Book Details - Clicking on author names setting

[BetterRed]

@chaley: bit OT - could the Prefs->L&F->BD->Clicking on author names should: list of choices be furnished with a 'Do nothing" option, at the moment I fudge it with a bodgie custom URL.

BR

[chaley]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

@chaley: bit OT - could the Prefs->L&F->BD->Clicking on author names should: list of choices be furnished with a 'Do nothing" option, at the moment I fudge it with a bodgie custom URL.

BR

It is easy to do in the GUI. Unfortunately, doing it in the content server is more problematic because it expects a link to always be there and doesn't discover one isn't until already talking to the browser. That throws errors. Because of that, for me this is a "won't do".

[BetterRed]

Moved this from Template language changes

For curiosity's sake, I tried to test my "Not a URL" custom URL in server, which I do not ordinarily use. This was with 7.26 Portable.

I gave up when I got an error message with default settings:




When I do the equivalent in desktop, I get:



BR

[chaley]

I don't know what you are saying. It seems to be two things:

1. The content server shows an error with invalid urls.
2. That a goodreads url is used when an invalid url is entered in Pref / L&F / Book details.

The first we know. That is why I said what I said two posts back.

The second disagrees with the first, confuses me, and is not what I see. If in Prefs / L&F / Book details I put the following:


Note that the URL is the text "do_nothing. Authors have the link "do_nothing", which shows in the tooltip. When I click on an author, no web page/tab/anything opens. Instead I get the following in my debug log:

ShellExecute 'do_nothing' failed (error 2).
QDesktopServices:penUrl() failed for url: PyQt6.QtCore.QUrl('do_nothing')

I don't see anything related to goodreads.

What did you do?

[BetterRed]

I'm not familiar with the current calibre server UI. I stopped using the old version when the calibre:URL scheme was released. It seems to be targetted for use on mobile phones. I can make and receive voice calls on my iPhone… but that's about it.

So, my 'testing' started with the default settings( V 7.26), which has Clicking on author names should: Search for the author on Goodreads.

When I clicked on 'John Schember' in the server Book details, I got a browser tab for "[:1]:8080/web-search/1/authors/John Schember?library_id=Calibre_Library" containing a message "No web search URL for authors John Schember"

When I clicked on 'John Schember' in the desktop Book details I got waht you see in attachment 3.jpg, a browser tab for "https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7163358.John_Schember"

I assumed I get the same in server as I get in desktop. I guess my assumptions about how the current calibre server works are wrong… I'll never use it, so let's forget about it.

BR

[kovidgoyal]

Well, "same thing" is a shorthand I used for the changelog. Technically what happens in the server is the URL is passed to the browser via a redirect, if and only if it is a http:// or https:// URL if it is not one of those you will get an error.

[BetterRed]

@Kovid - It was a fresh install of V7.26 Portable into an empty directory, so all the Preference settings were at their install defaults.

The "[:1]:8080/web-search/1/authors/John Schember?library_id=Calibre_Library" URL in the browser came from calibre when I clicked on John Schember. I have no idea what it even means… although I can hazard a guess.

When I click on John Schember in the GUI the relevant Goodreads page opens on a fresh tab in my Firefox. ✔

Maybe the error is caused by my network or Firefox config, or one of the addons I use in it. So, I just did some more tests: I think it's something to do with caching/restarting.

I set it to Search for the author on Wikipedia, restarted calibre and cleared browser cache. When I clicked on John Schember in desktop and server I got a not found WikiP page ✔

I stopped server, changed it back to Search for Author on Goodreads, started server, clicked on John Schember and the same WikiP page popped

I stopped server, restarted calibre, started server, clicked on John Schember and the Goodreads page popped ✔

My conclusion, a change to the Prefs->L&F->BD->Clicking on author names should: setting requires a calibre restart. Could be Portable only. Or it could be my Firefox and/or network config; although they are both very straight forward.

Given this investigation was for Curiosity’s Sake… i.e. I don't want to use the server… I won't pursue the issue further. Feel free let me know of you want me to try anything specific.

BR

[chaley]

FWIW and possibly

I did the following and got expected results, running Win11 and Chrome.

1. Installed Calibre Portable v.26
2. Took the defaults in the wekcme wizard.
3. Clicked on John Schember in book details and got the goodreads page in a tab in Chrome.
4. Closed Chrome
5. Opened Chrome and attempted to access the content server using 127.0.0.1:8080. . The content server wasn't running so I got a failure to connect.
6. Started the content server.
7. Connected to 127.0.0.1:8080, this time successfully.
8. Clicked on the quick start guide cover.
9. Clicked on John Schember, not the magnifying glass next to the name.
10. A new tab opened in the same Chrome window showing me the same Goodreads page I got above.

The difference could be caching. I have chrome empty the cache and remove most third-party data on close, so there is seldom anything left over.

@Kovid: this all started because of an idea to disable default author links. This is trivial to do in the GUI by adding a "Do nothing" choice in L&F / Book details and respecting that choice in render.py 'render_author_link()', returning None,None. However, I couldn't find a way to tell the content server to respect that choice and not show a link on an author, thus disabling the AJAX call on click, so I gave up.

[kovidgoyal]

@chaley: If you do want to implement that, you can do so by saving an empty string as "default_author_link". You can check the value fo that at line 291 in book_details.pyj to cotrol what the server renders.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by chaley

FWIW and possibly

↑ ↑ ↑ ✔ Bingo!

My problems were a Firefox issue. They went away when I applied one of my favourite Tweaks:

openers_by_scheme = {'http*': 'C:/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft/Edge/Application/msedge.exe %u'}

No strange behaviour with Edge, which is very vanilla (one tiny extension to not terminate when last tab is closed). I got the "No web search URL for authors John Schember" message when I had the Custom URL set to "Not a URL".

Ironically, if I had used my Installed calibre settings (53 items) rather that the Defaults (8 items) I would not have seen the strange behaviour in Firefox :lol:

If there was a Do Nothing option, the value entered for a Custom search URL could perhaps be validated to ensure it is syntactically valid. That's what bothered me, having to induce a desired behaviour by entering dodgy data… it violates my puritanical instincts

BR

[chaley]

Change is now in calibre source.

L&F / Book details


GUI


Content server

[ownedbycats]

What does the magnifying glass in server do?

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

What does the magnifying glass in server do?

searches the calibre library for that item

[BetterRed]

@kovid, @chaley

BR