Love it, bug?, 2 suggestions

thalaniel · 01-11-2011, 01:26 AM

Love it, bug?, 2 suggestions

Thank you for your work in creating and improving calibre. It's well thought out in presentation and execution. It's intuitive. The order of gui icons suggests logical sequencing of major workflow areas. I've been managing eBooks with it for a month. I like it and think I'm falling in love.

A minor problem: I have a custom column #format2 set to {format} to see at a glance in library view what formats exist or are still needed. For some of the book records the column misses displaying a format even though it exists. The books and formats it happens with are not always the same. When I click on that field in that record to generate the custom-field-set-to-other-field dialog, the missing format appears in the display after I click OK. So it's only a minor problem and only mildly troubling. That's in 0.7.38 on Mac OS X 10.6.6. Am I doing something wrong or is that a minor bug?

Suggestions:

1. Re-order fields in Catalog CSV/XML generation. In Convert:CreateCatalog Settings dialog box, CSV/XML, it's nice to be able to select the fields for output. Suggest adding ability to re-order them, similar to the way it's done in Prefs:AddYourOwnColumns.

2. Print gui list. I understand the catalog generation options but there seems to be no simple way to generate a printed list similar to what I see in the gui Library view. It's awkward and time consuming to output XML or CSV then use some outside application to clean that up for printing, when what I want printed is what I have already formatted and prettily displayed in the gui. Suggest adding a capability to print gui Library list, again with selectable and orderable fields. Suggest that it apply only to the records currently displayed so the printout could reflect specific searches or tags. There could also be a feature to generate that same formatted table output to printer *or* disk. The lack of an easy Printing feature is the main reason I still need to keep a separate db of pBook and eBook metadata in a spreadsheet. I'd love to get rid of that and keep it all in calibre.

Again, thanks for all your hard work on calibre. It makes my eBooking life simpler and more enjoyable.

-thalaniel

chaley · 01-11-2011, 04:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by thalaniel

A minor problem: I have a custom column #format2 set to {format} to see at a glance in library view what formats exist or are still needed. For some of the book records the column misses displaying a format even though it exists. The books and formats it happens with are not always the same. When I click on that field in that record to generate the custom-field-set-to-other-field dialog, the missing format appears in the display after I click OK. So it's only a minor problem and only mildly troubling. That's in 0.7.38 on Mac OS X 10.6.6. Am I doing something wrong or is that a minor bug?

What this says is that there is a pathway in the code that is not refreshing the GUI data when a format is added. It would help to know what you did between when it was right and when it was wrong. My suspicion is that the problem involves using the formats box in edit metadata, but I am not sure.

Also, handling of formats has changed in the next release. The problem might go away.

thalaniel · 01-11-2011, 11:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chaley

What this says is that there is a pathway in the code that is not refreshing the GUI data when a format is added. It would help to know what you did between when it was right and when it was wrong.

For one record, #format2 comes up blank on calibre startup. For others, all formats for a record immediately "dissapear" after I change any metadata field in any record in gui list. These missing formats show up for all missing-format-records when I click ok in edit template dialog box for any one of them.

chaley · 01-11-2011, 12:14 PM

We have demonstrated that there is a problem with refreshing columns made from other columns. Another developer was able to reliably reproduce it (I never could). Although I couldn't determine how the problem was triggered, we were able to determine where it occurred. We have fixed his problem and, I hope, yours. Will be in the next release.

thalaniel · 01-11-2011, 01:49 PM

Great, you guys rock!

No comments on suggestion 2 of printing direct the gui list? Am I missing something obvious there outside of CSV export?

GRiker · 01-11-2011, 02:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by thalaniel

No comments on suggestion 2 of printing direct the gui list? Am I missing something obvious there outside of CSV export?

CSV and XML are intermediate output formats intended to be manipulated in other programs. I don't see the point in polishing/manipulating the output when you can easily do it in the destination program.

With respect to printing a GUI list, that sounds like a candidate for a custom plugin.

G

thalaniel · 01-12-2011, 12:37 AM

@chaley, @GRiker, thanks for your responses.

I'll play some more with moving CSV output into Excel templates for printing. Which I'd already been doing, but maybe I can script some of it.

My point was mainly that the gui list *should* be *easily* print-out-able, not that I don't know how to do it with export to intermediate csv file then import into excel sheet for data then moving columns around so they're in the right order then cutting and pasting into an existing metadata spreadsheet then sorting then removing duplicates all manually. When if i could print the gui list direct from calibre I'd avoid all that.

I'll also research creating a plugin. Not sure I can do it since I don't know python and have relatively little experience with programming. But I'm willing to spend some time learning if that's the only way.

01-11-2011, 01:26 AM	#1
thalaniel Member Retired Posts: 4 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jan 2011 Device: Kindle 3	Love it, bug?, 2 suggestions Love it, bug?, 2 suggestions Thank you for your work in creating and improving calibre. It's well thought out in presentation and execution. It's intuitive. The order of gui icons suggests logical sequencing of major workflow areas. I've been managing eBooks with it for a month. I like it and think I'm falling in love. A minor problem: I have a custom column #format2 set to {format} to see at a glance in library view what formats exist or are still needed. For some of the book records the column misses displaying a format even though it exists. The books and formats it happens with are not always the same. When I click on that field in that record to generate the custom-field-set-to-other-field dialog, the missing format appears in the display after I click OK. So it's only a minor problem and only mildly troubling. That's in 0.7.38 on Mac OS X 10.6.6. Am I doing something wrong or is that a minor bug? Suggestions: 1. Re-order fields in Catalog CSV/XML generation. In Convert:CreateCatalog Settings dialog box, CSV/XML, it's nice to be able to select the fields for output. Suggest adding ability to re-order them, similar to the way it's done in Prefs:AddYourOwnColumns. 2. Print gui list. I understand the catalog generation options but there seems to be no simple way to generate a printed list similar to what I see in the gui Library view. It's awkward and time consuming to output XML or CSV then use some outside application to clean that up for printing, when what I want printed is what I have already formatted and prettily displayed in the gui. Suggest adding a capability to print gui Library list, again with selectable and orderable fields. Suggest that it apply only to the records currently displayed so the printout could reflect specific searches or tags. There could also be a feature to generate that same formatted table output to printer or disk. The lack of an easy Printing feature is the main reason I still need to keep a separate db of pBook and eBook metadata in a spreadsheet. I'd love to get rid of that and keep it all in calibre. Again, thanks for all your hard work on calibre. It makes my eBooking life simpler and more enjoyable. -thalaniel

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01-11-2011, 12:14 PM	#4
chaley Grand Sorcerer Posts: 12,421 Karma: 8012664 Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: Notts, England Device: Kobo Libra 2	We have demonstrated that there is a problem with refreshing columns made from other columns. Another developer was able to reliably reproduce it (I never could). Although I couldn't determine how the problem was triggered, we were able to determine where it occurred. We have fixed his problem and, I hope, yours. Will be in the next release.

01-11-2011, 01:49 PM	#5
thalaniel Member Retired Posts: 4 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jan 2011 Device: Kindle 3	Great, you guys rock! No comments on suggestion 2 of printing direct the gui list? Am I missing something obvious there outside of CSV export?

01-12-2011, 12:37 AM	#7
thalaniel Member Retired Posts: 4 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jan 2011 Device: Kindle 3	@chaley, @GRiker, thanks for your responses. I'll play some more with moving CSV output into Excel templates for printing. Which I'd already been doing, but maybe I can script some of it. My point was mainly that the gui list should be easily print-out-able, not that I don't know how to do it with export to intermediate csv file then import into excel sheet for data then moving columns around so they're in the right order then cutting and pasting into an existing metadata spreadsheet then sorting then removing duplicates all manually. When if i could print the gui list direct from calibre I'd avoid all that. I'll also research creating a plugin. Not sure I can do it since I don't know python and have relatively little experience with programming. But I'm willing to spend some time learning if that's the only way.

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