[GUI Plugin] FanFicFare

[ownedbycats]

Thank you

[stretch4441]

Originally Posted by Atherton25

Manually open StoriesOnline in a browser and login to the account you are using (all of them if you're using more than one). Select the classic theme (the one that the plugin is designed to read). Recently SOL has an update that forces you to select a theme, and I was getting that before I selected a theme. THe plugin can't get to the actual story until you do (thus the error).

Thank you very much, such a simple thing that I had missed. I thought that I had logged in and didn't notice the theme selection.

[John Maverick]

My reject list has almost 1500 urls, all with title, author and reason. I was thinking that, since Fanficfare can get the title and author of the stories from their site when downloading them, maybe the same can be done when adding urls to the reject list.

It would be nice if there is a checkbox with the option to get the title and author form the urls sites in the form to add rejected urls. It would be really useful when adding a lot of urls.

Thanks in advance.

[JimmXinu]

If you are rejecting something in your library you already downloaded, FFF does record the title & author (and reason). It sounds like you already know that.

When you are rejecting URLs without having downloaded them, I see it as a waste of bandwidth to go fetching the metadata just to record title/author in the reject list. You can still put a reason on them either individually or as a group.

[John Maverick]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

If you are rejecting something in your library you already downloaded, FFF does record the title & author (and reason). It sounds like you already know that.

When you are rejecting URLs without having downloaded them, I see it as a waste of bandwidth to go fetching the metadata just to record title/author in the reject list. You can still put a reason on them either individually or as a group.

I was thinking in cases that one need to add a lot of urls to reject, like 10 or 20.

I can think of 3 ways of how to add the urls with theirs titles, authors and reason of reject.

1. First download them and then select them and use the option of FFF to reject them. Then add the reason for all, or individually.
   
   Cons: But FFF need to download every story and proceed it into an ebook. If there're long stories it can take a lot of time. Is posible to make that only download one chapter of each story adding "[1]" with each url, but it would still download an produce an ebook for each story, which use more bandwidth and time than only get the metadata. Also that the ebooks produced are deleted and send to the recycle bin of the operative system (at least with Windows and Linux)
   
   
2. Second add the bulk of urls into the reject url form and click "Accept". Next go to "Modify url reject list". Go to the end of the table and manually add the title, author and reason.
   
   Cons: You have to switch between the browser and calibre to know the title and author. In the past I opened all the urls in a browser tab and one by one added the tittle, author and reason. Double checking that the 8 digit fanfic id of fanfiction.net mached on the row of the list become annoying fast.
   
   
3. The third, and the one actually use is to use the sintax to add url,title, author and reason in one go.
   
   

   http://example.com/story.php?sid=6,Title by author - Reason

   Cons: Having to carefully type all the values in the sintax.
   

I even used a snippet app that show a form with the attributes url, tittle, author and reason (you can see the form in the attached image). I use a snipped app to complete a form with 4 attributes: url, title, author and reason to generate the sintax. This is fast for a few stories. But no so much with 10 or more.

I think that if there is an option to make FFF get the titles and authors from the metadata of the site, only paste the url list, would be more easy. That only leave to add the reason of the reject. If the reason is the same for all the batch of url, then it can be added with the option of "Add this reason to all the URLs added". If each url had different reason that can be edited in "Modify url reject list". Which would be a lot better that the second option I mentioned, because instead of trying to see to what story the url was, you have the title and author filled.

I don't know the structure of FFF, so I don't know how much difficult is to get the metadata of a story in the context of reject urls. In terms effort needed to develop this feature maybe it isn't worth. In terms of bandwidth it's better than the actual option of download the stories and next reject them.

Thanks for contemplate this request of mine and your response.

[JimmXinu]

I agree with your analysis: If you are rejecting story URLs and insist on having title and author on each, those are your choices and their drawbacks.

But I'm not convinced adding groups of story URLs to the Reject list is something that happens that often. Your own initial post seemed to indicate that your reject list was built from deleting downloaded books, because you point out they all have title/author.

And when someone does want to reject entire groups of story URLs at once, I assume that there's going to be a common reason.

For example, rejecting all stories from a particular series from an author you follow, you can put in just the story URLs and set the common reason at the bottom of the dialog as something like "XYZ series by ABC - just not one I care about". It's a combo box specifically so you can customize it even beyond letting you edit the list of reasons in the drop down.

Looking at the 'Add Reject URLs' dialog box, I see it is not clearly indicated that you can input just story URLs which can all be given the same Reason using the comb box at the bottom of the dialog.

[John Maverick]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

But I'm not convinced adding groups of story URLs to the Reject list is something that happens that often. Your own initial post seemed to indicate that your reject list was built from deleting downloaded books, because you point out they all have title/author.

To be honest less than 10% of those my reject list is from deleting downloaded books. I use FFF since two years ago and more of the 90% of the urls have the titles and author put with the second and third method that I mentioned. A.k.a manually typing the title and author for every url.

And, while no so common, when I want to add almost all of the fanfics from an author who has a over 100 or 200, is not uncommon that I want to add 10 or 20 of those in the reject list.

Call me lazy, but after manually adding almost 1.5 of titles and authors I would prefer if FFF can take care of that. Even when I only need to add a single entry

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

And when someone does want to reject entire groups of story URLs at once, I assume that there's going to be a common reason.

At least in my case, the more common reason is that I don't know the original series, franchise, etc. But I not only put that as reason, I also add the name of the series, just to know in case in the future I care about the series in question.

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

Looking at the 'Add Reject URLs' dialog box, I see it is not clearly indicated that you can input just story URLs which can all be given the same Reason using the comb box at the bottom of the dialog.

I know that is possible to assign the same reason to all the story URLs in the dialog box.

Like always, thanks for all.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

And when someone does want to reject entire groups of story URLs at once, I assume that there's going to be a common reason.

For what it's worth, I put any fanfics that've been deleted from the website on the reject URLs list. I check all my #fanficstatus:Abandoned fics every few months in the off-chance that any of them have been revived. No point in having FFF check those ones just so it can go "yup, still deleted."

[endeni]

Hi, I was wondering if there was a way to automatically convert a series file, once downloaded with FanFicFare. It's something I've always done manually in order to get the cover created with the "Generate Cover" plugin to "stick", by converting the epub into another epub, and it occurred to me that perhaps there may be a way to automate that process?
Any help would be appreciated.

[JimmXinu]

(multi-reply)

Originally Posted by John Maverick

And, while no so common, when I want to add almost all of the fanfics from an author who has a over 100 or 200, is not uncommon that I want to add 10 or 20 of those in the reject list.
...
At least in my case, the more common reason is that I don't know the original series, franchise, etc. But I not only put that as reason, I also add the name of the series, just to know in case in the future I care about the series in question.

Sorry, I'm still not convinced. You're already putting info in the reason, you can throw the author in, too. Why would you need the title for something you don't want to read?

From what I can see, this request isn't about useful, it's about completionism. And that's not worth the non-trivial effort it would take to implement.

Originally Posted by endeni

Hi, I was wondering if there was a way to automatically convert a series file, once downloaded with FanFicFare. It's something I've always done manually in order to get the cover created with the "Generate Cover" plugin to "stick", by converting the epub into another epub, and it occurred to me that perhaps there may be a way to automate that process?

Look at FanFicFare's settings, on the Basic tab there's both an option 'Post Processing Options' to 'Automatically Convert' (what you asked for) and on the Generate Cover tab there's an option for 'Inject/update cover inside EPUB' (what you want).

And instead of Convert, you can update covers inside ebook files with Calibre's Polish or (epub only) the Modify Epub plugin.

[John Maverick]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

(multi-reply)

From what I can see, this request isn't about useful, it's about completionism. And that's not worth the non-trivial effort it would take to implement.

I was hoping that implementing this would be easy. Since it isn't don't worry about it.

Thanks for contemplating my suggestion

PD: Where did FFF store the list of rejected URLs? And in what format? I would want to search in if it's possible, like in a json file.

[ownedbycats]

Also, where is personal.ini kept? In case it ever needs to be restored from a backup.

[JimmXinu]

In the preferences table of the library database using Calibre's db.prefs.set_namespaced() interface.

Backing up a library will also backup all your FFF settings. See also 'View library preferences' under the Other tab of FFF's config.

[ownedbycats]

So FFF settings are library-specific?

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

So FFF settings are library-specific?

Yes. Always have been. Well, since at least mid-2012. But I'm pretty sure even before I moved the settings into the DB.

It surprises me that you didn't already know that. I guess the only particular mention is in the first post where it says Options now stored inside the Library rather than an external JSON file.