[GUI Plugin] Kobo Utilities

[Nicolas F]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Thanks, I'll look at them.


Unfortunately, that's how Windows works. It doesn't pass the anchor when opening the link. I played with it a bit when I created the help but couldn't get it to work.

Ah OK, no problem. I was just wondering about it since I could not make it work correctly. Thanks!

[Dfaure]

Hi,
I don't know if this has already been noticed before, but I'd like to make a cosmetic enhancement request for this excellent calibre plugin.

Once the reading location has been configured to be fetched on connect, when the Kobo is plugged, and not reading positions have been changed, the Kobo Utilities are used to display a dialog box needing explicit validation:

-----
calibre, version 3.11.1
Kobo Utilities: No reading positions were found that need to be updated

No details available.
-----

Couldn't we have this dialog being made optional, or have it automatically closed after some timeout?

And BTW, is there a way different than "on connect" to get these reading positions?

Thanks

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Dfaure

Hi,
I don't know if this has already been noticed before, but I'd like to make a cosmetic enhancement request for this excellent calibre plugin.

Once the reading location has been configured to be fetched on connect, when the Kobo is plugged, and not reading positions have been changed, the Kobo Utilities are used to display a dialog box needing explicit validation:

-----
calibre, version 3.11.1
Kobo Utilities: No reading positions were found that need to be updated

No details available.
-----

Couldn't we have this dialog being made optional, or have it automatically closed after some timeout?

Personally, if I get that message, it usually means a problem I have to look at. But, I'll see about adding a "don't show this" option.

And BTW, is there a way different than "on connect" to get these reading positions?

Yes, it is the "Store/restore current bookmark" option in the menu. Select the books you want to fetch the reading status for and choose the option.

[compurandom]

A feature I'd like to have would be a way to manipulate the tiles on the new home screen. Specifically, I'd like to be able to manipulate the contents and order of the top four tiles.

I've been playing with this, and I found I can add and change the order with restore bookmark / set status / set date to now, but this is a bit cumbersome and takes multiple passes to get what I want.

So, my guess is that a book will show up in the top bar if its status is set to reading (not unread or finished) and the order is controlled by the date setting. What I'd like would be a way to set these two items without changing the bookmark position.

What would be really great would be if I could also store the date into a custom column for editing to get an order, and then restore that date. Alternatively, maybe I could order the books in calibre somehow, select them, and then have kobo utilities set the date of selected books in order with one second difference descending or something.

The idea would be to put a list of books in the top four tiles so that when I remove a tile (by whatever means) then the next one to pop up would be the next in the list.

Would any of that be easy to implement?

[davidfor]

Manipulating that top line of books is easy. It displays the four most recently opened books. Which means, as you found, if you set the reading status to "reading" and "Last read" timestamp to something newer than anything else, the book will be the first on the list. And ordering three more books is easy.

But, I think it is pretty pointless to do this. As soon as you open a book, the last read timestamp is set to now, and it change the order of the books. You could set the timestamps in the future, but, again, opening the book, change the timestamp and the book order changes.

And with what you have suggested, it means you are marking all the books as being read, which seems counter productive to me. There are several good filters in the book list with lots of sort orders. The plugin already can manipulate the "Date added", so you could use that. That doesn't have a custom date option, but that's because I was a little lazy when I added that. It's on my TODO list.

I'm not interested in doing something like you describe, but, if someone wants to add it, I'll look at it.

[compurandom]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Manipulating that top line of books is easy.

...

But, I think it is pretty pointless to do this. As soon as you open a book, the last read timestamp is set to now,

That's fine, that's not a concern. What I really want is to pre-populate the list a bit without really changing the top four, and on occasion, bury something(s) that is in the top four without removing it from the list completely. (If I want to remove it, I can do that on the device easily.)

And with what you have suggested, it means you are marking all the books as being read, which seems counter productive to me.

No no, that's not what I want at all, I agree that would be counter productive. I just want to mark a few (more) books as Im_Reading and set (the order of) their dates.

The plugin already can manipulate the "Date added",

Is that different from the "last read" time stamp that sets the tile ordering?
If I could retrieve the last read timestamp, and then update it with "update metadata" that might cover what I want there.

To simplify, here's the minimum features I'm looking for, any subset of these, but this is more or less in the order of importance:

1. Add a checkbox at the top of restore for "update bookmark" (check to preserve current behavior, uncheck to not change bookmark); adding this alone would make me happier
2. Add a field next to "set date to now" that is subtracted from now
3. Add store current reading status in a column.. (or, alternately, add a checkbox to not filter reading status when getting shelves from device)
4. Add store last read date in column..

I'm not interested in doing something like you describe, but, if someone wants to add it, I'll look at it.

This might motivate me into doing some coding. Maybe if you made the first change, I could use that as a lever to start figuring out how to change this code?

[compurandom]

Actually, playing with it more, there's already a #lastread column which store populates (and apparently I set up but forgot about), so I just need a way to copy that back to the device without disturbing the bookmark or setting the value to today.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by compurandom

Actually, playing with it more, there's already a #lastread column which store populates (and apparently I set up but forgot about), so I just need a way to copy that back to the device without disturbing the bookmark or setting the value to today.

If you set the date in that column to something that suits you, then use the restore, the it will set the last read date on the device to whatever is in the column. And, whether it messes with the current position, depends on if you have pulled it from the device or not.

But, the plugin supports profiles. These are intended to support multiple devices, but you can always use another profile that only has the timestamp you want to set. If you only configure the last read column, it should do what you want to.

My suggestion about the "Date Added" was that manipulating this means you manipulate the whole of the books in that sort order. Which makes it easy to look through the list beyond the first four books.

As to the rest of your suggestion, sorry, I have no interested in doing it. Especially as I believe you can already achieve it.

[Nicolas F]

Originally Posted by compurandom

1. Add a checkbox at the top of restore for "update bookmark" (check to preserve current behavior, uncheck to not change bookmark); adding this alone would make me happier
2. Add a field next to "set date to now" that is subtracted from now
3. Add store current reading status in a column.. (or, alternately, add a checkbox to not filter reading status when getting shelves from device)
4. Add store last read date in column..

You can sort of do what you want already
1. if you don't set a column for "current reading location column", the "bookmark" will not be saved or restored (but you will need to set/unset the column each time you want to change the behavior)

2. & 4. as you've discovered, you can store last read date, and so change the value manually before restore. And to restore it to the device without changing the bookmark, you need to do what I said in 1: unset the column for "current reading location column" and then use the restore current bookmark without checking any option.

3. Reading status is stored in the percent read column -> 0 is unread, 100 is finished and everything in-between is reading. To restore it, use Restore bookmark and check set reading status (if you haven't set the column for "current reading location column", it will only change the reading status)

[compurandom]

Originally Posted by davidfor

If you set the date in that column to something that suits you, then use the restore, the it will set the last read date on the device to whatever is in the column.

I just looked at the code, and this is only true if the selected column is 'timestamp' 'last_modified' or 'pubdate'.

I have it set to a custom column, and it looks to me that in this case, new_timestamp is left uninitialized. I think this is a bug. That would explain why in my tests I couldn't change the date without setting it to now.

[Nicolas F]

Originally Posted by compurandom

I just looked at the code, and this is only true if the selected column is 'timestamp' 'last_modified' or 'pubdate'.

I have it set to a custom column, and it looks to me that in this case, new_timestamp is left uninitialized. I think this is a bug. That would explain why in my tests I couldn't change the date without setting it to now.

I tested it and it works for me when I use custom columns for last read and percent read. If you did not set the percent read to something else than 0, the kobo will probably ignore it since the top tiles show books that are being read.

[compurandom]

You may be right. Looks like I just ran my tests too close together for it to work.

I wish I understood that code better...

I take it back, I still have books I can't re-order in the tiles.

I just changed the date on a book and then restored its bookmark and it says "0 books updated". Then I changed the date again, and the second time it updated it. Then I read the date back, and it is wrong.

I think it is not reliably updating the date from the custom column. It seems like if I try enough times, eventually it works.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by compurandom

I just looked at the code, and this is only true if the selected column is 'timestamp' 'last_modified' or 'pubdate'.

You looked at the wrong code. That is the code for setting the "Date added" as part of the metadata updating. And as I said above, I didn't get around to adding a custom date field as an option.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by compurandom

You may be right. Looks like I just ran my tests too close together for it to work.

I wish I understood that code better...

I take it back, I still have books I can't re-order in the tiles.

I just changed the date on a book and then restored its bookmark and it says "0 books updated". Then I changed the date again, and the second time it updated it. Then I read the date back, and it is wrong.

I think it is not reliably updating the date from the custom column. It seems like if I try enough times, eventually it works.

If you got "0 books updated", it means that either the books selected hadn't been imported by the device yet, or there were no changes needed. Mostly, the plugin compares the data in the library with the database and only updates what has changed. If you think this is wrong, run the calibre in debug mode and post the log to show what happens.

[compurandom]

I haven't been able to get a repeat where sequential restores didn't and then did update the last read date. I'll have to play with it more over time. Maybe a closer look at the code will help me figure out what event sequence triggers issues.