[GUI Plugin] FanFicFare

[JimmXinu]

FYI, I just found another bug don't use the test version previously posted.

[JimmXinu]

Alpha Test Version Attached - Take Two!

2026-01-15
- Image Handling Changes
- Fix oversight in the 'all images in the epub' code that caused <img longdesc origurl to be replaced with the internal file name when it shouldn't.

This is an alpha level test version that makes a bunch of changes to FFF's image handling with the intention of making CSS url() images work.

I've written a wiki document all about it: Image Handling Changes - uuid5 file names and CSS url() because I wanted to use document formatting and markdown is easier than MR's mark up lang.

It's an alpha level test because I still found several things to change/fix just while writing the document.

[ownedbycats]

Question: Similar to the ini code that removes empty paragraphs, is one that turns linebreaks into proper paragraphs? Can edit manually, just would be easier.

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Question: Similar to the ini code that removes empty paragraphs, is one that turns linebreaks into proper paragraphs? Can edit manually, just would be easier.

This cluster of settings?

## Some sites/authors/stories use several br tags for scene/section
## breaks.  When set replace_xbr_with_hr:X will cause FFF to search
## for X or more consecutive br tags and replace them with br br hr br.
#replace_xbr_with_hr:3

## Some readers don't show horizontal rule (<hr />) tags correctly.
## This replaces them all with a centered '* * *'.  (Note centering
## doesn't work on some devices either.)
#replace_hr: false

## Some sites/authors/stories use br tags instead of p tags for
## paragraphs.  This feature uses some heuristics to find and replace
## br paragraphs with p tags while preserving scene breaks.
#replace_br_with_p: false

## Some sites/authors/stories (notably AO3/OTW) add empty p tags where
## they aren't intended by the author during document upload and not
## all authors know how/take the time to fix it.  This feature removes
## all "empty" <p> tags, ie, those containing only whitespace or <br>
## tags.
#remove_empty_p: false

[Atherton25]

Does the new image handling keep the old link if it can't download it? Such as downloading from Scribblehub, it didn't in the past. Maybe I just didn't have a flag set right if so.

I was catching up on posts, and saw that you can download images through the editor, so I went to a scribblehub story I've read in the past, found out it didn't keep the original URL - but it did keep the image name, so I wrote a quick replacement regex to insert the image name and the base URL since the author published them all in the same place and (almost) all of the image URL's were able to be used with the download option. I'd love to have this ability if it there isn't an option.

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by Atherton25

Does the new image handling keep the old link if it can't download it? Such as downloading from Scribblehub, it didn't in the past. Maybe I just didn't have a flag set right if so.

No. If FFF fails to download an image, replaces the tag as <img longdesc="failedtoload" src="failedtoload"/> so that it never tries again.

This is deliberate because it's not uncommon for older stories to have dozens of broken images and we don't want FFF spending time retrying each one three times every update.

I suppose that keeping the origurl while also marking failedtoload might be possible...

Originally Posted by Atherton25

I was catching up on posts, and saw that you can download images through the editor, so I went to a scribblehub story I've read in the past, found out it didn't keep the original URL - but it did keep the image name, so I wrote a quick replacement regex to insert the image name and the base URL since the author published them all in the same place and (almost) all of the image URL's were able to be used with the download option. I'd love to have this ability if it there isn't an option.

I haven't tested extensively, but with the new image handling, if you manually put an <img src="imgurl"/> tag into chapter text, FFF will get it and process it as normal (fetching, including, and naming ffdl-uuid.ext) on the next update.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

This cluster of settings?

## Some sites/authors/stories use several br tags for scene/section
## breaks.  When set replace_xbr_with_hr:X will cause FFF to search
## for X or more consecutive br tags and replace them with br br hr br.
#replace_xbr_with_hr:3

## Some readers don't show horizontal rule (<hr />) tags correctly.
## This replaces them all with a centered '* * *'.  (Note centering
## doesn't work on some devices either.)
#replace_hr: false

## Some sites/authors/stories use br tags instead of p tags for
## paragraphs.  This feature uses some heuristics to find and replace
## br paragraphs with p tags while preserving scene breaks.
#replace_br_with_p: false

## Some sites/authors/stories (notably AO3/OTW) add empty p tags where
## they aren't intended by the author during document upload and not
## all authors know how/take the time to fix it.  This feature removes
## all "empty" <p> tags, ie, those containing only whitespace or <br>
## tags.
#remove_empty_p: false

Thank you! I guess these are best on storyUrl sections rather than a default?

[Atherton25]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

I suppose that keeping the origurl while also marking failedtoload might be possible...

I haven't tested extensively, but with the new image handling, if you manually put an <img src="imgurl"/> tag into chapter text, FFF will get it and process it as normal (fetching, including, and naming ffdl-uuid.ext) on the next update.

Well, I don't mind either way, but it's nice to be able to use something, even if it's post FFF download, to get the pictures. Using the Calibre Book Editor worked fine for me, though I had to go get a script (in action chains) to compress the pictures because my <1MB file turned into 122MB.

Just having some option was nice though.

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Thank you! I guess these are best on storyUrl sections rather than a default?

Personal choice, really.

Originally Posted by Atherton25

Well, I don't mind either way, but it's nice to be able to use something, even if it's post FFF download, to get the pictures. Using the Calibre Book Editor worked fine for me, though I had to go get a script (in action chains) to compress the pictures because my <1MB file turned into 122MB.

If images failed during initial download, but work later, using FFF's Overwrite Always is a simple, if brute force solution. Or manually deleting the affected chapters before using Update.

Then you'd get FFF's usual image processing, too.

[Atherton25]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

If images failed during initial download, but work later, using FFF's Overwrite Always is a simple, if brute force solution. Or manually deleting the affected chapters before using Update.

Then you'd get FFF's usual image processing, too.

Honestly, I've never had a scribblehub image work in months, they always fail for me.

It may be processing, because generally (but that's just in the last 2 weeks) whenever I've been processing a scribblehub story I use a combination of Browsercache and flaresolverr. I found if I open the story/updates in my browser and flaresolverr grabs the TOC, it doesn't have to all go through Flaresolverr which really doesn't like scribblehub.

If I download a long story with only flaresolverr it I can generally only get 20-30 chapters before it'll fail, and maybe 3 books at a time, after that they all just fail. I've bumped up my slowdown by a lot and it's still the same *shrug*.

My current settings for Scribblehub sleep timer are:
slow_down_sleep_time:6
tweak_fg_sleep:true
min_fg_sleep:6.0
max_fg_sleep:14.0
max_fg_sleep_at_downloads: 7

And I still had lots of errors when I was getting stuff, mostly documents failing a couple dozen chapters in, if not before. Because I've got the setting to grab what it can, I was generally waiting a few hours and then starting the download again, getting books progressively until I found the shortcut I mentioned at the top. It doesn't work perfectly, but it's way better and I don't have to wait a day or two or progressive downloads when I try and grab something.

[Hlord369]

I recently added FanFicFare to download Ao3 fanfics with large numbers of images but I have a problem; I like to organize the stories in my library by date, and when the story updated with a new chapter I used the update function in Calibre to update it, but that caused it to move out of order with the other stories in the series because it changed the date from when it was added to when it was updated, how can I fix this without repeatedly manually editing the date, maybe by adding a new date column?

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by Hlord369

I recently added FanFicFare to download Ao3 fanfics with large numbers of images but I have a problem; I like to organize the stories in my library by date, and when the story updated with a new chapter I used the update function in Calibre to update it, but that caused it to move out of order with the other stories in the series because it changed the date from when it was added to when it was updated, how can I fix this without repeatedly manually editing the date, maybe by adding a new date column?

Add a custom date column, populate it with FFF's Created date, but New Only.
You can do that from FFF's Custom Columns config tab.

You can also order by Series at any time, and there's even a shortcut key (alt-s) to quickly search for a series.

[Hlord369]

Thanks! What's the best way to do a custom date column? I mean, what I should do for the lookup name, etc.? Also, I keep having issues when trying to do a quick reply, it keeps saying that the site is temporarily rate limited and to try again later.

[bigwoof]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

I assume you've heard my sermon on the ultimate futilely of wrangling AO3 tags? I don't remember how long it's been since I last gave it.

have not been here for a while. but just saw this and went "THIS!!"..

To "solve" this exact problem, I ended up writing a whole set of custom action chain scripts all tied together in an action chain module mapped to a hotkey. so for any new AO3 book, instead of whatever the authors thinks I need to know about, I just press the hotkey and the module changes all the tags to things I care about (by extracting and processing keywords from all the fields present in the metadata).

yes, it means I will never get any new tags but it also means my tags are capped at 115 (what calibre tells me) which makes my mobile book reader (moon+) happy when I search :-)

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by Hlord369

Thanks! What's the best way to do a custom date column? I mean, what I should do for the lookup name, etc.? Also, I keep having issues when trying to do a quick reply, it keeps saying that the site is temporarily rate limited and to try again later.

Calibre is *extremely* customizable. So it's largely up to you. There are YouTube videos and everything about how to add columns.

For what you asked for, I would do a Date type column, use a name and label that make sense to you. FFF's Custom Column tab will show you the column and you can choose 'Created' and check 'New Only'.

You might also consider adding two additional columns for FFF errors and FFF saved metadata using column type Long Text, 'interpreted as text'. FFF's Custom Column tab has options at the bottom to populate 'errors' and 'saved metadata' columns.

Having a 'saved metadata' column opens up FFF's 'Update Calibre Metadata from Saved' option, which can be useful for users first figuring out their Calibre setup because you can update FFF stories' Calibre metadata without hitting the story sites again. (This wouldn't help with your 'New Only' column because an update isn't 'new'.)

MR has had significant problems with bot users. New users are heavily throttled until they reach ~10 posts and/or some amount of time. I don't know the specifics.