[GUI Plugin] Extract ISBN

[JimmXinu]

FYI, I am not kiwidude and this isn't my plugin. But I'm trying to help out by porting some of the plugins I use regularly while kiwidude is busy.

Attached is a test version that should work for both the existing 1.X calibre and the upcoming 2.X version calibre. 2.x will use PyQt5 which requires changes to virtually all plugins.

This version needs to be tested with the existing calibre.

Brave souls to test with with the beta 2.X version would also be appreciated. Links to the 2.X beta and discussion of the transition (for plugins) can be see at: Attn plugin developers: calibre moving to Qt 5.

I don't actually use this plugin, but I did mine it for ideas and code when I wrote my own plugins. So I thought it appropriate to port it.

So give it a try, let me know how it works.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

I don't actually use this plugin, but I did mine it for ideas and code when I wrote my own plugins. So I thought it appropriate to port it.

So give it a try, let me know how it works.

Thanks, it seems to work fine with Calibre version 1.46, 32 bit.

[BetterRed]

@JimmXinu - seems OK on Windows 7 SP1, 1.46 [64-bit] and 1.203.1 portable. Tested extracting from Mobi, Epub, PDF, and Lit.

BR

[obvious]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

@Townk - this plugin offers just a simple and crude way to grab an ISBN primarily for metadata gathering purposes. As soon as you download metadata it will overwrite the ISBN again with one of the matches based on what you selected. So it is fairly pointless for most people to try to get too picky about which ISBN they have associated with the book, because of the way ISBN groups and calibre metadata download works.

Hi - Newbie alert

Once the ISBN info is inserted, what's the best way update title's, authors, covers etc using ISBNs as input for a bulk update.

I hope that's clear?

Edit: I made a guess and filtered by isbn:true which highlighted books with ISBN's in green but did not select them.

Edit2: Ah, I created a virtual library based on isbn:true. If I bulk download metadata for that library will the ISBN take priority when downloading metadata?

[davidfor]

If the metadata for a book has an ISBN as an identifier, this will be used when getting the rest of the metadata. They might also search on title and author, but the first check is using the ISBN.

[Jay Dugger]

Could Extract ISBN be used to extract other identifiers: DDC and LCC?

[MetDeFiets]

Hi KiviDude,
it seems that this is just the plugin I've been looking for

But I found one small problem while testing:
There are some publishers marking their 10 and/or 13 digit ISBN-Numbers as mentioned in the title. Would be very great, if you could extend that in your code. Thank you very much in advance.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by MetDeFiets

it seems that this is just the plugin I've been looking for

Moderator Notice
Moved post to the Extract ISBN plugin thread.

[RotAnal]

Dear KiwiDude,
Thanks so much for you plugin which has been adding value to the Calibre project!
However, I have been noticing that some pdf files, for reasons that I ignore, on opening do not show the first page, but another one. I suspect that your plugin may be dependent on that choice, because it does not find respective ISBNs (however well highlighted in the text) on those files. In other words, I can easily go back to the first pages and seek, copy and paste ISBN manually, while your plugin apparently does not.
Could you please check the code and, if confirmed, fix this issue?
Thanks in Advance
RotAnal

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by RotAnal

Dear KiwiDude,
Thanks so much for you plugin which has been adding value to the Calibre project!
However, I have been noticing that some pdf files, for reasons that I ignore, on opening do not show the first page, but another one. I suspect that your plugin may be dependent on that choice, because it does not find respective ISBNs (however well highlighted in the text) on those files. In other words, I can easily go back to the first pages and seek, copy and paste ISBN manually, while your plugin apparently does not.
Could you please check the code and, if confirmed, fix this issue?
Thanks in Advance
RotAnal

@RotAnal - there are known limitations with PDFs, did you read the doco in post #1 ==>> [GUI Plugin] Extract ISBN

...For PDF formats, scans only the first 10 pages, then if ISBN not found, the last 5 pages in reverse order.
For other formats, scans files at the front, then a number of end files in reverse order before the remainder of the book....

I'm not sure, but if the PDF is composed of images with no underlying text then even though you can see the ISBN the PI may not, it would need OCR capabilities to do that and I suspect it doesn't have such.

BR

[RotAnal]

Dear BetterRed,
thanks for your answer.
Yes I am aware of the limits of the plugin. Of course I don't ask it to read the entire document, just to begin searching from the actual first page even if the pdf itself is preset to open at page xxx.
As regards OCR, I think I have been writing that I can COPY and paste ISBNs manually, therefore I believe it is already OCRed in my pdfs.
ADDENDUM
Anyway, in order to get insight of the trouble, I have been working experimentally. I opened the pdf, entered in properties and reset the opening page to 1. However the plugin failed again to recognise the ISBN. Then it must be something other.
I suspected now that the culprit may be the ISBN-10 ISBN-13 that may confuse the plugin parser. Sorry, I am unaware whether this has been discussed in this forum.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by RotAnal

Dear BetterRed,
thanks for your answer.
Yes I am aware of the limits of the plugin. Of course I don't ask it to read the entire document, just to begin searching from the actual first page even if the pdf itself is preset to open at page xxx.
As regards OCR, I think I have been writing that I can COPY and paste ISBNs manually, therefore I believe it is already OCRed in my pdfs.

Some viewers have built-in, lightweight OCR, I know mine does.

Is it all PDF's or just some. It works for me at least 90% of the time. What is presetting this "start position" in the book.

BR

[BetterRed]

Calibre 2.7 introduced a new way of dealing with Jobs that have end-of-job dialogues. Rather than popping a modal dialogue box that takes control, a notification message is shown (bottom right where the Jobs spinner is) that does not require an immediate response.

See this thread for background Downloading metadata in background

The Count Pages, Modify and Extract ISBN PI's have automagically inherited this new job complete notification scheme... except when Extract ISBN fails to find an ISBN, then I get the 'old style' modal popup dialogue

BR

[Vortex]

I have a lot of PDF books that have the ISBN written in the front like this example, why does Extract ISBN fail on them? Is there any way to get it to read them? Thanks.

ISBN-13 978-1-934329-34-4 ISBN-10 1-934329-34-7

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Vortex

I have a lot of PDF books that have the ISBN written in the front like this example, why does Extract ISBN fail on them? Is there any way to get it to read them? Thanks.

ISBN-13 978-1-934329-34-4 ISBN-10 1-934329-34-7

@Vortex - did you check Post #295 above