[chaley]

Originally Posted by DavidTC

Here's are a few suggestions. I am not sure how easy they are.

Thanks for the well-written suggestions.

The problem: doing what you ask for requires a complete rewrite of CC. CC is designed to be an offline book manager that integrates with calibre in various ways. Offline means that CC must have its own copies of books and metadata, and the user must be able to trust that the information is in fact available offline. In addition, there are a zillion technical problems related to integration with readers, read/write data, multiple book formats (extensions), integration with Amazon SW on the Fires, and the like. I am not going to go there.

You might be happier with one of CC's "competitors". For example, Hofferic's CalibreBox directly interfaces with libraries and uses that data. I don't know if he supports local libraries, but if not he might be willing to consider it. Calibre Cloud Pro supports local libraries, but the app seems to be no longer maintained. Leger Calibre does (did) what you want (I think) but it too is no longer maintained.

What keeps stopping me is that the Cloud interface is incredibly annoying. First, I can't filter on multiple things, or sort, and the display is not the same

This isn't correct. You can easily filter on two things by long-pressing the first one then using the navigation to examine what is left. You can do arbitrary filtering using CC's search. Finally, you can sort most book list displays by one of Title, Authors, or Series.

First, sometimes the cloud is a local path.

And much more often it is not.

Suggestion #2: And then that leads to the obvious idea that if 'downloading' is just adding a database record, why not just automatically do it for *all* the books when 'connecting' to the local cloud folder? CC reads metadata.db, it fills up a database with all those books, tada.

Others have asked for a variant of this, specifically to be able to automatically update CC's database and book files with information from the cloud. I am still considering the idea. And yes, I know that isn't what you are asking for.

Suggestion #3: And then this leads into my confusion of why CC doesn't do this for *actual* cloud storage, too. CC already downloads metadata.db, so just fill up CC's database with all those book records, and put cloud:blah/whatever.epub as a 'virtual path' in the path field.

Because the majority of users don't want all their books on the device, and because that would require maintaining a connection to fetch the book files and covers.

And now it's in the *real* CC interface. Not only is this better, but whatever code is generating the 'pseudo-calibre-server interface from metadata.db' that Cloud users get can be removed.

And this is one reason why it is a total rewrite of CC. The existing wireless device connection and all of its support would have to change. Something equivalent but non-cloud would be necessary to transfer the metadata.db and book files, because *lots* of users do not have their library in the cloud. And so on.

Possible issues:

1) Sometimes people just want some of their books 'on their device', but frankly, I suspect any complaints in that direction are just people not paying attention to filtering options. (And if it's some sort of 'I want to hide these books in my library from other people', uh, those books should be in a different library, not in one they put in the cloud and hooked CC to!)

Your suggestion both raises complexity and requires a permanent internet connection. The complexity: one must peruse the library in advance of being off-line (or on a limited data plan or paid roaming) to ensure that the books shown in the library are actually on the device. People won't remember to do this (I wouldn't) so they must have a connection or won't be able to read the book.

2) Virtual paths are going to create some odd interaction with direct connection to Calibre, if people are trying to do both. A book could be listed as on the device, but not actually on the device.

The number of weird interactions with the wireless device connection is enormous.

In an early version of CC we allowed downloading metadata without downloading books. Things didn't go well. Not only did calibre get confused about what is where (formats, covers, metadata, etc), but the users (at that point "testers") did as well.

3) The entire library directory synced to CC has some odd dangers, especially if it's then connected directly to Calibre. These can that either can be dealt with...or 99% of them can be avoided by telling users that such a sync should be one-way. (Which is sad, because it sorta excludes the obvious feature of 'marking books read'.)

There are lots of users who sync their entire library to CC using the wireless device connection. Some have in excess of 15,000 books.

Finally, my apologies for coming across as negative. I think that an app based on your well-written analysis would be something that many people would want to use. Unfortunately, CC is not that app.