Minor Calibre issues

[starrigger]

I thought I'd just put these all together in case they've already been addressed somehow:

1. I still find that when I add books to the Calibre library in Windows XP, the adding books dialogue box often fails to close afterward, and won't go away unless I restart Calibre. (I know there was a fix on this a few versions back. Not sure if the fix worked, then got messed up in a newer release.)

2. When I open the Viewer on a LRF file, the viewer window almost always opens with the bottom of the window down behind my Quicklaunch bar, requiring me to move it up. When I do readjust it, the display doesn't properly resize to fit the viewer window, but generally has a vertical scroll bar for each given page, requiring up and down scrolling on each page. (Sort of like a PDF with fixed pages.) Doesn't seem to happen with the EPUB viewer.

3. Don't know how doable this is, but for those of us who like to keep the latest version of Calibre, it would be really nice if we could click an update button from within the program, and have it handle the download and install process.

Thanks, as always. Now that I use Calibre, I couldn't manage without it.

[kovidgoyal]

1. Hmm, I can't reproduce this on my windows machines, so it's hard for me to debug.

2. That because LRF, like PDF is a fixed size format (a screen size is defined inside the LRF file). Since the calibre viewer tries to be an accurate simulation of the SONY reader, it respects that size.

3. This is too much work for me

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

1. Hmm, I can't reproduce this on my windows machines, so it's hard for me to debug.

2. That because LRF, like PDF is a fixed size format (a screen size is defined inside the LRF file). Since the calibre viewer tries to be an accurate simulation of the SONY reader, it respects that size.

3. This is too much work for me

1. I forgot to mention, it seems more likely to happen if the books are large files, or if I do something like toggle to another program while Calibre is doing its job.

2. I didn't know that about LRF. Learn something every day.

3. I thought that might be the case. But I figured I'd ask.

[itimpi]

I have the same problem with the Add Books dialog never disappering (on XP Pro +SP3). I wonder if Kovid's version of Windows is different in any way?

Looking at the Calibre source it I notice some strange anomalies between what I see and what I would expect to see:

- When adding multiple books a message is displayed in the dialog about "Reading Metadata" for every book except the last. The source implies there should be one even for the last file.

- Then after a few seconds the dialog back is cleared and goes to pure white (except for the title bar). There should be messages about adding the books to the database.

- After a delay, the main window becomes active again. At this point the Adding Books dialog should disappear but does not. I must admit, though, that looking at the source that I do not see how the progress.Hide() statement at the end of the block that should remove the dialog box is not working as expected.

As Kovid cannot reproduce this and I can do it reliably, I am going to play with tweaks at the source level to see if I can change this behavior, and also to confirm that the statements are being executed as expected from my reading of the source.

[itimpi]

I added some msgbox() calls (using easygui) around the various calls to update the progress dialog. When these were in place the dialog updated as expected, and then hid itself at the end as expected. I am sure this is a clue to the problem on Windows although I am not sure yet what it means
It is almost as though the dialog is not getting a chance to process events and update itself at the appropriate points.

I will continue to investigate further.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

3. This is too much work for me

Is there any type of free package manager for Windows like there is for Linux and Mac?

BOb

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Is there any type of free package manager for Windows like there is for Linux and Mac?

BOb

Not that I know off.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by itimpi

I added some msgbox() calls (using easygui) around the various calls to update the progress dialog. When these were in place the dialog updated as expected, and then hid itself at the end as expected. I am sure this is a clue to the problem on Windows although I am not sure yet what it means
It is almost as though the dialog is not getting a chance to process events and update itself at the appropriate points.

I will continue to investigate further.

Hmm there is a periodic call to QApplication.processEvents(), but maybe I should just refactor the code to make it run in a separate thread.

[itimpi]

I added calls to QApplication.processEvents() either side of the various actions on the progress object, and then everything worked as expected including all messages displaying correctly, and the dialog hiding itself at the end.

I almost certainly have far more calls than I need, so I will start removing them gradually to see what the minimum set is to get correct behavior, and then let you have the patch when I get to the minimum set. That should be easier in the short term than worrying about any refactoring.

I wonder why it works OK on your machine and not mine? Perhaps you have a faster machine or a multi-core processor so that changes the event handling timing significantly?

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by itimpi

I added calls to QApplication.processEvents() either side of the various actions on the progress object, and then everything worked as expected including all messages displaying correctly, and the dialog hiding itself at the end.

I almost certainly have far more calls than I need, so I will start removing them gradually to see what the minimum set is to get correct behavior, and then let you have the patch when I get to the minimum set. That should be easier in the short term than worrying about any refactoring.

I wonder why it works OK on your machine and not mine? Perhaps you have a faster machine or a multi-core processor so that changes the event handling timing significantly?

Yeah, I run the windows tests on a Dual core

[kovidgoyal]

Oh and if you're doing this for add books, could you also do it for save books

[itimpi]

No problem.

[kovidgoyal]

Thanks

[itimpi]

Attached is the diff for the minimum set of changes that seemed to make the add books dialog update itself as expected and remove itself at the end.

I looked at the save books option, but the dialogs seemed to display fine and hide at the end, so have not suggested any changes in that area.

[kovidgoyal]

Thanks, applied.