[GUI Plugin] Open With

[carmenchu]

Thanks. -- it's always good to save settings, especially when you have added icons and may mislead/delete them.
Suggestion: my "OpenWith 7-zip" (for checking/comparison/partial update) shall have to be repeated for epub, zip, textz, htmlz, cbr/cbz... So,
what about a "clone entry" to next line, to only change the file association drop-down?
I have the same problem with the "OpenWith WinMerge"...

[kiwidude]

@carmenchu - I'll have a think about that suggestion as to how difficult it is to add. I'm trying to minimise the changes for the next release to just thoe related to getting keyboard shortcuts to work with centralised mgmt given the changes to Calbre (plus the bug-fix). If not trivial it can be considered for a future release.

[carmenchu]

Thanks to YOU.

By the way, would my first suggestion be more adequate for the "Check Duplicates" plugin?
I.e., two epubs / epub- zip, etc,. found --> open in 7zFM.exe with 2 views for comparison?

Chief difficulty from MY viewpoint (my programming skills very much limited to simple batch files, LaTeX and javascript) is that 7zFM.exe IS NOT a command line tool .. or, at least, the default installation doesn't tell one how to call it with params. But WinMerge calls it in 2 pane mode, so there must be a way to.

[kiwidude]

No I wouldn't put it in the Find Duplicates plugin either.

It is a very niche requirement imho. I reckon most users take the same approach as myself of just eyeballing two formats that are the same, by looking at them in the Calibre viewer. I believe I can far more quickly tell which version I want to keep by skimming though a few pages that trying to interpret WinMerge results. For many situations the slightest change (like a calibre style being renumbered) is going to show every single file as being different but may have no impact on the result. Any edit in Sigil is going to reformat the contents or put other filth like ids and inline styles. There are too may reasons why a merge type comparison has little value imo.

But I don't want to turn this thread into a big debate about it, because regardless of whether you agree with how useful or niche it is, I'm afraid I don't see it applying to any of my plugins. If you can write javascript, you can write a Calibre plugin in Python yourself. I had never written a line of Python in my life before I developed the plugins in this forum, and the other developers have been very generous with their time in helping when you get stuck (keep any questions very specific of course).

[kiwidude]

Could someone running Calibre 0.8.18 please try the attached version of the Open With plugin for me. This is the version I intend to officially release shortly, however it would be wonderful if someone would be so kind as to verify it is all working as they would expect. Seventeen of my plugins have to be changed and re-released specifically to work with the keyboard shortcut functionality so it is important I know that I have got it working "right" - it is countless hours of work as it is without doubling it with multiple releases if I missed something!

The key change in this plugin release (apart from the bug-fix for import/export above) is supporting Calibre's centralised keyboard shortcuts mechanism.

Note that this means that this plugin will no longer store shortcuts itself for your menu items, so any keyboard shortcuts you have configured currently for this plugin will be lost (like Alt+E for Sigil)! Your custom menu items will be preserved, just without shortcuts assigned to them.

Instead you use Calibre's Preferences->Keyboard dialog which I have also made available via the Open With configuration dialog.

There were a whole bunch of permutations I had to attempt to cater for involving people adding, removing and renaming shortcuts. I think I have it "right", fingers crossed.

Another side effect of this is that when you click on the "Keyboard shortcuts..." button on the open with customisation dialog, it will immediately apply whatever changes you may have made to your menus, rather than waiting for you to click ok. So think of "Keyboard shortcuts..." being the same as an "Apply" button in that you cannot cancel changes made before then.

I hope that makes sense. The new centralised keyboard shortcuts are a brilliant feature long desired (thanks Kovid), and hopefully makes it easier and more bulletproof to ensure you can configure shortcuts that do not conflict with other plugins or Calibre.

[Aleyst]

I got the shortcuts working
The only issue I had was when trying to scroll down to see after clicking for example, sigil, to setup the shortcut, every time I scrolled, it closed. Which was annoying, but that might not be an issue for anyone not on a netbook with limited screen real estate.

Just a question though, i have had trouble for the last couple of versions with getting the custom images to show up with the program name. The link to the program works itself but the images refuse to show up, they are being saved though.

[mightymouse2045]

Yeah everything is now working fine for me also in Fedora 15.

The only 'issue'? is as the previous poster said in the keyboard shortcuts area once you double click on an item to apply a shortcut key if you try and scroll either with the mouse or by clicking the up and down arrows, it closes the shortcut preferences for that item. You can however resize the window so if it's not showing the whole area as with the previous poster you can just resize the window and it won't close it in the process, or resize and then open the item - either way.

This is happening on all items within the keyboard shortcut preferences so it's not an issue with your plugin, and looks like it is by design anyways

Thanks for your efforts dude

[Aleyst]

As MightyMouse said, once resized, doesn't seem to be an issue.
Thanks heaps for the plugins, They're awesome

[kiwidude]

@Alyest/mightymouse - thanks very much for helping test it and providing feedback. Indeed the "close when scrolling" thing is nothing I have control over. That window to manipulate keyboard shortcuts is as you have found the exact equivalent of choosing Preferences->Keyboard and is entirely Calibre code. I am sure that if it is something Kovid can improve on over time he will.

@Aleyst - I have no problem adding images, I tried one just now. In my case I just added a new menu item, chose Add new image from the dropdown in the Image column, navigated to a .png icon on my hard-drive and immediately it appeared in the list as well as next to the menu text all as I would expect. I als tried it with a web favicon as well and that too worked. So I am not quite sure why you are having issues with that?

I have made a few minor tweaks to the help file and code tidy-ups so when I officially release this those of you who have downloaded the version above should "reinstall" using the Plugin Updater (the version number will be the same as 1.5.0). Doing the reinstall once you are already at 1.5.0 should not lose any shortcuts you have setup - it is just users migrating to 1.5.0 for the first time who will have that occurring.

[kiwidude]

Changes in this release:

• Fix bug in Import and Export menu items which were broken
• Fix bug of double click on the application path should not be allowed when no menu name
• Upgrade to support the centralised keyboard shortcut management in Calibre

This release requires Calibre 0.8.18. See my preview release post above for more details on the changes related to keyboard shortcuts.

Upgrading to this release will cause any current keyboard shortcuts associated with your Open With plugin menus to be lost. You can add them again (a one-off exercise) from either the Customize plugin menu option or Preferences->Keyboard.

[Aleyst]

Thanks kiwidude, I'm not quite sure, I've had it work once maybe... is there a size limit or something? I really have no idea why it refuses to work for me.

----
Just tried again, perhaps it has to do with naming convention? I was trying to save them so that they matched the current images using owp_ProgramName. That failed, just saved one using just programName and that worked...

Odd.

[kiwidude]

Aleyst - ahh that makes sense. The naming convention I use internally for the images just helps me know whether to look for them in the plugin zip file or not. So your naming it the same way is perhaps confusing it. Just don't rpefix them owp_ and you should be fine.

[kiwidude]

Changes in this release:

• On Windows ensure the opened file is added to the MRU list, to support jump lists and recent documents

Thanks to charleski for providing me with the link to the solution for this.

[st_albert]

Just tried installing Open With 1.5.1 on Linux, Calibre 0.8.19, from the command line. On restarting Calibre, the Open With plugin is there but when I try to configure it, I get an error:

calibre, version 0.8.19
ERROR: Must restart: You must restart calibre 
before you can configure the
 <b>Open With</b> plugin

Restarting does not help.

What am I missing?

[kiwidude]

Only guess I can venture is that there might be an error when calibre starts up. What happens when you start calibre in debug mode?