[GUI Plugin] Reading List

[ownedbycats]

Question: What is the intended purpose of auto-populating a reading list from a search? It disables most of the other list settings, so I'm not sure in what case an autopop reading list would work better than just a saved search.

[JimmXinu]

I speculate that it may have predated Calibre's saved search feature? I know it predated virtual libraries.

But I wasn't involved with RL then.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Question: What is the intended purpose of auto-populating a reading list from a search? It disables most of the other list settings, so I'm not sure in what case an autopop reading list would work better than just a saved search.

Why do you need to know?

I've used the feature in conjunction with the Drop Search Results plugin.

BR

[compurandom]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Question: What is the intended purpose of auto-populating a reading list from a search? It disables most of the other list settings, so I'm not sure in what case an autopop reading list would work better than just a saved search.

I use it to sync the items in a saved search to a device.

[JimmXinu]

New Test Version

2022-01-12

- Changes for upcoming Qt6 Calibre

This version contains changes necessary for the upcoming Qt6 Calibre version.

I haven't tested against every version, but this should still be backward compatible to v2.85.1 and newer.

[JimmXinu]

New Version Released

Version 1.8.0 - 22 Jan 2022
- Bump Minimum Calibre version to 2.85.1
- Changes for upcoming Qt6 Calibre

[alwayzambi]

Hello, I'm new to the plugin, and the community. Is there a way that when I drag a book to one tag, it automatically removes any other tag that it has. When I drag one book from tag to another to indicate status, the book still exists in the on the tag/list I wanted it out from. Thanks in advance

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by alwayzambi

Hello, I'm new to the plugin, and the community. Is there a way that when I drag a book to one tag, it automatically removes any other tag that it has. When I drag one book from tag to another to indicate status, the book still exists in the on the tag/list I wanted it out from.

The plugin does not support drag-and-drop between the lists. You can use drag-and-drop to add a book to a tag in the tag browser, but, that does not invoke any action in the Reading List plugin. It does not trigger any changes in what Reading Lists the books are in. The way to achieve what I think you want is with the "Move to list..." function in the plugins menu. In the dialog, you can select the lists to move a book from and the list to move it to. That will process the changes in tags or other columns.

[luciaisacat]

Hi! I'm big fan of this plugin (many Thanks!) and would like to make a suggestion... I'd find very useful the possibility of adding (for example in a user-defined column) the date a certain title was added to the Reading List. The reason is that when I browse the whole library and pick-up some new title, there is no way to show these last additions on top of the reading list (e.g. as the most recently added).

To this purpose I tried the "Column Update Option" but the "Column to update" appears to allow only text-type columns and the "Value in column to add" should enlist the today-date variable.

Any chance this might be part of a future release?

Thanks anyway for the great job already done!

[JimmXinu]

Personally, I'm not all that interested in adding new features to RL.

I also think there are already a couple ways to accomplish what you want.

Each (manual) list is ordered by when each book was added to the list. If you use View list, the latest will be at the bottom. Not sure how you'd get them on top instead.

You can create a custom series column and configure a Reading List to up date it, then use that. It has the added advantage that you can use the same column with several lists using different series names.

[ownedbycats]

A question: Is it expected for there to be a delay of a few seconds when updating (adding, removing, rearranging) a manual list with an assigned series column?

[JimmXinu]

No idea, but it doesn't surprise me.

It depends primarily on the size of the list, (less so) on the size of the library and how many books were series before.

RL has to search for all books with that series, then spin through all the books in the list setting that column, then spin through any books that had that series before that aren't on the list clearing that column, then commit the changes.

I don't see any obvious inefficiencies, unless db.set_custom() has started started doing commits too.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

I don't see any obvious inefficiencies, unless db.set_custom() has started started doing commits too.

The legacy method db.set_custom() ignores the 'commit' parameter. Every call ends up calling db.new_api.set_field(), which does commit the operation. This isn't new -- I think it was changed in calibre V4.

To avoid the commits you should use the book_id_to_val_map parameter of set_field() (in calibre.db.cache). Using your description of the processing you would:

1. map = dict()
2. First remove the series name from all books that have it. Search for all books with that series. For each book found, do
   

   map[book_id] = ''

3. Set the series for all the books in the list along with the series index. For each book in the list do
   

   map[book_id] = '{} [{}]'.format(series_lookup_name, series_index)

   Note that series_index can't be empty. If it is then use
   

   map[book_id] = series_lookup_name

4. Call db.new_api.set_field(series_name, map). This will do all the operations in one transaction.

(NB: there might be syntax errors in the code. I didn't try to run it.)

The operation order is important. The second operation will add back any series that was deleted in the first operation.

[JimmXinu]

Not sure I have the motivation myself to update RL for purely performance reasons on one particular type of custom column...

How far back does db.new_api go? RL currently still supports cal 2.85.1.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

How far back does db.new_api go? RL currently still supports cal 2.85.1.

I think it was introduced with V4. It exists if db.new_api exists.

If you wanted to do it and maintain compatibility then the same loop that would build the map could call the old api book by book.