[GUI Plugin] Kindle Collections (old)

[nynaevelan]

Originally Posted by meme

What is your 'Personal doc tag' set to?
What tags are assigned to your Catalogue book?
How many files does Calibre say are on your Kindle for your Catalogue? (if only 1 it won't say any) - look in the Device column

I tried Catalog and [PDOC]. I removed the catalogs from the device and the library and recreated them and the same error.

[meme]

Originally Posted by nynaevelan

I tried Catalog and [PDOC]. I removed the catalogs from the device and the library and recreated them and the same error.

Well, I'm puzzled. Can you try running through the above step by step list again - I've updated it slightly. This works for me, but every setup is different so it could be something we're missing.

I see you have a Kindle 2. Perhaps it doesn't work for Kindle 2's and only works for Kindle 3 - I'm running 3.1.

[nynaevelan]

This is what I did to try to get it to work:

1. set output option for mobi personal tags to Catalog
2. set extra tags in news to Catalog although I do not use the news feature
3. unchecked option to automatically send conversions to kindle
4. reboot Calibre
5. deleted existing catalogs from Calibre and kindle
6. selected and converted to mobi 2 catalog files
7. copied the converted mobi catalogs to kindle
8. rebooted Calibre
9. created a preview of collections on kindle collections plugin

And this is the warnings:

WARNINGS:

These books on the Kindle cannot appear in any collections on the Kindle because the book information is not set correctly. Try reconverting/resending the book. If this is a News feed, check Preferences->Output Options->Mobi output and set "Personal doc tag" to a tag you are using for the news feed, e.g. "News" (To use a tag other than "News", also set the News feed tag: open the specific news feed and add the tag to "Extra tags" under Advanced tab:

Title: How To Geek
Code: #0e220604-dcb7-4513-805d-68abd9a679c1^None

Title: Not Romance On Kindle 031511
Code: #d4f9cae4-3e3a-4647-8afe-316b02bcb20a^None

Title: Romance On Kindle 031511
Code: #8c874181-6088-450e-b1f3-7a4a9b6b3a0b^None

I do not have news in any of the tags so I don't know what is wrong, maybe you are right and this is a limitation of the k2.

EDIT: I do not think it is the plugin, I think there is something about these mobi files because the option to put them into collections is greyed out on the kindle itself.

[meme]

Originally Posted by nynaevelan

EDIT: I do not think it is the plugin, I think there is something about these mobi files because the option to put them into collections is greyed out on the kindle itself.

It isn't the plugin. The plugin is just trying to replicate what the Kindle does and warn you that the Kindle can't put the 'books' into a collection because the information in the book file isn't complete. What we're trying to do with the tag stuff is to force Calibre to put the right information into the book file. But this might only apply to Kindle 3 or a particular firmware version.

This isn't a News Feed issue - its a Catalog issue. I'll update the warning to be more generic - its just that it was first seen with News Feed. (If you wanted you could set Personal doc tag to News and then Fetch a news item to your Kindle to see if that can be put into a collection...)

What tags are showing for your Catalog 'books' in Calibre's tag column?

And did you use Send to Device as oppose to copying the files?

You shouldn't need to restart Calibre - but its always worth a go when things aren't working

Thanks for your patience in investigating this.

[NiLuJe]

@nynaevelan: Nope, Calibre doesn't care if you're using a K2 or K3, it shouldn't change a thing.

And, no, you don't have News in the tags, that's normal, it's not a newsfeed, it's a catalog .

You can't add them to collections on your Kindle because they're periodicals, and we can't put periodicals in collections (through the Kindle UI, anyway ).

Just to be clear on step 7: You did use 'Send To Device' from calibre?

@meme: AFAIK, calibre doesn't know if we're running a K2 or K3. And in this specific case, it should work (cf. line 357-358 of ebooks/metadata/mobi.py). And it does work on my system, even with catalogs.

As for the test version you posted, yep, it fixes the encoding issue in the Edit collections panel on my system too . (Still seeing UTF-8 in the debug console, but that's not really a huge problem ).

[meme]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

As for the test version you posted, yep, it fixes the encoding issue in the Edit collections panel on my system too . (Still seeing UTF-8 in the debug console, but that's not really a huge problem ).

Try the test version again on the previous post

[meme]

Originally Posted by pr126

Thanks for the advice. I run the command "preview" in debug mode and it found a sample book as the culprit.
Removed the sample book from the kindle, and no more error msg.

Its still not clear why the plugin crashed, but unfortunately as we discussed we don't have the specific sample file it crashed on.

It turns out that while testing a Sample Book to see if this would replicate the issue, that Sample Books use a special type ("EBSP") and were therefore incorrectly triggering the warning about not being included in collections. I'll fix this in the next release.

If anyone else sees any crashing on a specific book (or for any reason actually), can you try running "calibre-debug -g" (or "calibre-debug -g > outfile.txt") and seeing if that helps pinpoint a particular book with an issue.

[nynaevelan]

Originally Posted by meme

This isn't a News Feed issue - its a Catalog issue. I'll update the warning to be more generic - its just that it was first seen with News Feed. (If you wanted you could set Personal doc tag to News and then Fetch a news item to your Kindle to see if that can be put into a collection...)

I tried that but they show up greyed out also.

Originally Posted by meme

What tags are showing for your Catalog 'books' in Calibre's tag column?

They are showing up as Catalog in the tags field.

Originally Posted by meme

And did you use Send to Device as oppose to copying the files?

Yes I use the send to device option.

Originally Posted by meme

You shouldn't need to restart Calibre - but its always worth a go when things aren't working

Thanks for your patience in investigating this.

Not a problem, I really like this plugin.

[pr126]

Thanks again for your help meme.
Being able to create collections so easy is one of the most useful plugins to have.

Brilliant work.

Regards.

[NiLuJe]

@meme: Back to the old "UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' codec can't encode character u'\u2019' in position 8: character maps to <undefined>" traceback :s.

I'm not sure there's a good solution to that though, the character in question is a unicode curly quote, and there's just no way to display it with a non-UTF-8 locale.

You might also want to exclude .tan (Topaz annotations), .phl (Popular Highlights), .ea & .eal (Before You Go stuff) files from the Edit collections panel .

[beckywc]

Catalogs are treated like magazines and magazines cannot be placed inside collections. You can create a catalog then convert it and then it will be able to be placed inside a collection. But then you loose the look of the catalog because is becomes just like any e-book.

[Nyssa]

Newly added books are not being placed into existing collections. I tried 3 books, and all had to be manually added to the correct collection. I even tried using the "first time" instructions, again.

[meme]

@beckywc - Ah, that could be the misunderstanding.

@nynaevelan - are you setting your Catalog format to "MOBI"?

@NiLuJe - test zip updated for extensions and encoding, plus a different check for book types. This one warns for None, and just adds a message about newspapers, magazines and blogs not being collectable.

The Kindle not allowing periodicals in collections is a bit odd...

[meme]

Originally Posted by Nyssa

Newly added books are not being placed into existing collections. I tried 3 books, and all had to be manually added to the correct collection. I even tried using the "first time" instructions, again.

Do you have a few more details?

By newly added books you mean books you just imported into Calibre?

When you run preview, what does it say for the book at the bottom of the report?

If it says not collected then are you sure you've set the customization to create collections for the book (e.g. if creating tags, is there a tag on the book?)

[Nyssa]

Originally Posted by meme

Do you have a few more details?

By newly added books you mean books you just imported into Calibre?

When you run preview, what does it say for the book at the bottom of the report?

If it says not collected then are you sure you've set the customization to create collections for the book (e.g. if creating tags, is there a tag on the book?)

Two of the books in question were already in Calibre, but NOT on my Kindle, the third one was a place holder (originally an empty book) that I was able to turn into a "real" book by adding the mobi file.

I am trying it again, with another set of books that are already in my Calibre Library, but that were not originally on my Kindle. I'll have it create a new series and author collection, then I will go back and 2 more books to the existing collection, to see what happens.