Idea of Bookshelves - How to organize books by drag and drop to bookshelves

[duytrung]

Hi all,

I have an idea of managing books by shelves like in the libraries. For example, the shelf of literature, maths, physics, chemistry....However, I'm not quite sure that Calibre has this functionality.

Reasons?
A. I believe the virtual library function does not reflect the nature feeling of visiting a library. I think that when user need to read for a book or genre, he will need to go to the relevant section instead of use the search whenever he open Calibre up.
B. Switching between libraries? Sometime it is not very convenient. I don't use all Calibre functionalities. but I found switching between libraries is not a good idea. I use the portable version. That's all book are in the same folder in the usb for ease of management.

Here are details:
1. By normal view, there are additional views all library book shelves.
2. In bookshelves view, it can be animated as if we are walking through shelves in the library.
3. By selecting the specific shelf for a specific topic, it will display a view of books in the shelf. the the right corner will be a small thumbnail list of book with names and authors. More info will be display once user click into the book and hold for one or two seconds.
4. User can choose whether a shelf has 100, 200 or a 1000s of books, even unlimited depends on the quantity. If shelf of 100books, for 250 books there are 3 shelves in the library
5. The left toolbar that display: authors, languages, series, formats, publishers,.... is now replaced by a big animated computer icon that represent the e-catalog. User can use this functionality to lookup books and "go to shelf" if needed.
6. Once lookup for a keyword in the title, the results will now be displayed with relevant to the keyword, including authors, languages,tags... For example, I want to find "writing" in total 10000 authors, tags, etc,.. but there is 10 authors that relevant to "writing", Calibre will display "Results that relevant to keyword "writing".
7. Support of drag and drop books from one shelf to another shelf.
8. Support for sub-shelf, for example, maths shelf >>> algebra, geometry,etc....
9. Support for "recent reads" that save the recent accessed books, include the bookmark information.
10. There are areas for misc., unsorted, recently added or favorite books.
11. Area where deleted books are kept. Option to delete to recycle bin or remove permanently.

...

This is only my idea to make Calibre more enjoyable (game) than just a normal ebook manager. Great thanks for comments/replies/feedbacks.


DuyTrung

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by duytrung

Hi all,

I have an idea of managing books by shelves like in the libraries. For example, the shelf of literature, maths, physics, chemistry....However, I'm not quite sure that Calibre has this functionality.

Reasons?
A. I believe the virtual library function does not reflect the nature feeling of visiting a library. I think that when user need to read for a book or genre, he will need to go to the relevant section instead of use the search whenever he open Calibre up.
B. Switching between libraries? Sometime it is not very convenient. I don't use all Calibre functionalities. but I found switching between libraries is not a good idea. I use the portable version. That's all book are in the same folder in the usb for ease of management.

Here are details:
1. By normal view, there are additional views all library book shelves.
2. In bookshelves view, it can be animated as if we are walking through shelves in the library.
3. By selecting the specific shelf for a specific topic, it will display a view of books in the shelf. the the right corner will be a small thumbnail list of book with names and authors. More info will be display once user click into the book and hold for one or two seconds.
4. User can choose whether a shelf has 100, 200 or a 1000s of books, even unlimited depends on the quantity. If shelf of 100books, for 250 books there are 3 shelves in the library

I don't understand how your suggestion is different from the pre-existing "tags" feature. Except I guess you want more eye candy in the process.

5. The left toolbar that display: authors, languages, series, formats, publishers,.... is now replaced by a big animated computer icon that represent the e-catalog. User can use this functionality to lookup books and "go to shelf" if needed.
6. Once lookup for a keyword in the title, the results will now be displayed with relevant to the keyword, including authors, languages,tags... For example, I want to find "writing" in total 10000 authors, tags, etc,.. but there is 10 authors that relevant to "writing", Calibre will display "Results that relevant to keyword "writing".

Already exist, except it is called the "search box".

7. Support of drag and drop books from one shelf to another shelf.

Books can already be dragged onto a tag in the tags browser.

8. Support for sub-shelf, for example, maths shelf >>> algebra, geometry,etc....

see Preferences ==> Look and Feel ==> Tag Browser (tab). Fill in a value for "Categories with hierarchical items".

9. Support for "recent reads" that save the recent accessed books, include the bookmark information.

calibre already saves bookmarks in the books it opens. The View toolbar icon has a Recently Viewed list.

10. There are areas for misc., unsorted, recently added or favorite books.

That is what tags are for. Since you need to tag them anyway.
Recently added is possible by sorting your books according to the Date column.

11. Area where deleted books are kept. Option to delete to recycle bin or remove permanently.

All books when deleted are moved to the Recycle Bin. An option to skip the Recycle Bin is completely unnecessary, just clear the Recycle Bin.

This is only my idea to make Calibre more enjoyable (game) than just a normal ebook manager. Great thanks for comments/replies/feedbacks.

I don't want calibre to be a videogame. I want it to be an ebook manager. If I wanted a videogame, I would buy a videogame.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

I don't want calibre to be a videogame. I want it to be an ebook manager. If I wanted a videogame, I would buy a videogame.

Give me functionality over eye candy (bloat) any day

[aleyx]

Well, most of it is already there in one form or another... As far as I can see, what you want is basically take the cover browser, give it the same drag n drop abilities as the main list, and make it two-dimensional (several horizontal levels instead of just the one). Or maybe start from the cover grid and give it a cover browser look and feel?

That's _really_ non-trivial, for a basically trivial use. I guess it could be a fun project for a 3D-oriented GUI plugin, but given dev resources, better focus on functionality rather than eye candy. Gotta keep your priorities straight.

"Cool app! Can I do X?"
"No."
"Then can I do Y?"
"No, sorry."
"...Z?"
"Nope."
"Okay, what _can_ I do?"
"Not much at all, but it'll look cool while doing it."

Not really appealing.

N.

[eschwartz]

People have inquired in the past about giving calibre a facelift, I think we can all agree it doesn't meet the Apple guidelines but so far no one has volunteered to do the work.

Eye candy doesn't grow on trees, and Kovid's time has already been allocated to maintaining and expanding the featureset.

I for one would much rather we get a new Content Server with read-write access, an in-browser reader app that supports annotations, and which integrates well into systemd -- rather than eye candy which doesn't make calibre any more useful.

[CarstenF]

I simply followed this chapter in the documentation in order to get the feature the OP asked for:
http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/sub_...roups-tutorial

Why use a new field, and not simply the built-in tags field? Personally, to me it seems like the built-in fields are intended to be populated by "metadata providers". We can arbitrarily edit and overwrite them (and prevent new values from being downloaded on a per-field basis), but I still feel as if one day I might want to try out something new and would thereby accidentally overwrite the built-ins, possibly noticing the damage only much later.

(That was also my motivation in this thread. For "bookshelves" however, the solution as described in the docs seems straightforward -- it works excellently for me. )