Plugin ideas... add yours here

[FilBot3]

Plugin Idea/Request: DriveThruRPG Library by One Bookshelf.

There is a Python library called drpg on PyPi. I am reading through the plugin development documentation now. However, if someone is more ready to do this, please.

I find the official DriveThruRPG Library Client to be not as good. I would like to be able to run my DTRPG library from a sever and access it on my network or share with my players.

[Cambel_James]

I have often seen speed readers share a trick, which suggests drawing an imaginary grid or a real grind lines on pages, and keeping focus on that area by reading the whole line rapidly by peripheral vision. Just two lines after 2-3 words of each margins of the page. Shown here, the trick is very popular. https://youtu.be/0Q0we4LjSws?t=527

So, a feature should provide that grids which is customizable, in the layout option. I get this suggestion request to the right people.

thanks.

[retval]

Greetings to all, I wanted to suggest an add-on that allows to insert OCR in pdfs.
As you may have experienced there are old pdf's that were scanned as image. That's why you can't use Calibre's full text search. The free OCR programs I have tried are not efficient and the good ones are very expensive like Foxyt.
Thank you.

[BetterRed]

To get high quality OCR in a plugin the developer would probably need to buy the relevant SDKs, in Foxit's case that would be $3,000 per platform (Windows, MacOS, Linux), per year ²

Most plugins are created by the first person having the need for a particular functionality.

BR

[waynia]

Hello everyone, I am a user of Calibre software for a long time. Recently I developed a python program to recursively summarize the information of an epub format ebook, and output the summaries to a .csv file. This could be further developed as a plugin for Calibre. Imagine that you drag a new e-book into Calibre, and clicked a button, then the plugin summarizes the content of this new book in the back, and the summarized content could be a context for you to chat with ChatGPT. This would be not only interesting but also useful for us.

The program I have developed has been hosted on Github:https://github.com/waynia/epub_retrieval ，while this is only the first step towards the plugin I just described. I have no experience about how to build a GUI plugin of Calibre and I believe the best way to create it is to ask you to join me together.

Moderator Notice
Moved to the plugin ideas thread. Making a new thread labeled like that suggests you already have a plugin made.

[feuille]

Originally Posted by retval

Greetings to all, I wanted to suggest an add-on that allows to insert OCR in pdfs.
As you may have experienced there are old pdf's that were scanned as image. That's why you can't use Calibre's full text search.

Hello retval,
I like this idea. I've always converted scanned documents outside of Calibre, but a plugin would have some advantages for the process flow (save the desired output format via Calibre's conversion tool, writing metadata, etc.).
The OCR SDK shouldn't be a problem. I have developed a Python program (I call it Doculyzer) that can be used in companies and government agencies to extract data from scanned PDF files or faxes and store it in a backend database. I use Tesseract as the OCR library, which delivers very good results (see attached example).
If I have some time in the next few weeks, I'll integrate the Python code into a Calibre GUI plugin. Suggestions are welcome!

[retval]

Originally Posted by feuille

Hello retval,
I like this idea. I've always converted scanned documents outside of Calibre, but a plugin would have some advantages for the process flow (save the desired output format via Calibre's conversion tool, writing metadata, etc.).
The OCR SDK shouldn't be a problem. I have developed a Python program (I call it Doculyzer) that can be used in companies and government agencies to extract data from scanned PDF files or faxes and store it in a backend database. I use Tesseract as the OCR library, which delivers very good results (see attached example).
If I have some time in the next few weeks, I'll integrate the Python code into a Calibre GUI plugin. Suggestions are welcome!

Great, I'm completely ignorarte in programming, I'm just a user. Of the OCR programs I know the one that I think achieves the best results is Foxyt. Many programs bog down the pc, as pdfs without OCR are often too many megabytes in weight. I don't know if that will be a limitation.
Hopefully you can create a plug-in that integrates OCR.
Best of luck with it.
PS: what program do you use for OCR? The test you upload is very good.

[feuille]

Originally Posted by retval

PS: what program do you use for OCR? The test you upload is very good.

As I wrote, I use my own frontend. This first breaks down the PDF into individual images using the Poppler library (which Calibre also uses). Then the text is recognized using the Tesseract library. Since this is done image by image, the overall size of the PDF file is irrelevant. Tesseract (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesseract_(software)) is free software under an Apache license, for which there are various frontends. Tesseract also has training data for different fonts. For example, I have many books in German Fraktur, which I convert with the training data from the University of Mannheim.

[Ertagon]

Originally Posted by tomsem

I took a look at the KCC (command line) code a few months ago, as it was the closest thing to my use case (make photo albums from a set of images, with landscape spreads that join smoothly when in 2 page mode on a tablet, and scaling up and down for 'best fit').

I had some success hacking to get it to do this, but reached a point where I was struggling too much with the way the code is structured, and concluded it would be better to start over from scratch.

The KCC IMO is not well structured, it seems to do too many things to do any of them well, and the greatest Python sin of all, it doesn't conform to Python naming conventions or PEP8 generally.

I think one of the KCC developers had a project to create a calibre plugin, but they wanted to use Python 3 features which wasn't supported at the time so it probably isn't much of a starting point.

So I would agree it's better to start over with a clear list of requirements, as I plan to do with my photo album idea, should I ever get around to it.

If you don't find a willing recruit, you could just build a command line tool, get that working, and worry about the plugin stuff later. Which is my plan.

I started my own development.
I am still figuring out how to access various info from the conversion panel.
Calibre does not have the most comprehensive documentation out there.
Though ChatGPT was surprisingly helpful.
I successfully overwrote most of the functions that handle CBZ as input.
Right now I am trying to figure out the right XML format for Kindle devices.
I looked at KCC but there seems to be a lot of extra code just for individual panels.
I looked at the XML used in manga bought on Amazon and it seems those extra panels are required even if they are empty.

I had to replace my Scribe and that took me some time so I had to put development on hold since I couldn't test things properly. Might give it another shot sometime soon.

Your idea of just doing CLI sounds half decent but then you can't really take advantage of lots of built-in functions of calibre conversion. I think letting Calibre handle image manipulation and just figuring out the XML format is the best approach for a calibre plugin. Though I am very new to this environment so I might be mistaken.

[AJLane]

When using email to share books in Calibre is there some way to add Series and Comments to to the body of the email? Is there an easy way to view a simple log of books that have been shared via email with when, email address and book?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by AJLane

When using email to share books in Calibre is there some way to add Series and Comments to to the body of the email? Is there an easy way to view a simple log of books that have been shared via email with when, email address and book?

You can use the Template Language in the 'Subject'
{title}-{series}
balloon help on many items is the only easy documentation.

No easy 'log'. It might be buried in the Debug Log (if running)

[AJLane]

Thanks for the info!

[asymon]

Hi!

I'm curious is there any way to send e-books from Calibre to kindle device using wi-fi? Just like copy via USB, but... without USB. Of course I'm talking about jailbreaked device that's in the same local network as PC with Calibre.

So... I have jailbraked kindle, succesfully configured openssh server in usbnetwork, set password, installed public ssh key. I can send e-book directly to my kindle using scp. All this can be (and has to be) done without Calibre.

But why bother with command line and not build some interface in Calibre? Like in command:

$ ssh $EbookFileName root@$MyKindleLocalIP:/mnt/us/documents/$SomePath

- I assume that $MyKindleLocalIP is to enter in plugin options and $EbookFileName and $SomePath are just taken from book database, like in USB 'case'.

What do you think? Or maybe it has been done already? The problem I see is one-way communication, ssh have some status messages, though. But we can't "connect" device, and kindle doesn't replay for pings.

There's something in Connect/Share menu "Start wireless device connection", but I'm pretty sure it's designed for something else.

[Comfy.n]

How about a plugin that places a button on Calibre toolbar, which will toggle on/off the "Use internal viewer" behaviour setting.

Use case, for instance, is when frequently alternating between FTS module -- in which is desirable to have internal viewer ON -- and Main Calibre Program, in which is desirable to have default system programs open EPUB, AZW3, CBR and MOBI formats.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Comfy.n

How about a plugin that places a button on Calibre toolbar, which will toggle on/off the "Use internal viewer" behaviour setting.

Use case, for instance, is when frequently alternating between FTS module -- in which is desirable to have internal viewer ON -- and Main Calibre Program, in which is desirable to have default system programs open EPUB, AZW3, CBR and MOBI formats.

What's wrong with using View->View with calibre E-book viewer if that's what you specifically want.

You could give it a shortcut and or add it to Favourites.

BR