Quote:
Originally Posted by chaley
Gary, you sound like you have things well under control. That said, your answer implies that I didn't explain what I said well enough, so even though this message is probably superfluous ...
A user category is not a tag. Instead it is a collection of metadata items such as authors, series, publishers, or tags, providing a level of indirection. For example, you could create a user category called "Favorite authors" and populate it with authors you like. Same with series. They appear in the tag browser, can be opened to see their contents (like other categories), edited, and searched. You can drag n drop metadata items onto the category to add them. When you search using a user category, it (in effect) does a search for each item in the category and 'or's the results together.
The advantage of the user category is that the TA can easily see the list of names in the category by opening the category. This is harder when using saved searches. Not a lot harder, though. However, since your are asking the TAs to send you emails, clearly they know who is in their sections. Instead of sending emails they could drag the student's name into 'their' user category.
Another thing to mention: the calibredb command can create a saved search. You might be able to maintain the saved searches using this command, but it might not be worth fighting with the shell to get the arguments quoted correctly.
|
Chaley,
I took a brief look and I understand the opportunities you suggested looking at better. The positives are the aftermath of the work creating it when it comes to doing searches. Near as I can tell, when I drop down the search box to look at the history, the user category searches only show the @_Gary:true line rather than the FULL SPACE-CONSUMING LIST that doing the named searches do. (An aside to Kovid, shouldn't a saved search only show the search:"=SAMPLE_BIG_SEARCH_WITH_LOTS_OF_NAMES" rather than the expanded out list of ALL the names that were in the big compound search when looking at the LIFO history of searches?). And once you got a big list into your user category, adding a new one is pretty straight forward and easy enough to do. Spelling errors are close to non-existent. There's also the second level of filtering so that I could create a user category of my favourite authors' mysteries, although that level of granularity is more theoretically good than I have use for. The entry in the tag browser also offers you the all encompassing look, or, when expanded, each individual author.
The downside, no easy importation of a list that I could find. I started one for my own favourite authors in my own calibre and it was ... non-trivial to add the names. After a delayed startup which I understand the reasons for, I had to scroll through available items to add to applied items by double-clicking on the author. No paste function from an externally copied list. If I was to have ten favourite authors, this would not be a downside. But I have dozens. It just seems faster to open a text file, copy and then paste the names into the search box and hit enter. Even changing or adding one name, it's still the same process ... assuming Windows co-operates. I don't care where, who or whether it was simply a spelling correction, the mass copy and paste as an update for compound searches works well (within the limits of my testing) Also, I don't keep the tag browser open much. Somewhere in the threads that talked about adding files being faster if the browser wasn't open, I decided I liked faster better and I prefered not 'wasting' the screen real estate. So for _Gary to have its own entry, rather than as an entry underneath User Categories is a negative.
Am I going to work to finally create a useable _Gary for myself with all the authors I want to have at a click of a button (or two)? Yes. I think so. I will also create a _GaryRecommends with sub-filtering by SFincluded because so few of my friends want SF recommendations slotted into their mystery list to try out. I think User Categories have a use. But in the kludge I've thrown together, I think I will stick with what's working till it ain't.
Thanks for pointing me towards the feature and then clarifying things when I didn't get it the first time.
Regards, GM