MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Forma Any Way to Make "List" View an Actual List?

enuddleyarbl · 06-14-2021, 10:21 AM

I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this, but thought I'd ask (just to be sure). My Forma can show my books in either List View or Cover View. Cover View is pretty much as expected. But, List View is giving me issues:

1. It still shows the cover. It's a small thumbnail, so it's not really a space problem width-wise. But, height-wise, it really restricts how many books can be "listed" on the page. Also, it's too small for my old eyes to really see.
2. The right half (almost) of the list includes the scroll bar, and book status/statistics. That's fine and dandy, but that's about as much space as the ..."
3. Book Title, Series and Author. And, here's the big problem. If I put the Forma in I'm-Old-And-Can't-See-Anymore-Darnit mode (More > Beta Features > Large Print Mode), the title shows only about 2 words. In regular mode, about 4 words. That's not enough information to easily browse my collection. Especially with my title naming scheme (see below).

So, is there any way to make the List View into an actual list? IOW, no cover, no book status/statistics, and the majority of the line being the actual title of the book (like, sigh, my old Kindle)?

Since I'm almost positive the answer to the above is no, I think I'm going to have to go through my Calibre library and modify my book naming scheme. In my Kindle days (all of about 2 weeks ago

), I included the series and book number into the title (i.e., [series name], Book [number]: [title]). I'm guessing I should left the title as pure title and added the series/book information into what I'd saved to my Kindle via a plugboard instead. Since the Forma handles series/book number information better than my Kindle, I don't need that any more (and if I have to save back to my old Kindle, I can do that with a plugboard). Is there an easy way to go through all those titles and remove the series name and book number from the titles? Or, am I just going to have to spend a couple of days manually editing them?

EDIT: Just for posterity, I did a bulk replace in Calibre to remove my series/book# from my titles. I went to Edit Metadata > Edit Metadata in bulk, switched the Search Mode at the right side to Regular Expression, the Search Field to Title, and Search For the ^(.+):\s\s (the ^ starts the search at the start of the field, the (.+) matches any characters, and the :\s\s matches a colon followed by two blanks. I left Replace With empty and for Your Test I just entered something that looks like my standard title naming scheme. Actually, the generic description I used in the above paragraph works fine there. In my case the Test Result was just the [title] information. Surprisingly, it all worked fine. I expected at least a few mis-matched replacements, but didn't get any. I re-synced my metadata between Calibre and the Forma and things are much more readable now.

And here are a couple of screenshots of what I'm trying to describe by not being able to see enough text under My Books. The first image is with Large Print on:

This second image is with Large Print off:

06-14-2021, 10:21 AM
enuddleyarbl Guru Posts: 769 Karma: 1537886 Join Date: Sep 2013 Device: Kobo Forma	Any Way to Make "List" View an Actual List? I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this, but thought I'd ask (just to be sure). My Forma can show my books in either List View or Cover View. Cover View is pretty much as expected. But, List View is giving me issues: 1. It still shows the cover. It's a small thumbnail, so it's not really a space problem width-wise. But, height-wise, it really restricts how many books can be "listed" on the page. Also, it's too small for my old eyes to really see. 2. The right half (almost) of the list includes the scroll bar, and book status/statistics. That's fine and dandy, but that's about as much space as the ..." 3. Book Title, Series and Author. And, here's the big problem. If I put the Forma in I'm-Old-And-Can't-See-Anymore-Darnit mode (More > Beta Features > Large Print Mode), the title shows only about 2 words. In regular mode, about 4 words. That's not enough information to easily browse my collection. Especially with my title naming scheme (see below). So, is there any way to make the List View into an actual list? IOW, no cover, no book status/statistics, and the majority of the line being the actual title of the book (like, sigh, my old Kindle)? Since I'm almost positive the answer to the above is no, I think I'm going to have to go through my Calibre library and modify my book naming scheme. In my Kindle days (all of about 2 weeks ago ), I included the series and book number into the title (i.e., [series name], Book [number]: [title]). I'm guessing I should left the title as pure title and added the series/book information into what I'd saved to my Kindle via a plugboard instead. Since the Forma handles series/book number information better than my Kindle, I don't need that any more (and if I have to save back to my old Kindle, I can do that with a plugboard). Is there an easy way to go through all those titles and remove the series name and book number from the titles? Or, am I just going to have to spend a couple of days manually editing them? EDIT: Just for posterity, I did a bulk replace in Calibre to remove my series/book# from my titles. I went to Edit Metadata > Edit Metadata in bulk, switched the Search Mode at the right side to Regular Expression, the Search Field to Title, and Search For the ^(.+):\s\s (the ^ starts the search at the start of the field, the (.+) matches any characters, and the :\s\s matches a colon followed by two blanks. I left Replace With empty and for Your Test I just entered something that looks like my standard title naming scheme. Actually, the generic description I used in the above paragraph works fine there. In my case the Test Result was just the [title] information. Surprisingly, it all worked fine. I expected at least a few mis-matched replacements, but didn't get any. I re-synced my metadata between Calibre and the Forma and things are much more readable now. And here are a couple of screenshots of what I'm trying to describe by not being able to see enough text under My Books. The first image is with Large Print on: This second image is with Large Print off: Last edited by enuddleyarbl; 06-16-2021 at 06:58 PM.