Feature idea for Calibre Companion

[NSILMike]

(or if it is already there, how do I turn it on?)
For News sources, it would be nice to have a setting to deleted old issues automatically when a new issue replaces it. Calibre itself has a very good version of this feature, which allows you to set how many back issues are kept.

[chaley]

IIRC this already works when using the wireless device connection. Calibre enforces its rules.

EDIT: IDRC (I Didn't Remember Correctly). Calibre does not delete news from devices.

If you are transferring news using the content server then no auto-clean actions are applied. Is this what you are asking for? Given that the feature already exists with the WD connection, I am not very much in favor of adding the options to CC to do it for CS connections. Every option increases the support load, something we really want to avoid unless the gain justifies the cost.

You might be able to get a lot of what you want with either the reading list plugin or the smart eject plugin. For the latter, you would define as search that would check for need on the device that isn't in calibre. Discloser: having never done anything like this I have no real idea if it would work.

[NSILMike]

Calibre does it, but CC does not, or I do not know how to turn it on. I use (as you will recall from my recent issue) the wireless device connection. While calibre deletes old issues on the PC. CC does not do so on my device (nexus 7) so until I manually delete them, the old issues 'pile up.'
(I'm not familiar with those plugins, so I will take a look...)

Update: The reading list plugin description is very different from what I am suggesting. The other plugin is not shown under that name in the list of calibre plugins...

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by NSILMike

The other plugin is not shown under that name in the list of calibre plugins...

Perhaps chaley is thinking of the Smart Eject PI

BR

[NSILMike]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Perhaps chaley is thinking of the Smart Eject PI

BR

Perhaps, but the description of its function (UI plugin to check for duplicate/missing/added books when ejecting devices) is also unrelated to my request.

[chaley]

First, I apologize for my misstatement above. I believed that calibre had a feature to clean news on a device in addition to its feature to clean news in the library. I don't use news so I never had a reason to discover that I was wrong.

Originally Posted by NSILMike

Perhaps, but the description of its function (UI plugin to check for duplicate/missing/added books when ejecting devices) is also unrelated to my request.

Not if I understand your request. You want something to delete news "books" on your device when they expire. As you pointed out, Calibre has a feature that deletes these books from its library as they age. Smart eject could tell you that you have news books on your device that are not in calibre's library, telling you which books you should delete from your device to make it match what is in calibre.

At the moment you would need to use a search in Smart eject that checks the title of the book, which is less than optimal if you have many news sources. I will look at whether I can add searching on tags to the device view, which would make the process easier.

EDIT: Starting with the next calibre release you will be able to search for tags in the device view. A book in the device view will have tags if it was put on the device by calibre or if it ever matched a book in calibre's library. For example, "tags:news" will find items on the device that have the news tag, which any news "book" put on the device by calibre will have.

[NSILMike]

See my embedded comment...

Originally Posted by chaley

First, I apologize for my misstatement above. I believed that calibre had a feature to clean news on a device in addition to its feature to clean news in the library. I don't use news so I never had a reason to discover that I was wrong.
Not if I understand your request. You want something to delete news "books" on your device when they expire. As you pointed out, Calibre has a feature that deletes these books from its library as they age. Smart eject could tell you that you have news books on your device that are not in calibre's library, telling you which books you should delete from your device to make it match what is in calibre. Mike->Makes sense for a big collection of books. For news, it's not very complicated. I have calibre set up to run at a specific time via a windows task schedule. It downloads the Boston Globe newspaper for today, and deletes yesterday's edition on the PC. I sync it wirelessly, and need only to scan CC to see where there are dupes to manually delete. My request is to automate this on the device. It makes a lot of sense for news sources of course, but I can imagine that for real books it is at least possible someone would want to keep it on the device even after deleting it from the PC, so that option would be needed.

At the moment you would need to use a search in Smart eject that checks the title of the book, which is less than optimal if you have many news sources. I will look at whether I can add searching on tags to the device view, which would make the process more easier.

[Tanjamuse]

I would really love to have more than one library on my new tablet.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Tanjamuse

I would really love to have more than one library on my new tablet.

I assume you are talking about separate calibre physical libraries, not separate calibre virtual libraries.

With some setup in calibre, CC already can handle separate virtual libraries. The setup:
- in calibre, create a tags-like column built from other columns with the template "program: virtual_libraries()".
- in CC, add that new column to the list of custom columns shown in the grouping drawer (CC's settings)
Now a long-press on a virtual library in the grouping drawer will restrict what CC shows to books in that virtual library.

CC can also already handle combining different physical libraries into its database, correctly handling metadata update depending on which library calibre is using when you connect as a wireless device. If you added a tag or a new custom column that provides the name of the library the book comes from then you could use CC's long-press-to-restrict feature described above to limit what you see in CC to a given source library. EDIT: you can create a column that automatically fills in the library name using a column built from other columns with the template "program: current_library_name()". This scheme would also work with the content server because the library name would be in the book's metadata.

As for handling multiple physical libraries as separate libraries in CC: there are complexities. The first is how would CC show them. Clearly no cross pollination between libraries should be possible, implying separate book storage, separate database (grouping and sorting), and probably separate setup options. This really implies separate CC installations, something that would not be straightforward given how Android works.

The second is ensuring that when you connect to calibre as a wireless device, you are connecting to the library associated with that CC installation. In effect, CC would be required to refuse to connect if the library on the calibre side isn't the "right" library; the same the one used when the CC library was created. How this would work with the content server is an interesting question, given that one can simultaneously have several different content server instances serving different content from multiple libraries. Also, a side effect is that combining libraries into a single CC database would be forbidden, something that people use today.

The third would be the expected immediate requests for dynamic switching between the physical libraries and for moving books between the libraries. Coordinating this with calibre would be extremely challenging.

Given these complexities and given the workarounds described above, I am not inclined to attempt to implement separate physical libraries.

[Tanjamuse]

This sounds good, but I still don't understand anything about Templates, so you have to tell me where to put and how ... a complete step-by-step would be nice

I really like Caliibre and would love to understand this Template thing

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Tanjamuse

This sounds good, but I still don't understand anything about Templates, so you have to tell me where to put and how ... a complete step-by-step would be nice

I really like Caliibre and would love to understand this Template thing

Templates are used all over the place in calibre, making a general step-by-step guide rather difficult. You can start with calibre's template documentation: http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/template_lang.html. Then ask for help here at mobileread, providing where you want to use a template (file templates, plugboard templates, custom column templates, etc). The thread https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=118563 has many examples of various kinds of templates.

As regards what we are discussing in this thread, identifying separate (non-virtual) libraries in CC, you can avoid using templates altogether by adding the library name as a tag to all books in the library.

The best way to get help with templates (or anything else in calibre) is to ask a specific question about something you want to accomplish. It is best to talk about "what" you want to do in terms of outcomes (e.g., I want to back up my books, I want to track where I bought books, I want to use my genre column in CC, etc), making it easier for people to understand how to answer.