[Gary_M_Mugford]

So few are the times that I get frustrated with Calibre these days that I find myself not haunting the newsgroup, soaking up every new post as it appears. As a result, I've lost my searching skills. When my favourite niece asked me to include a certain author in her selection list in the family Calibre database, I called up the User Categories Editor and went through the labourious process of finding the author in question and adding him to the list of Applied Items. Two days later, a different niece says she wants me to amalgamate her list with her aunt's and for both to get email when something new appears for their now combined list.

No on-point answers appeared searching for various combinations of user, category, editor, export, import, merge and document (more of the last one later).

Harrumph!

It occurs to me that it would be nice to have a search box just below the filter box in the Editor. KiwiDude's User Category PlugIn can stand in it's place and is much, much faster, but it would be handy to have the facility in place WHILE IN the editor, which takes a bit of time to start up ... about the length of time for me to palm my forehead and say I'd wished I had chosen the plugin instead ... or some words to that effect.

But even the User Category plugIn doesn't do the merge thing from one user category to another.

And here's another thing I wish for. I'd like a documentation capability for user categories. I'd like the LOOOOOONG string that's probably stored CSV-like in the Calibre database system for each category. That way I could create a COMBINED list of my own. But THEN, I would have to have an ability to PASTE BACK IN the results of my dogged editing. Which would have to be error-checked on the way in. And such pasting would absolutely be required to be done into an empty user category for safety's sake. And wouldn't it be great to have an ability to have ALL of the data for ALL user categories exported to a CSV file so that I could bring it into a spreadsheet and see at a glance which authors were shared by ... whatever criteria.

And another thing that MIGHT BE INTERESTING is that this paste method might be able to inject NEW AUTHORS that aren't yet presented in the Calibre database. Saaaay for example, somebody watches a Daily Show episode and wants the book that Stewart is interviewing the author about (an example for me would be the first appearance of William Kwamkwamba who was touting The Boy Who Harnassed the Wind). Well, that author might NOT be in the database already. But everybody wants some notice when I do add the book eventually (I eventually bought Kwamkamba's book in both dead-wood AND ebook versions). I do a monthly search through the books I've added and see who is on record as wanting the book. But I'm limited by not being able to add something in User Categories Editor that is not there ... the author. (I eventually worked around it by adding a fake WANTED Magazine article with the author's name in question, to get him on the lookout list).

So, to summarize: In the User Categories Editor, I want a search box, a documentation utility and a paste utility, with the paste utility doubling as a merge utility. Or a standalone merge utility. I'm greedy, not unreasonably picky.

Any or all of that would be immensely welcome.

Thanks, GM