Remembering "interesting" books

[kaufman]

I had an idea today that I wanted to suggest. I was at the movie the Martian and there were about 25 minutes of trailers. Three of the trailers were based on books that I happen to have in my book library. I know this because I browsed through my library and checked while the trailers were playing (never during the movie).

When I got home, I would only remember one of the three books.

What I was thinking was that it would be nice if there was a way in CC to see the most recent book detail pages I had opened. This could be done with a new sort called "Date Viewed" or perhaps a menu item called "Recently Viewed".

The menu item might be a little better, because its more a stand alone action (what books have I recently looked at) then a new sort I might want to apply for an extended time. Either way would be a nice addition.

Thoughts?

[chaley]

Originally Posted by kaufman

What I was thinking was that it would be nice if there was a way in CC to see the most recent book detail pages I had opened. This could be done with a new sort called "Date Viewed" or perhaps a menu item called "Recently Viewed".

The menu item might be a little better, because its more a stand alone action (what books have I recently looked at) then a new sort I might want to apply for an extended time. Either way would be a nice addition.

Thoughts?

Interesting idea, but I wonder if there isn't a more general solution. It seems that what you want to do is "mark" books as interesting for some reason. This would be done as a check box in book details. At some later time you would ask to see marked books, something that could be done using the grouping drawer. You could sort them as you like. You could also long-press the mark group then group in other ways, although I suspect that this isn't something people would do.

The downside of the "mark" is that there would be immediate demand to sync it back to calibre, something I don't want to do. The CC-to-calibre sync process is already too slow. The sort idea would not have this problem.

A mark feature would also require a "clear all marks" operation. That would be easy to implement. The question is "where to put it?" I suspect adding it both to the book details menu and to Settings / Other is the right thing to do.

Both options would require a dreaded database upgrade.

I am not sure which (sort or mark) is the right way to go, or even if either should be implemented.

[kaufman]

That sounds very nteresting, but the first thing I would ask for is actually an auto mark when I looked at the details and sort them by date marked and clear all marks.

It's actually also a very big job that does a ton more than my original idea. Which isn't bad, but if my original idea is interesting at all, I may have come up with a simpler way to implement it. What i was thinking about was perhaps a function just like the widgets that keep track of the last books opened. I beleive that didn't require a database change because you limit it to a small number (20?) of books. If you did the same storage for books looked at, you wouldn't need a database change and no one would ask you to sync it to calibre. Then if you also added an way to look at the list in cc, I would be all set.

I would prefer this within cc, because my next step after looking at the list is to look at details again,not to open the book.

[BetterRed]

Calibre has a Marked Books feature, by design its a transient attribute that does not survive a program restart. If CC introduced a different Marked Books feature it could be confusing- especially if it persisted.

One the other hand, the concept of Recently Read is well understood, indeed the calibre ebook-reader has such a feature.

BR

[chaley]

Originally Posted by kaufman

That sounds very nteresting, but the first thing I would ask for is actually an auto mark when I looked at the details and sort them by date marked and clear all marks.

It's actually also a very big job that does a ton more than my original idea. Which isn't bad, but if my original idea is interesting at all, I may have come up with a simpler way to implement it.
[SNIP]
I would prefer this within cc, because my next step after looking at the list is to look at details again,not to open the book.

So, order is as important as existence, which means that a boolean mark won't cut it. If marks are ordered, then why does one need Clear All? Simply to clean up?

I understand the suggestion as being "capture the last N books that had their details opened, including their order". Capturing book details visits is easier using the same technique as capturing opening the book, but unfortunately the rest of it is hard. Database access is built deep into book list/grid display. There is currently no way to display a list of books, sorted or otherwise, without getting that information from the database. Of course that could be changed, but doing so would be quite risky (a parallel mechanism) and a lot of work.

It would be easy to show the info in a widget, but it wouldn't be easy to have a tap on the widget open book details. And in any event that would be weird.

Assuming that the info is stored in the DB, then the existing mechanisms could be used. A book is considered "marked" if it has a non-null marked date, making that into a group similar to "Read". The list could be sorted by that date by adding a "Date marked" to the sorting drawer. Checking the box in book details would store the date, not the boolean. And this still leaves us with the "request to sync" problem.

Another approach similar to your first request would be to store the date book details was opened in the db, then add a sort that does the obvious thing. The sort could be named "Date accessed (CC)" or some such. This avoids check boxes and grouping, at the cost of a significant restriction in usefulness. It also probably avoids the requests to sync the info. And it is not hard to build.

I will keep thinking about this. I would want some evidence that the function would be useful to more than a handful of people.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Calibre has a Marked Books feature, by design its a transient attribute that does not survive a program restart. If CC introduced a different Marked Books feature it could be confusing- especially if it persisted.

One the other hand, the concept of Recently Read is well understood, indeed the calibre ebook-reader has such a feature.

BR

My use of the word "Marked" might have been unfortunate. A CC "mark" would be more like a built-in yes/no column, or perhaps better a built-in date. A better word might be "Accessed" and "Sort by accessed".

[kaufman]

Originally Posted by chaley

So, order is as important as existence, which means that a boolean mark won't cut it. If marks are ordered, then why does one need Clear All? Simply to clean up?

If marks are ordered,then I dont need a clear all. The clear all was just for if marks are just marks.

Originally Posted by chaley

Another approach similar to your first request would be to store the date book details was opened in the db, then add a sort that does the obvious thing. The sort could be named "Date accessed (CC)" or some such. This avoids check boxes and grouping, at the cost of a significant restriction in usefulness. It also probably avoids the requests to sync the info. And it is not hard to build.

That was my first thought on how to do it, but I (incorrrctly) thought the widget way was easier. A new sort would perfectly suit me.

Originally Posted by chaley

I will keep thinking about this. I would want some evidence that the function would be useful to more than a handful of people.

Well, I can't promise you that, but I would use it a lot, so that's one.

[chaley]

I went ahead and built something along the lines of the sort solution. It requires a DB upgrade, but not a complicated one. It will be in the next beta.

Whenever you go to book details, CC stores the time in the DB. It is called the "Accessed Date". You can sort by this date (new sort "Date accessed (CC)" and add it to the book list in one of the 4 customizable information boxes. Book details shows you the last date/time accessed, something marginally more useful than showing the current date/time, which is to what the accessed date has been set because you are in book details.

[kaufman]

Thanks. I really appreciate your efforts.

One question/suggestion. What is the default value for the field going to be? I would vote for "Date (Calibre)" as that sort of makes sense (When was I last interested in this book?), but NULL might make sense as well.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by kaufman

One question/suggestion. What is the default value for the field going to be? I would vote for "Date (Calibre)" as that sort of makes sense (When was I last interested in this book?), but NULL might make sense as well.

The default is "0", a timestamp before all others. This is better than NULL because sorting non-NULL values is well understood. It is also a default that makes initialization easy and fast.

[kaufman]

Works for me.

Thanks again.