Thread: [Android] Change "Is Read" for books with missing files?
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Old 01-14-2017, 07:16 AM   #3
chaley
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Posts: 12,475
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Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Notts, England
Device: Kobo Libra 2
Quote:
Originally Posted by joeblowma View Post
Hopefully this wish isn't asking for tons of work making it have a better chance of existing... in the 'books with missing files' area would it be sane to have a 'mark all missing as read' in the menu? Or 'mark all missing as...' that presents a quick dialog with the 3 possibilities as buttons?

The main issue I have that causes me to ask for this, is when you have a dozen or so books that you've deleted via a reader as they are read, going into each book's view and marking them as read is a bit of a pain (in my case mainly due to the dropdown being too small to manipulate quickly even on an 8 inch screen.)

An alternate idea that would serve in my case would be to dispose of the read dropdown and put 3 buttons in a line ([o yes] [x no] [x none]) the size of the current dropdown's height, with the current one highlighted or radio buttoned making it easier to finger mash quickly.

I recently properly learned search in calibre (not #read:yes) so at least I no longer have to sync twice (before and after remove deleted files to tag as read.) This last bit would be icing on the cake for me at this point Either way, thanks for CC!
You are suggesting three options to solve your problem:
  1. Mark all missing as "Read" in "Find missing books"
  2. Alternative to the above, Mark all missing as one of the three possibilities.
  3. Improve the usability of the Read dropdown in book details.
Choices 1 and 2 are hard for 3 reasons:
  • The options would require changing the protocol between CC and calibre. This is hard enough, but now that we have iOS CC the problems are made worse.
  • This is a solution to a subproblem: mark the books I am currently looking at (result of a search, grouping, etc) as read (or something). It would take only 10 minutes for someone to ask for this, and it is a harder problem for me then the missing books case.
  • The change also opens the door for other bulk operations such as Delete all books in the current list. Even more problematic, it opens the door to selecting books on the list and applying the operation to them. Both are hard.
For these reasons I don't want to go down this path.

On the other hand, your suggestion to make setting the Read status in book detail easier is a good one. I, like you, find choosing in the drop-down list difficult, especially on devices like my phones that have smaller fonts, or on my e-ink devices where the "tap" sensitivity and resolution isn't the best.

I am thinking that changing a tap on the "Read" status would open a small dialog with three largish buttons: Read, Not Read, Blank. The button for current value would be shaded. You tap the button for the value you want.

I would really like 4 buttons (add a Cancel) but Android dialogs are limited to 3. One way to work around that would be to offer 2 buttons for the values that differ from the current value and a third "Cancel" button. I could also add some text saying something like "The current value is Read" or some such. I am not sure if this is better than the three buttons, but I suspect that it is.
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