Plugin ideas... add yours here

[Spatterson]

http://www.beelinereader.com/

essentially I'd like to gradient color the font in a pdf. calibre seems like a good tool for the side. I know python quite well... I just don't have a lot of time on my hands. Are there any plugins out there that just change the font color? That would be a good starting point for me

[eschwartz]

You could probably make a plugin to do it -- you could divide the words in a paragraph into chunks and give them incrementing classes to apply a font color.

Nothing entirely like that exists right now. But it shouldn't be too hard. You could take a look at some other plugins that modify ebooks, like Hyphenate This and ScrambleEbook, for inspiration.

[DaltonST]

Originally Posted by canpolat

I'm looking for a plugin that I can use in the following scenario:

1. I export my Calibre library (not the books, only the data stored at Calibre database) and send it to my friend.
2. She imports that library as a separate book-less library. Then she starts working on fixing the tags, genres, etc.
3. Once she is ready with fixing, she exports the library and sends it back to me.
4. When I get the library and importing the differences to my existing library. The plugin prompts me with changes and I accept them (or deny some of them) and the merging happens.
5. The books with changed metadata are marked in Calibre so that I can work on them (embed metadata, etc.)

I know this sounds complicated and does seem niche, but isn't that what plugins are for? I hope someone finds the idea challenging enough to give it a shot.

@canpolat:

Easy. Almost trivial.

[1] Send your friend a CALM (Consolidate All Library Metadata) Target Library (which is of course 'bookless').

[2] She can use CALM to standardize and otherwise change the metadata. There are CALM tools just for that purpose.

[3] She sends the CALM Target Library back to you.

[4] You can then use that changed CALM Target Library to synchronize it with the real Source Libraries using the CALM standardization/synchronization pushbuttons in its 'Metadata Tools' and 'Library Tools' Tabs.


DaltonST

[BILL TERRY]

It would be of great use to those of us users who import a number of books from multple sources, if we could have an addition to the drop down menu that appears when you rightclick in Title or Author columns. This button would be titled Swap Title and Author! A lot of books, from different sources, will be listed by author or title first, and this means Right click for edit metadata, Left click for edit metadata in bulk, tick box for swap author and title, Left click Apply and then Ok, then scroll back to where you were in your library!
You'll agree, a long winded process, especially when setting up a new library, stocked with books from all over the place!
Any help would be great.
Thanks
Bill Terry

[eschwartz]

Editing metadata in bulk means you can do all the books with the wrong metadata at once.

Hardly a long-winded process... adding a dedicated right-click option to save you a grand total of two clicks per person per initial import is not an interesting feature.

[BetterRed]

@Bill Terry - suggestion:

• set the mark books option in Preferences->Add Books
• when you've added a bunch of books, show marked books (ctrl+shift+m),
• unmark books that don't need title and author swapped (ctrl+m)
• refresh the search (alt+g)
• select all books (ctrl+a)
• press 'e', that will bring up bulk edit because you selected multiple books
• check swap name and title
• press ok

BR

[Spatterson]

Revisiting the idea of doing a Beeline reader plugin.

For those not familiar: http://www.beelinereader.com/
Turns out taking a pdf and trying to do this with the text is not really simple. With a ebook it might be another story... but I'm interested in doing this on PDFs (whitepapers and such that I have to read on a daily basis).

My next idea is to completely overlay a full page color gradient. The gradient would ignore anything white (so the page wouldn't be colored). For anything black/near-black it would alpha-blend this gradient. If the vertical change from red to blue in the gradient is approximately equal to the text size on the page, this should give a pretty accurate approximation of the beeline reader effect.

Anyone know of any plugins that are doing some kind of overlay? THat would be a good starting point.

[talmage]

How difficult would it be to make a plugin or a store for the Digital Public Library of America? http://dp.la It has an api that is documented at http://dp.la/info/developers/codex/.

[courtneydion]

I have an idea for a plugin for Anthologies/Box Collections/etc. that would allow you to save metadata/cover image for the anthology alongside the metadata for a book/story split off from the anthology.
Whenever I buy an anthology or box set, I will split it so that each book/story is a separate book. (Mostly because a lot of the anths. I read have stories that are part of a larger series and I want to be able to read those shorts in order with the series without having to search through anthologies to find them).
So basically, I want to add an additional tab to the metadata editor that allows entering meta about the anthology, it would essentially look the same as the basic metadata tab, but would be additional info about the anth instead of the specific book.
Is it even possible to make changes to the metadata editor window?

I am aware that I can add custom columns and add the info in there, but I would like the functionality of being able to download the meta like the way the basic tab works and to add the cover image to that tab.

[eschwartz]

Why not just use the EpubSplit plugin to separate the ebook into separate book records for each story?

[JimmXinu]

It sounds like courtneydion wants each split book from an anthology to have a second set of metadata that's a copy of the original anthology's metadata.

I don't immediately see how that could be done as a plugin. And keeping a copy of the original anthology's metadata in each split book would result in a lot of data duplication.

I wonder if it's possible to create a link of some kind from the split books back to the original anthology book?

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

It sounds like courtneydion wants each split book from an anthology to have a second set of metadata that's a copy of the original anthology's metadata.

I don't immediately see how that could be done as a plugin. And keeping a copy of the original anthology's metadata in each split book would result in a lot of data duplication.

I wonder if it's possible to create a link of some kind from the split books back to the original anthology book?

Field omnibus, fulfilled with the original ebook where the book belongs. Not a link but you can use for search and grouping.

[courtneydion]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

It sounds like courtneydion wants each split book from an anthology to have a second set of metadata that's a copy of the original anthology's metadata.

I don't immediately see how that could be done as a plugin. And keeping a copy of the original anthology's metadata in each split book would result in a lot of data duplication.

I wonder if it's possible to create a link of some kind from the split books back to the original anthology book?

Yes, that's exactly what I'd like to be able to do.

For a lot of the books I'm working with, there's really not a lot of duplicate data publishers, dates, almost all of it is different for the single book versus as it's listed in anthologies.

Stinks though that you don't think it can be done.

[BetterRed]

Thinking outside the square - if calibre published a URI link to books like some other database applications do, then they could not only be used within calibre itself, but in other applications too. Something like calibre://library_uuid||book_uuid.

Meantime you could put a file link into the split-off books' Comments columns (or custom long text columns) to the anthology book folder in which you have stored a book format with the metadata in a form suitable for humans - maybe an epub that just has a book jacket.

Or maybe there's a program that can present (probably in a browser) a metadata.opf in a format suitable for humans - it would need to style it somehow. You'll see what I mean if you drop a metadata.opf into a browser

BR

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Meantime you could put a file link into the split-off books' Comments columns (or custom long text columns) to the anthology book folder in which you have stored a book format with the metadata in a form suitable for humans - maybe an epub that just has a book jacket.

Actually, one might be able to leverage the new Arbitrary Identifiers feature as a place to put the file link - I'll give it a whirl in a bit and report back - if someone else doesn't beat me to it

Still leaves the problem of how to present the metadata.opf file in a form suitable for humanity, i.e something like this:-



BR