[GUI Plugin] FanFicFare

[Leedie]

Hi!

Can you tell if it's possible to use FanFicFare to search&replace text in the body of fic? When it's downloaded, for example?

Such as replacing "labour" with "labor". Or, as another example, I read a lot of fics from Chinese fandoms and there are multiple technically correct translations of the same characters' names, and I would like to make all fics spell them the same way.

I already replaced all I need in metadata (using add_to_replace_metadata, FanFicFare was amazing at normalizing ship names across all fics!) but I'm having trouble doing it in the fics' text itself.

I can do that with Calibre's native Search&Replace, but it works one fic at a time and I might need tens or hundreds of fics edited at once, so doing it that way would be pretty time-consuming.

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by Leedie

Can you tell if it's possible to use FanFicFare to search&replace text in the body of fic? When it's downloaded, for example?

...

I can do that with Calibre's native Search&Replace, but it works one fic at a time and I might need tens or hundreds of fics edited at once, so doing it that way would be pretty time-consuming.

It's been asked for before, but I've always been very hesitant to provide such a feature because it's so easy to shoot yourself in the foot, especially when you can't see the changes immediately and you don't have an Undo feature.

I've used the Action Chains plugin to call the Editor Chains Editor plugin to do saved find & replace on multiple books at once.

I honestly think that's a better option than re-running FFF on 10-100s of books.

[Leedie]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

It's been asked for before, but I've always been very hesitant to provide such a feature because it's so easy to shoot yourself in the foot, especially when you can't see the changes immediately and you don't have an Undo feature.

I've used the Action Chains plugin to call the Editor Chains Editor plugin to do saved find & replace on multiple books at once.

I honestly think that's a better option than re-running FFF on 10-100s of books.

Thank you for the response!

That does seem to be the most efficient efficient way of doing so. If anyone else is not that tech-savvy and need additional help setting a mass word replacer up, here's capink explaining what needs to be done step-by-step with an example replacer (labour->labor) file attached, it was really helpful in understanding how to set everything up.

While I'm here, please accept my most sincere thanks for making and supporting this plugin. I love archiving things for personal use, and this has been literally priceless for me. Let you always have never-ending flow of fics that are right to your interests and all the time in the world to indulge in them!

[MidwestJen]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

Default setting for AO3 is slow_down_sleep_time:2

Does it help if that's doubled?

Sorry, I needed to wait until I had a few days worth stacked up in order to test it. I had one 429 error after adding this to my personal ini at 4. So it may help a bit. I may try 6 in a few more days to see if that helps if AO3 hasn't fixed the issue on their end.

[John Maverick]

Today I updated the browser I use for the browser cache to download. Since then when trying to updating or download a new story from ff.net I get this error:

Browser Cache Failed to Load with error ''utf-8' codec can't decode bytes in position 0-1: invalid continuation byte'

This happens with every url I tried. This is one of them:

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4754499/1/To-See-You-Again

Did something changed between version in Chromium in how the cache is stored or work?

My setup is the following:
OS: Linux Mint 22.0 x86_64
Calibre version: 7.24 (Official install from Calibre website, not the distro repository)
FanFicFare version: v4.41.0

Chromium versions:
Before update: 131.0.6778.264~linuxmint1+xia
After update: 132.0.6834.83~linuxmint1+xia

Somebody has an idea of what is happening?

Like always thanks in advance.

[JimmXinu]

I'm not seeing that problem with Chrome 132 on Win10. But that uses the Blockfile cache, mac/linux tend to use the Simplefile cache. I need to borrow a computer to test that.

Can you produce a debug log to share? Calibre Preferences dropdown -> Restart in Debug mode.

[John Maverick]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

I'm not seeing that problem with Chrome 132 on Win10. But that uses the Blockfile cache, mac/linux tend to use the Simplefile cache. I need to borrow a computer to test that.

Can you produce a debug log to share? Calibre Preferences dropdown -> Restart in Debug mode.

Here is the debug log.

[JimmXinu]

On a borrowed mac using SimpleCache, I do see this issue, too.

It looks like the cache file header may have changed again. We saw this happen back in Aug 2024.

Still investigating.

[JimmXinu]

New Test Version Posted

2025-01-22
- Browser Simple Cache adding orig resp time field & removing browser_cache_simple_header_old option.

To my astonishment, I actually found the Chrome code change this time:

https://www.gitclear.com/open_repos/...e/132.0.6825.0
Search for "[v8 code cache] Fix timestamp mismatch issue"
https://www.gitclear.com/open_repos/..._file_12568188

This version:

• Looks at the extra_flags field to determine if there's an original_response_time to read or not, and;
• Removes the browser_cache_simple_header_old back compat setting from August 2024.

So this should be back compatible to Chrome 131 etc, but not to versions before last August.

If someone on mac or linux using Chrome who hasn't updated to Chrome v132 yet could test this and confirm it works, I would appreciate it.

[John Maverick]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

New Test Version Posted

2025-01-22
- Browser Simple Cache adding orig resp time field & removing browser_cache_simple_header_old option.

Browser cache is working for me with Chromium v132.

I hadn't tested downgrading Chromium to v131 to see if the previous version works with this test version of FFF, but at least I wanted to give you the confirmation that is solved for the actual version. I'm sorry I can't help you with that. Supposedly, downgrading a package shouldn't give you problems. But it can happen and is something I want to avoid if possible.

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

If someone on mac or linux using Chrome who hasn't updated to Chrome v132 yet could test this and confirm it works, I would appreciate it.

But I'm willing to give a try if nobody test this in a few days.

Again thank you for your fast response and help. You're awesome JimmXinu!!!

[JimmXinu]

New Test Version Posted

2025-01-23
- adapter_fanfictalkcom: Update domain name & match pattern
- Remove site: starskyhutcharchive.net, moved to starskyandhutcharchive.net, not eFiction. Nobody's missed it.
- Remove site: fastnovels.net - Blog only now, no stories.
- Remove site: www.novelupdates.cc - Domain parked somewhere sketchy
- Remove site: ponyfictionarchive.net - Moved to AO3
- adapter_wwwaneroticstorycom: Update for site changes.
- Re-alphabetize defaults.ini

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

- Re-alphabetize defaults.ini

What does this mean?

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

What does this mean?

I run this script to put all the ini site sections in the defaults.ini files in alphabetical order for ease of finding.

[wildfire070]

This may be a silly question but when downloading with FFF, does it save the data in temp files somewhere? Normally when I download, I'm able to run the update and click to proceed with updating my library immediately. But I had a situation yesterday where I ran the download but had to step away from my computer for several hours before I could click on the "Proceed to updating your library?" popup. Would any data from the download be lost and I would need to rerun that download again?

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by wildfire070

This may be a silly question but when downloading with FFF, does it save the data in temp files somewhere? Normally when I download, I'm able to run the update and click to proceed with updating my library immediately. But I had a situation yesterday where I ran the download but had to step away from my computer for several hours before I could click on the "Proceed to updating your library?" popup. Would any data from the download be lost and I would need to rerun that download again?

Every time you start Calibre, it creates a temp directory for that session. When you run an FFF download or update, FFF creates a temp dir inside that Calibre session temp dir.

FFF deletes its temp dir when the download/update is done (ie, after you click "Proceed"), and Calibre deletes its temp dir when closed.

(If you're curious, you can see where FFF wrote the temp files in the background Jobs log.)

I've never heard of anyone having the temp files deleted. It's somewhat common to have large downloads run for hours, as is leaving to come back the next day to click "Proceed". So I expect I would have heard.

You'd have to look at where Calibre puts the temp dir and your specific OS settings for cleaning up temp files to know for certain. If you do ever have troubles with that, you can change where Calibre puts the temp dir.