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dailyalice · 08-31-2022, 02:04 PM

Due to circumstances involving a dead laptop, I'd not used Calibre & FanFicFare in a few years. A few months back, I got back into using it but was doing so on a Chromebook (& couldn't get my personal.ini file to save after editing it) (yes I did check file permissions in various places). (It was an interesting exercise doing things without being able to edit personal.ini, just going with default settings.)

But now I'm able to fully use the latest Calibre & FanFicFare (on a Mac Mini) and have set to work setting up a whole new archive. I've forgotten many things! So as I go, I've been documenting what I do in great detail so I can refer to it myself (because my memory is poor) and possibly share it with others.

As it stands, my guide to FanFicFare and Calibre is at 150+ pages in Google docs. It's getting out of hand and there's so much stuff I haven't covered yet. To be fair, I'm wordy and I'm including screenshots of basically everything.

I have a question that's probably incredibly simple to answer and basic stuff, I'm feeling a bit bad about possibly getting this wrong. And I'm too tired (after hours of working on the guide this morning) to search too much for answers.

I wrote a detailed section of the guide to cover setting up custom columns in personal.ini, only to realize recently that in my instructions I always have folks use (and have screenshots of me using) "add_to_custom_column_settings" when I should probably be using "custom_column_settings" instead.

So far my guide is heavily aimed at folks using AO3 (since that's the site I use the most) and most of my instructions so far for custom columns are specifically for AO3 custom columns. So maybe using "add_to_custom_column_settings" makes sense for the archive specific custom column settings? It does seem to work, but I haven't done extensive testing. And I want to give folks advice on the best way to do things. (Is there any reason it would be better to use "custom_column_settings" than "add_to_custom_column_settings" for AO3 specific columns?)

I'm assuming it makes more sense to use "custom_column_settings" in [defaults] (and perhaps the only way one should handle things in defaults). Fortunately I've only covered one column for defaults so far so I can easily redo that to say "custom_column_settings" instead of "add_to_custom_column_settings."

Thanks in advance.

08-31-2022, 02:04 PM	#7461
dailyalice Geek of All Trades Posts: 55 Karma: 100878 Join Date: Aug 2012 Location: Minneapolis Device: Kindle Oasis (3rd gen)	Due to circumstances involving a dead laptop, I'd not used Calibre & FanFicFare in a few years. A few months back, I got back into using it but was doing so on a Chromebook (& couldn't get my personal.ini file to save after editing it) (yes I did check file permissions in various places). (It was an interesting exercise doing things without being able to edit personal.ini, just going with default settings.) But now I'm able to fully use the latest Calibre & FanFicFare (on a Mac Mini) and have set to work setting up a whole new archive. I've forgotten many things! So as I go, I've been documenting what I do in great detail so I can refer to it myself (because my memory is poor) and possibly share it with others. As it stands, my guide to FanFicFare and Calibre is at 150+ pages in Google docs. It's getting out of hand and there's so much stuff I haven't covered yet. To be fair, I'm wordy and I'm including screenshots of basically everything. I have a question that's probably incredibly simple to answer and basic stuff, I'm feeling a bit bad about possibly getting this wrong. And I'm too tired (after hours of working on the guide this morning) to search too much for answers. I wrote a detailed section of the guide to cover setting up custom columns in personal.ini, only to realize recently that in my instructions I always have folks use (and have screenshots of me using) "add_to_custom_column_settings" when I should probably be using "custom_column_settings" instead. So far my guide is heavily aimed at folks using AO3 (since that's the site I use the most) and most of my instructions so far for custom columns are specifically for AO3 custom columns. So maybe using "add_to_custom_column_settings" makes sense for the archive specific custom column settings? It does seem to work, but I haven't done extensive testing. And I want to give folks advice on the best way to do things. (Is there any reason it would be better to use "custom_column_settings" than "add_to_custom_column_settings" for AO3 specific columns?) I'm assuming it makes more sense to use "custom_column_settings" in [defaults] (and perhaps the only way one should handle things in defaults). Fortunately I've only covered one column for defaults so far so I can easily redo that to say "custom_column_settings" instead of "add_to_custom_column_settings." Thanks in advance.