[GUI Plugin] Kobo Utilities

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Do you know if it happens on 4.38.23171?

I did a bunch of testing and wasn't able to get it to trigger (even with a kepub open, which reliably triggered it in the bugged versions).

[compurandom]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

I did a bunch of testing and wasn't able to get it to trigger (even with a kepub open, which reliably triggered it in the bugged versions).

I think there's more than one thing that triggers it and they've fixed some of them.

I think background jobs like rendering covers, and syncing also can trigger it.
It doesn't help that it works for a while after the corruption so I don't notice immediately.
I wonder if it would be possible to add code to the kobo driver to detect this -- or maybe there is some there already?

But I haven't felt like testing since the latest firmware update. It's such a bother to reload everything. Maybe this weekend.

[ownedbycats]

On the bugged versions, I was able to rarely trigger it by re-connecting immediately after importing new books, which made me suspect either the import process or cover generation. But I think DNSB or someone else said that the sql-wal files didn't show up for those processes so I'm not sure.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

On the bugged versions, I was able to rarely trigger it by re-connecting immediately after importing new books, which made me suspect either the import process or cover generation. But I think DNSB or someone else said that the sql-wal files didn't show up for those processes so I'm not sure.

It can't be cover generation as the Kobo driver adds the cover when you send via calibre.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

It can't be cover generation as the Kobo driver adds the cover when you send via calibre.

I don't think it's 100% reliable— occasionally I can see a newly-imported sideload switch from the generic text to the embedded cover. I'm not sure why it happens though.

[compurandom]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

On the bugged versions, I was able to rarely trigger it by re-connecting immediately after importing new books, which made me suspect either the import process or cover generation. But I think DNSB or someone else said that the sql-wal files didn't show up for those processes so I'm not sure.

Even if cover generation doesn't leave the database open, you could still get filesystem corruption that messed with the database. That would be much much harder, however. But that could explain why it is hard to reproduce too.

Does calibre always send a cover, or just when it has one?

Also, I'm not saying cover generation specifically causes it, I'm just saying things like that might.

[orchidreader]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Do you get any message about database corruption? In KU, what does Check database under the Database items report?

Also are you using Nickel or an alternative reader (KOReader, Plato)?

Sorry, was busy this week. I did check the database using KU and it just says OK. Whenever I use the Restore current bookmark, my book just disappears. It says it's in the Main Device memory but Kobo doesn't display the book. I can still see the kepub in the kobo memory when I plug it to Windows. It's really annoying but the only workaround so far that I'm doing is to factory reset my Kobo everytime I have to update the reading progress and capture last reading location to Calibre.

[orchidreader]

Originally Posted by orchidreader

Sorry, was busy this week. I did check the database using KU and it just says OK. Whenever I use the Restore current bookmark, my book just disappears. It says it's in the Main Device memory but Kobo doesn't display the book. I can still see the kepub in the kobo memory when I plug it to Windows. It's really annoying but the only workaround so far that I'm doing is to factory reset my Kobo everytime I have to update the reading progress and capture last reading location to Calibre.

Thanks for everyone's insight, I finally fixed my issue.

I was testing a few things when I thought I should just force the update for the reading % in my Kobo. So I connected my device and edited metadata.calibre and I looked for the book I'm reading, changed the value to what I need and saved. Expectedly, this corrupted my device database so I tried to factory reset, repair, and signing out from my account but none of it worked, my database is still corrupted/malformed even after resetting. So I decided to just format my device through Windows. After reformatting the device, everything went fine. The reading info is now showing up correctly, using the Restore function of KU no longer sends my books to the void.

Not sure what happened but it seems that my device internal database/memory (not sure if this even exists) was corrupted and it's not updating no matter what I do. The reformat reset that database and I'm finally happy that I can use my Calibre Library correctly.

[InnovationHack]

Hi -- I updated my Kobo plugins and when I built an ePub using the news feature, and sent it to my kobo, there are all sorts of instances of text being munged together. this doesn't happen if I sent the ePub to my kindle. Circled in red. Again, on a Kindle, these have spaces.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by InnovationHack

Hi -- I updated my Kobo plugins and when I built an ePub using the news feature, and sent it to my kobo, there are all sorts of instances of text being munged together. this doesn't happen if I sent the ePub to my kindle. Circled in red. Again, on a Kindle, these have spaces.

It's likely related to a bug introduced with the current version of KoboTouchExtended. Revert back to 3.7.1 (available via Github).

[Majutsushi]

Hi all,

Since I use the Kobo Utilities plugin regularly I wanted to make it easier to maintain in the longer run to make contributions to it easier, both for the contributing person and for whoever is responsible for integrating them.

As a result I have cleaned up a number of things in the plugin and set up a GitHub repository with some basic project configuration like automatic formatting, linting, and CI to automatically do pull request checks and releases. I also added a basic test framework to make it easier to add tests for changed or new code in the future. At the moment there's only one basic test, but at least it verifies that the plugin loads successfully in both the minimum supported version of Calibre and the latest version.

I started from @chaley's repository but set things up in a more standard way so that releases are not themselves added to the repository. There are still quite a few linting errors and areas that I think could really benefit from some larger refactoring, but I realised that fixing all of this would take a really long time and so I've put it off for now.

Note that my goal is not really to "take over" the plugin, just to make it easier to work on it as a community. I would be very happy if @chaley and/or @ownedbycats wanted to become co-maintainers on GitHub, for example. I certainly don't have any plans for any great changes so far, and I'm far from an expert on the code.

The repository can be found here:
https://github.com/majutsushi/kobo-utilities

I've attached a version of the plugin that includes all of my changes, but I haven't done an actual release yet so there isn't any potential confusion about release versions. I'm not sure how releases should be handled in the future, it would certainly be easiest for users if @chaley would continue updating the first post in this thread.

The changes I've made to the actual plugin are:

• Two new custom columns options for the "time spent reading" and "rest of book estimate" database entries. This is the only user-visible change (unless I broke something).
• Removed a lot of obsolete compatibility code for Python 2 and ancient versions of Calibre. This means that the minimum supported Calibre version is now 5.13, which came out almost four years ago. This is a bit unfortunate but makes maintenance in the future much easier.
• Reformatted the code with ruff so it is all consistent.
• Various small refactorings.

It would be great if a few people could test my changes to make sure everything is working as it should. I don't think there should be any problems, but you never know.

[chaley]

@Majutsushi: thank you for taking on (I hope) this work. IMO someone must be a gatekeeper for changes and I would be happy if that person is you.

What I mean by "gatekeeper" is someone who accepts (or not) changes made by other people and chooses when to release the changes. The "accept" process is influenced by the proposed changes and by work in progress. That is what I have been doing, merging proposed changes into my repo. I think using a Pull Request (PR) system would be better but I haven't bothered to set that up.

What I am trying to say is that I would be happy:

• for you to coordinate changes, especially as apparently you will be making your own changes as you refactor / clean up.
• to use a PR system instead of direct commits to your repo.
• to make "official" releases (changes to first post) for you. Alternatively and I think better: you can make a new thread and I change the Index of Plugins to reference that new thread, which would take me out of the release loop.

One note: Kobo Utilities is tied rather tightly into the calibre Kobo Driver. You will likely find reasons you want to change both the driver and the utilities. @Kovid is very open to accepting changes from people who seem reliable and will be around for a while. He uses PRs and it works well.

[ownedbycats]

There is one outstanding bug that might be worth fixing:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...83#post4251283

[JSWolf]

Has anyone tested the newly reworked version? If so, have you found any issues (or not hopefully)?

[JSWolf]

Can we please get rid of the dialog that pops up when we have no reading information to be updated from the Kobo? Thanks.