Beta testers for calibre 9 needed

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Why do you want to make it more complicated then it needs to be?

If we are going to have a bookshelf view, the varied widths make it more realistic and, IMNSHO, more people will like that than a mass of fixed width blocks. Whinging about it is not going to achieve anything.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Also, what about the bug I posted? Why isn't it being addressed?

It has been addressed and fixed.

[theducks]

As someone who started reading over 60 years ago, I have never once chosen a book (to read) by the number of pages or thickness.

OTOH A thick book makes a great way to prop/raise something up or door stop.

A Tall book raises my ire as it won't fit on my shelves
A thick-heavy book makes my arms ache.

@Kovid do it your way. There is always your standard 'patches welcome'

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

I'm a bit late to this party but here are a couple of observations, neither related to page counts you'll be relieved to hear:

2. Possible extra option for the 'look and feel' of a real bookshelf. I experimented by leaving both 1st/2nd line templates empty, i.e. no text superimposed on the spine. This just leaves a ghostly cover showing condensed author/title etc, but the words are the right way up, no neck cricks! This may just be me but I quite like it. I'd like it even more if I was also able to make it less ghostly (more opaque, less transparent?). Just a thought...

2. I think when you have that view, the color of the cover image should be able to be adjusted as to how bright it should be as I think it does need to be brighter. I do like it. But I'd like it more if the cover image was brighter.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by theducks

As someone who started reading over 60 years ago, I have never once chosen a book (to read) by the number of pages or thickness.

I have. The MR reading challenge for 2025 had a category to choose a small book. 2026's reading challenge also has such.

But I have picked a book based on the size. I've picked a shortish book when I was trying to decide what I wanted to read or a long book when I wanted to a long book.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by un_pogaz

Do you mean that a book with two authors value "Fred Bloggs [translator] & Mary Smith [editor]" should be present in two groups? Present once in "Fred Bloggs [translator]" and a other in "Mary Smith [editor]"?
If so, no, it not possible. Book cannot be duplicated on bookshelf and their grouping is bassed on the first value if the field can contain several (so only "Fred Bloggs [translator]" will take acount in this case).

Q. should books translated by Anat Admati take up shelf space?

I say no - bookshelves are not an index/catalogue.

In the example shown Anat Admati [translator] is the third name in the list of 'Authors' for the book "Rios De Londres"

BR

[BetterRed]

I had blank spines, but I want {title} and {author}



Had to restart calibre to get them back



BR

[Comfy.n]

Is the emblems feature working? Anybody tried it? I find the wording "Above of spine" and "Below of spine" a bit unusual. No emblems load for any of the 3 rules I tested.

Also, I'm trying to figure why I get a blue spinning wheel and have to restart calibre upon testing the bookshelf feature, while just scrolling the view, even with default settings.

Procmon doesn't give me any insight:



Restarting with 3rd party plugins disabled doesn't help.

Other view modes (book list, cover grid) work fine as usual, with my column icons and cover grid emblems displaying.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by Comfy.n

Also, I'm trying to figure why I get a blue spinning wheel and have to restart calibre upon testing the bookshelf feature, while just scrolling the view, even with default settings.

Are your pagecounts finished calculating? I had some freeze related to that. In general bookshelf view definitely a bit slower too, not sure what bottleneck is.

[BetterRed]

Can we have a specific shortcut to show List view

If Grid and Shelf don't have shortcuts there's no way to get back to List view… other than click a bottom, or via All actions (for me Ctrl+Alt+A)->Layout actions then arrow down to Hide the view I'm looking at.

BR

[Comfy.n]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Are your pagecounts finished calculating? I had slowness related to that. In general bookshelf view definitely a bit slower too, not sure what bottleneck is.

Yes it finished my main library by the time of the first beta release. Good call, though. I will have calibre re-count ASAP to see if that helps.

I find the bookshelf view to be generally sluggish; I don't plan to use it much but I wanted to see how the new emblems feature looks.

I suspect we would need @chaley, the custom columns founder and grand sorcerer, to inspect the bottlenecks. But it looks to me like he has retired.

[kovidgoyal]

Sluggish how? What operations are slow in particular and at what size of library?

@BR: There already exist shortcuts to toggle grid/shelf back to list. A shortcut to toggle list makes no sense as there is no list view in layout and it cant be "toggled" only "switched to". If you have removed the shortcuts for grid/shelf then resumably you arent going to be using them so I dont see how a list view shortcut is needed in that scenario.

[ownedbycats]

I mostly notice it when scrolling, using arrow keys to navigate books, or hovering cursor to make cover appear. All thumbnails generated.

It gets a little better if I set hover animation to 0 milliseconds.

Library about 8300 books.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

I mostly notice it when scrolling, using arrow keys to navigate books, or hovering cursor to make cover appear. All thumbnails generated.

It gets a little better if I set hover animation to 0 milliseconds.

Library about 8300 books.

Scrolling and arrow movement is instantaneous for me. The hover animation only gets trigerred after your mouse stops moving, which means calibre has to wait a fraction of a second to check if the mouse has really stopped before trigerring the animation. Is the animation itself slow or just how long it takes to start? Does reducing the shelf height help?

[Comfy.n]

Now I see the emblems in bookshelf view for a plain yes/no column I have, but still my #ac (annotations count) column returns the emblem only in cover grid mode, not in bookshelf mode.

I have:

program: annotation_count()

Scrolling indeed seems better on this large library I have (82k items), when animation is disabled.

Is there a way to reset the shelf height? I can't remember what it was initially, but wanted to retry the default value for my screen size.

[DNSB]

One item I would like to see is adding a Default button on the cover grid and bookshelf views to reset all the selections to the "factory" default.