[GUI Plugin] FanFicFare

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Running checks in epub-editor, noticed FFF downloads have Unexpected unknown property "adobe-hyphenate" (property-no-unknown). Supposed to do something?

That's was created by Adobe. That entry in the CSS enables hyphenation for old Adobe renderers. I suspect you will notice no side effects from removing it even using the Kobo ereader's RMSDK renderer.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by DNSB

That's was created by Adobe. That entry in the CSS enables hyphenation for old Adobe renderers. I suspect you will notice no side effects from removing it even using the Kobo ereader's RMSDK renderer.

I was trying to figure out if book was causing Kobo battery drain. Thankfully it was different issue.

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Running checks in epub-editor, noticed FFF downloads have Unexpected unknown property "adobe-hyphenate" (property-no-unknown). Supposed to do something?

From defaults.ini:

## Allow customization of CSS.  Make sure to keep at least one space
## at the start of each line and to escape % to %%.  Also need
## background_color to be in the same section, if included in CSS.
## 'adobe-hyphenate: none;' prevents hyphenation on newer Nooks
## STR(wG) (1.2.1+ for sure)
output_css:
 body { background-color: #%(background_color)s;
        text-align: justify;
        margin: 2%%;
	adobe-hyphenate: none; }
....

I don't like hyphenation and I used to use Nook readers. They, like many others at the time, used an adobe engine for rendering.

No idea if that still does anything or not. I haven't daily'ed a Nook in probably 10 years.

Actually, it affects my current KOReader! I may change the comment in defaults.ini, though.

[richard6154]

Intrigued: Updating one story with new a chapter changes all the authors stories modified date?

This has been happening for a while, its not a serous problem but it has me intrigued as its inconsistent and only happens to a few authors not every author.

Has anybody seen or experienced this? Some clue on why or how to stop it happening would be appreciated.

[JimmXinu]

Do you have stories with the same Author name from different sites?

By default, each FFF update sets the author's URL in the library DB by author name. If the URL hasn't changed, the modified date doesn't change.

OTOH, if you last updated a story by 'Bob' on AO3, and now you update one by 'Bob' on ffnet, all stories by Bob are 'touched' by the author URL changing.

You can turn off setting author url in FFF Config > Standard Columns tab > Author(s).

The few times it's bothered me, I've some edits like this:

[www.tthfanfic.org]
add_to_replace_metadata:
 author=>^dogbertcarroll$=>dogbertcarroll-tth

[richard6154]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

Do you have stories with the same Author name from different sites?

Yes I do, thanks this explains whats happenning.

and LOL

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

author=>^dogbertcarroll$=>dogbertcarroll-tth

This is the exact author and site today thats caused me remembering and writing my query.

[whiteowl]

Does the plugin reload the old chapters? If initially in the new chapter there were typos and they were fixed later - will updating the book update the chapter?
I kind of hope it would, but in FAQ we have a question https://github.com/JimmXinu/FanFicFa...are-downloaded Which I understand - do not re-download the existing chapter?

What about old images? I read a book at SV a few years ago and I remember there were illustrations. Downloaded that book yesterday - all illustration are gone. And upon checking the source thread on SV - the images were based in googleusercontent.com and apparently do not exist anymore.
So it get me thinking - that if I had downloaded these chapters (with images) when image's url was alive - and later updated the book for new chapters (at which moment the image from the first chapter no longer exist) - will that image survive in the epub?

I realize I am kind of asking for the opposites here - update the chapter's text and not update image referenced in the chapter. But.... What is the current policy on that?

At least for xenoforum, we can look at the end of the old post and see a mark: "Last edited: Month DD, YYYY", if that day is later than a date of epub's chapter it would make sense to re-download it. And for images, if url changed - re-download, if url broken - do not touch.
Is that possible?

[texasnightowl]

Just tried downloading 2 stories from AO3 tonight. Both are new and do not exist in my library. 1 worked. The other has the following comment in the log: bad escape \C at position 9

Any suggestions?

edit: more info. I restarted in debug mode to see what info I could get.

FFF: ERROR: 2026-01-14 20:48:24,052: story.py(973): Exception with replacement line,valuecharacters=>^Original (.*)Character(\(s\)|s|)$=>Original \Character(s)),(Original Skywalker Character(s))

FFF: ERROR: 2026-01-14 20:48:24,052: calibre_plugins.fanficfare_plugin.dialogs(791): Exception: {'title': 'Stardust', 'author_sort': ['Unknown'], 'author': ['kaybohls'], 'comments': '', 'good': False, 'status': 'Error', 'showerror': True, 'calibre_id': None, 'begin': None, 'end': None, 'comment': 'bad escape \\C at position 9', 'url': 'https://archiveofourown.org/works/15344100', 'site': 'archiveofourown.org', 'series': '', 'added': False, 'pubdate': None, 'publisher': None, 'uniqueurl': 'https://archiveofourown.org/works/15344100[None-None]', 'listorder': 0, 'collision': 'Update EPUB if New Chapters', 'is_adult': False, 'username': 'NoneGiven', 'password': '', 'totp': None, 'icon': 'plus.png'}:bad escape \C at position 9

So...that has to do with one of the replace lines in my personal.ini. So I commented that out and retried and it did download fine.

So...the replace line in question I thought I copied correctly from somewhere on the github/wiki? But maybe not. But there is something about it that wasn't happy.

# characters=>^Original (.*)Character(\(s\)|s|)$=>Original \Character(s)

Author has tags in the story for "Original Child Character(s)" and "Original First Order Character(s) (Star Wars)" and "Original Skywalker Character(s)".

[texasnightowl]

Also, my regex knowledge is essentially zero.

But I did go to regex101 and if I put in a regex of: ^Original (.*)Character(\(s\)|s|)$

And then put in the test strings, the Original Child entry "matches" and the Original Skywalker entry "matches". But for the "Original First Order Character(s) (Star Wars)" does not match. It appears to be the (Star Wars) at the end.

But I have no idea how to edit the line to handle such an instance?

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by whiteowl

I realize I am kind of asking for the opposites here - update the chapter's text and not update image referenced in the chapter. But.... What is the current policy on that?

If a chapter is already present in the epub when you update, it is not downloaded again. That's rather the point. Which would also be defeated by downloading it to check for a 'last edit' time. Which most of the supported sites don't have.

Technically you can force FFF to re-download chapters while re-using the previously downloaded images--assuming they have the same URLs still, but it's a manual process.

You can go into each chapter you want to re-download in Edit book and remove the <meta name="chapterurl" ... line before updating. You'd need to Update Always if there isn't a new chapter because 'If New Chapters' works purely by chapter count.

(That's an 'off label use', as it were. If you aren't comfortable editing your epub, you shouldn't be doing it. And make backups.)

I might consider a hybrid update/overwrite mode that keeps existing images while replacing all chapters if other users chime in that they'd find it useful.

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by texasnightowl

So...the replace line in question I thought I copied correctly from somewhere on the github/wiki? But maybe not. But there is something about it that wasn't happy.

FYI, use [code], not [quote] around log and ini lines. Otherwise MR removes them when I quote you.

 characters=>^Original (.*)Character(\(s\)|s|)$=>Original \Character(s)

Remove the \ in front of Character(s). The error told you what's wrong: bad escape \C

Originally Posted by texasnightowl

Also, my regex knowledge is essentially zero.

But I did go to regex101 and if I put in a regex of: ^Original (.*)Character(\(s\)|s|)$

And then put in the test strings, the Original Child entry "matches" and the Original Skywalker entry "matches". But for the "Original First Order Character(s) (Star Wars)" does not match. It appears to be the (Star Wars) at the end.

But I have no idea how to edit the line to handle such an instance?

The $ anchor means 'end of the string'. But now you want it to match chars before the end of the string.

If you just remove $, it doesn't completely get it because the line will only replace what matched to that point. You need to add .* before the end anchor($) to match anything else that may come.

 ^Original (.*)Character(\(s\)|s|).*$=>Original Character(s)

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.

[texasnightowl]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

Remove the \ in front of Character(s). The error told you what's wrong: bad escape \C

I found the sample I copied it from but it looks like I missed a character. On the MetadataManagement page. It has a \1Character(s). Why "\1"?

The $ anchor means 'end of the string'. But now you want it to match chars before the end of the string.

If you just remove $, it doesn't completely get it because the line will only replace what matched to that point. You need to add .* before the end anchor($) to match anything else that may come.

 ^Original (.*)Character(\(s\)|s|).*$=>Original Character(s)

thanks, I will add this!

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.

Oh yes. at least once or twice. I mentioned a few posts back that I'm starting a new test library. My main fanfic library has so many crap tags in it that I can't stand it. I'm moving forward with a new library and basically excluding "genre" aka the crap freeform tags. I still have to deal with too many characters being tagged when they barely appear. But I couldn't stand stupid tags like "lol" or "finally" or "the author regrets nothing" and so much worse! So I've decided to just go forward with none of them! I'll occasionally miss helpful tags but I'd rather add a few of my own as I read than deal with all the stupid and useless ones.

[texasnightowl]

I did make the 2 changes. Removed the \ in front of Character(s) and added the .* and it does seem to be good. I deleted tags and then did the update metadata from the saved metadata column and the 3 variants of Original did change to be just "Original Character(s)". So yay!

also, back to the subject of tags...since this time around I am doing the saved metadata column, I can still search on those freeformtags even though I removed genre from the "include_subject_tags" line for AO3.

So I can always search for "Alternate Universe" and add a tag to those books later.

Currently trying to figure out what additional character and fandom wrangling I want to do. ie. if a fic has assigned fandoms of Thor & Iron Man & Captain America & The Avengers & MCU...I really don't care about all that and just calling it MCU would be fine. So...I'm still playing.

But I am liking the saved metadata column. I didn't have that before.

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by texasnightowl

I found the sample I copied it from but it looks like I missed a character. On the MetadataManagement page. It has a \1Character(s). Why "\1"?

Backreference to put matched parans from expression in result. See https://www.regular-expressions.info...cebackref.html

[JimmXinu]

Alpha Test Version Attached

2026-01-15
- Image Handling Changes

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.

REMOVED due to bug