[GUI Plugin] Kindle Collections (old)

[Vaesse]

I remember reading a while back somebody talking about leaving the collections folders alone instead of recreating each time, so the date was preserved. While reading it, it didn't make a lot of sense, but with my recent CONSTANT recreating of Kindle Collections, I understand why that would be desireable. I collect my books in collections by series, and view on my Kindle by collections. I am a fast reader and tend to get into MANY books at the same time. Because I read quickly, adding books to a "currently reading" collection makes no sense to me. But I do use the position of the collections on the Kindle to remind me which series I had started (and maybe abandoned). I've been manually opening the collections to recreate the order, but after EVERY update, that gets very tedious.

Is there any way for your plugin to adjust the books IN the collection without changing the actual collection information on the Kindle? (Or any other way to keep the collections in the "most recently read" order after updating collections?) I don't mind new collections going pretty much anywhere, I just want the ones that persist to keep their order.

(P.S. Still working on that other issue, had to wait for my brain to go on-line this morning after FINALLY getting real sleep last night.)

[CRussel]

@Vaesse: I have a collection called "ToBeRead". No book is only in it, so whenever I finish a book, I simply remove it from the collection on the Kindle. When I buy/download a new book, I put it in "Mysteries" + "ToBeRead", or "1632" + "ToBeRead", etc. Seems to work for me, and I only have to keep track of the order of books in the one collection.

[Vaesse]

I tried that briefly and was less that fully satisfied with the results, as it makes moving from one book to the next in the series more difficult. I think I will continue to re-sort after recreating Collections for now.

[belfastbiker]

Originally Posted by meme

If you are on Windows, the plugin file is just stored in C:\Users\YOURNAME\AppData\Roaming\calibre\plugins\

Couldn't find it, then realised I was logged onto my hackintosh partition. Calibre is about 20times faster under Windows, one moment...

[belfastbiker]

Done, removed addon, then deleted relevantfile in folder. Stsrted Calibre again, downloaded plugin in again, installed, reloaded, and now, the icon doesn't appear in menu at all, and I get this when I try to customise it in preferences.


calibre, version 0.8.2
ERROR: Must restart: You must restart calibre before you can configure the <b>Kindle Collections</b> plugin


EDIT: Restarteed Calibre in DEBUG mode, and the icon appears as supposed to.

[belfastbiker]

Perhaps you and Kovid need to get together and integrate this functionality INTO Calibre?

[meme]

Originally Posted by belfastbiker

Perhaps you and Kovid need to get together and integrate this functionality INTO Calibre?

Its probably more likely that Amazon will change the way they manage collections before that happens Mainly because the work to clean up the code to an acceptable standard and integrate it into calibre is more work than I can manage. And also because its much easier to do updates/additions as a plugin

Since I haven't heard of others with these same issues, I can only guess its something to do with your setup. Whenever you next install the plugin try using the plugin updater to do the work for you and see if it makes any difference.

[meme]

Originally Posted by Vaesse

Is there any way for your plugin to adjust the books IN the collection without changing the actual collection information on the Kindle? (Or any other way to keep the collections in the "most recently read" order after updating collections?) I don't mind new collections going pretty much anywhere, I just want the ones that persist to keep their order.

Looks like another vote for this. I think it'd be best as an option in Customize so it can be toggled on and off. So when leaving collection times alone, new collections would get the current timestamp, and old collections will keep their current timestamps.

One question is whether to update the timestamp if a book is added or removed from a collection. From what I've read here the preference is to keep the old timestamp - because its the timestamp of when you opened them on the Kindle that matters to you, not when books were added/removed.

Another question is whether to make the default option do what it does now, or change it to default to leaving the timestamps alone. Its likely I'll leave it default to what it does now to avoid confusing existing users.

[Vaesse]

Yes, I'd prefer keeping the time the same even if adding new books. And leaving the defaults as is sounds fine. I don't mind hunting for the option. Just reading your post made me smile. It's nice to be able to make a suggestion and see a response so quickly. I often "dream" up ideas for improving software, but it rarely goes anywhere beyond the idea.

[Jen23]

Meme

This new version of Kindle Collections is flawless!

I just wanted to let you know that LOL...dl'ed with no problems and created collections with no problems OR any books left out!

Thank you!!!!!!!

[foghat]

I get the following error when I try add the plugin:

--------------------------------------
calibre, version 0.7.49
ERROR: Unhandled exception: <b>InvalidPlugin</b>:No valid plugin found in D:/Users/Darren/Documents/Documents/ebooks/KindleCollections_plugin.zip

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\preferences\plugins.py", line 281, in add_plugin
File "site-packages\calibre\customize\ui.py", line 379, in add_plugin
File "site-packages\calibre\customize\ui.py", line 94, in load_plugin
InvalidPlugin: No valid plugin found in D:/Users/Darren/Documents/Documents/ebooks/KindleCollections_plugin.zip
-----------------------------------

I also got the same error before I renamed the file.

Any thoughts?

[beckywc]

You need to update Calibre to the current version 0.8.2

[Zatakawa]

I want to have collections being created by tags. But the plugin does not seem to find all tags i use in Calibre. If i choose to create collections by tags, it creates 39 collections although i have hundreds of tags in Calibre. I can't find a reason why some tags are used and some are not.

[meme]

It uses only the tags that are assigned to books that are on your Kindle. Are the collections you are not seeing for tags that are not associated with a book on your Kindle?

[foghat]

Originally Posted by meme

It uses only the tags that are assigned to books that are on your Kindle. Are the collections you are not seeing for tags that are not associated with a book on your Kindle?

That is likely the issue. I too was wondering why it wasn't creating more collections, but only creates collections for tags associated to books already on the kindle.