Tips and tricks for Calibre

[Thasaidon]

I think it would be useful to have a "tips and tricks for Calibre " folder in the stickies.

I also think that ONLy tricks and tips should be permitted in it and perhaps an index of the items.

One of the problems I have with the other "tips and tricks: forums is that specific tips are buried in discussion about a tip which obscures the actual tip.

I would suggest an ordinary thread be started for each tip and after any discussion is ended the mods be asked to move the finalised tip to the sticky.

What do other people think?

[Bookstooge]

My only concern is the proliferation of "stickies", which most people seem to ignore anyway.

[Thasaidon]

Originally Posted by Bookstooge

My only concern is the proliferation of "stickies", which most people seem to ignore anyway.

You have a real point there.

[compurandom]

You could also do a wiki page for this...

If you're not comfortable starting a wiki page, if you can collect enough of your "tips and tricks" in this thread, I can start the page.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Bookstooge

My only concern is the proliferation of "stickies", which most people seem to ignore anyway.

I agree, there are too many stickies per forum and important stuff gets lost.
I also have observed that they do not always get read

Way back when... I was taught the 'rule of 6'.
Screen Menu's should be limited to 6 items (not just a space thing) to keep a easy to hit target

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by Bookstooge

My only concern is the proliferation of "stickies", which most people seem to ignore anyway.

cough the DeDRM thread....

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Thasaidon

I think it would be useful to have a "tips and tricks for Calibre " folder in the stickies.

I also think that ONLy tricks and tips should be permitted in it and perhaps an index of the items.

One of the problems I have with the other "tips and tricks: forums is that specific tips are buried in discussion about a tip which obscures the actual tip.

I would suggest an ordinary thread be started for each tip and after any discussion is ended the mods be asked to move the finalised tip to the sticky.

What do other people think?

You would lose a lot of value if the discussion that led to a 'finalised tip" was discarded, especially if people post variants and alternatives within the discussion.

On the other hand if topics are merged on a linear forum platform like VBulletin you lose the flow of a 'discussion' if other 'discussions' overlap in time. As occurs in some of the existing open sticky threads.

If MR moved to a multi-threaded platform, as was mooted at one time**, then you could do what you want; e.g. by collapsing all threads within a topic you have an index, another advantage is that newcomers can seek clarification by adding a post to an existing thread.

** IIRC Xenforo was mentioned.

An alternative is a sticky list of links to threads, such as these ==>> Index of Useful Links for Book Creators and Useful Related Tools Threads

BR

[compurandom]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

You would lose a lot of value if the discussion that led to a 'finalised tip" was discarded, especially if people post variants and alternatives within the discussion.

My approach in the wiki would be to summarize the "trick" enough so that it could be used, and link to the original discussion if someone wants more details, but if it's already in the wiki or in the calibre documentation, just mention it and link to it.

Think of it like a curated version of your sticky list of links to threads, except that more than one person can edit it, and it might be a bit better organized and formatted.

At least, that would be the goal.

Really, the calibre documentation is fairly good and does mention a lot of this stuff, but I've found a few cases there it wasn't well organized, and the parts needed to make a "trick" work were scattered over multiple sections.

I suppose at some point, it might be better to add some things directly to the calibre documentation instead. Maybe the goal here should be to collect recipes of sorts and link to explanations in the forum and in the calibre documentation?

[ownedbycats]

It's possible to copy and paste between timestamp fields, even if they're of different formats. (This was implemented due to one of my requests a few months ago. ) I use this mostly to copy the #filedate (from GetFileName plugin) to the date-added column.

[Thasaidon]

Originally Posted by compurandom

My approach in the wiki would be to summarize the "trick" enough so that it could be used, and link to the original discussion if someone wants more details, but if it's already in the wiki or in the calibre documentation, just mention it and link to it.

Think of it like a curated version of your sticky list of links to threads, except that more than one person can edit it, and it might be a bit better organized and formatted.

At least, that would be the goal.

Really, the calibre documentation is fairly good and does mention a lot of this stuff, but I've found a few cases there it wasn't well organized, and the parts needed to make a "trick" work were scattered over multiple sections.

I suppose at some point, it might be better to add some things directly to the calibre documentation instead. Maybe the goal here should be to collect recipes of sorts and link to explanations in the forum and in the calibre documentation?

I think you have outlined a good process.

1. Member posts a trick or tip as an ordinary thread in the Calibre forum.
2. Other members may discuss it or come up with variations.
3. When discussion has finished the trick to be summarised (with any relevant variations).
4.The Summarised trick to be put in the Wiki and made the last post of its' thread..
5. A sticky containing an index of the tips and tricks to be updated.

The summarised tricks in the Wiki could then be used by Kovid as a resource when updating the Calibre Manual.

All in all this should not be too much work especially if we have two or three people working on it.

I am willing devote some time to summarizing the tips and tricks as they crop up and updating the index.

However I am in the Philippines and our ISPs are crap. Recently the broadband speed in our area suddenly dropped to something like early dial up speeds. This meant I was unable to log on to many sites. MobileRead was one of the few sites I could log on to and it could take five minutes to do that!
Then just as suddenly after a couple of weeks the the speed went back to normal.

So any further comments? And are any other people willing to join a team to run thiis .

[compurandom]

Page name?

How much overlap with the calibre manual should there be?
In other words, do we avoid things in the manual, or just leave a one line summary and a link? There may be a few "trick" like things in the calibre manual mixed in with other sections that are not well indexed, like, how to accomplish a specific task using a feature in that section of the manual, and not indexed.

Searching the wiki, looks like there might be half a dozen existing tricks scattered about we could start with.

I know there's been a few questions here recently that were not covered well in the manual. When I have time (if someone else doesn't get there first) I might go through old threads and pick some up.

The only other question would be how to structure it initially.
This can be emergent and restructured later, but wiki pages tend to work better if there's a good initial structure. But it's more important to get started than to get a good initial structure, so...

[Thasaidon]

Originally Posted by compurandom

Page name?

How much overlap with the calibre manual should there be?
In other words, do we avoid things in the manual, or just leave a one line summary and a link? There may be a few "trick" like things in the calibre manual mixed in with other sections that are not well indexed, like, how to accomplish a specific task using a feature in that section of the manual, and not indexed.

Searching the wiki, looks like there might be half a dozen existing tricks scattered about we could start with.

I know there's been a few questions here recently that were not covered well in the manual. When I have time (if someone else doesn't get there first) I might go through old threads and pick some up.

The only other question would be how to structure it initially.
This can be emergent and restructured later, but wiki pages tend to work better if there's a good initial structure. But it's more important to get started than to get a good initial structure, so...

1. I would say overlap with the manual should be minimal. IF what is in the manual is indexed and all in one place. I agree with your suggestion , all we need is "a one line summary and a link" .

2.Great that will help collecting hints and tips quicker.

3. If you do not have the time to go through the old threads just give me a hint and I will start on them if no one else does.

4. I have not played with Wikis so I have no knowledge of them. I will leave setting the Wiki up to to you or some other member with Wiki knowledge, who would like to help.

5. I have a couple of Hints and tips I will start writing up in the meantime.

Thank you for your input.

[compurandom]

Originally Posted by Thasaidon

I have not played with Wikis so I have no knowledge of them. I will leave setting the Wiki up to to you

The wiki itself is already set up. Just have to create the page.

What I meant by structure is how do we organize the tricks.
Are there categories? Or (ick) chronologically by when the features were added to calibre?

Might not be able to figure it out until we have enough.

[maddz]

I will say I don't find the manual particularly useful, especially when trying to set up things like plug boards or custom columns. It's mainly because of the coding involved - the instructions are fairly opaque to me because I'm not a coder. (I have enough problems managing brackets in Excel and Business Objects which are far easier to code formulae in).

[Gandulf]

Originally Posted by Bookstooge

My only concern is the proliferation of "stickies", which most people seem to ignore anyway.

They get ignored because most of the posts have nothing or very little to do with the stickies. Look at "Links Every Kindle Owner Should Have" for example, all the posts that conform to the heading should be removed.

As it has been suggested members can post in a normal thread the tips or tricks and the ones agreed that are good can be posted in a stickie etc and closed so people can't post in it.

My2c