Adding "translator" field

[LostOnTheLine]

Originally Posted by DaltonST

The Job Spy plugin has a tool named 'Extract Original Title/Translator to Update Custom Columns [Selected EPUBs]'. Been around for years.
DaltonST

As my 1st post in this thread stated I am aware of & attempting to use that, but it requires the Translator to be a Comment type field with a big text block, no indexing ability, & requires you to select the books & find the Extract Original Title/Translator to Update Custom Columns inside a cumbersome menu. It's great that it exists, but it is far from ideal.

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

translators are not something common enough to warrant their own builtin field. As for adding a mechanism to map epub fields to custom columns, its not something I think is important enough to spend my time on, if you disagree, feel free to work on it and submit a patch.

I appreciate the feedback. & thank you for the great software. & I want to be clear I meant no disrespect to you or the software, just noted things that seemed odd to me to not be included, but I'm very much aware that things behind the scenes are often more complicated than they appear to those who do not know.

As for submitting a patch I'm excited to know that that is an option, I had only thought of the possibility of creating a plugin but that seemed like something that if it didn't already exist was probably due to limitations in the software. I personally will likely attempt to see if that's something I can work on, but my time, & coding skills (basics of BASIC, C++, HTML from a long time ago, none of which I've ever really used) are both lacking enough to not expect anything to come of it unfortunately.

Again, thank you for letting us know that it's not something you, & I assume the other developers, are interested in. I can't fault you for that, the software is great, & constantly getting better, so I'm sure you have plenty of work on your plate already.

[DaltonST]

Short-Text, like Titles, are not 'big blocks'. Job Spy just needs a text field that is NOT html. Your choice as to the subcategory. Sounds like user error to me.

DaltonST

[BetterRed]

[hint]

There more than a 150 user developed calibre plugins available from this site alone, at a guess they would collectively add 250-300 features. I doubt calibre would have a 1/10 as many active users without them.

There are User Interaction (GUI) plugins that extract data from format files and drop it into standard and custom columns, some do it on demand (Extract ISBN and Count Pages), and I think there are some File Type plugins that do it when a book is added. I suspect you could run an Extract Contributors GUI plugin when a book is added via the Action Chains plugin - then you'd have the best of both worlds.

[/hint]

BR

[DaltonST]

See the attached image for using the JS update of the metadata custom columns for Original Title and Translator.

Note the "short text like title" specification that makes a world of difference in how the Calibre GUI displays it.

If you want Translator in an Author-Like field, simply use Calibre Search & Replace to copy it to whatever other custom column you wish.



DaltonST

[LostOnTheLine]

Originally Posted by DaltonST

Short-Text, like Titles, are not 'big blocks'. Job Spy just needs a text field that is NOT html. Your choice as to the subcategory. Sounds like user error to me.
DaltonST

Text, column shown in Tag browser - Doesn't work
Comma separated text, like tags, shown in the Tag browser - Doesn't work
Long text, like comments, not shown in the Tag browser - Works
Text column for keeping series-like information - Doesn't work

The tooltip for the #translator says "This is the 'Long Text Like Comments' Custom Column Search/Lookup #name to be updated with the Translator." so "user error" it is not when the instructions say so.

Originally Posted by DaltonST

Note the "short text like title" specification that makes a world of difference in how the Calibre GUI displays it.

If you want Translator in an Author-Like field, simply use Calibre Search & Replace to copy it to whatever other custom column you wish.

When I was initially trying to get it to work I tried that, but it didn't pull the Translator from a book I knew had it, when I switched to "Plain Text" it worked so I assumed it was what was required. It only worked with Plain Text & Plain Text formatted using markdown, both of which were Large fields. I tried it again just now & it works, there must have been an error in my initial test. But the tooltip makes it sound like the Long Text is requires, so when the Short Text option of the Long Text didn't work it was expected because it seemed to be going against the plugin's directions. So there was a small amount of User Error there, but it was user error while trying to see if something seemingly against the instructions would work, so you can't expect the average person to even try that if they are following the instructions...