[GUI Plugin] FanFicFare

[JimmXinu]

FYI, I've made a pull request for Kovid to consider that adds Calibre tweak settings to control the page size and margins used to generate this cover image. We'll see what he says about it.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

FYI, I've made a pull request for Kovid to consider that adds Calibre tweak settings to control the page size and margins used to generate this cover image. We'll see what he says about it.

That looks good. The only bit missing, to my mind at least, is getting a 4:3 aspect ratio. Most ereader screens have this, so it means the cover can be render on them without either distortion or letterboxing.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

Thanks for finding where the size is coming from. Do you know what else that's used for?

I wonder how difficult it would be (and how open Kovid would be) to making that size a tweakable parameter?

Re: Title page, the title page format was created for FFDL before the plugin version existed. But as you figured out, it's all very customizable.

I'm not customising it in FFF. I don't remember seeing a way to split the pages like I have. The split is done by in my personal modify plugin.

The obvious no-change solution to all of these, of course, is to create cover images using Calibre's built-in cover gen or the Generate Cover plugin. Both of which are also highly customizable.

I don't really want to do that. The image adds size to the book and the device renders my first page.

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by davidfor

I'm not customising it in FFF. I don't remember seeing a way to split the pages like I have. The split is done by in my personal modify plugin.

I assumed you'd split into a cover image and then a reduced title page. Or put in a page break--I think that's a thing you can do in epub... Yep, looks like page-break-before: always; CSS works.

That's probably not a bad solution for this whole issue either--customized title page and CSS.

Originally Posted by davidfor

I don't really want to do that. The image adds size to the book and the device renders my first page.

I thought we were talking about an image--just one that's generated by Calibre from rendering the first page of the epub.

If you're not including the generated image and letting your device render the first page, why were you being concerned about the aspect of that image fitting your device?

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

I assumed you'd split into a cover image and then a reduced title page. Or put in a page break--I think that's a thing you can do in epub... Yep, looks like page-break-before: always; CSS works.

page-break-before: always; isn't supported by all reader apps/devices.

That's probably not a bad solution for this whole issue either--customized title page and CSS.

My code basically produces the title_page.xhtml which looks like as:

<h1><a href="https://linktostory">The title</a></h1>

  <p class="titleBy">by</p>

  <p class="author"><a class="authorlink" href="https://linktoauthor">Some Author</a></p>

With appropriate classes in the stylesheet. On the device, that is readable even in the smaller thumbnail size. And doesn't look to bad in calibre.

The rest of the metadata goes into info.xhtml. That has a h2 heading so it is in the ToC, though the style doesn't show it. I also separate each metadata line to a paragraph with a style so it is spread out a little. One of my other changes is that all chapter titles are changed to h2 (though I don't remember if that is done for FFF sourced books, or one of the other places I sometimes get books from).

My plugin isn't just for FFF books. I started it a long time before that because Modify ePub didn't support replacing the stylesheet and @kiwidude didn't agree it was a good idea. Then I added some common changes that I was doing in the editor (heading level, add chapter title for some sections that didn't have them, set the language to UK or AU English when needed) and things that I was doing elsewhere (creating an identifier from the URL in the book, running Count Pages). It is highly personalised to how I want the books and the source.

I thought we were talking about an image--just one that's generated by Calibre from rendering the first page of the epub.

If you're not including the generated image and letting your device render the first page, why were you being concerned about the aspect of that image fitting your device?

I missed a bit. With the Kobo devices, the drivers can send the cover images to the device. This uses the cover in the library. There are also two main formats: epub, for which the device renders the first page as the cover, and kepub, for which the device looks for an image. With the driver that produces the latter, I have calibre send the covers so that I don't need to include them in the books when there isn't a real cover image.

[gustyeagle]

Hello, when updating from urls from email space battles there is a strange action. FFF seems to believe the story only has the post that is linked in the email, and also is a new story and adds it.

Sufficient velocity seems to work just fine though, here are some of the lines of the log.

Update
A Finely Honed Blade
ensou
Update epub completed, added 9 chapters for 54 total.
https://forums.sufficientvelocity.co...sinners.32454/

Skipped
A Finely Honed Blade
ensou
Existing epub contains 45 chapters, web site only has 1. Use Overwrite to force update.
https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/posts/13199781/

Add
Skeletal
aceofAces_AA
Download epub completed, 9 chapters.
https://forums.spacebattles.com/thre...uto-si.666766/

Add
Skeletal
aceofAces_AA
Download epub completed, 1 chapters.
https://forums.spacebattles.com/posts/62238842/

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by gustyeagle

Hello, when updating from urls from email space battles there is a strange action. FFF seems to believe the story only has the post that is linked in the email, and also is a new story and adds it.

Are you using the test version (see my sig)? It has newer code to address that.

[JimmXinu]

Okay, Kovid didn't like my tweak settings idea for addressing the cover font sizing issue. Instead, he added code to Calibre for a different solution while also suggesting another different approach based on viewport relative size units.

So, here are the suggested options for dealing with the issue raised by Anyssia.

Cover Image

Perhaps the most logical solution is to create an actual cover image. Calibre has a graphical cover generating feature as well as the Generate Cover plugin, both of which can be extensively configured and automatically called from FanFicFare.

Render Page Size

Kovid has added a feature to appear in the next version of Calibre that allows you to put a render size and margins as metadata in the html of the title page using a <meta> tag such as <meta name="calibre-html-render-data" content='{"size": "A6", "margins": [5, 0, 5, 0]}'/>

It could be included after next Calibre update in all your future downloaded title pages in FFF like so:

Spoiler:

[epub]
titlepage_start:<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
 <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
 <head>
 <title>${title} by ${author}</title>
 <link href="stylesheet.css" type="text/css" charset="UTF-8" rel="stylesheet"/>
 <meta name="calibre-html-render-data" content='{"size": "A6", "margins": [5, 0, 5, 0]}'/>
 </head>
 <body>
 <h3><a href="${storyUrl}">${title}</a> by ${authorHTML}</h3>
 <div>

But this doesn't work until the next Calibre version is out.

Viewport Relative Font Size

Kovid also pointed out that there are now CSS units that scale relative to viewport size(search for vw, vh, etc) that can be used for font size.

This has the advantage of not needing to wait for the next Calibre version to use and possibly also affecting your book reader.

It also has the disadvantage of possibly affecting your book reader. vw/vh/vmin/vmax are CSS3 and may cause problems to the point that: "Some reader programs are very finicky about CSS stylesheets and will ignore the whole sheet if there is an error. ..."

Right now, it looks like the Calibre convert to AZW3 (for Kindle readers) discards the vw/vh/vmin/vmax sizes for that reason.

It could be included right now in all your future downloaded title pages in FFF like so:

Spoiler:

titlepage_start:<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
 <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
 <head>
 <title>${title} by ${author}</title>
 <link href="stylesheet.css" type="text/css" charset="UTF-8" rel="stylesheet"/>
 <!-- meta name="calibre-html-render-data" content='{"size": "A6", "margins": [5, 0, 5, 0]}'/ -->
 </head>
 <body style="font-size: 3.3vmax;">
 <h3><a href="${storyUrl}">${title}</a> by ${authorHTML}</h3>
 <div>

Conclusion?

Right now, my favorite is the viewport relative font size.

But it does highlight that I haven't done anything in past to make it easier to selectively apply CSS to FFF's generated output. I'll probably be adding HTML class attrs to various tags in a test version shortly. Then a much shorter add_to_output_css setting could be used instead of titlepage_start.

Opinions?

[JimmXinu]

New Test Version Posted

2019-10-30
- Adding some html class attrs to epub output for ease of CSS.

That plus some additional CSS gives me covers from title page that I'm happy with:

[epub]
add_to_output_css:
 body.fff_titlepage {font-size: 3vmax;
                     margin: 1vmax;}

A while ago I said:

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

FYI, I just figured out this part is imperfect and can cause downloads to fail when login cookies expire on SB at least. I'll be looking into it.

In the meantime, restarting calibre clears the cookie cache.

I've only seen a problem occur with this once, so I think it was a fluke.

That said, the issue keeping a cookie cache is there to address, fetch_last_page feature for SB, doesn't appear to be working around what I now know to be an SB bug as well as I'd hoped. It will probably be removed (again) before the next release.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

You can change every category to have 'Fanfiction' at the start with replace_metadata:

replace_metadata:
 category=>^(.*)$=>Fanfiction.\1

Does the replace_metadata work with the tag mapper? I set the tag mapper to replace Fanfiction.Mass Effect Trilogy with Fanfiction.Mass Effect, but it didn't work. Thanks again.

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Does the replace_metadata work with the tag mapper? I set the tag mapper to replace Fanfiction.Mass Effect Trilogy with Fanfiction.Mass Effect, but it didn't work. Thanks again.

Tag mapper is not automatically called by FFF if that's what you're asking.

I looked into it about a year ago--I'll direct you to look at that because I've forgotten everything I knew about it then.

[Demanih]

please www.juicysecrets.club

[AndersW]

https://www.tgstorytime.com/ isn't pulling all the metadata. And is listing stories that are complete as in-progress.

[JimmXinu]

Story urls showing the issues, please? And maybe some details about what’s missing?

I don’t read most of the sites FFF supports and don’t know what they’re supposed to look like...

[AndersW]

The only tags I get for this one: In-Progress, Magical Gender Change, Male to Female, Transgender, Young Adult (20-26 yrs)

In-Progress is incorrect, and there should be plenty of other tags like: Corsets, High Heels, Lingerie, Masks, Sex Toys, Undies, Accident, Caught Crossdressing, Female Domination, Willing or Voluntary, Fights Change, Becomes Only Attracted to Women, Does Not Change, Comedy, Everyday Living, Mythical Setting, Romance, Slow/Gradual Change, Stuck, Bondage/S&M, Intense Violence