[GUI Plugin] Kindle Collections (old)

[jesscat]

Originally Posted by meme

This sounds like a problem reported a short while ago - where the plugin is not getting the list of books from calibre and so it just creates the collections. Its not clear what is causing this and I need to figure out how to debug it. I will have to post an updated version that tries to catch this error and stop the preview/create so that it doesn't confusion.

I was one of the people reporting this problem and never went back to it. I'm pretty sure I can reproduce it if necessary (in my post a few days ago I think I described a typical pattern for me - I can't tell exactly what belfastbiker was doing, but if I had to guess, I'd take a stab at saying that maybe it arises when you do multiple runs of the plugin - maybe with a disconnect of Kindle in between? - but without making any changes to anything on the Kindle [maybe without changing anything on Calibre either???]).

Once you post the new version, if you have guidance and/or suggestions, I'd be willing to try to help with debugging. This seems like an elusive one; doesn't happen frequently, but it does keep popping up...

[meme]

Originally Posted by jesscat

I was one of the people reporting this problem and never went back to it. I'm pretty sure I can reproduce it if necessary (in my post a few days ago I think I described a typical pattern for me - I can't tell exactly what belfastbiker was doing, but if I had to guess, I'd take a stab at saying that maybe it arises when you do multiple runs of the plugin - maybe with a disconnect of Kindle in between? - but without making any changes to anything on the Kindle [maybe without changing anything on Calibre either???]).

Once you post the new version, if you have guidance and/or suggestions, I'd be willing to try to help with debugging. This seems like an elusive one; doesn't happen frequently, but it does keep popping up...

Try the test version attached to this post. It should catch the situation when the plugin gets a list of 0 books from calibre and display an error message (it also fixes the FONT_FAMILY bug, and prints some debug information at startup to help with a separate Mac issue).

[nynaevelan]

This fixes my issue.

[meme]

Originally Posted by nynaevelan

This fixes my issue.

Great but that was the easy one

[Nyssa]

Meme,

Is there a way to remove the "These files have invalid extensions and will be ignored by the Kindle:" message (and the books) from the report?

[meme]

Originally Posted by Nyssa

Meme,

Is there a way to remove the "These files have invalid extensions and will be ignored by the Kindle:" message (and the books) from the report?

Not by the user - I'd have to remove it in the code or add an option to include/exclude the warning.

Is there a reason why you don't want to see the warning - or rather, why do you have files on the Kindle that it can't display? (although I know that I've had .pdr files that are really pdf and the Kindle figures this out, so maybe I should add .pdr as a valid file type and ignore it).

[Nyssa]

Originally Posted by meme

Not by the user - I'd have to remove it in the code or add an option to include/exclude the warning.

Is there a reason why you don't want to see the warning - or rather, why do you have files on the Kindle that it can't display? (although I know that I've had .pdr files that are really pdf and the Kindle figures this out, so maybe I should add .pdr as a valid file type and ignore it).

I'd like to ignore the warning because (1) it takes up half of the report and (2) I have no idea what to do about it.

As for why they're there, I really don't know. The two extensions are: .partdldtmp and .sa, neither of which I recognize.

[jesscat]

Originally Posted by meme

Try the test version attached to this post. It should catch the situation when the plugin gets a list of 0 books from calibre and display an error message (it also fixes the FONT_FAMILY bug, and prints some debug information at startup to help with a separate Mac issue).

Okay, I installed the test version and reproduced the problem - as before, I ran the plugin, then disconnected the Kindle, then immediately reconnected (without any changes to anything on calibre or the Kindle) and ran it again. On the second run, all collections empty.

I repeated this twice, the test version did not give me any error messages (double checked - the version is 1.6.1b; is that right?). Was there something else this version was supposed to do with regard to this issue?

Anyway, I restarted calibre in debug mode and did the entire thing again. I'm attaching the debug log here (covering two runs of the plugin with no changes to calibre or the Kindle but with a disconnect of the Kindle in between; the first plugin run created the collections properly, the second created empty collections) - hopefully it will help somehow!

[meme]

This version should fix the issue of 0 books in a collection when disconnecting then reconnecting the Kindle using Windows.

@jesscat - Your confirmation and debug output was very helpful indeed. Its much easier to find something when you know for sure its a real problem

Your log file clearly shows its not an issue with calibre (well, I never really thought it was ) or the way the plugin interacts with calibre. It was a problem with the plugin finding the books on the Kindle - that made a huge difference.

At first I wasn't able to duplicate this. Either on Linux or Windows. Then I something clicked about you immediately reconnecting - and I tried turning off the reboot fast option (I have the screensaver hack that allows a quicker restart of the Kindle which is great while developing this plugin but not in this instance) and I was able to reproduce it on Windows only. The reboot meant everything was reset and hid the issue from me.

Once I could reproduce it I tracked it down to a recent change I made in the code that reads path names from the Kindle. In the new code I did a change into the directory on the Kindle before looking for files. Under Windows it appears that this change of directory was getting remembered in some way and once you disconnected and reconnected the Kindle the plugin was stuck looking at the old directory and not the new one so it didn't see any files. I removed the change directory and also cleaned up some printing of pathnames and it works great.


@nyssa - the warnings about file extensions have been removed. One of the file extensions you listed looked like a temporary file used by a newspaper, the other I wasn't sure. Instead of trying to include an endless list of valid (or invalid) types, since the Kindle ignores invalid extensions anyway, I've just removed the displaying of the files in the report. Its still available in the debug output in case someone has a book that isn't showing up when they know its on the Kindle.

This test version is basically ready for release but I'd like confirmation that things are ok. It also contains some additional code for another issue where a Mac user is crashing after Customizing.

[ElizabethN]

I've had no trouble with the plugin and only noticed this "collection creation" issue recently. I'm hoping someone can figure out why the plugin is creating some collections this way as I'm a bit baffled. I've only discovered 2 authors where this is occurring but haven't yet had time to compare every author's results under the different collection scenarios.

example #1: author Jory Strong (2 titles are from anthologies)
If I use "author" and split on "&": collection with 31 entries (matches calibre)
"author sort" and split on "&": 1 entry
"author sort" and no split (or split on ";"): 29 entries
custom column using author_sort and split on ";": 1 entry

example #2: author Christine Feehan (1 title from anthology)
author with split "&": 21 entries (matches calibre)
author sort and split on "&": 20 entries
author sort and no split (or split on ";"): 20 entries single & 1 entry as line of multiple authors where Feehan is listed as first author
custom column using author_sort and split on ";": no collection created

My preference would be to use author sort and split but I'm currently using author and split since the results match up with my calibre database.

Using K3 - windows 7 - calibre 0.8.1 - kindle collections plugin 1.6.1c
I have a metadata plugboard recipe that changes "author FN LN" to "author sort results LN, FN" and replaces " & " with ";" (mobi files for kindle are created using author not author sort).
I also have a template under "sending books to device" that creates the calibre folders by author LN, FN then subfolders by series or not...the primary author calibre folder is LN, FN;LN, FN if multiple authors.

Thoughts, advice?

Thanks

[meme]

Can you post your exact author sort plugboard command.

Do you get any warning or dialog windows that states that one name will overwrite another?

It sounds similar to an issue I saw where the plugin would find one collection with certain books in it, and then later find that same collection name due to the splitting/translating and overwrite the books in the first collection. I added a check for this to warn.

I'll try to reproduce this but may need to post a debug version for it.

[adriantc]

Hello meme,

First of all I want to thank you for creating this great plugin for Calible.

Then I would like to ask you a question. Is there any way (maybe I'm not smart enough to find it ) to put books into a collection. For me the best scenario would be to put tags on a book in Calibre and when I use your plugin to automatically create the collection (if it doesn't already exist) based on that tag and then assign that book to that collection. This way Calibre would be a great backup for my Kindle.

Once again I wish to thank you for all the effort you put into this plugin.

[meme]

@adriantc - Welcome to Mobileread

Well I'd say that this is the one thing the plugin is designed for - but it does a bit more these days

Once you've got Calibre installed and the plugin installed, connect your Kindle. Then go to Customize and select 'Create' from the dropdown next to the Tags entry. If you then run Create it will create the collections on your Kindle (you can run Preview and look at the report first), although you'll have to restart your Kindle to see them. See the first post in this thread for even more details on how to use the plugin

One issue with tags is that lots of books come with lots of tags that you might not want in your collections, so you might want to experiment with it.

[adriantc]

Thank you for your very fast reply. It is greatly appreciated.

I have tried that before posting here and I got the collections, just the books weren't assigned to them. They were all empty.

Tags won't be a problem as I edit the metadata of everybook I upload to my Kindle.

[meme]

@adriantc - ok, that could be an issue with the version. What version are you using? You can download the version attached to this post and try it again.

@ElizabethN - try this version. It adds more debug output. Run in debug mode (click down arrow on Preferences to Restart in Debug mode, run your Preview, then exist Calibre to have the output show). In the file you'll see 'Splitting on' showing how the names are split, and also if there is any automatic replacing of semicolons causing issues. You can PM me the details.