Plugin ideas... add yours here

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by wan1967

The plugin I created attempts to normalize titles to reduce these Japan-specific problems and minimize export errors. I am not sure whether there is demand for such a plugin outside of Japan, so I am wondering whether it is worth publishing. What do you think?

While I would not use that plugin, there are likely a number of people who would find it useful. I am wondering where this plugin would be applied. Using send to device, exporting to disc? Are you getting the title from calibre's metadata store? Correcting it in the ePub's file .opf from calibre's metadata?

[un_pogaz]

Originally Posted by wan1967

The plugin I created attempts to normalize titles to reduce these Japan-specific problems and minimize export errors. I am not sure whether there is demand for such a plugin outside of Japan, so I am wondering whether it is worth publishing. What do you think?

The plugin Quality Check contain a action "Normalize the fields" to convert the values into their canonical form defined by the Unicode Standard, aka merge and reorders diacritics.
Certainly what you were looking for.

[Ma'am-I-Am]

Originally Posted by Baldur333

Idea for Plugin (Vision Impaired MOD):

Text to Speech plugin for any and every language.

This sounds like a really big ask - *any* and *every* language? Isn't there something like 7,000-8,000 languages in use today?

[wan1967]

My plugin is designed to modify the title field in the metadata managed by Calibre.
Therefore, it does not alter the imported content itself. If that were changed, Calibre would no longer be able to manage it properly.
By keeping it this way, when exporting to EPUB from Calibre, if the filename includes the metadata title field, it becomes useful for locating the desired book on devices such as tablets, and also convenient for viewer software to display titles in an orderly manner.
For example, in the case of a famous Japanese manga:
ＯＮＥ　ＰＩＥＣＥ　１巻
is normalized as:
ONE_PIECE1
This normalization process:
- Converts full-width alphabets into half-width alphabets
- Replaces spaces between alphabets with underscores
- Normalizes “１巻” into “1”

[wan1967]

Thank you for introducing my plugin.
The plugin I created is not just about simple Unicode normalization.
For example, take a famous Japanese manga title:
ＯＮＥ　ＰＩＥＣＥ　１巻
If you only apply Unicode normalization and convert the alphabets to half-width, it becomes:
ONE PIECE 1
This state is fine within Calibre’s metadata database, but I do not want filenames with spaces when exporting to EPUB.
Although Calibre’s export settings can handle spaces, in that case it becomes troublesome to do anything more complex. For me, it is easier to manage if the metadata database itself has already been corrected in advance.

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by wan1967

My plugin is designed to modify the title field in the metadata managed by Calibre.
...
This normalization process:
- Converts full-width alphabets into half-width alphabets
- Replaces spaces between alphabets with underscores
- Normalizes “１巻” into “1”

So your intention is to normalize to basically ASCII less spaces on output?

Honestly, that sounds like Calibre's Save to disk settings should already cover it:

[varia]

This is probably a big ask, but here goes.
I would love to see a plugin that gives reading journal features similar to what online reading journals/trackers have. Goodreads, The Storygraph, Hardcover App, etc, gives reading statistics such as number of books/pages read, percentage of read books that were X genre, rating, mood, etc. At the end of the year the statistics are rolled up into a really nice graphical wrap-up, showing the covers, charts, etc. I can envision this in Calibre, even with DIY templates for the wrap-up.

I do use the available reading plugins, and I am very appreciative of the work that goes into those.

If one plugin can handle reading journal features and output a nice epub with the stats, that would truly be amazing. Please and thank you, if such a thing is possible.

[Ma'am-I-Am]

But is Calibre meant to be a reading app? I use the viewer to check books for various reasons, and to read the occasional comic because I don't have a reader for that, but I thought it was mainly for library management.

[Comfy.n]

Originally Posted by varia

This is probably a big ask, but here goes.
I would love to see a plugin that gives reading journal features similar to what online reading journals/trackers have. Goodreads, The Storygraph, Hardcover App, etc, gives reading statistics such as number of books/pages read, percentage of read books that were X genre, rating, mood, etc. At the end of the year the statistics are rolled up into a really nice graphical wrap-up, showing the covers, charts, etc. I can envision this in Calibre, even with DIY templates for the wrap-up.

I do use the available reading plugins, and I am very appreciative of the work that goes into those.

If one plugin can handle reading journal features and output a nice epub with the stats, that would truly be amazing. Please and thank you, if such a thing is possible.

Originally Posted by Ma'am-I-Am

But is Calibre meant to be a reading app? I use the viewer to check books for various reasons, and to read the occasional comic because I don't have a reader for that, but I thought it was mainly for library management.

I agree but calibre can be anything. It provides a wide range of tools and powerful framework for infinite possibilites. (hence the name calibre, on one of its interpretations)

I believe @thiago.ecc 's Reading Goal does that already?

[varia]

Originally Posted by Ma'am-I-Am

But is Calibre meant to be a reading app? I use the viewer to check books for various reasons, and to read the occasional comic because I don't have a reader for that, but I thought it was mainly for library management.

I don't use Calibre for reading. I use it for library management as well. I'm not referring to reading specifically, but journaling/tracking in order to have a report you review. A lot of readers do this is the many online reading trackers (Goodreads, Storygraph, etc), but those systems have their own issues. There are plugins that already do some of what I mentioned (see plugins already in place: Reading Goal, Reading List, Count Pages), but not as a comprehensive tracker.
I hope that explanation is clear.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Ma'am-I-Am

But is Calibre meant to be a reading app? I use the viewer to check books for various reasons, and to read the occasional comic because I don't have a reader for that, but I thought it was mainly for library management.

All of the Above.

Manager
Editor
Converter
Viewer

It does all these well and they are integrated when used from the Library view.
Viewer and Editor can be used without the Library being loaded.

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by varia

This is probably a big ask, but here goes.
I would love to see a plugin that gives reading journal features similar to what online reading journals/trackers have. Goodreads, The Storygraph, Hardcover App, etc, gives reading statistics such as number of books/pages read, percentage of read books that were X genre, rating, mood, etc. At the end of the year the statistics are rolled up into a really nice graphical wrap-up, showing the covers, charts, etc. I can envision this in Calibre, even with DIY templates for the wrap-up.

This is close to something I have also wanted but not had time to implement myself. Though not to the extent you have described of generating an epub, but of just being able to bring up some nice graphs for the year of books/words/pages, and be able to compare with previous years. Yes I have/use Goodreads, but that doesn't do a good job of comparing years nor use info on how books are tagged in my calibre library.

With respect to thiago's plugin it didn't hit the right notes for my use case, from memory the one time I looked at it was too tightly focused on reading goals and reading progress % which is not what I am after. Maybe it is more flexible nowadays, I haven't looked again. I just want to use common columns like tags, pages/word counts and a #lastread type column.

Which also highlights the other flaw with such a "simplified" use case plugin, that #lastread is not going to work for someone who re-reads books a lot, as your statistics for previous years will be incorrect. Something I personally can live with given how infrequently I re-read but others may rant about the limitation.

Add in my lack of time and the fact that writing this sort of thing in a python plugin is not my first choice and it all just fell into the too hard basket.

[varia]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

This is close to something I have also wanted but not had time to implement myself. Though not to the extent you have described of generating an epub, but of just being able to bring up some nice graphs for the year of books/words/pages, and be able to compare with previous years. Yes I have/use Goodreads, but that doesn't do a good job of comparing years nor use info on how books are tagged in my calibre library.

After many years of using Goodreads I jumped ship because of these limitations and lack of development. If I remember well, their end of year wrap up doesn't use charts or graphs at all.

Originally Posted by kiwidude

With respect to thiago's plugin it didn't hit the right notes for my use case, from memory the one time I looked at it was too tightly focused on reading goals and reading progress % which is not what I am after. Maybe it is more flexible nowadays, I haven't looked again. I just want to use common columns like tags, pages/word counts and a #lastread type column.

I use that plugin and a couple others to get some of the data. With Reading Goal, statistics show books read by month and by genre. It can show custom challenges side by side so you may be able to see number of books read over several years. Using several plugins isn't ideal, but in the absence of a comprehensive option I try to make do for the time being.

Originally Posted by kiwidude

Add in my lack of time and the fact that writing this sort of thing in a python plugin is not my first choice and it all just fell into the too hard basket.

I can understand that. To my non-techie mind it sounds like a lot.
I wonder if a viable alternative would be to export specific column data to then compile into a templated spreadsheet? I've seen some really detailed spreadsheet-format reading trackers that have the benefit of filtering. While it would be nice to keep everything in Calibre, I understand sometimes complexity requires a different approach.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by varia

. . .
I wonder if a viable alternative would be to export specific column data to then compile into a templated spreadsheet? I've seen some really detailed spreadsheet-format reading trackers that have the benefit of filtering. While it would be nice to keep everything in Calibre, I understand sometimes complexity requires a different approach.

You can export column data to a CSV file via the Create Catalog tool, which can be added to any toolbar or menu, it is also accessible via the Conversion drop down menu.



The 'really detailed spreadsheet-format reading trackers' can probably read a CSV file.

BR

[varia]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

You can export column data to a CSV file via the Create Catalog tool, which can be added to any toolbar or menu, it is also accessible via the Conversion drop down menu.

Attachment 220482

The 'really detailed spreadsheet-format reading trackers' can probably read a CSV file.

BR

Didn't notice the CSV export function before, so thanks. I will check this out in the meantime.