"Read Y/N" dialog handling

[anadem]

I'm wondering if I'm just missing something simple (a brain, maybe?) so come for advice please... can some kind person tell me:

Is there a quick way to switch the Y/N dialog in the "Read" column for a book? The way I'm marking a book as "read" seems really clunky:

• click on the book's row, in the "read" column - the box gets selected
• click on the selected box - the dropdown opens, showing 3 options: Y/N/<none>
• click on the "Y" option - the Y and checkmark are selected
• click somewhere else, so that the box is no longer selected (otherwise a mouse scroll changes my 'Y' to whatever)

Surely there's a better way to toggle this?
Actually the "Read" setting doesn't really even need three options (Y/N/blank), just two, assuming it's meant for "has been read" - though maybe three options is appropriate if it means "to be read".

Calibre is running here (with about 2000 books) on x64 Windows 7 on a reasonably fast machine, but this GUI action is quite slow and having four clicks to make a change is painful. I added a "ToRead" column with the same three-option toggle but don't use it because it's awkward.

This is a minor gripe with a great, wonderful tool (THANK YOU KOVIND and all other contributors) but it's driving me crazy.

Alan

[theducks]

I use the keyboard

navigate to the column
tap F2 to put it into edit
Tap Y or N for T/F columns. Dates auto-fill with Today()
TAB/Backtab keep you in edit mode and moves to the next/previous field

If you arrange Read to be next to rating, you can set both with 1 F2
set Read and rate the book

[BetterRed]

@anadem - Further to what the theducks said

If a date cell has a value, that you want to clear to undefined, hit the hyphen/minus key '-'
If a date cell has a value, that you want to change to now, hit the equals key '='
If a number cell has a value, that you want to clear to undefined, hit the space bar

When editing cells in the book list I also use the keyboard.

BR

[anadem]

yay, thanks so much theducks and BetterRed! that makes things much nicer, a big improvement.

[jjmcgaffey]

Yes, thanks, BetterRed - you solved my problem, which wasn't what the thread was about at all. I had a bunch of books that I'd opened, for whatever reason, on my Android phone - so Calibre Companion had passed back a Read date that was completely bogus. I could not figure out how to wipe it - I don't see any way of doing so with the mouse. But your keyboard trick cleared them right out. Thanks again!

[chaley]

Originally Posted by jjmcgaffey

Yes, thanks, BetterRed - you solved my problem, which wasn't what the thread was about at all. I had a bunch of books that I'd opened, for whatever reason, on my Android phone - so Calibre Companion had passed back a Read date that was completely bogus. I could not figure out how to wipe it - I don't see any way of doing so with the mouse. But your keyboard trick cleared them right out. Thanks again!

Have you solved the problem of how those bogus dates got there? CC has an option that controls whether or not the read date gets automatically set when you launch a reader from CC.

[BetterRed]

@jjmcgaffey - whilst answering chaley's query, you could thank him for the '-', '=' and ' ' keys to clear & set dates and numbers. IIRC he did the code changes

[chaley]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

@jjmcgaffey - whilst answering chaley's query, you could thank him for the '-', '=' and ' ' keys to clear & set dates and numbers. IIRC he did the code changes

Nope, Kovid did those way back in Feb '13. I had to look in the source control records because I couldn't remember whether or not I was the culprit.

[BetterRed]

@chaley - pretty sure it was you who told me about 'em. I have a memory cell telling me that they didn't work in the spreadsheet only in MD Edit - maybe you fixed that. It was 'round the time when the Comments editor was changed to put column name into the title and to preserve the window size.

That series of changes liberated me from having to use Single MD Edit

BR

[Inferno]

One very good reason for the three (Y N and blank) is when someone like me has not yet gone to each book in their library to mark them. I have thousands of books in my library I have not yet marked as Y or N. It is because I have not looked at the specific book to determine if I have read it yet.

If it had only Y or N then when first creating the column it would be necessary to completely go thorough your library to set each book and for some of us that is not practical.

Also, what would new books be marked as? Y or N? If N then adding an old favorite to your library would show it as unread. Much better having a blank to indicate it needs to be looked at.

[jjmcgaffey]

Originally Posted by chaley

Have you solved the problem of how those bogus dates got there? CC has an option that controls whether or not the read date gets automatically set when you launch a reader from CC.

Yeah, and I've got it set to enter them - 90% of the time it's very helpful (when did I start that book?). It's that remaining 10% that drives me nuts...

Whether or not you made this particular function, thanks for working on calibre and CC! Between the two of them, they solve basically all my ereading problems.