Testers needed for Reading Tracker plugin

[varia]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Are the books being tracked kept in a json file?

Yes. That is the rebuild change for version 2.

[CAIArchive]

Originally Posted by varia

Seeing, yes, but without a start date, books couldn't be assigned to a specific month and the graph would be empty. Unless you mean there is another way to populate monthly read without a start date ?

In the original version the tracked and finished books aren't the same. Click the KPI cards to see the search string in Calibre. The status breakdown shows Finished, Reading, TBR, Paused, and DNF, if those statuses are assigned to any of your books. Unless all tracked books were labeled finished, then yes, that is the only detail you would see in the status breakdown pie chart.

For the date column(s) - I will work if you have just a "finished date" using at least MM and YYYY in the date. It can then be split into MM (this is for the month read of course) and YYYY (for the year read). DD isnt necessarily needed IMO, except if someone wants to sort data in the tracker tab by date read ("finished date") in which having the day part would be helpful.

[varia]

Originally Posted by CAIArchive

For the date column(s) - I will work if you have just a "finished date" using at least MM and YYYY in the date. It can then be split into MM (this is for the month read of course) and YYYY (for the year read). DD isnt necessarily needed IMO, except if someone wants to sort data in the tracker tab by date read ("finished date") in which having the day part would be helpful.

Yes, I think it would populate the monthly reads with only month/year. Having the full dates also feed a statistic that tells the reader how long it took them to read a particular book. Or which books took the longest vs fastest to complete. It's not a current statistic on the dashboard right now but was one of the possible ideas to add. (I understand not everyone tracks this detailed. It is just an option).

[DNSB]

For myself, my current homebrew is using the finished date from the Kobo last read column and the finished column to display the number of books read in a month. As for how long it took to read a book? I get that from one of Kobo statistics columns fed through another column that reformats the seconds returned by my Kobo into hours, minutes, seconds. The display is as ugly as homemade sin which is why I'm hoping that the final version of your plugin will be able to do a much prettier display.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by varia

Yes. That is the rebuild change for version 2.

Then what you can do if using the reading date as the date started if there is no date started.

[varia]

Have had an opportunity to squeeze come more changes to the tracker. Added functional tweaks as well as a Challenges tab. You can select specific books from your library to add to a challenge. Some new features: reading streak, import, export, drag and drop challenges, click book to go to the book detail in Calibre, local Ollama AI support if you have it installed (it is not required and can be hidden from view).

At this point what I need to know is if users would be fine with a stand-alone plugin that does not conveniently write to your custom columns. Reason being, it cannot support all possible custom columns and parse the data needed for the dashboard statistics. Where would still be interaction with the library, eg clicking a book in the tracker would take you to the book in the library.

VariaM

[varia]

Version 2 up for testing.
I strongly recommend installing on a test Caliber (portable works well) or back up. Keep in mind I am not even amateur rank.

New:
Challenges tab, interactive with your library. Reading streak for for the daily readers. For the anti-AI folks, Ollama will not run unless you install it. You can hide that panel. For those who want to try it, phi3 model works well enough. If you need help on it, ask.

Tracker tab with reading journal, improved review writing, interactive with library. Right click to see your book in the library.

Colors: Tweaked this to remove hard code colors, so now it matches custom palettes.

This was all in development when the last version was released, so certain features were not yet implemented.

Columns: Tried half a dozen different ways to remove reliance on columns and it is a bear. You lose interaction with the library. In that sense it would be like using Openreads tracker app but as a Calibre plugin. A hybrid with columns for those who want it and no columns for those who don't, is mayhem. Anyone with more coding brains than Chatgpt, feel free to suggest ways to tackle that beast. Otherwise, highly recommended:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=372614

Translation-friendly coding: Very important, still in the works.

Still have some more tweaks to do. More stats if possible.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by varia

Version 2 up for testing.
I strongly recommend installing on a test Caliber (portable works well) or back up. Keep in mind I am not even amateur rank.

New:
Challenges tab, interactive with your library. Reading streak for for the daily readers. For the anti-AI folks, Ollama will not run unless you install it. You can hide that panel. For those who want to try it, phi3 model works well enough. If you need help on it, ask.

Tracker tab with reading journal, improved review writing, interactive with library. Right click to see your book in the library.

Colors: Tweaked this to remove hard code colors, so now it matches custom palettes.

This was all in development when the last version was released, so certain features were not yet implemented.

Columns: Tried half a dozen different ways to remove reliance on columns and it is a bear. You lose interaction with the library. In that sense it would be like using Openreads tracker app but as a Calibre plugin. A hybrid with columns for those who want it and no columns for those who don't, is mayhem. Anyone with more coding brains than Chatgpt, feel free to suggest ways to tackle that beast. Otherwise, highly recommended:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=372614

Translation-friendly coding: Very important, still in the works.

Still have some more tweaks to do. More stats if possible.

Can you please remove the AI? It is a waste of screen and disk space. AI is getting into things it doesn’t belong and this plugin is one of them. You would have a lot more happy users if AI was gone forever.

[varia]

It doesn't have AI in any way shape or form, but I hear you.
Here's the plugin with the AI panel and show/hide button removed.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by varia

It doesn't have AI in any way shape or form, but I hear you.
Here's the plugin with the AI panel and show/hide button removed.

Brilliant! This version should become the official version.

[sgmoore]

I was playing with this on a copy of my library and noticed a few issues. (Sorry for the number of points and length of this message, but I think it looks worse than it is!)

1
When I start calibre and launch this plugin the initial dashboard is split in three panels but the first (containing Tracked Books, Books Finished, Pages Read etc) is not updated until I hit refresh. The second panel (containing Status Breakdown, Type Breakdown and Ratings Breakdown) and the Monthly Reads panel are already updated without needing to hit refresh.

2
The 'Challenges' section does not really work correctly if you have more than one library. In particular if you set up a challenge in one library it stores the ids of the books and when you switch to another library it display the challenge and is presumably attempting to match using these ids. If you happen to have a book with the same id, then this incorrect book will be displayed otherwise it shows unknown.

3
If I open the plugin in my test library and then switch to another library and then back to my test library and re-open the plugin and click refresh I get the error

calibre, version 9.6.0
ERROR: Reading Tracker error: Failed to populate dashboard

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "calibre_plugins.reading_tracker.main", line 624, in _populate_dashboard
  File "calibre_plugins.reading_tracker.data", line 52, in stats_for_year
AttributeError: 'LibraryDatabase' object has no attribute 'new_api'

4
When you export a particular year, the reading breakdown shows the status values for all years.

5
There is a slight inconsistency between the dashboard and the exported files. Pages Read in the exported files includes the thousands separators but the dashboard does not. The former is preferable but takes up more room.
Also the dashboard does not display progress for all years, but the exported files do. But since the total number of books I have read is over 1000 it only has room to display the number read followed by a / symbol.

6
When the dashboard is displaying details for all years the label under the number of books finished says Books finished (year).

PS
I must say I'm impressed that this all can be done using AI/LLM.

[varia]

Originally Posted by sgmoore

I was playing with this on a copy of my library and noticed a few issues. (Sorry for the number of points and length of this message, but I think it looks worse than it is!)

1
When I start calibre and launch this plugin the initial dashboard is split in three panels but the first (containing Tracked Books, Books Finished, Pages Read etc) is not updated until I hit refresh. The second panel (containing Status Breakdown, Type Breakdown and Ratings Breakdown) and the Monthly Reads panel are already updated without needing to hit refresh.

2
The 'Challenges' section does not really work correctly if you have more than one library. In particular if you set up a challenge in one library it stores the ids of the books and when you switch to another library it display the challenge and is presumably attempting to match using these ids. If you happen to have a book with the same id, then this incorrect book will be displayed otherwise it shows unknown.

3
If I open the plugin in my test library and then switch to another library and then back to my test library and re-open the plugin and click refresh I get the error

calibre, version 9.6.0
ERROR: Reading Tracker error: Failed to populate dashboard

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "calibre_plugins.reading_tracker.main", line 624, in _populate_dashboard
  File "calibre_plugins.reading_tracker.data", line 52, in stats_for_year
AttributeError: 'LibraryDatabase' object has no attribute 'new_api'

4
When you export a particular year, the reading breakdown shows the status values for all years.

5
There is a slight inconsistency between the dashboard and the exported files. Pages Read in the exported files includes the thousands separators but the dashboard does not. The former is preferable but takes up more room.
Also the dashboard does not display progress for all years, but the exported files do. But since the total number of books I have read is over 1000 it only has room to display the number read followed by a / symbol.

6
When the dashboard is displaying details for all years the label under the number of books finished says Books finished (year).

PS
I must say I'm impressed that this all can be done using AI/LLM.

Very helpful feedback, thanks!

1. This one bit of odd behavior I meant to address several iterations ago. I will see if I can tweak it.

2-3. Likewise I will add this to the list to see how to adjust for multiple libraries.

4. Good catch. There is definitely some fuzzy maths going on there that will need tweaking.
5. Will check on this an aim to update in the next round.
6. Orphan text that used to have the actual year in parenthes. Will remove in the next update.

I was surprised it made it this far. It’s not easy though. It must have taken weeks just to get the plugin icon to show up on the toolbar. It forgets. It will claim to give complete code but then you find out the code is missing key functions. Sometimes it has the “intelligence” of a box of rocks.
Then, sometimes it gives great suggestions.
All in all, I really like the idea of having and sharing a plugin that keeps my tracked reads in Calibre, where I keep all my books.
Back to work I go. Right now working on a List tab, but will work on these fixes as well.