[Metadata Source Plugin] Webscription (Baen Ebooks)

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Here's another beta. I think all this fixes the problems reported.

The covers for books that are no longer sold should be retrieved. This was also part of the problem with eARCs.

I have put some handling in for "edited by", but I'm not sure it is correct. All I am doing is ignoring the "edited by". That means that for the example given, I am assuming the author is just "James H. Schmitz". For this case, I think it is correct. For others, it might not be.

The changes might have fixed the problem with "Phoenix Ascendant". I didn't do anything specific for this, but I can't reproduce the problem today.

As usual, please report any problems. A link to the problem book is really handy, as is a copy of the logs. If everything is OK, I'll arrange for a release sometime next week.

Phoenix Ascendant appears to work correctly now. However, I had an eARC end up with a completely wrong title -- Carousel Seas eARC was returned as Carousel Tides (non-eARC).

Another issue: When the Series information is already set, but with a different series name than Baen has chosen, the plugin overrides that to Baen Series Name [1]. I'm sure I'm not alone in having some series listed in Calibre with a different name than Baen has chosen to use. My personal preference would be for the series information to be written ONLY when there isn't something there already.

For example, with the Carousel series, the author (and I) have chosen to refer to it as the Archer's Beach series, so the eARC was in Calibre as Archer's Beach [3]. That was overwritten to Carousel [1]. On another book, When the Devil Dances, where I used the same exact series name as Baen, the behaviour was correct. It did not overwrite the series index.

[gbm]

Works with all of my test cases, some of which did not work with the original plugin.

bernie

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by theducks

Baen's Bar is the BAEN forum site
Toni's Table is where the 'Editor' hangs out

NNTP is what us old time USENET users like

I got that from the context, and did look at them, though I had to dig NNTP out of the dusty corners of my mind. I was responding to the suggestion that this thread wasn't the correct place for the discussion of problems with this plugin. My reaction that that is basically

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Phoenix Ascendant appears to work correctly now. However, I had an eARC end up with a completely wrong title -- Carousel Seas eARC was returned as Carousel Tides (non-eARC).

I just tested and this isn't happening here. Can you post the log? And does this happen when you only use Webscriptions for the search, or are you using other plugins at the same time?

Another issue: When the Series information is already set, but with a different series name than Baen has chosen, the plugin overrides that to Baen Series Name [1]. I'm sure I'm not alone in having some series listed in Calibre with a different name than Baen has chosen to use. My personal preference would be for the series information to be written ONLY when there isn't something there already.

For example, with the Carousel series, the author (and I) have chosen to refer to it as the Archer's Beach series, so the eARC was in Calibre as Archer's Beach [3]. That was overwritten to Carousel [1]. On another book, When the Devil Dances, where I used the same exact series name as Baen, the behaviour was correct. It did not overwrite the series index.

Sorry, but that is how calibre works. A metadata search plugin gets the results and passes them back to calibre to apply. Calibre is probably only changing what is different. In the case of the series info, if the series name changes, it is probably resetting the name and index and then applying the new values. This means that the current series index is replaced by whatever comes from the search. As the plugin doesn't set one, calibre uses whatever rules it has for choosing the series index.

What I had completely forgotten or possibly didn't know, are that the rules can be changed with a tweak. The "Auto increment series index" tweak has two options. I have:

series_index_auto_increment = 'first_free'

use_series_auto_increment_tweak_when_importing = False

That uses 1 as the series index.

Changing the latter option to "True" will use the same rules as used when setting the series in the metadata editor.

[jcsalomon]

Originally Posted by davidfor

I was responding to the suggestion that this thread wasn't the correct place for the discussion of problems with this plugin. My reaction that that is basically

Not what I meant. This thread is the place to discuss the plug-in, but Baen’s Bar (either the EBooks conference or Toni’s Table) would be where to discuss what Baen’s site can do to accommodate the plug-in, or what features of the new site the plug-in might be able to use.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by jcsalomon

Not what I meant. This thread is the place to discuss the plug-in, but Baen’s Bar (either the EBooks conference or Toni’s Table) would be where to discuss what Baen’s site can do to accommodate the plug-in, or what features of the new site the plug-in might be able to use.

That is also what I took from your post.

There are 2 ends of any download plugin. Sometimes the adjustment needs to be at the source end for simplicity

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by davidfor

I just tested and this isn't happening here. Can you post the log? And does this happen when you only use Webscriptions for the search, or are you using other plugins at the same time?

I can't repeat it now. I suspect some previous metadata edit had inserted an incorrect ISBN value, which Calibre, of course, accepted. The eARC should have ONLY a webscription value, since it's not sold anywhere else.

[CRussel]

Any word on a "release version" of this? It seemed like we had most problems resolved...

[davidfor]

I'm waiting for kiwidude. When I change his plugins, I send a message to him about the update and he updates the first post. Usually he is pretty quick, but it has been a week or so this time.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by davidfor

I'm waiting for kiwidude. When I change his plugins, I send a message to him about the update and he updates the first post. Usually he is pretty quick, but it has been a week or so this time.

Any forum Mod can do that
If you PM me:
1) the edited BB code section for the index, I can paste (replace) it there (usually just a rev level bump)

2) Instructions (new text) of what should done to post 1

[kiwidude]

Changes in this release:

• New URL
• Lots of website changes
• Added series name but no series index

Thanks to Davidfor who made the changes.

[DNSB]

Just to mention that in __init__.py around line 28, "Bean" should be "Baen". Otherwise, the plugin works for me.

[davidfor]

I thought I found all those misspellings.

[davidfor]

Does anyone know when this stopped working? I went to add the second item below, and found the search wasn't working. So, I had to fix it.

• Fix: Web site changes
• New: Add id_from_url to return the identifier.

While fixing this, there are two things that seem to be missing: series information and the publisher. The series is sometimes in the title or the first line of the description, but it is not always there. The publisher is also missing on the details page.

Second change is for a change I made to the metadata editor that has been released in calibre version 3.34. When you press the button next to the identifiers field, if there is a URL in the clipboard, then it will attempt to get an identifier from the URL. That function needs support from the metadata source plugins.

If anyone is out there and wants to use this, please test the beta and tell me how it goes.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by davidfor

If anyone is out there and wants to use this, please test the beta and tell me how it goes.

Tried downloading metadata and covers for the Baen Nov. 2018 bundle and the Grantville Gazette Volume 80. Of the 8 books, 4 returned no results, 3 showed valid results and The Valley of Shadows returned the eARC instead of the release version.

I managed to get the Grantville Gazette, Volume 80 to work by using the URL method to add the ID and changing the author from Bjorn Haessler to Eric Flint while The Valley of Shadows worked using the URL to add the ID.