[GUI Plugin] Kindle Collections (old)

[ElizabethN]

Originally Posted by EbokJunkie

Guys please, can anyone describe a procedure (if possible) to copy collections from one Kindle to another?
I have a defective Kindle that Amazon agreed to replace, I received the replacemnt today. Aall my books sit in folders and collections have respective names. No problem to copy folders, problem is in copying collections. I never used Calibre to manage my books and did everything manually.

Tried to save collections from old Kindle inside Calibre, then diconnected old Kindle, connected the new one...but saved collectiions seem to go away...
Is there any way to keep them and save to new Kindle?

For your amazon only books:

New kindle, use menu to go to archives. There should be an option at the very beginning. "Add Other Device Collections" clicking this will then send you to a screen listing the names of your devices. select device.

I haven't used this function in awhile, Meme's program combined with calibre is vastly better. But, if I remember correctly, the collection names are imported into the new kindle and, if the same amazon purchased books exist on the new kindle then they are put into the collection you assigned on the old kindle. This does not send books to the new kindle only collections. You still have to pull the books from archives or re-send using manage my kindle.

If you have non-amazon purchased books, you will have to re-load and re-add those to collections manually.

Thankfully when amazon customer service had me do a hard reset, all of my files were in calibre. So adding books via calibre and using collection manager to add collections made the process extremely easy.

Good luck.

[EbokJunkie]

Thanks for all your advices. All my books are sideloaded, so I'll use the idea of copying collections.json over from old kindle to the new one.

By the way, with all books in folders, it would be a great advantage to have (as option) plugin ability to create collection by automatically mapping names of existing folders to collections. Cannot understand why do I need to spend time creating collections manually when names of folders are already in place.

[meme]

Well, creating collections based on folders is certainly possible to implement. It runs counter to using Calibre to create them, but then so does Edit. I suppose yet another option might be worth considering. Modifying the Customize window to handle Create from Calibre or Create from Folders sensibly could be interesting.

I won't necessarily implement everything, but I'll have a look, and depending on feedback/effort we'll see how it goes. I still have to release 1.58 - but I think it'll jump to 1.6 if testing of some items in the next test version goes ok.

[EbokJunkie]

meme

Thank you, that will be really great!!! Beleive me, there is a huge number of people who prefer to have e-readers that display books in folders rather than in collections. Option to map folders to collections may be very popular.

[jangell2]

I know this doesn't apply to the OP wanting to move his collections to a new kindle, but if you have all your books (including books purchased from Amazon) managed by Calibre, it would be a relatively simple process to put all those books onto a new Kindle, unless there's some restriction in putting the Amazon books onto another kindle.

Additionally, if your were using a custom column and meme's plugin, they'd go into collections automatically.

I am working towards getting all my books into Calibre so that I can use the plugin to manage the collections.

[A_dagio]

I seem to be having an issue since upgrading to 1.57 and Caliber 0.7.59. Everything was working fine, but now I'm either getting unicode errors or my collections are created with no books in them. Books are on, but not in collections

I have a Kindle 2, but I'm not sure if that matters. I removed all my json files as well and restarted the kindle, but I still have the same issue

Any help please?

[meme]

The unicode support appears almost stable. But before I release a new version, here is a test version of the release that includes some bonus functionality. @A_dagio - let me know if this works ok for you.

Thanks to imdqmznh's suggestion at https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...&postcount=641 and for the work that the thread points to especially by NiLuJe.


Modify Kindle Settings such as Margins and Fonts

You can set your horizontal justification and margin size, and even fonts without installing any hacks using this option.

Spoiler:

Before connecting your Kindle to your PC and changing any of these settings, you must press the Home key on the Kindle to go to the Home page or your changes will be ignored.


Justification

Control whether the text is left justified (ragged right edge) or fully justified (straight left and right edges). Not all books will be affected by this setting depending on how they were created. You can change the setting on the Kindle once you run the plugin and if check 'Allow user justification'.

Margin

Control the amount of space between the edge of the screen and the text. The Kindle allows you to set to a few values (fewest, fewer, default), but you can use the plugin to set other margins (e.g. 20).

Fonts

The Kindle does allow you to use a different font for your books without jailbreaking and without installing a font hack. But you need to follow a few steps so that the plugin can find your font and the Kindle can use your font.

1. Find some fonts to use.
   • The font must have 4 Truetype or OpenType files - one each for Regular, Bold, Italic, and BoldItalic variants
   • For example, DroidSerif is popular and free, available from http://www.google.com/webfonts/famil...ly=Droid+Serif (you will need to extract the 4 files from the zip file, and rename DroidSerif.ttf to DroidSerif-Regular.ttf)
2. Go to the Home screen of your Kindle, then connect your Kindle to your PC
3. Create the directory "fonts" on your Kindle at the top (e.g. E:\fonts) if it isn't there already
4. Copy the 4 font files to your Kindle's directory - you must use a specific name format, e.g. if your font is called "DroidSerif", then the 4 files in the font directory must be named as follows (use "-" not "_", and use ".ttf" even if its an OpenType font):
   
   DroidSerif-Regular.ttf
   DroidSerif-Bold.ttf
   DroidSerif-Italic.ttf
   DroidSerif-BoldItalic.ttf
   
5. Run the plugin - your font should be visible in the drop down menu for fonts. If it is not visible then check that the 4 file names are correct and in the right directory
6. Select your font, and click Save
7. Eject and Restart your Kindle

Notes:

• If you get the message "The selected item could not be opened" when you try to open a book, it means the font you selected is not compatible with the Kindle for some reason. Go to the Home screen of your Kindle, reconnect it to your PC, use the plug to select a default font, and restart your Kindle.
• You can copy any number of fonts to your Kindle's font directory. The plugin will show a list of all fonts it finds (but each font must have the 4 files with the name pattern above, e.g. MyFont-Regular.ttf, ...). Only 1 font can be used by the Kindle at a time - you will need to use the plugin and restart the Kindle to change fonts.
• To change back to a regular font, just use the "Aa" key to select "std". In fact, if you select the standard font on the Kindle menu, and want to use your custom font again, you may need to run the plugin again to re-load your custom font.
• The plugin actually copies the 4 font files to the names alt-Regular, alt-Bold, etc. and sets the preferences to use the font "alt". The Kindle only seems to recognize the "alt" name and not other names, so the plugin just copies your font files to the "alt" name when you select it.
• If you have only 3 of the 4 variants of a font, you could copy/rename one of the others, but this does not always work or look right

Font Size

The size of the text on your Kindle will depend on the font you use. You can easily set the size using the settings on the Kindle so you can see the impact.

Line Spacing

You can already control this on the Kindle, but you can use this to set more values.

Other

There are various other settings that the plugin will allow you to change, but they have no known effect.

I've included a few options that don't appear to do anything. I may remove them, but for now I've left them in case someone finds out what they do.

I've linked to one example font that is hopefully okay to post a link to here since it appears to be free, but let me know if there is any issue with this. I expect the font settings to cause some confusion. If you follow the steps, and have a compatible font it does work - but I've no idea how to tell if a font is compatible. Unfortunately if a font isn't compatible you won't be able to open a book to change it and will need to use the plugin to reset it.

All of these settings can be set by you using a file on the Kindle and do not require any hacks to be installed. The plugin just wraps a GUI around it. In fact, I uninstalled my fonts hack to test this and need to re-install it to test it with the hack installed.

I wasn't sure if I wanted to include these settings in the Kindle Collections plugin, but since I needed to re-use a lot of the code it was simpler to add an option than to split out and remove all the parts I didn't need. And having it all in one plugin is simpler to manage. Not sure about renaming the plugin though as I think its the collections feature that most people would be looking for.

[EDIT: file removed ]

[A_dagio]

Meme, the new code works great thanks. Interestingly enough - once I installed it, it picked up around 10 of my books (out of 120) as having duplicates on the Kindle. I removed those, but have no clue where they came from. Works like a dream now though. Thank you

[NiLuJe]

@meme: You can also use OpenType fonts, they're working fine (I'm actually mostly using OpenType CFF fonts right now ), but they'll have to follow the naming scheme (ie. .ttf, even if they're not truetype fonts at all).

I didn't touch the alt settings in the fonts hack, so it should work fine with the fonts hack installed, too .

As for a way to verify the Kindle framework won't die horribly on a specific font, welcome to the club . I don't even fully understand *why* it breaks, because the exact same font will work fine on a Kindle, and break horribly on another one, with the exact same FW... It does seem to be linked to the freetype lib bundled on the K3, since using a custom one has so far 'fixed' it for a lot of people, if not everyone encountering this issue with the fonts hack...

[meme]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

@meme: You can also use OpenType fonts, they're working fine (I'm actually mostly using OpenType CFF fonts right now ), but they'll have to follow the naming scheme (ie. .ttf, even if they're not truetype fonts at all).

Good to know - I've updated the description (which will go on the first page when I release it).

As for a way to verify the Kindle framework won't die horribly on a specific font, welcome to the club . I don't even fully understand *why* it breaks, because the exact same font will work fine on a Kindle, and break horribly on another one, with the exact same FW.

I'll let others find the fonts that work Took a little digging around to find some, so I have no issue linking to free ones if people find good ones.

Its a shame the Kindle forces you to use alt as the name, though it was easy enough to code around it. I just picked copying all the fonts to the Kindle to have a simple place for the Kindle to find them. I could have easily used a subdirectory for each font, or allowed you to pick another directory on your PC to use as the font source (to save room on the Kindle) but all in one was simpler to start with.

Have to restart (well fast framework reboot ) between tests was annoying - especially when I usually forgot to go the Home screen before connecting.

Now if only someone can identify what those unknown settings are for... I'm guessing there aren't more or you would have listed them in your post.

[sylviebi]

I just used this for the first time to modify/manage my collections on my K3 wifi/3g. Awesome! Saved me tons of time. Thanks.
I tried to use the modify kindle settings but get the following error as soon as I click this option:
calibre, version 0.7.59
ERROR: Unhandled exception: <b>UnboundLocalError</b>:local variable 'names' referenced before assignment

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "calibre_plugins.kindle_collections.ui", line 177, in modify_kindle_settings
File "calibre_plugins.kindle_collections.kindle_modify_ settings", line 73, in run
File "calibre_plugins.kindle_collections.kindle_device" , line 329, in get_fontnames
UnboundLocalError: local variable 'names' referenced before assignment

This would be so awesome if I can get this to work... Can you tell me how to fix it. I made sure my kindle was at the home menu before selecting this menu entry.
Thanks,
Sylvie

[meme]

Originally Posted by sylviebi

I just used this for the first time to modify/manage my collections on my K3 wifi/3g. Awesome! Saved me tons of time. Thanks.

You're welcome

I tried to use the modify kindle settings but get the following error as soon as I click this option:
calibre, version 0.7.59
ERROR: Unhandled exception: <b>UnboundLocalError</b>:local variable 'names' referenced before assignment

Thanks for testing. New version posted up above to fix this - I hadn't tested without the fonts directory on the Kindle

[CWatkinsNash]

Just updated both Calibre (0.7.59) and the plugin (1.5.7c) - amazing! I tried a new font but ended up going back to the default - it's nice to have the option, though.

Excellent work, as always!

[sylviebi]

okay trying the new version d now! picture me bouncing up and down with excitement...

[sylviebi]

ok I just tried it and now it openes without error but...
I am unable to select fonts.
I created the folder f:\kindle\fonts (f: being the kindle drive)
I also created the folder f:\fonts
and copied the droid example to both these locations and even the f:\kindle location for safe measure.
When I go to the application manage kindle settings and use the drop down menu to seclect a new font only three options appear. condensed... no droid listed. I thought I had to select the check box first and save and restart the kindle but that did not help to get the fonts to appear.
What am I doing wrong?
Thanks for your continued support.
Sylvie