough where I was worried I would break something fundamental. Another problem that could arise is that the same author now appears twice in the list (both the old and new names are there), and I have no idea what to do about that other than to refuse to modify that book.

Similar problems exist with publishers, series, and tags. Publishers I can see how to do. Tags add complexity, but again, I can see what needs to be done; I would need to delete the old tag from all books, then add the new tag back to those books that don't already have it. However, I think that series will remain manual because of the numbering complexities.

I am still thinking about how to proceed with all this. It will arrive someday.

[pietvo]

Hello,

Thanks for the new version.

I noticed one strange thing on Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The windows resizing handle is not at the corner of the window but slightly inside. It is to the left of the number of active jobs. I didn't even know that this was possible. It is confusing, however. On the first run I didn't know how to resize the window. The window was taller than the screen height and I couldn't see the lower right window corner.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Zicon

At least until I plug in my Sony PRS-600 and get plonked with "Error communicating with device." Sigh.

Any chance that you have books on the device with empty titles?

[Zicon]

Originally Posted by chaley

Any chance that you have books on the device with empty titles?

Didn't think I had, but double-checking the device with Reader Library proved that I indeed.

The files in question were all plain text files, and removing them from the device before firing calibre back up solved it nicely.

[pollito pito]

Excellent, fantastic, superb …

Big thanks to Kovid and the development team

[riemann42]

Love the custom columns. It would be nice to have a way to pre-populate the data of a new custom field.

For example, I have added three new custom fields: Read, Store, and Date Read. For the Read field, it is trivial as a tag search made filling this in easy. Same with the Store. For the last read, I haven't been keeping track of this. I have been keeping track of purchase date (by using the date field). So it seems reasonable to pre-populate the Last Read field with a query such as:

if (#read:yes) then (value=date) else (value=undefined)

or even

(#read:yes)?(date)

or even

(#read:yes)?(date+1d)

I would then, of course, have to go through and change values such as for Peter Hamilton's Commonwealth and Confederation series which I read annually in a binge before the next book comes out (it's really a sick disease. I need help).

For now, my sql-fu is good, so it is not too much of an issue for me to do this, and I realize it would need a new language to do so it is a little complicated of a request.

[grizedale]

Originally Posted by riemann42

Peter Hamilton's Commonwealth and Confederation series which I read annually in a binge before the next book comes out (it's really a sick disease. I need help).

Whoo hoo I do the same

[Valloric]

Shiiiiiiiiiny!

Congrats on the milestone Kovid!

(BTW, where did you get those Harry Potter ebooks )

[riemann42]

Originally Posted by Valloric

(BTW, where did you get those Harry Potter ebooks )

I am sure they are just stand-ins for physical books that he has placed in his library. It is also possible that Kovid and J.K go way back. This might explain J.K.'s reluctance to release ebooks...

[rpdillon]

First off, thanks so much for the amazing work...I just bought my first reader a couple of weeks ago, and Calibre makes it about three times as useful as it otherwise would be. So, thank you so much for creating it, and continuing work on it so diligently.

After I got everything working with 0.6.x series, I enthusiastically installed 0.7.0 (Ubuntu Linux 10.04) and found that two new problems have emerged that I don't know how to fix (after reading the stack traces and doing a bit of searching).

First, Calibre has now started mounting the "install" partition of the PRS-300 as a memory card ("Card A"). It's not a memory card, and is in fact read-only, so every time I plug the PRS-300 in, I get an "Error Communicating With Device":

(30, 'Read-only file system')
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/home/kovid/build/calibre/src/calibre/gui2/device.py", line 58, in run
File "/home/kovid/build/calibre/src/calibre/gui2/device.py", line 262, in _books
File "/home/kovid/build/calibre/src/calibre/devices/prs505/driver.py", line 97, in books
File "/home/kovid/build/calibre/src/calibre/devices/usbms/driver.py", line 147, in books
File "/home/kovid/build/calibre/src/calibre/devices/prs505/driver.py", line 103, in sync_booklists
File "/home/kovid/build/calibre/src/calibre/devices/prs505/driver.py", line 93, in initialize_XML_cache
File "/usr/lib/python2.6/os.py", line 150, in makedirs
makedirs(head, mode)
File "/usr/lib/python2.6/os.py", line 157, in makedirs
mkdir(name, mode)
OSError: [Errno 30] Read-only file system: '/media/Sony Reader Storage Card (1)/Sony Reader'

Since it thinks it is a storage card, it looks for the "Sony Reader" directory, but it doesn't exist and I can't create it, because the install partition of the device *is* read-only.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, I now get an error when syncing books:


ERROR: ERROR: Unhandled exception: <b>AttributeError</b>:'list' object has no attribute 'add_book'

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/home/kovid/build/calibre/src/calibre/gui2/__init__.py", line 246, in dispatch
File "/home/kovid/build/calibre/src/calibre/gui2/device.py", line 1056, in books_uploaded
File "/home/kovid/build/calibre/src/calibre/gui2/device.py", line 304, in add_books_to_metadata
File "/home/kovid/build/calibre/src/calibre/devices/usbms/driver.py", line 219, in add_books_to_metadata
AttributeError: 'list' object has no attribute 'add_book'

The books do in fact get copied to the device, but no collections are created, which causes a bit of a navigation problem on the device itself. It's not the end of the world, but I really like collections. =)

This is normally associated with the "wait until the hourglass stops spinning before adding content" fix, but in my case, everything has settled completely when I get the error.

What I think is happening is that Calibre attempts to read what's on the device, works its way through main memory, tries to read the "Card", fails with an exception, and never returns the data structure it is supposed to. Another piece of evidence to this effect is that when I try to browse the device in Calibre, nothing appears to be on it.

All the obvious approaches don't work; i.e. the OS can see the device just fine, I am trying to sync with Main Memory (not Card A), I'm waiting for the device to settle, etc. I have tried it on two different Ubuntu machines running 0.7.0, I've formatted my device, and today I returned my old device and got the same model and the same problem is showing up.

So...have I found a bug, or am I still missing something?

Thanks for everything,
Rick

[kovidgoyal]

There was a regression in the sony driver on linux, will be fixed in 0.7.1 which will be released tomorrow.