[GUI Plugin] Kindle Collections (old)

[CRussel]

NP. Nothing is currently causing big issues. Mostly at this point I'd like to get the sync stuff sorted so collections get set right from within Calibre before/when the books are added to the collection. If that takes a bit longer, it's not an issue. The other (minor) annoyance (resetting timestamp on collections) got fixed with the last build.

[kirkle]

Forgive me if this has already been adressed... Plugin works great, but, is there any way to show the series number so I can read them in order? I have that info in Calibre, but it doesn't transfer to my Kindle. Thank you.

[CWatkinsNash]

Originally Posted by kirkle

Forgive me if this has already been adressed... Plugin works great, but, is there any way to show the series number so I can read them in order? I have that info in Calibre, but it doesn't transfer to my Kindle. Thank you.

In order to view the Series number on your Kindle, you can use the plugboard to add the number to the title when it gets sent to the device. This post has information and several templates ready to use with the plugboard.

[bpalesch]

Originally Posted by meme

You should not need to restart calibre each time you want to add/remove books. The Create Collections function will write out a new collections file each time its run based on the current information in the database. If you are disconnecting the Kindle after you run Create and eject the Kindle, then you still need to Restart it (not poweron/off). If something still isn't working then its an issue to be looked at.

meme, the problem was not with creating the collections on the Kindle, that worked fine. The issue was getting books that were uploaded onto the Kindle into the collections. Maybe (probably) I didn't have something set correctly so the book would upload but never get put into their collection (each book I upload is listed in only one collection). In, "List by collection" view I'd see the collections with any books I had assigned to them, then after the collections list would be the books I'd just uploaded - they would never make it into their collection and before you ask, yes, I was restarting Kindle each time. Now I can at least get them into their correct collection; I just have to remember to close and reopen Calibre if I want to add more.

[meme]

If you just upload the book (using Send to Device), then the collections on the Kindle are not updated. You must run Create Collections for the plugin to update the collections list.

I just retested that in case something went wrong - sending a new book to the Kindle (even with Metadata Management set to Manual), and then running Create Collections after the book was sent. It appeared OK in the collection (I used Edit Collections in the plugin to view what was on the Kindle to avoid having to do a restart to check). (Actually, the first book I picked didn't end up in the collection - turned out it had an invalid format and I didn't see the Warning my plugin printed about it )

You say the book is not in their collections, but then you say it is listed in only one collection, so I'm a bit confused. Knowing your settings and your exact sequence and expected/unexpected results would help - though I know its a pain and time consuming to record the exact steps.

[Gazerwolf]

Originally Posted by meme

Well, not too hard, even if I did get it wrong the first time The next version will merge collections if two calibre columns set for Create have the same name - and the same prefix/suffix.

The next version of the plugin will be waiting for at least the next release of calibre as its necessary to support the fix for the Reading List/Book Sync issue - after much help from Chaley and Kovid and their updates to calibre.

YAHOO!

[HBH_AU]

Sounds awesome - any idea of an ETA on the next version of the plugin?

[fretjes]

Meme,
it seems that I have a problem. First of all I'm a newbie with Calibre.I've followed your instructions on installing the plugin. It has installed it in "user interface action plugins" But there is no button showing up in Calibre. I've restarted calibre, no joy. So I must have forgotten something but what?
Running win7/32, Calibre 0.8.4 and have a Kindle 3 (very recently)
gr fred

[kiwidude]

@fretjes - you need to add it to your "toolbar for when a devices is connected", go to Preferences->Toolbars.

[fretjes]

Kiwidude,
Thank you very much. Has solved it (of course)
So simple and a obvious newbie mistake.
gr fred

[fretjes]

Slight comment:
I've noticed that after a restart I've had to reenter my WPA2 key (wifi) because this is wiped. Somehow a little strange because a "restart" is not a complete "hard reset" but more of a "soft reset"
Any thoughts on this?
I've searched this thread if there was a report on this but no result. So am I the only one?
calibre 084-Kindle3-win7/32
gr fred

[meme]

I haven't seen an issue with the wifi key and Restarting. Just retested again and my wifi connection is fine after restart. I suppose its possible you selected Reset to Factory Defaults by mistake.

[fretjes]

I don't think so because other changes I've made, like a custom name for the Kindle were still there. That's why I concluded that a restart was a soft reset.
However, tested again to make sure and now nothing wrong, WPA2 key still in place.
But then, why am I not surprised after all these years??
Thank you anyway for your swift answer and a nice piece of work on the plugin.
gr fred

[meme]

A new version of the plugin is available. See my signature, or after upgrading to Calibre 0.8.6 just use the new built-in plugin updater feature!

Requires calibre 0.8.6

This should fix the integration with Reading List (the plugin formerly known as Book Sync). This version of the collections plugin will now wait for the Reading List to complete sending all books and information to the device before it starts - so the plugin will now correctly put books that you have just synced into collections. You should now be able to connect your Kindle, have your books sync to your device and have Kindle Collections create collections for the new books automatically.

As part of getting the syncing to work, I changed the plugin to run some of the jobs (create in particular) in the background - so if they take longer than a couple of seconds the plugin will no longer stop you from using calibre while it runs.

And to support requests about merging duplicate calibre collection names, the plugin will now merge the books from collections in calibre that have the same name. So if you have an Author named Foo, and a Series called Foo, and you create from both columns, the books in both of those columns will end up in Foo. Previously the plugin just warned you of a clash and dropped one set of books. The only caveat is if you use a prefix/suffix with your columns. The plugin will obey the setting of ignore prefix-suffix, so if you have it set to the normal ignore-prefix=true, and your 2 columns have different prefixes only 1 collection will be created - although it will contain the books from both columns. This is because once the first collection is written out, the ignore-prefix=true setting tells the plugin to replace it with the 2nd column. You can avoid this by setting ignore-prefix=false - the only consequence of this is that if you change the prefix for a column the plugin won't automatically convert the names and you'll end up with collections using the old prefix and new prefix. Since I'm not detailing all that in the first post, we'll just deal with questions as they come up

Oh, and although it doesn't affect anything at the moment, I added some code to re-read the book information from the device once the collections are written out. This is done as a background job after the collections are created and only takes a few more seconds to run. The purpose is to force calibre to re-read the latest collection information from the kindle so that it can populate the Device Tab list of collections with the latest information. Unfortunately calibre still needs to be updated to actually understand how to read collection information from Amazon mobi files, so in practice there won't be any visible change to the collections list at this point.


Updates:
- Changed create/preview/view to background jobs to avoid blocking calibre and to support Reading List correctly
- Changed collections to merge when multiple Calibre columns have the same collection name
- Added code to refresh collection list in Device Tab after create (but all collections won't be visible until calibre is updated to correctly show Kindle collections)
- Fixed issue with rare crash if a particular book's timestamp could not be read
- Moved warning about books being manually edited to report instead of dialog
- Removed unnecessary extra call to get device info which confused job percentage complete
- Modified dialogs to be called only by parent job to support background jobs
- Requires Calibre 0.8.6 - in order to support jobs and syncing correctly

[Nyssa]

Hi Meme!

First off, thank you, thank you, thank you!

Second, I have two questions: 1. Using the "Foo" example, is there anyway to set it up so that if the book is in a series collection AND in an Author collection, one can be ignored?

I have the plug in set to create a collection for any series with 3 or more books and any author with 3 or more books - more often then not that creates two collections with the exact same books. Is there away around that without having an incredibly long ignore list?

2. Reading list - To make sure I understand, we no longer have to run the Kindle Collection plugin if our books were already on the reading list prior to connecting the Kindle?