calibre 5: Beta testers needed

[nixsee]

Suggestion: be able to click on a highlight to edit it. Perhaps a long click or right click? Or perhaps show some sort of clickable icon at the end of the highlight?

Edit: Nevermind. I see that you can double click a highlight and it will cleverly select the whole highlight and bring up the menu. Very nice!

[fitnesspm]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Look in the viewer preferences under miscellaneous

I connect to the content server by my browser, I right-click on Preferences but there is no option there for Miscellaneous.

All I can see is
Colors
Page layout
Styles
Headers and footers
Scrolling behavior
Keyboard shortcuts

On the other hand, if I click on a book in Calibre, I can right click on Preferences and there is a menu for Miscellaneous.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by fitnesspm

On the other hand, if I click on a book in Calibre, I can right click on Preferences and there is a menu for Miscellaneous.

Yes and that's where you specify which content server user you want the local viewer to sync with.

[democrite]

Originally Posted by nixsee

Suggestion: be able to click on a highlight to edit it. Perhaps a long click or right click? …

2nd mention of such. Others please as they say chime in.

There is a reason all apps I know of behave as such, even desktop apps like Kindle. Kovid mentions not having a single click do multiple things. In the case of a highlight, single click selects it and is contextually aware: add note, change color, delete, copy, etc. More often than not I think that is the preferred action and as such apps behave as such. If one wanted other, one could merely drag select for other actions such as copy.

As for other things, I have sort of gone silent. The add note I think I should be as simple as a post it; other apps are as such. No confirmation nor cancel. If such was wanted, the elegant way though perhaps a bit of work is have an undo/redo queue.

Drag selection handles when canceling out of edit note, not sure if it's elsewhere, is perhaps not needed on desktop. Cumbersome.

How different Kovid decides to design things from other apps that have mostly done it a single way for years with only minor variation, it's as if he hasn't spent years using readers. What comes to mind is the Vedas; for one learned one does not address as or ask speak the truth, but merely request that one speaks, that vac (or logos) is speech. There are numerous things that for some are understood.

[kovidgoyal]

@democrite: As nixsee noted in his post, which you chose not to quote in its entirety, you can double click on a highlight to edit it. Its never going to be single click, the notion is stupid. It means either, that if your highlight spans a link, that link is no longer useable or clicking on certain parts of the highlight will not edit it while clicking other parts will. And on a touchscreen it means that if you happen to tap on a highlight, instead of the page turning as usual, you will get the selection bar popping up. I dont care how many apps have done it that way for how many years, you want to argue for something, argue for it on its merits, not on how many apps have done it.

@nqk: You should be happy to note I have solved the issue of needing extra taps on a touchscreen. Now when the selection bar is show, the adjustment handles are also shown, so you can choose to adjust the selection, or create a highlight, both from the same place.

[nqk]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

@nqk: You should be happy to note I have solved the issue of needing extra taps on a touchscreen. Now when the selection bar is show, the adjustment handles are also shown, so you can choose to adjust the selection, or create a highlight, both from the same place.

Oh, I am, I really am. I've been waiting for this since v3.

[nixsee]

I agree, Kovid, that double click is better for the reasons you mentioned - especially when there are underlying hyperlinks. Other apps do not handle this well.

But, despite Democrite's aggressive ramblings being mostly incoherent and nonsensical (this very thread and your 2 quick iterations of the beta prove that you are very receptive to feedback and changing your mind), I think there is one good idea in there: I'd also like for the Add Note pane to be more minimalistic, perhaps like a post-it as they suggested. The current pane is overly massive with lots of empty/wasted space. I'd prefer to have it as small as possible - minimal margins, whitespace, etc... so as to have as much of the text still showing for context while writing the note.

Moreover, the current pane covers up the actual highlighted text if it isn't at the extreme top or bottom of the page!

UI Suggestions:
* Get rid of caption that says "Add notes for this highlight". Its already implicit in being at that pane
* Get rid of the caption that says "Double click or tap on a highlight to see its notes". The fact that I never saw this until now is proof that it isn't in a useful place. Its better placed in the Calibre Manual, to be seen and learned once.
* Remove the two horizontal lines
* Put the highlight colors on one line
* Move the adjust, finish and new color buttons to some whitespace (perhaps on the same line as the colors?
* Minimal margins
* Once the pane is smaller - more of a pop-up textbox/post-it - have the pane be spatially aware and show up beside the highlighted text, but not overlapping it.
* A related suggestion is to have a small icon on the highlight to indicate that there is a note - both to distinguish it from plain highlights.

I think a combination of the Kindle for PC and Google Play books would be ideal:
* Both are very minimalistic
* Kindle is spatially aware, but doesn't have color selectors



* Kindle also has a note icon



* Google Play has color selectors, but isn't spatially aware (and doesn't even show the highlight once the note pane is open!)

[kovidgoyal]

Making the pane smaller is obviously possible, but it makes typing/reading notes harder, since you have to do it in a small area. I'd like to hear more opinions on that, I dont much care either way.

[The_Ad]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Making the pane smaller is obviously possible, but it makes typing/reading notes harder, since you have to do it in a small area. I'd like to hear more opinions on that, I dont much care either way.

I fully agree with the suggestion of @nixsee.

Some personal suggestions

I guess it would make lot easier to read/write the notes if Pane window is made more like a native notepad app of Windows.

So that functionwise,

1. it can be moved around window by holding it and dragging it to avoid the interfernce with highlighted context.

2. and size can be adjusted as we do in notepad so that if note gets longer, pane windows can be adjuested accordingly

3. can be minimized and maximized(not imortant though)

Colors selection buttons along with other buttons might look better in single row with minimalistic margin.

I have added screenshot with notepad app overlayed with viewer and I think it looks good and will even look better with some of your magical codes.

[nixsee]

Making the pane smaller is obviously possible, but it makes typing/reading notes harder, since you have to do it in a small area. I'd like to hear more opinions on that, I dont much care either way.

My suggestions were simply for removing whitespace (which is about 1/2 the current window size) from the window, which would allow for the same-sized text pane to be located adjacent to the highlighted text.

But I like The_Ads' suggestion to make it a re-sizable and movable window. I think it could default to similar, or even smaller, size than it currently is and allow for expansion (maybe even automatically!) as needed.

[kovidgoyal]

Making the window expandable and moveable is waaaaay too much work for me. But I will make it more compact and place it better.

[ganymede]

Will there also be an update for the Raspberry (ARM)?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by ganymede

Will there also be an update for the Raspberry (ARM)?

Kovid Goyal does not build calibre for Linux on non-x86 architectures. The Raspbian repository currently shows 4.99.7 as being available. you can also find 4.99.9 ARM builds in the Debian repository. Since this is beta software, be prepared to run into issues such as the number of plugins that have not been updated for Python 3 compatibility.

[fitnesspm]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Yes and that's where you specify which content server user you want the local viewer to sync with.

How? Can you give me detailed steps? There is more than one option there.

[nqk]

Originally Posted by fitnesspm

How? Can you give me detailed steps? There is more than one option there.

1) Start the content-server, create a user (you must know this)
2) Read the book using your browser (phone, tablet, whatever you may choose), and make your annotations there as you wish. You want to hit the button Sync. (on the top panel, you must know this)
3) On your main calibre where the content-server is hosted, read the book using the main viewer. (Please note that if you open up the browser viewer here, the annotations are synced automatically). Open the control panel by right-clicking, go to Preferences -> Misc. You will see a box to enter the user name (remember the step 1?).