[GUI Plugin] Count Pages

[kiwidude]

@itimpi - the question was whether Kovid would change the page count algorithm used by the calibre ebook viewer to use the same approach as ADE or continue to use its own version that is based around the displayed text.

The answer to which he has said he does not want to change, so I shall just make three page count options available in this plugin.

[itimpi]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

@itimpi - the question was whether Kovid would change the page count algorithm used by the calibre ebook viewer to use the same approach as ADE or continue to use its own version that is based around the displayed text.

The answer to which he has said he does not want to change, so I shall just make three page count options available in this plugin.

Fair enough - but I always thought that the viewer was effectively a "screen count". As I do not use the Calibre Viewer for reading I tend not to think of it is as a key Calibre component.

[kiwidude]

I don't use it for reading either so I don't particularly care and it is trivial for my plugin to support both. I will say while I know Kovid has his reasons I don't actually find calibre's current page count particularly meaningful, as it is so massively large compared to a printed equivalent of a book. Not that ADE has any magic voodoo guaranteeing its numbers are better, but they are lower which makes them appear more realistic, and of course other software readers and devices uses that ADE number so there is some consistency between them.

Maybe Kovid will accept a patch of an option for the ebook viewer preferences to use the ADE count. As I said I don't care enough to try to change Kovid's mind, I can offer it in this plugin which will let users see in a column what they will get on their devices and that is good enough for me.

[kovidgoyal]

Calibre's viewer uses the number of non whitespace characters (actual text characters not including HTML markup) / 1000 as the number of "pages". This algorithm is a lot better than ADEs, which was implemented purely as the simplest (least resource intensive) way of arriving at a page count on CPU bound devices.

The value of 1000 was chosen to be close to the number of screens per ebook, rather than the number of pages per paperback. For instance, at the font size I prefer, on my Kindle Touch, there are, on average, ~750 non whitespace characters per screen.

[kiwidude]

Changes in this release:

• Add another page count algorithm of "Adobe Digital Editions (ADE)", which matches that used by the ADE software and some devices like Nook.
• Rename the "Calibre Viewer (Adobe)" option to "E-book Viewer (calibre)" as it was misleading, calibre uses its own calculation not the Adobe one.

[Zetmolm]

Thanks for adding this as another option rather than replacing the Calibre count. ADE may be closer to the page count of physical books, but I don't care about the number of pages in physical books anymore. A number that is close to the number of screens on my reader is more relevant to me.
And another nice thing, the Calibre page count is very close to the page count that FBReader does on my Onyx Boox.

[jgaiser]

@kiwidude - Upgraded to latest and my queer page count has gone away. Don't know what was going on, but it's all right now.

[tontea]

I just updated to Calibre version 0.8.54 and also updated the Count pages plugin. I am getting the following error message when I run the plugin:

calibre, version 0.8.54
ERROR: Failed to count statistics: <b>Failed</b>: Count ePub/Mobi Statistics

Count ePub/Mobi Statistics
Failed to initialize plugin: u'C:\\Users\\Tonya\\AppData\\Roaming\\calibre\\plu gins\\MobiDeDRM.zip'
Python function terminated unexpectedly
need more than 5 values to unpack (Error Code: 1)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site.py", line 132, in main
File "site.py", line 109, in run_entry_point
File "site-packages\calibre\utils\ipc\worker.py", line 191, in main
File "site-packages\calibre\utils\ipc\worker.py", line 138, in arbitrary_n
File "calibre_plugins.count_pages.jobs", line 29, in do_count_statistics
ValueError: need more than 5 values to unpack

Help! The plugin worked fine prior to updating.

[Terisa de morgan]

Thank you for the change to ADE options but... now I have to update calibre/plugin... tsk (I still was at 8.30, not a great fan of updating myself )

[kiwidude]

@tontea - welcome to mobileread. Did you remember to restart calibre after upgrading the plugin?

@terisa - yes, I am "dragging" users forward in calibre versions if they want to use the latest version of the plugin. There have been some really important bug fixes for ePub conversions in particular recently, so it is worth the effort, honest!

[GeckoFriend]

Thanks for updating to allow ADE counts. I love that the page count now more closely matches what my reader shows.

[tontea]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

@tontea - welcome to mobileread. Did you remember to restart calibre after upgrading the plugin?

I did not. That was, of course, the problem. Sorry to be a bother. Thanks for all your hard work! Love the plugin!

[maxiart]

A question, and apologies if this was mentioned or asked somewhere else. Is there a way to it count pages in the same way that the nook STR does? So that the count displayed and the count displayed when I open the book with the nook agree?

[kiwidude]

@maxiart - appreciate the apology but clearly you didn't read the very same page you posted on?

Look at the release notes above...

[maxiart]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

@maxiart - appreciate the apology but clearly you didn't read the very same page you posted on?

Look at the release notes above...

I wholeheartedly admit I did not! Thanks a lot!