Custom GUI plugins for Calibre here...

[darthyoda6]

Chapters Indigo for Canadian Books.
http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/home/s...ords+to+search
can search for isbn or anything else by using keywords.

[danwdoo]

Hmmm... I seem to have broken my Calibre. I was adding the 'utf-8' entries for search the internet and after restarting, Calibre shows up in the task menu but the interface never comes up. I'm running the latest version of both Calibre and the plugin. Is there a way to edit the current tweaks outside of Calibre to fix whatever mistake I made? I found the default tweaks but none of my changes are in there.

Thanks!
Danny

[danwdoo]

Ok,
I kept looking and located tweaks.py in AppData\Roaming\calibre (Win7). I found the mistake, changed it and now Calibre is working fine again.

Danny

[slantybard]

I added the inkmesh search capabilities using the following code in the tweaks section:

    ('Inkmesh for Title', None, 'http://inkmesh.com/search/?qs={title}&btnE=Find+Ebooks', 'utf-8', None),
    ('Inkmesh for Author', None, 'http://inkmesh.com/search/?qs=author%3A%22{author}%22', 'utf-8', None),
    ('Inkmesh for Title and Author', None, 'http://inkmesh.com/search/?qs={title}+by+{author}&btnE=Find+Ebooks', 'utf-8', None),

I find this useful as it usually can grab a list of most e-retailers selling the book and the associated metadata for filling in the publisher's missing metadata for a book.

Edit: so I did this on my own because I was so excited to play around with this plug-in and was too lazy to read all 16 pages of the thread only to realize that everyone has been contributing and adding so many other websites including inkmesh already... heh heh. Oh well, at least the code I did for inkmesh works great.

Originally Posted by kiwidude

This plugin was designed to allow quick navigation from the selected book/author in Calibre to a choice of websites in your browser. By default websites such as FantasticFiction, Amazon, Google and Wikipedia are configured, however you can add/remove your own to this list via configuration. I mainly use this to look for better quality metadata than that available from the default Calibre sources, however it is also useful to get detailed reviews, identify missing books in a series, accurate publication dates etc.

[kiwidude]

No probs slantybard, indeed everyone's links they have posted here on this thread have been included such as those you listed.

I also like the concept of "similar authors" to find new authors that others have recommended based on one you know (select in Calibre). There are a bunch of websites out there for this that I added to the list a few days ago such as LoveReading.co.uk, SimilarAuthors.com, WhatShouldIReadNext.com and one that gives a cool graphical map of Literature-Map.com.

Coding is finished on the plugin (at last!). A bunch of new features I haven't mentioned on the thread yet were added, such as being able to test links from within the config dialog with a bunch of editable predefined test books. Only way I could properly test the 75+ links I have in the list now! There are some additional tokens that can be used in the url. Also added import/export capability which zips up the selected menu settings and any custom images so people can easily share with others such as on this thread or use for backup etc.

However in the process I found a minor bug in Calibre that affects the Export feature. This has now been fixed in the trunk (thanks Kovid). So I am waiting for a release of Calibre 0.7.41 before I make it available. There is a workaround for anyone desperate to use an earlier Calibre version but the plugin still requires at least Calibre 0.7.38 anyway for it's API requirements.

If anyone wants to play with it in the meantime to help test it just drop me a PM and I will send you a link - Bertrand has been kind enough to do a lot of testing for me and reckons it is good to go. Special thanks also to chaley for his tremendous help/advice in code reviews and coming up with a plugin proxy approach which helps make what is now a fairly complex plugin (around 1400 lines of code) a bit more manageable.

[kiwidude]

Btw... here's a preview of the next plugin to get the configuration dialog treatment... comments/suggestions as always welcomed...

[carmenchu]

Looks just fine.

[Arainais]

I love the search the internet plugin, now if there was only a way to pull metadata directly from a site you search, like goodreads.

[slantybard]

I agree, the search internet plugin is great and motivated me to upgrade from .20 to .40. I have always been disappointed in how poorly the metadata search function from the edit book details has performed when trying to update books from indie publishers. I expect that this is due to the poor support for indie publishers in google/librarything/etc.

It would be nice if we could access the search internet plugin from the edit metadata dialog window but I have no idea if that would be complex to do. Then you could have the metadata window open, search for the internet and then copy/paste stuff right into the window.

Originally Posted by Arainais

I love the search the internet plugin, now if there was only a way to pull metadata directly from a site you search, like goodreads.

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by slantybard

It would be nice if we could access the search internet plugin from the edit metadata dialog window but I have no idea if that would be complex to do. Then you could have the metadata window open, search for the internet and then copy/paste stuff right into the window.

There is no way to do this as a plugin currently, it would require changes to Calibre source code. Plugins can only be hosted on the toolbar or library right-click menus, and as the edit metdata dialog is modal neither are accessible with it open. However you can of course use the menu options before opening the edit metadata dialog...

As for some sort of automation of that metadata retrieval - yeah it's a nice dream but realistcally not going to happen for any websites except those that offer a formal API - such as Amazon, GoogleBooks etc which Calibre already has metadata readers for. Trying to grab unstructured data from various sites using web page scraping techniques leads to madness

[DoctorOhh]

Just wanted to report that I'm using the new Search the internet and the new open with plugins. Very nicely done.

Having the ability to customize the plugins from the right click menu and not having to muck through the plugins to find what needs to be customized or add any tweaks is great.

From a Windows user perspective these two plugins are a big hit.

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by dwanthny

Just wanted to report that I'm using the new Search the internet and the new open with plugins. Very nicely done.

Awesome, thanks for the feedback Dwanthy, appreciate your help with the testing. I will wait a few days after the next Calibre release before I post them on this thread for everyone else given the dependency in there.

I'm also planning to "upgrade" a number of the other plugins now I've figured out how to do the GUI configuration screens, a few might pickup a few other features along the way. If anyone has any suggestions for missing features then post them here. I've got time to look into them at the moment but that won't last forever

[kakkalla]

Please help.

I have downloaded and installed the search the internet plugin. I have restarted calibre as explained in the installation notes.

However, I can't get it to appear in the context menu. I have it on my toolbar but I'd like to be able to access it from the context menu. Any ideas? I am running calibre on a Mac, in case that makes a difference.

Thanks in advance.

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by kakkalla

However, I can't get it to appear in the context menu. I have it on my toolbar but I'd like to be able to access it from the context menu. Any ideas? I am running calibre on a Mac, in case that makes a difference.

From the first post in this thread - make sure you change the dropdown to select the appropriate toolbar/menu to add it to...

Originally Posted by kiwidude

By default the new plugin will not appear in any menus or toolbars. To add it to any of these you must go to Preferences->Interface->Customise the toolbar. In the dropdown at the top choose where you want the new action, such as “The context menu for the books in the Calibre library”. The new plugin menu option should be in the list of “Available actions” on the left for you to select it. Apply and close.

[kakkalla]

Apologies for missing that. Sigh. I have a lot to learn about forums and how to track back.

THANKS again.