Version 4.7 sent to AppStore (BookOrbit, Calibre virtual libraries and more)

[petrjahoda]

■ New features
- Keyboard support on iPad. Arrows, Space, Page Up and Page Down turn pages in every reader, and a menu bar puts the tabs, Search, Import from Files and the whole Book menu on Command shortcuts. Hold Command in a book to see the list.
- BookOrbit. Connect a BookOrbit server from the Library ••• menu, download its books, and keep progress, highlights, notes and bookmarks in step in both directions. Your reading sessions go to its statistics.
- Calibre virtual libraries. The title of the Calibre Books sheet is now a menu that shows one virtual library from your server. When you sync, you pick which of them become collections.
- Filter by author. The library filter sheet gains an Authors section, a searchable list with a count for every author, where you include or exclude any of them.
- Audiobooks from Calibre. M4B, M4A, MP3, AAC and FLAC now download from a Calibre server, and an Audiobooks only filter finds them. A book that also has an EPUB or PDF still downloads that.
- Single sign-on for Grimmory. A server that signs its users in through an identity provider now offers a Sign in button in the connection sheet.
- Dim only the book. Settings > Reading > Reader Screen gains Brightness Applies To, set to Whole Device or This App Only. On This App Only the slider on the screen edge dims the page instead of the device.

■ Improvements
- The library, Home, search and statistics are faster.
- Books open faster, and the images inside a book stay ready for the next time you open it.
- Covers load faster in lists and in Calibre.
- Two imports at the same time keep both books.
- Deleting a book no longer removes it from your statistics. A book you read keeps its cover there and still counts as finished.

■ Fixes
- Highlights that arrived from another device are drawn again.
- The highlight menu keeps all its buttons on screen.
- A book opened from a widget or Spotlight while the app starts now opens.
- Editing a book while the metadata scan runs keeps your changes, your reading status and your own cover.
- An interrupted database restore recovers at the next launch.
- Read Aloud and the audiobook player no longer take the playback controls from each other.
- The subscription screen recovers when prices fail to load.
- Highlights exported as PDF no longer cut off long text.
- A large book from a Calibre server downloads to the end instead of stopping partway.
- OPDS paging, incomplete downloads and selecting several Grimmory books at once are fixed.

■ Localization
- All the new text is natively translated across all 18 supported languages.

[Docuro]

It‘s already there ��

[petrjahoda]

Yes it is :-).
People at Apple reviewing this version were too fast for me now :-).

[Docuro]

Yes. This morning I was astonished that the App told me that there is a new version - without a notice here

[culytera]

Love the Virtual Library update! Selecting a virtual library from the Calibre Sync window is a bit finicky, sometimes I accidentally close the window when tapping the selector. Probably because I tapped too close to the bar thing at the top. There's already a close button on the left, I don't know if there's a difference in behavior between the bar at the top and the close button.

Sometimes in Calibre Sync, it'll detect a book as changed despite having the same modified date in Calibre and justread. I'm not sure how to replicate this consistently. I'll try to do more tests.

Is there a way to disable the share dialog from being brought up automatically after closing a finished book for the first time?

Why does justread need to extract metadata for all books despite syncing only a few books?

[petrjahoda]

Hello Culytera, thank you for the feedback and let's go to answers.
1. As I remember, you are using iPAD, right? As the selection of virtual libraries is in the middle of sheet and the close button to the left, I do not think you accidentally hit the close button, I think maybe you accidentally tapped outside the sheet... that closes the sheet, which is a standard iOS behavior.
2. About that detection: it should always show what is changed for that book... can you please give me more information, or maybe screenshot?
3. Sharing opens automatically for now.
4. I played with this metadata extraction a little bit after reading your comment, so this will be changed in upcoming release

[culytera]

I use an iPhone so the Calibre Sync dialog takes up the entire screen for me.

Since changing a library clears the database, going back to that library and using Calibre Sync means books that are already in that library are now considered "New". If I sync those "New" books, they don't get imported as extra copies of the book, but they probably overwrite the existing copies. I should've taken a screenshot of the Calibre Sync screen before making a new library for tests so I can't show a screenshot yet for the detection issues.

For now I can show screenshots of the Calibre Sync dialog on my screen using my test library.

I also noticed the thumbnail for the covers are shown differently in recent versions of the app. They have a blurry preview now instead of the sharper preview before. Was this to make the loading times faster?

[petrjahoda]

Thank you for the information and you are right, the reason for those images was speed of loading.

[culytera]

More feedback:

1. Going back to my library after making a test library, I ended up with duplicates of books that were already in the library after syncing because they were seen as "New". I suppose this was to be expected since I was warned that changing the library deletes the database, so now the books are seen as New despite being the same books. I don't know why I didn't have this duplicate issue yesterday.
2. What's the difference between "Clear Library" (which 'clears the database but doesn't delete book files', same as changing the library) and "Clear Data"? Since I have to remake my library after messing it up, my options are to Select All and Delete which would populate the Recently Deleted list with a lot of books or make a new library altogether. Can I just delete the old library folder afterwards or will that somehow mess with justread's database?
3. If Calibre already has progress data for a book that's newly imported to justread, is the app not able to read the data so it opens the book to the spot where it might be at that progress percentage? I ask because remaking the library reset my progress with books in the app. Though this probably interferes with my earlier suggestion of adjusting the reading progress when a book updates with more pages.

Originally Posted by petrjahoda

Thank you for the information and you are right, the reason for those images was speed of loading.

I see, I was using the covers to get a quick glance at a fanfic's summaries so this somewhat affects that, but if this is the only way to improve loading speeds then it can't be helped.

[petrjahoda]

Hello Culytera,

1. The idea of library is simple: it is just a pointer to a folder. So if you ended up with two copies of one book in the library, that does mean you have two physical files of that same book in the folder. As I do not know exactly what, how and where you have saved, I cannot help more.
2. Clear Library just clear that "pointer", meaning simply.... no Library selected, without touching any of your books. Clear data deleted the data for the books in the database.
3. Partly, because Calibre can read/write only percentages, not precise position for this.

For totally new library it is pretty simple.
1. Create an EMPTY folder where you want to
2. In justred, select Change Library and select this folder
3. Transfer any books you like via Calibre Sync

Also would be wise to delete physically that original folder or folders.
But ATTENTION here... I suspect here that you may have selected folder you use for Calibre... and of course do not delete this folder, because then you will delete all the original books. My suspicion here is because you ended up with duplicates, as you wrote. But maybe I am wrong on this, if you are 100% sure Calibre data are elsewhere, just simply delete the folder.

For example, for testing purposes I have many folders
- Books, which I use for my real life
- Grimmory, which I use for testing with Grimmory
- Calibre, which I use for testing with Calibre
- BookOrbit, the same for BookOrbit
- Experimental, for testing special cases, bugs, fixes, etc.

So when I want to test Grimmory I simply Change Library to this folder without any fear it will do anything to my real life reading folder. When I am done, I simply Changes back to Books and life goes on.
When I will delete Grimmory folder, for example, well... then I will not be able to switch to Grimmory folder and for testing I have to create a new one, if needed.

[culytera]

My actual Calibre folder is fine, by library I meant the libraries in justread. I currently have 3 justread libraries: Default (where the duplicate files are located), Test (where I switched to initially for doing tests), FF (the new one I made after messing up my Default folder).

Now, if I change my justread library to Test then go back to FF, all books are New when I check in Calibre Sync. I didn't make any changes to these books prior to switching justread libraries. These are the same books as I left them in Calibre the software and FF the justread library. Although when I sync these New books to FF they now overwrite the same books in FF, I don't know why they were duplicates in my old Default library. That solves that problem at least.

EDIT: I guess my question is, why does switching libraries make justread "lose memory" of sync data when you switch back to that library?

Also, I imagine the Covers folder in justread will keep getting populated with book covers since the user only manually deletes an old library folder. Easy enough to delete the covers anyway.