[Enhancement] calibre:// book-details option

[ownedbycats]

Question: Will links remain intact if an older version of Calibre is run?

[chaley]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Question: Will links remain intact if an older version of Calibre is run?

Probably. If you don't touch the db table representing the category item then they will not be changed. For example, editing a category should work in cases where the database table row survives the operation, such as item renames to something that doesn't already exist. I don't know for renames that force merges or case changes. Copy to library might present issues. DB Recovery will certainly not recover the links.

Another possibility: there might be instances where the upgraded db version causes problems. I don't know of any but that doesn't mean a lot. Over the years Kovid did a lot of work to ensure that running a version of calibre expecting db version X wouldn't break db version X+n. That said, it happens especially with db triggers.

Plugins are another story. If a plugin reads or modifies the db directly then who know what will happen.

Personally, I would avoid the problem if possible.

[ownedbycats]

Since it's semi-related: Is there a reason the category manager locks the background?

I'm copying author links into fanfic authors:

1. Open Author Manager, filter to VL
2. Right-click the first author without a link to 'Show books by author'
3. Press "OK" to close window.
4. Open an ePub by the author and copy the author link from the titlepage.
5. Re-open the Author Manager, re-apply VL filter, and add the link.

Being able to click on the ePub link in details without first closing the window would save a lot of clicks...

Alternately any other options to improve the workflow would be useful. (A search to find books that have authors without links?)

[chaley]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Since it's semi-related: Is there a reason the category manager locks the background?

I'm copying author links into fanfic authors:

1. Open Author Manager, filter to VL
2. Right-click the first author without a link to 'Show books by author'
3. Press "OK" to close window.
4. Open an ePub by the author and copy the author link from the titlepage.
5. Re-open the Author Manager, re-apply VL filter, and add the link.

Being able to click on the ePub link in details without first closing the window would save a lot of clicks...

Non-modal dialogs create various problems, the most common being that they get lost behind other windows. People then report bugs saying that the window went away. There are also problems with keeping data consistent. When do edits take effect? What happens to the rest of calibre when a non-modal edit window is closed with OK?

Why are you opening the ePub to get the link? It is available from book details by right-clicking on the format.

[ownedbycats]

Not the calibre:// link, but the one from the fanfiction site. FanFicFare does have an option to auto-insert them but I had it turned off because of the previous behaviour of overriding the Calibre searches when the author is clicked.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Not the calibre:// link, but the one from the fanfiction site. FanFicFare does have an option to auto-insert them but I had it turned off because of the previous behaviour of overriding the Calibre searches when the author is clicked.

Wait for the fix? Probably tomorrow (well, today now)?

Or are you talking about some other problem?

[ownedbycats]

I'm GMT -4:00 so probably tomorrow for me

Yeah waiitng for fix would be best.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Not the calibre:// link, but the one from the fanfiction site. FanFicFare does have an option to auto-insert them but I had it turned off because of the previous behaviour of overriding the Calibre searches when the author is clicked.

What previous behavior when author was clicked? The problem you reported was for series. There is no fix in the queue for authors.

[ownedbycats]

Prior to the changes, if I had Look & Feel > Book Details > 'Clicking on author names...' set to 'Search in library,' an author link would override that and open the link instead when clicking it in details. Now clicking on the name searches the library and clicking on the icon opens the link.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Prior to the changes, if I had Look & Feel > Book Details > 'Clicking on author names...' set to 'Search in library,' an author link would override that and open the link instead when clicking it in details. Now clicking on the name searches the library and clicking on the icon opens the link.

And that is a problem? The link icon tells you if there is a link, so you can choose the behavior you want.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by chaley

And that is a problem? The link icon tells you if there is a link, so you can choose the behavior you want.

No, I prefer this behaviour. Having it override is why I didn't use authorlinks before.

Sorry if not very coherent, brain is feeling a bit foggy.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Alternately any other options to improve the workflow would be useful. (A search to find books that have authors without links?)

You can do this for author links in a template search. There is a template function that returns the author links for an author. You would check for each author of a book (a for statement). If the count of links for any author is zero then the template would return "matched" or whatever you specify in the search.

At the moment you can't do this for links other than authors without using a python template.

[ownedbycats]

That could work.

Since the author link is also stored in #fanficmetadata (along with a lot of other information), I also thought of using an Action Chain to find it via regex and copy to clipboard.

[BetterRed]

@owb - If you had your library open in CalibreSpy, you could open the epub from there, copy whatever from it, and paste it into into the Author Link in the already open Library manager->Manage authors dialogue.

Probably easiest to select the VL in CS and then use its "Browser" window.

And if CS isn't already running, you can run it from the command line - in fact it's better to do that - 3 line bat file

@echo on
START calibre-debug -r "CalibreSpy" -- --"D:\Calibre\Libraries\Books"
pause

BR

[ownedbycats]

I'll try CalibreSpy!