[GUI Plugin] Kindle Collections (old)

[meme]

Originally Posted by vogelap

My anticipated workflow (with a couple questions, below) is this:
* Using Calibre, copy the books from my K3 to my Kindle Library on my main PC at home. I've previously created "Imported Kindle Collections" column.

Ok. The best column type to use is Comma separated, like Tags. And the easy way to import your K3 books into Calibre is to go to the Device button/view and right click on a book that's only on your K3 and select Add book.

* Run the Kindle Collection Manager and import my Collections from my K3 to Calibre. I should see the "Imported Kindle Collections" column populate, right?

Right - the column will be populated with the collection names from your K3. You only need to do this once, unless you update the collections on the Kindle itself and want to re-import and overwrite the collections in your "Imported Kindle Collections" column.

* In Calibre, assign/edit books to categories as I desire.

Now, my questions:
* What do I do after that? In this scenario, I've got books assigned to categories on Calibre but not on my K3. What steps are required to get the categorized books from Calbire to K3?

Setup the plugin to use your column - go to Customize in the plugin's menu, then select 'Create' next to your column name, and make sure none of the other columns have 'Create' selected. You only need to do this once.

Then each time you want to export your assigned collections to your K3 run the 'Create Collections' option in the plugin.

* Must I run the Kindle Collection Manager plugin before and after every category modification on Calibre and K3?

You need to run "Create Collections" from the plugin after you've completed updates in Calibre that you want to see on your K3. It doesn't have to be after you update each book but can be done once you've finished several updates.

And if you update your collections manually on the Kindle, you need to re-Import them into your column (this will overwrite anything you already have in the column).

I appreciate the help of this group.

Its a very helpful group

[ButterflyJak]

Ok, I am really struggling with this. I have downloaded Calibre 0.8.17 and installed the latest Kindle Collections plugin 1.7.0, it tells me it's installed and to restart Calibre, but the Kindle Collections icon does not appear. Even going into Preferences, Toolbar there isn't an icon for Kindle Collections. I've drove myself mad trying to figure this out, reading previous posts etc, but am now losing the will to live..... Please help....

[meme]

Originally Posted by ButterflyJak

Ok, I am really struggling with this. I have downloaded Calibre 0.8.17 and installed the latest Kindle Collections plugin 1.7.0, it tells me it's installed and to restart Calibre, but the Kindle Collections icon does not appear. Even going into Preferences, Toolbar there isn't an icon for Kindle Collections. I've drove myself mad trying to figure this out, reading previous posts etc, but am now losing the will to live..... Please help....

Can you post your "gui.json" file from Calibre's settings directory (on linux its in $HOME/.config/calibre/gui.json and in Windows something like C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Roaming\calibre )

When you installed the plugin, did you get asked where to add the icon, and did you select something?

[meme]

Originally Posted by ButterflyJak

Ok, I am really struggling with this. I have downloaded Calibre 0.8.17 and installed the latest Kindle Collections plugin 1.7.0, it tells me it's installed and to restart Calibre, but the Kindle Collections icon does not appear. Even going into Preferences, Toolbar there isn't an icon for Kindle Collections. I've drove myself mad trying to figure this out, reading previous posts etc, but am now losing the will to live..... Please help....

Actually, skip posting the gui.json.

I just re-installed on a clean system and got the same results - because of 2 issues.

When you install the plugin and it pops up a dialogue asking you where you want the icon to go - you must select a location. It might appear that the 'Main Menu when device is connected' is selected, but its not - you must click on it (or on another entry).

When you look in Preferences->Toolbar for the Kindle Collections icon, you MUST change the dropdown selection from 'Main Menu when device is not connected' (click on the text) to 'Main Menu when device is connected' - or the icon will not be visible since it can only be used when a device is connected.

I'll try to highlight this in the install notes as it seems to happen to people occasionally...

[vogelap]

Originally Posted by meme

Its a very helpful group

Thanks for the help, meme and everyone else on the forum! It worked once I followed your specific directions! I am excited -- this makes managing collections MUCH easier!

[babkayaga]

some collections on kindle include books in
calibre and books not in calibre (copied to flash directly).
when I update collection from calibre, non-calibre books
disappear from that collection.

[babkayaga]

sorry above was cut in half.
reposting.

Using the plugin, it is very useful.I have a problem though:
some collections on my kindle include both books in
calibre and books not in calibre (copied to flash directly).
when I update collection from calibre, non-calibre books
disappear from that collection.

yes I know I can copy all books into calibre but they are
big and take too much space that way.

[babkayaga]

and a wishlist item:

would be nice to be able to change collections for a single
book or list of books, and then update collections
on kindle just for these books, not touching the rest.

[kiwidude]

@babkayaga - you can't mix calibre and non calibre books in the same collection with this plugin. You can have Kindle only collections (that the plugin leaves alone) or Calibre generated collections. You cannot have a Calibre plugin generated collection and "expect" that books that are not in Calibre are going to stay inside it.

So either use two collections, or put all your books in Calibre (the space a book takes up on disk is next to nothing - after all a Kindle only has a limited amount of RAM which your hard-disk will be far greater than).

[ButterflyJak]

Originally Posted by meme

Actually, skip posting the gui.json.

I just re-installed on a clean system and got the same results - because of 2 issues.

When you install the plugin and it pops up a dialogue asking you where you want the icon to go - you must select a location. It might appear that the 'Main Menu when device is connected' is selected, but its not - you must click on it (or on another entry).

When you look in Preferences->Toolbar for the Kindle Collections icon, you MUST change the dropdown selection from 'Main Menu when device is not connected' (click on the text) to 'Main Menu when device is connected' - or the icon will not be visible since it can only be used when a device is connected.

I'll try to highlight this in the install notes as it seems to happen to people occasionally...

Thanks a lot meme, I did have trouble getting the plugin to change it's behaviour, but seem to have managed it now by uninstalling plugin and deleting the plugin file in its directory (wouldn't work until I did this) and reinstalling. I don't think I selected anything when it asked where to put the icon as I thought it had defaulted to the first item.

All seems to be working now and it's looking very good. Thanks

[Vandeervecken]

Originally Posted by meme

The plugin did not delete any of your books. It simply doesn't have any code to do so.

As for blanking some of your other collections, have you run the Restore previous Kindle collections option in the plugin, and then restarted the Kindle? That will copy your old collections file on top of the new one and get you back to exactly what you had before for collections (and if you've run it a few times, you can manually move files around as the plugin always keeps the original first copy of the file). Did Edit show you all the collections/books that you expected before you modified any? Had you edited collections by some other method and not restarted before? If you actually removed from your Kindle by some means other than deleting them directly from the Kindle (e.g. you did a remove in a directory or asked Calibre to delete them), then those books would no longer be able to appear in collections making it look like some collections were blanked. If you want to try to debug the collections issue then I'll be glad to help if you PM me files, examples.

Well I don't know what to tell you. I edited one collection, and saved it. when I restarted my Kindle as I was told, my 900+ books was down to 380. Almost all of my collections now contained no books. Perhaps it was all a coincidence. . . .

I did re-install all my books, and try again, using the plugin to put them all in collections and that worked just fine. However the first time I ran it, it did exactly what I described above.

[pchrist7]

Hi meme.
If I get this right, when importing collection info into Calibre custom column, the data is changed for ALL books in calibre, and then a full backup of calibre is triggered.
Is it possible to modify the import function, so a books metadata/custom column data is only changed if it's changed ?
Maybe I misunderstood it all, but ....
Cheers, Per

[meme]

Originally Posted by pchrist7

Hi meme.
If I get this right, when importing collection info into Calibre custom column, the data is changed for ALL books in calibre, and then a full backup of calibre is triggered.
Is it possible to modify the import function, so a books metadata/custom column data is only changed if it's changed ?
Maybe I misunderstood it all, but ....
Cheers, Per

Yes, the Import Collections function zeroes out the column you've selected and then populates the entries for books with data. This was the easiest way to do it since calibre provides functions to do this in a couple of calls. But its also the only way to be sure any old collections are removed. If the import only modified the books that were found on the Kindle, then it would miss blanking the column entries for the books no longer on the Kindle.

Well, I guess that's not fully true - its not the only way. I suppose I could scan the list of books and update/zero out only the changed ones. My concern would be performance - checking every entry, see if its on the Kindle, see if the collections are different, modify them if different, and if not on the Kindle check if its blank, if not blank it. If I remember my initial tests it did take longer, but I can't remember if it was significant or not.

I don't have my calibre library set to back up (maybe something I should look into ) so if a backup is triggering a backup of all books each time you import then that sounds like it would take quite a bit longer than checking if things changed.

I'll have a look into, but it might take a bit.

[anyanicole]

I currently have a Kindle 1 and am attempting to change fonts. I used the calibre add on, but when I try to save my changes inside the plug-in, i get an error message: unable to write new preferences to kindle. Any ideas? I even tried to simply change the line spacing and still no go. What can I do?

[GirlCami]

So my dad upgraded his Kindle Collections plugin on calibre to the most current after he reformatted his computer (simply b/c the most current version is the only option).
I need one of two options to work out regarding this newer version.
1. We previously used 1.4.3 without any problems which is why we never upgraded to newer versions. (I did once to 1.5 [I think], and it did not work the same....so promptly switched back. I wish the way the plugin is now integrated into Calibre made it doable to access a previous version. It shows the previous versions, but will not allow you to run them.
2. So since I doubt above will happen, I feel I am left with having to use this newer version. We create collections based on author name. We sort by collections on our Kindle 3. And before, it worked beautifully & sorted it in alphabetical order every time we freshly created, so to speak. Of course, if you accessed one of the Author Collections it would move to the top of the pile. Now they are all mixed up & the Kindle Collection says it is sorted by most recent. It is so unorganized looking. We hate it. In 1.4.3, all we had to do was add prefix _ and it worked like a charm. Not with this version. Somebody help please. I have spent too many hours tonight trying to get this to work the way we want it to. I don't know what else to do.