Feature Request - Title formats

[paulrw]

Really 2 requests, both associated with formats. It would be really nice if Calibre checked to see if deleting a format from a title would leave it with no formats, and issued a warning (when I have reformatted a number of books and get distracted before I delete the redundant formats, it is really easy to delete ones not yet converted and lose the original!)
My main request though is for a bit of colour - I would like to create empty books (i.e. no associated formats) for books I have in hard copy, and for missing books in series that I want to look out for, but I need to be able to quickly distinguish which of the 3 categories a title is in. I know I can create the empty entries, and I know I could create a custom column to identify the category, but I also know that on a quick glance I would mistake paper for missing, or forget to check at all, unless it is immediately obvious by for instance the title being shown in a different colour. Accepting that this would be a major change, a good substitute would be the ability to show a coloured icon in a custom column (e.g. a green tick for "in hard copy" or a red cross for "missing altogether")

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by paulrw

Really 2 requests, both associated with formats. It would be really nice if Calibre checked to see if deleting a format from a title would leave it with no formats, and issued a warning (when I have reformatted a number of books and get distracted before I delete the redundant formats, it is really easy to delete ones not yet converted and lose the original!)
My main request though is for a bit of colour - I would like to create empty books (i.e. no associated formats) for books I have in hard copy, and for missing books in series that I want to look out for, but I need to be able to quickly distinguish which of the 3 categories a title is in. I know I can create the empty entries, and I know I could create a custom column to identify the category, but I also know that on a quick glance I would mistake paper for missing, or forget to check at all, unless it is immediately obvious by for instance the title being shown in a different colour. Accepting that this would be a major change, a good substitute would be the ability to show a coloured icon in a custom column (e.g. a green tick for "in hard copy" or a red cross for "missing altogether")

Feature requests should go here. This forum is a good place to find out if others are interested in that feature, or if it's already available.

I think a warning before deleting the last format would be nice, but it's not something I need. I keep originals separately and backups of my calibre library.

On the color issue - have you considered just keeping a search with highlighting turned on to highlight the non-content books (or vice-a-versa)? Tag the books "NoFormats", then save teh search:

tag:"NoFormats"

and turn on the highlighter. This will show all the books with a colored highlight.

[user_none]

Search formats:false to show all books without formats. Saves time of having to set a tag.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by user_none

Search formats:false to show all books without formats. Saves time of having to set a tag.

True.

I actually had in mind that he would tag his two different cases of books to buy for series and books he already owned as tree-books. He could then save corresponding searches and show one or the other.

I tried to save some typing by describing a single tag, so my test case devolved to your simpler solution.

[paulrw]

Thanks but it doesn't solve my issue - I would like to be able to see at a glance if I already have the book in some form, and if so what form - your suggestion simply produces lists which I could do in any number of ways. I would like to be able to look at an author and see 5 in hardcopy only, 3 others wanted, 15 ebooks etc. To give an example of a use for this, if I go to a secondhand bookshop (Barter Books here I come), I would like to be able to look at Calibre on my tablet and see if I already had a book, specifically wanted it, or didn't know it existed. With a substantial library in both paper and electrons, lists are simply unmanageable - I would need to convert the lists into books (I feel a recursion coming on).
I also keep backups of my Calibre library and separate copies of all the originals (and backups of the discs they are on), it is just slightly irritating to have to use them, but more to the point, once I start to create empty entries, I can't distinguish between ones I have deliberately created and one that exist because I accidentally deleted the original format (I don't do it very often now, but even so Murphy's law being what it is, it will happen
On a separate note it seems strange to put feature requests in the bug section.

[Manichean]

Originally Posted by paulrw

With a substantial library in both paper and electrons, lists are simply unmanageable - I would need to convert the lists into books (I feel a recursion coming on).

You can actually do that in one shot within Calibre. Have a look at creating a catalog.

[kiwidude]

Why not just add a formats column computed or you to your view, if as you say you want to see what formats you have. Blank will be no formats. I ju st use a wish list tag myself for empty books, but then as I ensure I only have at most a couple of tags per book it means. Can always see that tag in the column.

[paulrw]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

Why not just add a formats column computed or you to your view, if as you say you want to see what formats you have. Blank will be no formats. I ju st use a wish list tag myself for empty books, but then as I ensure I only have at most a couple of tags per book it means. Can always see that tag in the column.

Because I want to have more than one kind of blank, and because looking across a line it is not immediately obvious which is the item with the blank, but more than this because screen real estate is precious and I am already sacrificing columns i would like in order to get the essentials onto one screen, hence ideally change the colour of the title, but failing that a 1 character wide column for an icon.

[paulrw]

Originally Posted by Manichean

You can actually do that in one shot within Calibre. Have a look at creating a catalog.

I do create catalogues but with several thousand books in both paper and electronic format, that catalogue is of little use for what I want. It does bring to mind another thought though, it would be nice to have a format of "paper and electronic", since I will always have books which I will keep in hard copy, and again there are ones which I have electronically which I would get a paper copy of I saw it and was sure I didn't have it.
So in summary what I want is a way of showing one of four states for a title
1) electronic only
2) paper only
3) paper and electronic
4) not owned

I can create a column for these, create a catalogue including this column, put it into a database and write a program to show it in the way I want, but this seems to be duplicating Calibre, requires maintenance every time I update Calibre, and most of all seems like something other people who can't write their own apps might want.

[travger]

I do agree about colors. It does not have to be whole row that's colored, just the very first column (currently contains numbers) would be enough. And in settings then user could determine meaning for different colours.
I would for example use intensities of red and green to show if and how much book needs editing (now there's only yes/no column option).

[kiwidude]

Colors don't work well in selection based grids. As soon as you select the row all your coloring will be lost. Do a search bringing back only one row and you can't see any coloring at all.

You can do all of your four options with a format column as I suggested. As I think you also wrote somewhere and has been posted elsewhere on this forum you can use a paper format for representing those books. So the one formats column will give you all you want without any separate updating or maintenance required.

[travger]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

Colors don't work well in selection based grids. As soon as you select the row all your coloring will be lost. Do a search bringing back only one row and you can't see any coloring at all.

[paulrw]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

Colors don't work well in selection based grids. As soon as you select the row all your coloring will be lost. Do a search bringing back only one row and you can't see any coloring at all.

You can do all of your four options with a format column as I suggested. As I think you also wrote somewhere and has been posted elsewhere on this forum you can use a paper format for representing those books. So the one formats column will give you all you want without any separate updating or maintenance required.

Sorry - it won't I don't have enough screen width as I said, and from a GUI point of view looking across at another column and reading an entry is vastly inferior to seeing a colour. It is like you saying there is no point in having stars in the rating column because you can read the number - true, but very far from ideal.
Your point about losing the colour with a selection is irrelevant, I am talking about instant visibility in a straightforward view. For more complex operations involving selection the possibility of using a category still exists.
I have attached a couple of mockups to show what I am after - ignore the formats and category columns, I just included them to show the derivation of the colours. The first is the ideal, the second just takes the rating stars as an example but uses colours rather than stars to express the underlying value (a coloured star?)
I suppose the real issue is whether I am alone in wanting this - it seems unlikely, but then by definition I am normal and everyone else is odd

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by paulrw

Your point about losing the colour with a selection is irrelevant...

You clearly choose to gloss over it but I'm afraid it is completely relevant. Color does not work well in grids without doing very complicated things with selection coloring like alpha blending. And that is a whole world of pain particularly cross platform that I would bet Kovid isn't going to be in a rush to implement.

If you rely *only* on colour to indicate the state of something it just won't work well with selections (it also won't work well for people who are color blind). So you need a secondary visible trigger, be it an icon or a column.

As for not finding space, there is always a way to find space if you want it that badly. You could even do a custom column with a custom formula built from other columns with a one character code if you wanted to. As for "scanning across", well you can put it right next to your title column if it is that big a deal for you.

[paulrw]

How does the star field work? I presume it uses the number on which it is based to size an array of blue star characters. By using the same technique, but indexing an array of different coloured stars you would achieve exactly what I want and have a column type which could be used for any purpose where a clear visual indicator was wanted. I don't see how this would be affected in any way by the use of grids unless Koval has to do very complicated things with colour blending to make the stars blue at the moment. I have never suggested that the colour coding be the only indicator of the value - in fact in my previous post I explicitly pointed out that the underlying columns would still be available for inspection when selected.
As for your last point, that is exactly what I am asking for, if you look at the second of the mockups I attached. What I would like though is for that column to make use of colour since that makes it far easier to recognise at a glance (see most guides to UI design). We do not argue that the + and - in the tag browser should be grey rather than green and red because colour blind people won't be able to see the difference, instead we use colour to give an immediate visual representation of whether something is included or excluded which the majority of users will find useful.
This thread has been really useful for me in terms of clarifying my thinking on the topic, and how it could be implemented, thank you to all contributors. As I said, I think the real issue is whether there is any interest in having a colour indicator amongst other people - if so I don't see that implementing it by analogy to the star column would be that hard, if not I guess I will have to get the Python manual out and see how true that sweeping statement is