[GUI Plugin] Reading List

[DavidTC]

I would just like to point out to everyone that the entire 'animosity' that others appear to be talking about on my part is two things: 1) calling a design decision 'strange' and 2) not knowing what this plugin was originally for.

And, of course, I didn't just randomly call it 'strange'. No, we were in a conversation about what seemed 'strange' WRT to the plugin, and I said that I thought the decision to not just use tags was strange. I had no idea that mentioning to a programmer that something they and other programmers had done seemed to be 'strange', and asking if they could explain it, was an unforgivable sin. (Although it turns out it's the same programmer, which I didn't know.)

And then 3) I didn't respond with the proper enthusiasm to the need to 'keep a list of books in order', and 4) I got sarcastic about the fact that, while I was informed there was a good reason for (1), they're certainly not going to tell me because I was rude, so I started calling it the 'super-secret reason'. But all this was _after_ I had 'an attitude'.


And, yes, chaley, I know how free software works. I know no one has an obligation to write code to do what I want. You will notice that, at no point, have I insisted on anyone do anything at all, despite your analogy. I used to help _maintain_ some free software.

And I know I can download the code and change it myself. Perhaps I will at some point, although I do not know Python. Although this is not where I would start with a plugin. I'd much rather have a plugin that let me mark a book as 'News', aka, automatically sent to a device and deleted. This is the exact same strange design decisions, this time on the part of Calibre itself, to hide book toggles away where people can't get to them.

But _usually_ I don't deal with programmers so thin-skinned that when I ask 'Could do you do this?' and then I mention in a followup 'I don't really understand why everything doesn't work that way to start with, the way everyone does this seems somewhat strange.' they do not respond 'There's a good reason, but I don't like your tone so I'm not going to tell you!'.


So, swkotor, if you're going to be asking requests, you better never question why, exactly, that the Reading List plugin can't just read the tags or custom columns set by Goodreads already. Or vis versa. (Yes, I do find it funny that almost immediately after my question someone else came along and asked a question that would be _trivially_ solved if tags were used to define the reading lists instead of inaccessible 'marks', why did you ask?)

[electronicfur]

Originally Posted by itimpi

Interesting observation. As I added two devices almost immediately then I never noticed this item not being present.

That raises an interesting point about UI design and feature 'discoverability'. Maybe it would be good practise for that option to always be visible as a hint to the facility existing? I must admit I do not have strong view either way but it might be interesting to see what others think?

I agree it could be always be visible but greyed out. But for me it would be more user friendly to be able to sync a single list to multiple devices. Your workaround is fine, but I found I then end up having to manually keep the reading order of my two lists in sync.

[kiwidude]

@electronicfur - the option to sync to multiple devices is not likely to happen anytime soon. The whole model behind this plugin is a per device per library list. To try to change a list to be associated with multiple devices has too much "pain" associated with it in multiple areas - be it the data model or functional such as when tags get added/removed etc.

What might be a possible alternative I would consider is a "Copy" menu option, allowing you to copy the contents of one list to another. So rather than using the "Add to all lists" function you could just treat one list as your master, and then have the ability to copy from one to another.

As for the whole menu options visible vs disabled thing, it is an interesting debate. If you want to know why it works the way it is currently, it is an attempt to not end up with a full screen right-click menu with a squillion options on it that completely initimidates new users. Someone who only maintains a single list gets the most concise menu that contains only options that are relevant to them - they don't have to mouse over permanently disabled options, and if using Calibre on a low resolution device there should be no problems with menu size.

The downside as you have mentioned is the compromise on discoverability.

The other approach I took for plugins like Quality Check is to allow the user to control which menu items appear on their menu. This does require additional development and adds complexity to the plugin, so it was "easier" to just hide menu items not relevant and let people read the documentation in the first post to "discover" what else the plugin could do.

If enough people feel strongly about it then again it is something I can look at sometime, but so far out of the many thousands of downloads only one person has posted about it causing them a problem.

[electronicfur]

Yes a Copy menu option would work well.

With regards to the menu options, I can see why you'd want to keep the menus clean. I guess the main reason I got confused and ended up asking on the forum is that I thought my use case was a common use for the plugin. And I got further confused as in the configuration there is a Devices table with a checkbox next to each device, so I assumed that I could check each device I wanted to send the list to. Other newbies to the plugin might get confused like me. But I guess just a line in the plugin description on how to use multiple lists in this case would help.

Basically my use case is that I just maintain an ordered reading list and then I want to sync the list to all my reader devices. This is so that if I dont have say my Kindle with me, then I still have my reading list on my other devices and can then read on my phone or tablet pc instead.

I was doing this manually, so your plugin is already a great help thanks.

Cheers,
EF

[kiwidude]

@electronicfur - I've been thinking a little more about what you want to do. I think that the "add to all lists" type functionality is probably still your best bet. Is there a particular reason why you would not want to use this?

Certainly the obvious reason is if you have other lists that are not related to the ones you intend to synchronise. I was thinking that rather than "Add to all lists" the functionality should be changed to be "Add to list group", with a new configuration tab allowing you to define which lists make up that group. This would make that "Add to all" function much more flexible/useful. The only question in my mind is whether to make it possible to allow users to define multiple list groups, or if I can keep it simple with just a single group defined.

[electronicfur]

Hi Kiwidude,

It was mainly because I was planning to have a reading list for my girlfriend as well. But I've worked around that by installing Calibre on another PC for her.

But you're right a copy or list group would work for users with multiple lists.

Another thing I found was that I cant now use the "edit list" to remove books from my reading list, but must first find & select the book I want to delete from my reading list in Calibre, and then use the "remove from all lists".

Also a problem with keeping multiple device lists in sync with the "add to all lists" is that the reading order goes out of sync if you edit it, so you have to choose one master list for the reading order and ignore the others.

No big deal really, so only worth changing things if other users have the same use case. I thought it would be common to want your reading list on all devices, but if it hasnt come up before, perhaps I'm the only one. But for me that is the main attraction of the plugin, as it avoids me having to manually copy all the books in my reading list to my Kindle, phone and tablet pc.

Cheers,
EF

[kiwidude]

Ahh yes, thanks for posting those problems with trying to use the Add to all lists approach. It isn't a feature I use myself and I can see now what you mean by the issues. I agree it isn't ideal.

Not sure what else to suggest at this point. Even Copy to List wouldn't do what you want, because what if there was other items on that other list, they sitll wouldn't be kept in sync etc.

I think fundamentally it really does need special case functionality to support what you want. Perhaps a special device type of "Any device", so you still just have a single list. That wouldn't break the data model quite so badly.

I'll mull it over - previously I thought that the previous suggestions around Add to all lists might at least offer a "usable" workaround but that really only works if you don't plan to edit the lists.

[Vaesse]

How hard is it to change the "connection" between list and device to many-to-many? That would certainly be the best solution I can imagine, but if it's too difficult then I'll shut up, because though I might use the functionality if it were there, it's no big deal to me either way.

[happydemic]

As a user of calibre since the libreprs500 days, I can't believe I'm only now posting on this forum for the first time... *hangs head in shame*

Kiwidude, thank you for all your awesome plugins. I use this and Goodreads every day, with great pleasure.

I have a feature request which should be quite straightforward but which may be of relatively little interest to other users, particularly the power users on this thread! So I quite understand if you don't fancy it.

I would like to add another sync option - "overwrite device". This would delete all books on the device except for those on the reading list being synced.

The reason I would use a feature like this is that I am still using a bashed-up and dog-eared PRS-505. (Believe me, an e-book can get dog-eared.) Managing books on my device requires waiting for its little gears to crank up and for wizened homunculi to shuffle across the e-paper. So I manage all my books, including deletions, through calibre. My reading "workflow" (funflow?) is so simple - I just use a single sync list to sync to the reader - that rather than set up a separate deletion list, I'd like to be able to add new books and remove old ones all at the same time.

I am undecided whether an "overwrite device" sync should be a "true overwrite" (i.e. operate like "Sync all list items" but also delete everything currently on the device) or whether it should operate more like "Sync new list items" mode, i.e. deleting books not on the list, adding books which aren't on the device, and leaving alone books which are on both. The latter would be quicker and would suit me better, but a "true overwrite" might suit people who aren't too sure what badly formatted old versions they might have on their device and would just like to start again. Alternatively "overwrite device" could be a checkbox (which would do nothing/get greyed out when "Remove" mode is selected).

Thanks again for all your hard work.

[teeminghorde]

I would love to have the "Add to list group" functionality.

[Kraftwerk]

I am not that great with computers, so please bare with me.

I recently installed Calibre (so I have the latest version) and added three plugins: 'Find Duplicates'; 'Quality check' and 'Reading list'.

I installed it and added some books to the Library to understand how 'Calibre' works, to be ready when I get my Kindle 4 in the new year.

Concerning the 'Reading List': I am not sure what I can do with it.

I have read all the pages for this thread but can't figure out what I am able to do.

All I want to be able to do, is to have a list of books that I want to read and in an order that I want to read them, which I have already done.

But is there a way of telling me which books I have read which are in the Calibre library, so that I know I have read a book and not add it to my reading list again in the future?

When I put a book into my reading list does it disappear from the Calibre library? (I am trying to figure out exactly what happens when I do this).

What are 'Tags' and what are they used for?

Anything else I can do with this plugin which I don't realise I can do?

I just want to get my head around this plugin so that I can get the best out of it.

[kiwidude]

@Vaesse - indeed, looking for some way to make a list across devices is on the todo list when I get a chance.

@happydemic - welcome for your first post on MR. I will have a think about your requirement too and how easy that would be to apply.

@teeminghorde - yes I think Add to List Group would be a more useful evolution of "add to all groups", thanks for showing some interest in it.

@Kraftwerk - adding a book to a list will by default not change anything about it in the library. Imagine you had a piece of paper you were writing a list of book names on. Writing the name down on the list does not in any way touch the book in your library.

To keep track of whether you have read a book or not, most often people use either a custom column or a "tag". A tag is just a name that you can add to the comma separated list of values in the "tags" column - most often this is used for genres but you can put virtually any name you like for your own purpose. For isntance some people used to use a + sign as a tag to indicate they have read it, or you can put the word "Read" or whatever you like. Alternatively use a custom column (which is what I do), adding a yes/no column called #read which I then change every time I finish a book.

You can also go further and use goodreads.com to also keep track of books you have read, using the Goodreads Sync plugin to add them to your "read" shelf there. This gives you all sorts of nice statistics and if you choose the ability for "friends" to see what you have read and your reviews etc.

In terms of "what else can the plugin do" - well reading back through this thread should hopefully give you some ideas of how people are using it. A lot of people use it as a convenient way to queue up books to be added to their device (automatically or manually) the next time it is plugged in. You can also specify that books in your library should have a tag or custom column set by adding to a list. So for instance if you wanted to keep track of what books were on your Kindle even when it isn't plugged in, then you could have a "Kindle" list, setup a rule to set a tag value of Kindle when items are added to your list. Or if you had lists for multiple people/devices, you could set values in tags/custom columns based on adding something to a list. People have been very creative in ways to use this plugin

[Vaesse]

Tracking reading, I take it a step further and have a "read date" and "read count" so I can track just how many times I've read my favorite books and how long it's been since I last finished each book. Either one alone might be enough for a less obsessive tracker.

[kiwidude]

Changes in this release:

• Allow a list to be associated with "*Any Device" so a single list can be synced to multiple devices
• When switching libraries, if a device is connected then fire the check to see whether lists to sync
• Rename list types - Sync new list items -> Add new list items to device, Sync all list items -> Add all list items to device
• Add list type "Replace device with list, send new only" to delete non-list books from device, send new items not on device
• Add list type "Replace device with list, overwrite all" to delete non-list books from device, overwrite all books with list

This update should address some of the requests made above.

Firstly there is a "*All Devices" option for the dropdown of which device to synchronise to. So people who want to replicate their list onto multiple devices can do so without having to have multiple lists like they had previously. Note that if you have the "Clear after sync" menu option checked, this option won't work very well for you - I considered disabling it but just a case of being aware.

Secondly in preparation for adding some new list types I renamed the items in the dropdown to hopefully make it a bit clearer what they do.

Then there are two new list types, which give you the option of deciding exaclty what books should be on your device by whether they are in your list or not. So when you sync to the device, any book which is not on your list (*but is in your Calibre library) is removed. There are two variations of this list type - "Send new only" will only send books that do not already exist on your device, whereas "overwrite all" will force all books on the list to be sent again. Note that these options only remove books which have a matching entry in the current calibre library (not on your list). So if you have added a book to your device from another library, outside of calibre or since deleted it from your library it will be kept on your device.

The final change was to make sure that when you switch libraries while connected to a device, that the plugin spins through the lists once in the new library to check whether any should be automatically synced. Previously the automatic sync logic would only fire for lists for the library you were in at the time you connected your device.

I am sure this plugin will evolve further with some of the other suggestions and some ideas I have but hopefully this should create some new options for how people make use of it.

[happydemic]

Mr Kiwi, not only are you one of the nicest devs I've ever encountered - you are also by far the quickest!

Thank you for implementing my request. I'm thrilled and very grateful. In fact I was so pathetically thrilled that in my haste to connect my reader to Calibre, I tried to shove my USB cable into my Ethernet port - oops...

The "Replace device" options worked perfectly for me. So thank you again.