Plugin ideas... add yours here

[BetterRed]

Well that was easy enough, I thwarted the Windows Permissions Beast by installing the portable version of the Windows Quicklook app. Hooked it up to calibre's Open With for PDF's and even gave it 'space' as a shortcut.

Cute and PDQ, I'll play with some other formats tomorrow.

Someone with a Mac will have to see if they can do the same.

BR

[nixsee]

Wow, I didnt expect such a fast response let alone success! Will you be trying to make it into a plugin or is it something I can/will have to configure myself?

[nixsee]

And another idea - Indexed Full Text Searching. This is the one outstanding feature that keeps my waffling about Calibre vs Zotero for my academic papers (I've been all-in on Calibre for books for many years).

I have seen this in the forums already, but it doesnt look like there is a solution yet other than to just use your built-in operating system search indexer. I can do that, but it would be really nice to have it built into calibre - make saved searches, tag results, etc...

Perhaps there's a way to piggyback off of the Windows search index? Or something on Github that can be integrated?

[nixsee]

Another idea: OCR, which goes hand-in-hand with search indexing. There's obviously other ways to do this with 3rd party applications, but a built-in, streamlined process (and without need for the command-line) would be great. Again, Zotero has a plugin for this, that is built off of the free Tesseract engine.

https://github.com/UB-Mannheim/zotero-ocr

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by nixsee

Another idea: OCR, which goes hand-in-hand with search indexing. There's obviously other ways to do this with 3rd party applications, but a built-in, streamlined process (and without need for the command-line) would be great. Again, Zotero has a plugin for this, that is built off of the free Tesseract engine.

https://github.com/UB-Mannheim/zotero-ocr

It's a large effort for very little return.

[nixsee]

Fair enough. I know next to nothing about coding - just making suggestions. Thanks for the quick reply!

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by nixsee

Wow, I didnt expect such a fast response let alone success! Will you be trying to make it into a plugin or is it something I can/will have to configure myself?

No need for a plugin, the following does exactly what you asked for - opens PDFs in Quicklook when you press spacebar in the book list - pretty cool

This is what I did on Windows - you or someone with a Mac will have to work out how to do the same on a Mac, there's only one unknown, where does Apple hide Quicklook in MacOS

Initially I installed Quicklook app from the MS Store, that was OK I could use it from File Explorer (Finder in Macspeak), but it was installed the C:\Program Files\WindowsApps folder which is where I ran into the Permissions Monster.

So I went looking for a portable version of Quicklook, I found it on the developers site ==>> Releases · QL-Win/QuickLook, so I installed the msi in C:\Program Files (Portable)\Quicklook (that's a folder)

Then in calibre:

I found a book with a PDF in my Test library and right clicked the PDF link in Book Details,



After selecting Add other application for PDF files this popped up:



After clicking Browse computer for program, Flle Manager kicked in and I went to C:\Program Files (Portable)\Quicklook



So that hooked Quicklook into Calibres Open With for PDFs. I then went to Preferences->Shortcuts, scrolled down to Open With, then to Open PDF Files with Quicklook and gave it a custom short cut of 'space'



Then I found another book with a PDF



Pressed the spacebar and up popped Quicklook



The unknown on a Mac is where to find the Quicklook app, if you can find it then just follow the above steps.

BR

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by nixsee

And another idea - Indexed Full Text Searching. This is the one outstanding feature that keeps my waffling about Calibre vs Zotero for my academic papers (I've been all-in on Calibre for books for many years).

I have seen this in the forums already, but it doesnt look like there is a solution yet other than to just use your built-in operating system search indexer. I can do that, but it would be really nice to have it built into calibre - make saved searches, tag results, etc...

Perhaps there's a way to piggyback off of the Windows search index? Or something on Github that can be integrated?

There are a couple of plugins with content search, MultiColumnSearch and ????????????????????????

But I don't use either of them, instead I use Windows Search and X1 Search. I 'integrate' them into calibre via the Drop Search Results (DSR) plugin. I don't know if DSR works with Spotlight on Macs, ask in the DSR thread.

Index of plugins

Help: Can someone remember the other one - it's one of kiwidudes

BR

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by nixsee

Another idea: OCR, which goes hand-in-hand with search indexing. There's obviously other ways to do this with 3rd party applications, but a built-in, streamlined process (and without need for the command-line) would be great. Again, Zotero has a plugin for this, that is built off of the free Tesseract engine.

https://github.com/UB-Mannheim/zotero-ocr

See previous response - re searching,

Kovid has indicated in the past that he intends adding content search to calibre, I think he mentioned using the Lucene engine, it may search OCR search image PDFs.

This also looks interesting Dropbox's AutoOCR can index text from PDFs and images

BR

[nixsee]

@BetterRed Wow, thanks so much! I was unaware of the Open With features and menus - I'll poke around there some more, and in the menus in general.

Neat feature, eh? Now to have something like that built right into Calibre - like the Windows Explorer Preview Pane, so you can preview files while scrolling through them! (wishful thinking?)

And thanks for the tips on the various Search Plugins - I'll explore them, and look closer at the Index of Plugins as well.

[BetterRed]

If anyone is interested in Quicklook for EPUB, the QL plugins are at ==>> Available Plugins · QL-Win/QuickLook Wiki

install it into Quicklook, add Quicklook to the EPUB Open With list, and give it a shortcut e.g. Shift Q.

It's very quick to open, UI is not great, actually it's awful, but it works. It's written in C# and the source is licensed GPL-3.0.

BR

[The_book]

I have an idea. Create an input plugin and a output plugin to deal markdown. This two plugin do exactly what txt plugin dose, just aim to auto convert .md file, because I am somehow tired to rename file from txt to md everytime. What can I do to start? Is there any direct api to using built-in input and output plugins in new plugin?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by The_book

I have an idea. Create an input plugin and a output plugin to deal markdown. This two plugin do exactly what txt plugin dose, just aim to auto convert .md file, because I am somehow tired to rename file from txt to md everytime. What can I do to start? Is there any direct api to using built-in input and output plugins in new plugin?

What is a .md file? If it's just a text file, then nobody is going to write these plugins because there's not need as Calibre already converts text files.

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by The_book

I have an idea. Create an input plugin and a output plugin to deal markdown.

Calibre already supports the import and export of markdown and textile files.

[The_book]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

What is a .md file? If it's just a text file, then nobody is going to write these plugins because there's not need as Calibre already converts text files.

I use ebook-convert cli to convert books. So when I want to get a markdwon from an epub, I need to set --txt-output-formatting=markdown everytime and rename the file from .txt to .md everytime. I think to use ebook-convert xxx.epub .md is not a bad idea.
By the way, I find this post after post another post with the same content. I'm sorry for this action, and as that post have been closed, I can only thank jhowell here for the suggestion to look at the implementation of the TXTZ Output plugin in txt_output.py. It seems helpful to me.