[GUI Plugin] Reading List

[Firedancer885]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

What happens if you rearrange your toolbar to put some other menu in that place. or if you add another plugin with a menu. Do they all have this issue or is it specific to this one particular plugin? Certainly no-one else has reported an issue with this plugin and there are linux users of it out there. At a guess I would blame some library/OS specific issue on your machine, but linux really isn't my thing nor will it ever be.

Yeuch Just managed to recreate the bug. I minimized Calibre to the sidebar and when I maximized it again, the popup menus "hid". Sorry, I really thought the reading list popup was the only one with this problem.

FanFictionDownloader, Temp Marker and Reading List all have popups, and I just realized all three display this error. Both the popup menus and the submenus in the context menu disappear.

Next step, Calibre bug report, because this is definitely a Calibre bug. Nearly all the context menu submenus disappeared.

Again, sorry for the bother.

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by Firedancer885

Yeuch Just managed to recreate the bug. I minimized Calibre to the sidebar and when I maximized it again, the popup menus "hid". Sorry, I really thought the reading list popup was the only one with this problem.

FanFictionDownloader, Temp Marker and Reading List all have popups, and I just realized all three display this error. Both the popup menus and the submenus in the context menu disappear.

It may or may not be related, but I remember a user determining that minimizing Calibre to the systray in Windows would kill a running FFDL progress bar dialog. But not background jobs.

[Firedancer885]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

It may or may not be related, but I remember a user determining that minimizing Calibre to the systray in Windows would kill a running FFDL progress bar dialog. But not background jobs.

Kovid told me: "More like its a Ubuntu problem, not a calibre one. Probably related to whatever hackery they do to implement their unified menubar in unity. I cannot replicate this on my three linux distros, windows xp, vista, 7 and os x."

So I need to remember not to minimize Calibre.

[JimmXinu]

On the upside, that's great developer support.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Firedancer885

Kovid told me: "More like its a Ubuntu problem, not a calibre one. Probably related to whatever hackery they do to implement their unified menubar in unity. I cannot replicate this on my three linux distros, windows xp, vista, 7 and os x."

So I need to remember not to minimize Calibre.

I would call Unity butchery

[gwe]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

@gwe - the lists are stored in the "Reading list.json" file in your plugins subfolder (Preferences -> Misc -> Open calibre configuration directory).

Other than manually syncing that file between your machines the only other suggestion I have is to make sure that calibre configuration folder is in a network location that can be shared by the two machines. Then alter the CALIBRE_CONFIG_DIRECTORY environment variable on the machines to point to that new location. Note that just like sharing a library you would have to be careful to not have calibre open on both machines at once if you do this, and it will share *all* of your settings which may not be desirable. For instance if things like dialog positions are serialized you might have issues when you try to open on your smaller laptop screen etc.

Just like calibre isn't designed to be used from multiple machines, neither are plugin settings I'm afraid. The only other possibility is to change the plugins to store their settings in the library itself - though there are always some settings/plugins that work across libraries, and people who "rebuild" libraries would lose all their plugin data too. There are performance implications of putting the data into calibre's library, and there may not even be an appropriate place in the library structure to put it.

These are the "hard" questions that I avoided by storing the list data locally outside of the database. However with Kovid making efforts to rewrite the calibre back-end for multi-user use I can forsee you are not going to be the last person to hit this issue. So for this particular plugin I think I need to change the design to support this - I'll take the technical questions I have around that to the Development forum rather than this thread...

Thank you for your help.

I'll try to sync the data file between the systems

[kiwidude]

@gwe - Kovid and chaley have made some supporting changes in calibre, so when the next release comes out I will be able to put out a new version which will store the reading lists in the library database. So the file sync will not be necessary at that point, things should just "work" (provided you don't leave calibre open on the other machine).

[elainem]

Hi I tried to install this plugin today and got the following error message:
calibre, version 0.8.23
ERROR: Install Plugin Failed: A problem occurred while installing this plugin. This plugin will now be uninstalled. Please post the error message in details below into the forum thread for this plugin and restart Calibre.

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages/calibre/gui2/dialogs/plugin_updater.py", line 731, in _install_clicked
File "site-packages/calibre/gui2/preferences/plugins.py", line 385, in check_for_add_to_toolbars
File "site-packages/calibre/customize/__init__.py", line 539, in load_actual_plugin
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'ReadingListAction'


Can anyone help me with what went wrong?

[kiwidude]

@elainem welcome to MobileRead. This sort of error usually comes about due to not restarting calibre after installing the plugin. I see you are also using quite an old version of calibre. Try updating to the latest version and install again, making sure you restart calibre after installing a plugin.

[kiwidude]

Changes in this release:

• Now requires calibre 0.8.57
• Store list contents in the calibre database rather than a json file, to allow reuse from different computers (not simultaneously!)
• Add a support option to the "Other" tab allowing viewing the plugin data stored in the database
• Remove code that supported upgrading from earlier than 1.2.0 of this plugin.

I've got a number of plugin updates that will be released today based around calibre 0.8.57, taking advantage of a new feature to store plugin settings inside the calibre library. The benefit of this is for users that store their library in a shared network location and use calibre from multiple machines (though never at the same time - that limitation hasn't changed!). Your plugin configuration settings which are specific to each library (such as custom column names, book exemptions, reading lists etc) will be automatically kept in sync when calibre is next opened on each machine.

Specifically for this plugin it means that your reading lists will now be stored inside the calibre library, allowing you to make changes/additions or even sync from different computers without losing the integrity of the lists.

[GeckoFriend]

I updated this plugin today and it no longer works. I had my list set to sync when the device is connected and auto populate a column. When I connected it didn't sync and clicking sync now didn't work. No error message, just nothing happened.

I checked the customize menu and found that "Sync to this device as soon as its connected" is grayed out and no longer checked. "Clear this list after a sync" is grayed out and checked. Neither of these options can be changed.

I was able to manually clear the old list and add books to it.

I did restart calibre after updating plugins.

Bug or something I inadvertently screwed up?

[kiwidude]

It is all working fine for me. Those checkboxes will be greyed out if you have set your list type to "Auto populate list from books on the device", and would also explain why clicking sync now etc would do nothing.

[GeckoFriend]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

It is all working fine for me. Those checkboxes will be greyed out if you have set your list type to "Auto populate list from books on the device", and would also explain why clicking sync now etc would do nothing.

Until yesterday, I plugged in my Sony and the column auto-populated. After I added and/or removed books I clicked Sync Now and the column changed to reflect the additions and/or removals.

What has changed that the plugin no longer works that way? What do I need to do to have it work this way again?

[kiwidude]

*Nothing* has been changed in the plugin behaviour for how it works with lists. And like I said it works fine for me - as expected lists were migrated into the database in the same state they were in the file previously and no settings were changed. All that was changed is where the location of the list configuration is stored, not how it is processed.

Now unless anyone else also reports the same issue that means something has changed in your list setup - be it related to the database, the column, or the list configuration.

If you want me to help you need to give me some details - such as a screenshot of your list configuration. You can also switch to the "Other" tab and click on the "View library preferences" and attach those as a txt file to a post.

[GeckoFriend]

Attached are the screenshots. The column and list configuration haven't changed for probably 3 months. The structure of the library hasn't changed if that's what you mean by database.

I have no idea what any of the "View library preferences" means or where they come from.