CC alpha release 3.4.4d

[chaley]

CC alpha release 3.4.4d has been published and will be available to people in the alpha test program.

Changes since 3.4.4c (see this thread for details about 3.4.4c):

• Performance improvement (I hope) in grouping drawer
• Per-group first letter control
• Display file size in book details
• Use value-sensitive ranges for numbers in the grouping drawer when doing first-letter grouping
• [BUG FIX]Fix typo in Samsung
• [BUG FIX]Fix typo in Publishers (missing opening paren)
• [BUG FIX]Fix incorrect calibre version displayed for sync books
• [BUG FIX]Fix regression that removed custom columns from grouping drawer settings
• [BUG FIX]Fix "something has gone wrong" when tapping on category line

[kaufman]

Just installed it, and after a few minutes I have the following comments:

1) Grouping Drawer is much faster.
2) Love the Per-group first letter control. I thought I was going to catch you on the option to turn on the first letter button, but you already addressed the issue perfectly by turning the global change into a per-group one.
3) I have a custom column that shows the number of pages. Since you are showing the commas in the Book file size, could you also show them in the Pages column as well. Or, to but it more generally, could you format a field that is just a number with the commas. Or, since that might cause fields with just a year to be messed up, maybe the ability to tag a field as a number so that you know to insert the commas?
4) I think it might be better to show the file size as number of Kbytes instead of the number of bytes. People who care about size are probably familiar with them, and 385K looks cleaner than 294,240.

I would like to make a small comment about the beta program.

I love it. There's nothing like waking up in the morning and having a new release of CC to play with.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by chaley

• Performance improvement (I hope) in grouping drawer
  Not enough books on my device to comment. It's always been very snappy for me.
• Per-group first letter control
  Love it!
• Display file size in book details
  No problems. Not sure whether it's something I'll use myself.
• Use value-sensitive ranges for numbers in the grouping drawer when doing first-letter grouping
  Works well with Pages.
• [BUG FIX]Fix typo in Samsung
  [BUG FIX]Fix typo in Publishers (missing opening paren)
  Hurrah! Success!
• [BUG FIX]Fix "something has gone wrong" when tapping on category line
  Confirm, it seems to be fixed.

[BUG FIX]Fix regression that removed custom columns from grouping drawer settings

About this one: The custom columns now appear correctly in setting 'Sort when tapping a group'. I have found a minor problem on this page, though. This is how I can reproduce it:

• Select one of the Groups and change the auto-sort value.
• The new value is correctly shown for that Group in the Current value: field.
• Without leaving the 'Sort when tapping a group' page, select a second Group to change its auto-sort value.
• After selection the Current value: field is not changed. It has been changed but I have to exit the 'Sort when tapping a group' page and reopen it for Current value: to display correctly. The Group drawer itself registers the change correctly.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by kaufman

3) I have a custom column that shows the number of pages. Since you are showing the commas in the Book file size, could you also show them in the Pages column as well. Or, to but it more generally, could you format a field that is just a number with the commas. Or, since that might cause fields with just a year to be messed up, maybe the ability to tag a field as a number so that you know to insert the commas?

I will change the display to respect the format in calibre's column definition if there is one, otherwise to display with commas.

Custom date columns already respect the format entered into the custom column definition. If someone is using an integer column to represent a date (a year), then either they add a format to the column definition that doesn't show commas (something like {0:d}) or they get a comma.

4) I think it might be better to show the file size as number of Kbytes instead of the number of bytes. People who care about size are probably familiar with them, and 385K looks cleaner than 294,240.

I don't want to go there. As soon as a choice is made to elide the numbers, some people will want to turn it off and others will want a different elision. Further, it will be on a column-by-column basis. I would rather remove the field than go down that path.

I would like to make a small comment about the beta program.

I love it. There's nothing like waking up in the morning and having a new release of CC to play with.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

About this one: The custom columns now appear correctly in setting 'Sort when tapping a group'. I have found a minor problem on this page, though. This is how I can reproduce it:

• Select one of the Groups and change the auto-sort value.
• The new value is correctly shown for that Group in the Current value: field.
• Without leaving the 'Sort when tapping a group' page, select a second Group to change its auto-sort value.
• After selection the Current value: field is not changed. It has been changed but I have to exit the 'Sort when tapping a group' page and reopen it for Current value: to display correctly. The Group drawer itself registers the change correctly.

I will fix this. Thanks for the clear steps to repeat it.

[jackie_w]

Since I was the one asking for Page ranges, I thought it was only fair that I tested the 1000-range-interval with bigger numbers. I added custom column #words to my small Test library and copied a few books in there.

The functionality appears to work correctly. If I have a book with exactly 10000 words it correctly appears in the Words group 10000-10999. If I manually set the calibre value to 9999 it is correctly moved to the Words group 9900-9999 at the next connect.

The only other comment I have is that some of the test books were around the 140,000-150,000 words mark and a range interval of 1000 meant that each range only contained 1 book. Perhaps for values >=100,000 the range interval could increase to 10,000? Is that doable or is this getting unmanageable?

[chaley]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

The only other comment I have is that some of the test books were around the 140,000-150,000 words mark and a range interval of 1000 meant that each range only contained 1 book. Perhaps for values >=100,000 the range interval could increase to 10,000? Is that doable or is this getting unmanageable?

It is easily manageable, but is is usable? Might it not create categories where all the numbers are grouped together? 10,000 words is somewhere around 35 pages. Is it likely that many books would fall into that range? Which is better, to risk an interval per book or all the books in one interval?

Perhaps a range of 5,000 for numbers >= 100,000 is a good compromise?

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by chaley

Perhaps a range of 5,000 for numbers >= 100,000 is a good compromise?

Yes, maybe. My suggestion was merely to keep the algorithm consistent, i.e. range = max/100

Opinions from a few more alpha-, beta-people would be good, I think, especially if they might use this feature.

[kaufman]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

Opinions from a few more alpha-, beta-people would be good, I think, especially if they might use this feature.

I don't think I would use this feature, but as everyone knows, I have opinions about everything.

I think you should take that highest 5% of your books and make that into a range of the lowest one in the range (rounded) or higher.

So if you have 1000 books, and 95% of them have less than 150,000 words, use 150,000->Infinity as your last range. I'm not sure if this is doable based on how the books are stored, but I think any solution that doesn't do something like this is going to have a lot of sparse categories at the right end of the bell curve.

Depending on how this works out, it might also make sense to do the lowest 5% as one range as well.

For really large libraries, it might make sense to do the last 3% instead of 5%.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by kaufman

I don't think I would use this feature, but as everyone knows, I have opinions about everything.

I think you should take that highest 5% of your books and make that into a range of the lowest one in the range (rounded) or higher.

So if you have 1000 books, and 95% of them have less than 150,000 words, use 150,000->Infinity as your last range. I'm not sure if this is doable based on how the books are stored, but I think any solution that doesn't do something like this is going to have a lot of sparse categories at the right end of the bell curve.

Depending on how this works out, it might also make sense to do the lowest 5% as one range as well.

For really large libraries, it might make sense to do the last 3% instead of 5%.

The algorithm cannot depend on actual values. The decision must be made as soon as the first book is processed, and that decision is final. Changing it would require reprocessing all books.

[kaufman]

Originally Posted by chaley

The algorithm cannot depend on actual values. The decision must be made as soon as the first book is processed, and that decision is final. Changing it would require reprocessing all books.

Well don't do that. Sorry, I don't have any other ideas.

[Purple Lady]

I see that there is no Calibre release this week. I guess I have to wait for next week for the sync book functionality?

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

I see that there is no Calibre release this week. I guess I have to wait for next week for the sync book functionality?

Or fix the future-dated books. Ignoring them is all 2.4 adds.

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by chaley

Or fix the future-dated books. Ignoring them is all 2.4 adds.

Do you know of a way to do a search to find them? Will CC still loop if I don't fix them? If not I could just ignore the extra syncing if I can't easily find the books.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

Do you know of a way to do a search to find them? Will CC still loop if I don't fix them? If not I could just ignore the extra syncing if I can't easily find the books.

Open a file explorer on your library. Enter datemodified: into the search box. Click today's date. Enter a > character (greater than) between the : and the first number of the date.