Quote:
Originally Posted by chaley
FYI: this is *not* guaranteed to work. The "editable" field was added way-back when we first introduced custom columns and neither really implemented nor removed. At this point, several years later, very few of the internal calibre functions check it. For example, bulk metadata search/replace doesn't. In addition, there is no guarantee that making such a change will not break something else. Finally, the APIs that *do* check it include the edit metadata functions, so you might be prevented from making changes to such a field when you want to.
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@chaley:
I can flatly guarantee that this works to "protect" changes to Custom Columns via the Edit Metadata-Single Book dialog. I know this because my QuarantineAndScrub has used and relied on this since 2014 to "protect" its "work" custom columns from user changes. By design, only the Q&S plugin can change those custom columns.
The Edit Metadata-Single Book dialog "central widget tab" does not have dropdown boxes for any Custom Column so configured. I refer to your "widget_factory" used to do the above.
The example image attached to my prior post was from a QuarantineAndScrub Library. It is from my "real", personal Calibre library, which happens to be a Q&S library.
My MultiColumnSearch plugin also uses this method to protect a specific Custom Column that it manages, "mcs_was_indexed", which pertains to indexing a specific ebook's words for word-index searches.
I can also confirm that if a user changes their mind, they will not be able to change it using the Edit Metadata-Single Book dialog until they "unchange" it. That is what it is for. I interpreted "protect" literally when I gave my answer.
Thanks for adding that feature years ago. I very much appreciate it.
DaltonST