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Originally Posted by emmgee
One sad thing about online discussions is that people find it hard to disagree without being disagreeable. I provided some feedback, not "vague aspersions". I made a suggestion and it was called "a stupid idea". Isn't there a better way to have a discussion than to lower the tone to name-calling?
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"Calibre is very complex and could be much more simple and achieve many of its design goals" is feedback in the form of a vague aspersion that calibre is ill-designed.
And as I said above, I am more than happy to listen to what you have to say, as soon as you say it -- implies giving a reasoned explanation regarding the complexity you see and why and how you would make it simpler.
I will freely acknowledge I jumped the gun in assuming you had nothing to say other than what you said.
Although I have seen many people come here and say the same thing, and they always turn out to be cranks...
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I don't consider myself to have lowered the tone to name-calling.
I consider myself to have
attacked the merits and practicality of your one suggestion, and then
concluded it was a stupid idea. Harsh? Maybe. Name-calling? Not at all.
I'd like to reiterate that past experience with people claiming calibre is needlessly complex inclines me to not think very highly of the suggestion.
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I have worked in high tech for many years. I am very familiar with the design process. I have my ideas and my preferences. I put out a few thoughts in this thread. Why not? Isn't that what discussion forums are for? Do I need to make a rock-solid case for my thoughts to avoid being called "stupid"?
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You don't need to make a rock-solid case, but you do need to make one that doesn't immediately get me to think "that would be a tremendous disaster of epic proportions".
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I do think Calibre is overly complex. I would guess that more people would find it useful if there were fewer features and it was more simple to use. Maybe two versions would be a good idea, one fairly basic and one that has fuller features.
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calibre already has the capability to e.g. hide unused toolbar icons and unused panels. Much of the advanced functionality is hidden behind menus or right-click options.
Making a second application as a lightweight alternative would be a lot of work, and I don't think Kovid is interested. He is happy with the current userbase which is quite large already.
Quote:
Originally Posted by emmgee
In direct reply to the following:
Try this: Download new books via the Kindle app then in Calibre select Add books > Add books from directories, including sub-directories (Multiple books per directory, assumes every ebook is a different book).
Calibre then does what you apparently think is a stupid idea. A pop-up appears that says "Reading metadata and adding to library" and presents a progress bar and titles that it is adding to the library.
Then it shows you the duplicates it found and asks if you really want to add them. If you click on "Select none", the duplicates are unchecked. Click "OK" and the non-duplicates are added.
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calibre does what I think is a very good idea actually. I suspect that is because you didn't actually internalize that i said it was a bad idea
in the context of a discussion about auto-import.
Adding the books you specifically selected (recursively adding a specifically selected directory
) is a very reasonable thing to do though. Given that it was manually told to do so, and all.
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My "stupid idea" is that since this functionality is already built in, it should be a fairly simple thing to change it this way:
Create an option under "Add books" that reads "Add new books". User clicks this option and Calibre does the same action as above but it assumes that the user does not want to add duplicates, only new books.
I hope you find this clarification less stupid. BTW, there are no loops involved.
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Are we still talking about auto-importing books? Because manually importing them requires manually doing so, oddly enough, and one extra click is not my idea of a burden. In fact, I don't know why you are all of a sudden worried about the need to personally confirm adding duplicates. Adding duplicates is not expected behavior -- it is anomalous, and you
should subject it to scrutiny.
Assuming you are still talking to me about auto-adding (feel free to ignore me if you secretly switched topics)... let me spell it out for you a little clearer.
calibre watches for changes in the auto-add folder using a QFileSystemWatcher.
When it gets a signal that the auto-add folder has changed, it recursively starts adding ebooks.
Leaving those ebooks in place means any ebooks which have already been added, get re-added every time the Auto-Adder triggers.
Given that the Auto-Adder is a constantly-running background process, the auto-adding happens in a loop. As in, again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again...
AFAIK there is no robust way to trigger on all modified files in a recursive tree, then remember that state after calibre is shutdown and restarted, catching files that were modified/added while calibre was NOT running, recognizing renamed files with byte-identical contents...
So recursively adding on a DirectoryChanged notification it is.
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Or as theducks said, "a failure [...] to fully understand the ramifications of repeatedly trying to [auto-]import the same books".