V3.5.6 has been published

[chaley]

CC V3.5.6 has been published and should soon be available on Google Play.

Changes since V3.5.5b:

• Option to align cover at top in book list
• New translation: Japanese
• Updated translation: German
• [BUG FIX]Fix rare crash opening the grouping drawer
• [BUG FIX]Fix restore settings occasionally not restoring some settings
• [BUG FIX]Fix some strings not re-translating when CC's language is changed

This release will be on Amazon in 10 days or thereabouts.

[NSILMike]

I don't know if this is related to this update, but I cannot connect wirelessly or to the content server via wifi. (It worked fine yesterday, and fails 100% now following the updates to Calibre today as well as to Calibre Companion.) I get the msg to check my IP, etc. I'm sitting in front of my laptop and can see that the IP and ports are correct for both. And I know my wifi is fine via other apps...
Any clues what to check? Have restarted both my Nexus tablet and my laptop...

[chaley]

Originally Posted by NSILMike

I don't know if this is related to this update, but I cannot connect wirelessly or to the content server via wifi. (It worked fine yesterday, and fails 100% now following the updates to Calibre today as well as to Calibre Companion.) I get the msg to check my IP, etc. I'm sitting in front of my laptop and can see that the IP and ports are correct for both. And I know my wifi is fine via other apps...
Any clues what to check? Have restarted both my Nexus tables and my laptop...

If I had to guess and if you are running windows, it is that the AV or firewall doesn't like the new calibre release and is isolating it. A second possibility is that your wifi router updated itself and turned on guest mode or wireless isolation.

The first thing you can check is whether your device's browser can see calibre's content server. Open the browser and enter "http://calibre.ip.address:calibrePort/opds/" without the quotes. If that works (you see a lot of structured text) then there might be something with CC. If it doesn't then calibre isn't visible on your net, pointing again at the firewall on the calibre machine.

If it works then I need a calibre and CC debug log. Those will tell me what each end is seeing. See https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...7&postcount=10 for some instructions. If/when you send the CC debug log, please remove the multipie.co.uk address. I am dealing with this so we don't need to disturb my son.

[NSILMike]

Originally Posted by chaley

If I had to guess and if you are running windows, it is that the AV or firewall doesn't like the new calibre release and is isolating it.
Mike-> Windows 7, and AV & Firewall are OK (checked.)AV is Avast on both PC and tablet. Firewall on PC is windows.
A second possibility is that your wifi router updated itself and turned on guest mode or wireless isolation.
Mike-> I've set my router (and everything else) not to allow auto updates. And no, after checking this isn't the source either.

The first thing you can check is whether your device's browser can see calibre's content server. Open the browser and enter "http://calibre.ip.address:calibrePort/opds/" without the quotes. If that works (you see a lot of structured text) then there might be something with CC. If it doesn't then calibre isn't visible on your net, pointing again at the firewall on the calibre machine.
Mike-> not sure I'm entering it correctly... I did http://192.168.1.36:9090/opds/
and
http://192.168.1.141:9090/opds/
because calibre lists both as acceptable. (I had tried CC set to both before.) But is /opds/ correct as text, or is that something I don't recognize?
In both cases the tablet searches endlessly.


If it works then I need a calibre and CC debug log. Those will tell me what each end is seeing. See https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...7&postcount=10 for some instructions. If/when you send the CC debug log, please remove the multipie.co.uk address. I am dealing with this so we don't need to disturb my son.

Thanks very much for the fast reply!

Update: now it works. I rebooted laptop. Hmmm...

[chaley]

Originally Posted by NSILMike

Mike-> Windows 7, and AV & Firewall are OK (checked.)AV is Avast on both PC and tablet. Firewall on PC is windows.

We have had problems in the past with avast.

not sure I'm entering it correctly... I did http://192.168.1.36:9090/opds/
and
http://192.168.1.141:9090/opds/
because calibre lists both as acceptable. (I had tried CC set to both before.) But is /opds/ correct as text, or is that something I don't recognize?
In both cases the tablet searches endlessly.

First, your computer should absolutely not have two IP addresses in the same subnetwork (192.168.1). This is a recipe for lots of things not to work. Do you have both wireless turned on and a cable attached?

As for the URL, you should use the port number of the content server, probably 8080, thus http://192.168.1.141:8080/opds/. Whether the last number should be 141 or 36 I can't say.

[NSILMike]

Originally Posted by chaley

We have had problems in the past with avast.
First, your computer should absolutely not have two IP addresses in the same subnetwork (192.168.1). This is a recipe for lots of things not to work. Do you have both wireless turned on and a cable attached?
Mike-> Yes, and one is wifi and the other is cable as you would guess. And this has never, ever caused a problem for me on any other application (and is supported by windows and my adapter.)

As for the URL, you should use the port number of the content server, probably 8080, thus http://192.168.1.141:8080/opds/. Whether the last number should be 141 or 36 I can't say.
Mike-> Yes, I understand that. I just did not recognize OPDS and wasn't sure if that was actual text or not.

FYI, this has happened in the past, and I spent a week rebooting my laptop when it happened. An update (don't know whether calibre or to CC) seemed to have fixed it until today... sigh...
But many thanks for your quick replies and advice.

[chaley]

Although having 2 IP addresses on the same subnet may not have appeared to cause problems, unless the underlying software effectively ignores one of them then various IP protocol bits won't work correctly. For example, broadcasts will trigger responses from both addresses, making it appear to be two computers when in fact it is one. Outgoing packets are permitted to use either, meaning that the NAT system in your router can get confused.

But onto the more important stuff: I interpret your response as saying that you cannot connect to the content server from your portable device (tablet?). That would mean that something between your tablet and calibre is blocking network packets. If it isn't the router then it is the AV/firewall on the laptop, which points a finger at avast.

You could try rebooting the laptop in "safe mode", starting calibre, and seeing if CC can connect. If is can then we know that the problem is in software that is loaded while you laptop is booting, probably avast. You could try disabling avast to see if that fixes it, but my experience has been that avast is very hard to completely disable. You could look for avast logs to see if it is unhappy with calibre. You could also try rolling calibre back to what you had before.

I am certainly willing to look at debug logs. It is possible that they might tell us something.

[NSILMike]

Originally Posted by chaley

Although having 2 IP addresses on the same subnet may not have appeared to cause problems, unless the underlying software effectively ignores one of them then various IP protocol bits won't work correctly. For example, broadcasts will trigger responses from both addresses, making it appear to be two computers when in fact it is one. Outgoing packets are permitted to use either, meaning that the NAT system in your router can get confused.
Mike->Actually the NAT system in the router handles that.

But onto the more important stuff: I interpret your response as saying that you cannot connect to the content server from your portable device (tablet?). That would mean that something between your tablet and calibre is blocking network packets. If it isn't the router then it is the AV/firewall on the laptop, which points a finger at avast.
Mike->No, it's fine. When it wouldn't connect, it wouldn't connect to either one is all I meant. Whatever rebooting the laptop did, cured both.

You could try rebooting the laptop in "safe mode", starting calibre, and seeing if CC can connect.
Mike-> While that sounds good, the cure so far to this has been a regular reboot, so I suspect safe mode will work just fine and we won't learn anything.
If is can then we know that the problem is in software that is loaded while you laptop is booting, probably avast. You could try disabling avast to see if that fixes it, but my experience has been that avast is very hard to completely disable. You could look for avast logs to see if it is unhappy with calibre. You could also try rolling calibre back to what you had before.
Mike-> I'm pretty sure it is not Avast. There's no alert given (Avast is good at doing that) and nothing in the log. I also think that in the past - months or maybe even a year ago- when this happened for a week or two, I was using Microsoft's AV... (Security Essentials)

I am certainly willing to look at debug logs. It is possible that they might tell us something.

I'll be happy to share debug logs if you're curious or still interested. If this recurs and reboots work, I'll survive... and I don't want to impose too much.

[kaufman]

Originally Posted by chaley

• Option to align cover at top in book list

This option means something completely different than what I thought it was going to mean. Somehow I had it in my mind that that it was about the placement of the cover on the details screen.

It does give me an idea. Would you be averse to adding an option to the book list to show the covers on the right instead of the left? If its a lot of effort, don't worry about it.

[chaley]

@NSILMike: apologies. I hadn't realized/noticed that you got is working after a reboot. I am perfectly happy to let sleeping dogs lie.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by kaufman

It does give me an idea. Would you be averse to adding an option to the book list to show the covers on the right instead of the left? If its a lot of effort, don't worry about it.

That could be done, perhaps without lots of work. However, I am going to wait a bit to see what happens with the Japanese translation, to see if other stuff needs adjustment due to RtL language issues.

Question: if the cover moved to the right, where would the read check mark go? To the left? To the right of the cover? To the left of the cover?

Is this another "leftie" thing? I am not trying to be snarky, but am genuinely curious.

[Jessica Lares]

Yay, thank you for the cover fix! You're awesome.

[kaufman]

Originally Posted by chaley

Question: if the cover moved to the right, where would the read check mark go? To the left? To the right of the cover? To the left of the cover?

I would say to the right of all the book information, but to the left of the cover.

This also gives me another idea. What would you think about showing the read checkmark in cover view? You could put it in the corner of the cover.

Originally Posted by chaley

Is this another "leftie" thing? I am not trying to be snarky, but am genuinely curious.

In a year of communication, I don't think you have been snarky even once, and yes, it is a lefty thing.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by kaufman

This also gives me another idea. What would you think about showing the read checkmark in cover view? You could put it in the corner of the cover.

There are two issues here. The first is that the mark would need to float over the cover, which has some performance implications. The second is that the mark would occlude part of the cover (perhaps a lot of it depending on its size), which isn't a good thing.

I have considered trying different backgrounds or putting borders around the cover, but these both have problems with potential visibility. The same thing is true if I put a smaller icon; it would need a border to be sure that it wasn't lost in the colors of the cover, making it larger.

Another thing I have considered it to extend the grid vertically and put the check icon (or something like an under-bar) outside the cover. The problem here is that there would be fewer covers.

There are times where I wish touch devices had the notion of float-over.

[kaufman]

What if you left the cover alone, but put the check mark over the shelf underneath the cover. Then you wouldn't have issues with cover colors.

I did a mock up. The checks are the exact same size as they are on the book list.