Calibre Companion prerelease 3.3.0d

[chaley]

CC prerelease 3.3.0d has been published and will available soon to people who are members of the CC prerelease program.

This prerelease contains the following enhancements and bug fixes over CC prerelease 3.3.0c:

• Allow setting the date read in book details.
• Date read is now synced both directions. Changes in the calibre column are synced to the device.
• Show popup messages during connection if the user sets up Read syncing and the calibre columns do not exist or are the wrong type.
• In the grouping drawer, add the count of items under a first letter, e.g., [5 authors, 15 books]
• Make separate options for moving Connect/Show/Sort to the app menu
• Change manual path specification when setting CC's folder to make the process more clear
• [BUG FIX] Attempt to tell Android when books are deleted in hopes that it will update the info it shows to MTP clients
• [BUG FIX] Do not offer Google Books as a reader. If you want to upload a book to Google's cloud, do it directly in the Books app.
• [BUG FIX] Upgrade the Google support library in hopes of eliminating some rare crashes.
• [BUG FIX] Don't crash when an app advertizes that it can handle a book format but in fact cannot.
• [BUG FIX] Change how debug logs are sent in hopes that sending from a kindle will attach the debug log to the message

This prerelease completes the functionality intended for this cycle. My intention is to release this version to production in the next seven days or so. There may be bug fix releases, and although unlikely it is possible that something additional will be added.

If you have already installed CC 3.3.0c then this prerelease does not require a database upgrade.

If anyone is using this prerelease on a Kindle, could you test the last bug fix above by trying to send a debug log to see if the log is actually attached? Send the log by going to Settings, scrolling to the bottom, and choosing "Send a debug log to MultiPie". Just check if the log is attached. Don't bother to actually send the message.

[kaufman]

Looks great. Thanks for all the great additions.

3 things;

1) I set the date read and then went into settings from the book details screen. When I came out the date read had been cleared.

2) there doesn't seem to be a way to manually clear the date read field. That might be useful for some people.

3) If you decide you don't want to use the Read Information, there is no way to clear out the sync columns, because it is checking for "starts with #" instead of "blank or starts with #".

[chaley]

Originally Posted by kaufman

Looks great. Thanks for all the great additions.

3 things;

1) I set the date read and then went into settings from the book details screen. When I came out the date read had been cleared.

Fixed in next release

2) there doesn't seem to be a way to manually clear the date read field. That might be useful for some people.

Changed in next release. The attachment shows what the date picker looks like now. The "link" to set the date to today is there because Android really wants to limit the number of buttons in a dialog box to three. Clicking the link changes the date picker to today. You can change it further or hit OK.

3) If you decide you don't want to use the Read Information, there is no way to clear out the sync columns, because it is checking for "starts with #" instead of "blank or starts with #".

Fixed in next release.

I will make another prerelease in a day or two containing these changes and any others that come up.

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by chaley

[*][BUG FIX] Do not offer Google Books as a reader. If you want to upload a book to Google's cloud, do it directly in the Books app.

I don't think there is a way to do this from the Books app. Also, if you use the book id as the file name, it's nearly impossible to do it from a file manager app if you have a large number of books on your device. What was the bug with this anyway? I don't remember having a problem.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

I don't think there is a way to do this from the Books app. Also, if you use the book id as the file name, it's nearly impossible to do it from a file manager app if you have a large number of books on your device. What was the bug with this anyway? I don't remember having a problem.

My partner (and son) asked for this because he is getting lots of emails about it. Mostly people didn't understand what it did (why is it there as a reader? you can't read anything.), but some wanted to launch the Google Books reader after the book was uploaded.

You are correct about the app and the id-as-file-name problem. That said, you can upload to google books using a web browser on the machine running calibre.

I am open to some solution that doesn't involve listing Google Books as a reader app.

[kaufman]

I know you said no more features, but I have one thing I have been meaning to bring up.

How would you feel about using a somewhat larger font for the word "Groups" in the grouping drawer? We hit that a lot to close the current grouping, and I find that about 20% of the time I hit the Search field instead.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by kaufman

I know you said no more features, but I have one thing I have been meaning to bring up.

How would you feel about using a somewhat larger font for the word "Groups" in the grouping drawer? We hit that a lot to close the current grouping, and I find that about 20% of the time I hit the Search field instead.

Not happy about using different font sizes, but I have no problem with spacing things out more.

The first attachment shows it as in 3.3.0d. The second shows it spaced out more. There is more space between the search box and "Group" (which is not clickable), and the space taken by "Group" is larger.

[kaufman]

Originally Posted by chaley

Not happy about using different font sizes, but I have no problem with spacing things out more.

That's perfect. Thanks.

By the way, I just added a group for custom columns, and clicking on author or series to jump from a book to a grouping while the database is being upgraded works perfectly. I only added the custom column to see if it would work. Good job.

[kaufman]

Just as a confirmation. I have not found any other issues while using the app. As far as I can tell, it is good to go.

[jackie_w]

I've been in the process of moving to a new phone for the last few days so only just got round to trying this latest version. As far as I can tell, everything seems OK.

In particular I tested all the combinations of 'Read' (yes, no, blank) from PC-->CC and CC-->PC with no problems.

I don't have a calibre 'Date Read' user column so didn't test that. One thing I did notice, once the CC 'Set date read' clickable field has a date value, there doesn't appear to be a way to re-initialise it. I'm not sure whether this would be a problem for some folk (not me).

[Purple Lady]

CC just crashed and I sent the debug log using CC help screen. I was just looking at books so I don't remember exactly what I was doing. The last new thing was cancelling the update of the date read field.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

I've been in the process of moving to a new phone for the last few days so only just got round to trying this latest version. As far as I can tell, everything seems OK.

In particular I tested all the combinations of 'Read' (yes, no, blank) from PC-->CC and CC-->PC with no problems.

Thanks for taking the time even when life intervenes.

I don't have a calibre 'Date Read' user column so didn't test that. One thing I did notice, once the CC 'Set date read' clickable field has a date value, there doesn't appear to be a way to re-initialise it. I'm not sure whether this would be a problem for some folk (not me).

kaufman mentioned that a few posts back. I have changed the dialog to allow the date to be cleared. There is a screen capture of the new dialog in the third post. Given that you both thought of it, the change is probably important.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

CC just crashed and I sent the debug log using CC help screen. I was just looking at books so I don't remember exactly what I was doing. The last new thing was cancelling the update of the date read field.

It looks like you have a book with no authors, which I didn't think was possible. Either that or some other very mysterious thing is happening that I haven't tracked down yet.

I have fixed the crash. I still need to look more for the root cause to see if CC is doing something strange somewhere.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

I don't think there is a way to do this from the Books app. Also, if you use the book id as the file name, it's nearly impossible to do it from a file manager app if you have a large number of books on your device. What was the bug with this anyway? I don't remember having a problem.

I have been thinking about this and decided that we are damned if we do and damned if we don't. Yes, there are people who don't understand and send emails. However, there are also people like you who want use the send to google books, will be unhappy that it is gone, and send emails. To avoid this conundrum I added a new "Upload to Google Books" menu item in Book Details (in the app menu, not on the action bar) that does exactly what it says. If Books is not installed then the menu line goes away.

While I was there I also dealt with another not-so-frequent request, to be able to send books to other apps such as cloud storage or email. I added a second menu line "Send book to app" that when clicked offers you a choice of all the apps on your device that think they can do something interesting with the book other than "view" it. I tested it with gmail and dropbox and both did what I expected. Oddly enough, Google Books is not an app that presents itself as a choice, which is why it has a menu line of its own.

Given the number of bugs fixed and the above new functionality, I will make another prerelease later this afternoon. I want to wait until after people in the US have had time to wake up and tell me I am full of it.

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by chaley

It looks like you have a book with no authors, which I didn't think was possible. Either that or some other very mysterious thing is happening that I haven't tracked down yet.

I have fixed the crash. I still need to look more for the root cause to see if CC is doing something strange somewhere.

I looked at the books ordered by CC read date which is one of the things I was doing before the crash, and they all have authors. Everything with a recent Calibre date has authors as well. Is there a way to find books without authors?