Quote:
Originally Posted by davidfor
I have been looking at the tiles and how they work. Partly for curiosity and partly because I found a couple of problems with the calibre driver interaction. Plus the Sync tile peeves me. Here is how I see it working.
There is a table called "Activity". This records what you have done recently. The table has the following columns:
- "Type" is the type of tile. The common ones are "RecentBook", "Shelf", "Extras" and "RelatedItems". There are some single types such as "Sync" and "Library".
- "Id" holds which of the types the row refers to. For "RecentBook" it is the id of the book, for "Shelf" it is the shelf name and "Extras" it is the name of the extra so, "sudoku" or "browser". The single type rows such as "Sync" and "Library" either have blank id or a generic id of some sort.
- "Enabled" - This is either "true", will be displayed, or "false", won't be. Dismissing a tile toggles the value from "true" to "false". And yes, directly changing it in the database works.
- "Date" is the timestamp for when the activity was last done.
- "Action" is either 1 or 2. All the tiles with "1" seem to be system generated tiles: "Sync", "GlobalStats" and "RelatedItems" are some. I think they might get a higher priority for display.
- "Data" holds extra information for the tile. For a "RecentBook", it holds the how many bookmarks, and annotations the book has. For the new books tile, it is the list of ids for the added books
At its simplest, the home screen should be filled with your most recent activities that you have not dismissed. There are exceptions. The first tile is always a "RecentBook". If the "Sync" is enabled, it is always the second tile and can't be dismissed. And I think that tiles with Action=1 might be pushed up a little in the priority.
I do see some tiles that I wonder why are there. But, any time I connected and checked the database, it made sense from the timestamps. And as an experiment, I just took a copy of the database so I could look at it while using the device. Then I started dismissing tiles. The tiles that replaced them where the ones I expected based on their timestamps.
While doing the above, I realised no shelves where appearing as tiles. So, I opened a couple and no tile. Then opened one and opened a book from it. Still no tile. It looks like you have to "Manage" the shelf for it to appear. Though maybe it is a bug in the firmware I am running. |
Interesting although I don't have the mental energy to check the database
What does 'manage shelves' involve? I don't AFAIK manage my shelves except to put books on or delete them with calibre. I get shelf tiles all the time although I rarely use them. The ones I have now are the 2 last used and one from a while back that I did open a book in but did not read. Since then I have opened books in 5 other shelves besides the ones showing according to the recently read sort on the books read in the books list. Possibly I dismissed one but I don't think so as I don't bother much with the home screen, I generally just use the shelves.
Helen