[GUI Plugin] Import List

[Sabardeyn]

Huh? How does your locale affect a date? Not questioning your veracity, I just don't understand how a date can be altered in this manner.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Sabardeyn

Huh? How does your locale affect a date? Not questioning your veracity, I just don't understand how a date can be altered in this manner.

It is probably timezone rather than locale. Dates in calibre tend to be stored as timestamps with the timezone set to UTC. My guess would be that somewhere there is a conversion that uses the PCs timezone setting for the input date. The conversion to UTC makes this one day earlier. Or, it could be that the date is stored assuming UTC but calibre displays the date in your timezone.

[BetterRed]

Locale takes account of the vagaries of seasonal adjustments to the local time. Locations close to the equator don't adjust their clocks because there is little benefit in doing so, locations in the same time zone but closer to the poles do adjust there clocks because there is a benefit. Case in point the states of NSW and Queensland in Australia are in the same timezone, but as of last weekend when its 20:00hrs in Sydney its 19:00hrs in Brisbane.

If I create a CSV catalog, then a pubdate for which I have entered 2013-10-07, will appear as 2013-10-06 in the CSV, I fix it by getting Excel to unadjust it. It may not matter if its the pubdate of fiction, but it matters if its a pubdate of an op-ed from the Daily Telegraph - which is not published on Sundays.

My assumption is that the OP's issue is related to what I get with pubdates in CSV catalogs.

BR

[nabsltd]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

My assumption is that the OP's issue is related to what I get with pubdates in CSV catalogs.

Yeah, it looks like it's an overall Calibre issue, and it seems that it's because local time conversion is sort of handled, but then the time part is ignored.

I'll just make sure I adjust my dates before import.

[nabsltd]

Whenever I right-click on a book in the match list and choose any search, I get the following error:

calibre, version 1.6.0
ERROR: Unhandled exception: <b>TypeError</b>:QSortFilterProxyModel.mapToSource(QModelIndex) : argument 1 has unexpected type 'int'

calibre 1.6 isfrozen: True is64bit: False
Windows-2003Server-5.2.3790-SP2 Windows ('32bit', 'WindowsPE')
('Windows', '2003Server', '5.2.3790')
Python 2.7.5
Windows: ('2003Server', '5.2.3790', 'SP2', 'Multiprocessor Free')
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "calibre_plugins.import_list.page_resolve", line 690, in _force_search_book
TypeError: QSortFilterProxyModel.mapToSource(QModelIndex): argument 1 has unexpected type 'int'

The search field will always display the title and author, regardless of the seach I picked.

If I click the "Go" button, the search works fine, with either the text that was auto-entered by the context menu, or if I manually enter text.

[kiwidude]

Changes in this release:

• Fix for search matched books list right clicks not working correctly

Thanks for reporting that nabsltd.

[captpete]

Originally Posted by captpete

Here's something for the Wishlist: I have the Project Gutenberg DVD (~40K Books). While it's easy to import the books into a new Calibre Library the book titles are displayed by PG's number or alphanumeric ID and there is no other metadata displayed. The books are mostly Text and/or HTML format with some exceptions. PG publishes a listing of all their books as either a text, XML/RDF or MARC Records file which includes the required title/author/ID, etc. Is it possible to create an import list from that file that will import the numbered books from the DVD and add the correct metadata from the list. Would probably work with their other CD/DVD's too.

Here's the relevant url's:
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenb...nd_DVD_Project
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenb...fline_Catalogs

PG also has several lists on their website (with books in ePub, Mobi, etc. formats), could they be made into an import list?

Online Catalog: http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/

Top 100: http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/scores/top

RSS feed of recent books: http://www.gutenberg.org/feeds/today.rss

Bump.

[Sabardeyn]

In the time you've waited, you could have tested this yourself and arrived at your own answer. /shrug

I would suggest creating an empty copy of your existing library structure (switch library>create new) somewhere else on your hard drive. Enter two dummy books (add book>add empty book) inside just so you can look at sample data - don't get too fancy, but do enter all fields.

Based on Message #1's included images (#6, 7), it looks like you should be able to test whether it's possible. You would need to use the CSV or Webpage Import, I think. Create a new ID (ID: pg - project gutenberg) as your cross-reference point to link everything together. This should create a series of empty (no formats) ebooks.

Then add books with merging enabled and make sure you use an import filter where you specify metadata from filename, with the template set to the ID field. This should cause calibre to use the filename (which is a pg ID#) against the ID field's ID (which is a pg ID#) and merge formats into the existing metadata from the steps taken in the paragraph above.

You don't have to try the full library - just a dozen books as a sample file. Preferably with some wonky author names, titles, etc to stress the software. Better now then on the real database. Anyway, check the test library for issues and if none are found you can consider doing the same for the real library.

I've never attempted this, or used this plugin, so... YMMV and all that. But theoretically, those are the steps I imagine need to be completed. If one of the real gurus happens to wander by with alternate directions, listen to them instead. You'll know who they are - they answer all the other questions in the Calibre section of MobileRead.

[trying]

When creating a "csv" file (actually a tab-delimited file), how does one specify multiple authors?

I tried "firstname1 lastname1, firstname2 lastname2", "firstname1 lastname1 & firstname2 lastname2", and "firstname1 lastname1 firstname2 lastname2". None of them found any matches in "Step 2: Match list of books against your library" of the Import List PI. The "Possible matches for selected book" area, however always found the correct entry.

[kbaerwald]

I am a little confused - have exported a 4000 item book list and imported without problems into the plugin. Now that everything is ready I see that the <NEXT> button is greyed out. See attached jpg. German version here.

Did I forget something to finish? Thanks for any help...

[trying]

Originally Posted by kbaerwald

I am a little confused - have exported a 4000 item book list and imported without problems into the plugin. Now that everything is ready I see that the <NEXT> button is greyed out. See attached jpg. German version here.

Did I forget something to finish? Thanks for any help...

The first post states:

• Supports importing title, author, series, series index and pubdate (all but title are optional)

A lot of your items are missing a title. Maybe that's why the Next button is disabled?

[kbaerwald]

O.K. - found out that I can handle a smaller csv file (I took 25 items to import). That worked. Does anybody know how long the list of items can be? I have a file with 4000 titles to import !

[theducks]

Originally Posted by kbaerwald

I am a little confused - have exported a 4000 item book list and imported without problems into the plugin. Now that everything is ready I see that the <NEXT> button is greyed out. See attached jpg. German version here.

Did I forget something to finish? Thanks for any help...

You (still) have blanks in the title column on the right side

Title is required, Always

[kbaerwald]

You are completely right! Just eliminated the blanks ... and my setup is running now - thanks all!

[nynaevelan]

Kiwidude:

Amazon has this new feature on their website which searches through your kindle purchases and finds books in your library which have a companion whispersync book in Audible format. Is there any way to set up an Import list in order to import this list? I tried to modify one of the existing Amazon lists, but my inexperience did not produce any results.

Thanks in Advance

EDIT: I saved the page as a local file to get around the problem of the sign in issues but still not able to get any results. I am sure this is due to my inability to know what the heck I am doing.