[GUI Plugin] FanFicFare

[John Maverick]

Would be possible to add the option to assign a keyboard shortcut to "Add rejected URL"?

[JimmXinu]

The one that opens a text dialog? Because 'Reject Selected Books' can already have a short cut.

I think I can, but the only way I know how is by also adding a menu option for it, like I did for 'Edit personal.ini'.

[John Maverick]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

The one that opens a text dialog?

Yep, that one.

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

I think I can, but the only way I know how is by also adding a menu option for it, like I did for 'Edit personal.ini'.

If that isn't a problem for you and your plans for the plugin, I said that would be great. I'm subscribed to receive email notifications when authors I'm following update or create new stories, and sometimes I have to add a lot of stories URLs to reject. Having easy access to the option would help me a lot.

As always, thanks in advance for reading my suggestion.

[JimmXinu]

Question for Mac users:

Does anyone actually need fanficfare_macmenuhack.txt anymore?

That was a hack added 14+ years ago for macos inexplicably crashing calibre with certain FFF menu options.

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

...
This also introduces a different way to deal with the problem of Mac users crashing calibre.

To recap: A couple of Mac users have experienced calibre crashes after installing FFDL PI. Long story short, I removed the Configure Plugin and About Plugin menu items for all Mac users to fix it for one user.

It has since occurred to me that I have no idea how many Mac users FFDL PI actually has and how many of them have this problem. Am I inconveniencing a bunch of people for a problem only one user has?

So I came up with a different way remove those menu items for those users it crashes for. Create a file named 'fanfictiondownloader_macmenuhack.txt' in your calibre/plugins directory. If some Mac user could post an example of where that typically is on Mac, I'd appreciate it.

(Theoretically, it should be possible to figure out why it only happens to FFDL and fix/workaround it. But without having a Mac that's doing it to experiment on--or at least a user with one willing to try dozens of versions--I don't see that happening.)

[JimmXinu]

New Test Version Posted

2026-03-27
- Add Reject URLs: Accept story URLs drag/drop & paste like Add Stories by URL
- Add top menu items for Add/Edit Reject URLs.
- Remove fanficfare_macmenuhack.

I'm especially interested in hearing:

• From Mac users--Does this version crash anyone?
  14+ years ago some mac users needed fanficfare_macmenuhack.txt.
• Should the three top level Reject menu items be bundled into a sub menu?
  Would add an extra click to get to Reject Selected Books than now.

[MidnightRose]

Is there any way to configure personal.ini to update the default rating column with the stars value from the fiction site? I got as far as putting it into a custom float column, but trying to put it into the default rating column does nothing, and trying to put it into a custom stars column complains that it's supposed to be an int instead of a float, and errors out.

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by MidnightRose

Is there any way to configure personal.ini to update the default rating column with the stars value from the fiction site? I got as far as putting it into a custom float column, but trying to put it into the default rating column does nothing, and trying to put it into a custom stars column complains that it's supposed to be an int instead of a float, and errors out.

No, FFF doesn't have code to set Calibre's standard Rating column.

One reason is that for most sites 'Rating' is 'K', 'T', 'M', etc, not a star count.

Calibre's custom Rating type appears to want 0-10 integer values which map by half stars, ie 1/2 star = 1, 1 star = 2 up to 5 stars = 10.

It might be possible to map site specific metadata to that using some clever replace_metadata, but I don't know how without what site and what metadata entry.

[John Maverick]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

New Test Version Posted

2026-03-27
- Add Reject URLs: Accept story URLs drag/drop & paste like Add Stories by URL
- Add top menu items for Add/Edit Reject URLs.

Tested the new test version. Worked perfectly. Thank you so much for your fast response and amazing work

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

I'm especially interested in hearing:

• Should the three top level Reject menu items be bundled into a sub menu?
  Would add an extra click to get to Reject Selected Books than now.

I sightly prefer the way the menu is in this test version, with the 3 Reject options in the main menu. But even if these menu items are bundled into a sub menu I don't have any problem. At least for me, either way is okay. Also I think that with the possibility of assigning keyboard shortcuts to these options the extra clicks matter little for those who use them a lot.

[Hlord369]

I'm looking to add a new column so that when I update a story I've already downloaded with FanFicFare, the Date column for the story stays the same, but the new Update Date column updates instead with the date it was updated. What precisely is the best way to do that please?

[JimmXinu]

In FFF's config, under the 'Standard Columns' tab, you can check Date 'New Only' to only set the Date field once.

Under the 'Custom Columns' tab, you can set your custom date column to be filled with 'Updated'.

[Hlord369]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

In FFF's config, under the 'Standard Columns' tab, you can check Date 'New Only' to only set the Date field once.

Under the 'Custom Columns' tab, you can set your custom date column to be filled with 'Updated'.

Thanks! What should I do to add a Published Column, and what more do I need to know about this kind of thing, especially if I want to add a column showing when I last updated from my computer as well?

[JimmXinu]

FFF populates Calibre's standard Published Date column by default.

I'm not sure what you mean by "add a column showing when I last updated from my computer as well", but if you mean manually changing something in a book's metadata, all I know of is Calibre's standard 'Modified' column which updates when any change is made.