Uses for column icons

[ownedbycats]

What do you use column icons for?

Here are mine:

- Instead of leaving an undefined boolean blank, you can put an icon there to match the checkboxes and x's.

- Metadata issues. No pagecount? It'll show an icon. Forgot to delete an ORIGINAL_EPUB? Another icon. Fanfic hasn't been updated in a few years? Another icon. It's helpful for quickly sorting out issues that land a book into my Cleanup virtual library.

- Reading status. I have a boolean yes/no column for #read, but I heavily use icons. If I'm currently reading the book, a bookmark will appear there. If it's on my reading list, it'll show a little clipboard. I've also got a specific icons for fanfics that have a new unread chapter.

- Device status. If a book is on my Kobo, it shows an icon. If it's on my send-to-device reading list, it shows a different icon. If it's a Kobo Store book, it shows a DRM lock. If it's a book borrowed from Overdrive, it shows a library icon.

Here's my reading status and device status columns in action:



(Curious about how I did the chapter count on the fanfics? Here you go.)

- Fanfics. My Fandoms column shows icons for various fandoms (including generic book/film/game icons for ones not warranting their own.)

- Formats. Instead of having a long text list, I just have a set of icons.

[davidfor]

Do you ever get any reading done? I sometimes wonder that with your questions about templates and things But, I'm probably little better.

Mine is a bit simpler. In my case, I overlay the percent read column that is fetched from calibre. I think it started by putting a tick in that column and not displaying the number. And then added the other icons.

I currently have:

• Green tick for read and the percent read is not shown.
• A star if the book needs to be rated.
• An open book if the percent read is between 0 and 100.
• Icons for "Incomplete" and "InProgress". That's basically for stories downloaded using FFF. The former is basically it hasn't been updated for long enough that I don't think it will be.
• The ToC icon if I need to update the ToC on the device (the newest).

There are also Reading Lists involved and they have usually update the @status column, which is a tag-like column. That is used for some of the decisions. I move books between the reading lists such as "To Read", "Reading", "To Rate" and "Finished". But, the others are separate statuses that can overlap.

All the icons are included in calibre. The incomplete and inprogress are the "Finish" and "Forward" icon and are probably the least clear.

Looking at some of your icons shows a difference in how we think. The icons for the format seems pointless. Either I have it or I convert it. But, I suppose the only format I care about is epub. On the rare occasion I get something else, I'll convert it when I add the book to the library and probably do some cleanup as well. Similarly, I don't care much about whether the book is on the device or not. Either they are, or they will be when I connect next time. If the book needs to be on the device right now, then I plug it in and put it there. Reading lists are used for managing that, so I can see what is to be sent to any of my devices.

[BetterRed]

I use them to cloak long-text columns that are set, having the icon a) tells me to look in Book Details to see content, b) de-clutters the book list and c) tells me what to expect when I press F2 on the cell.

BR

[Sirtel]

I use them to indicate which of my devices a book is on. Different icons for my Kindle, Nook and Kobo.

For read status I use column coloring (red).

Edit: that's mighty few icons compared to the OP, but I find too many icons and colors too visually noisy and that would make it harder to process information at a glance (for me; YMMV). For most things I just use text, e.g. where I bought something. The format column is hidden; formats are visible in the book details pane.

[ownedbycats]

To hide the text in the author column when there is no author, make a transparent png (128x128 is best) and set an 'icon with no text' rule to display when the column has Unknown. ('Is not set' doesn't actually do anything for authors. That'll be removed in the next version.)