X-Ray Builder - Windows Application

[Ephemerality]

So sorry for the delay! I've been very engrossed in Pokemon Go and haven't done much else

Originally Posted by HawkJacq

I still have the doubt if there is some kind of problem with mixing Spanish Books with metadata or options in English.

Glad you were able to get it somewhat working in the end at least. I'm not really sure what could be going on with it, it must be something to do with the Spanish/English stuff as you mentioned.

Originally Posted by HawkJacq

5.- Even though what I mentioned in Number 4 was a success, I came with two problems. The Spanish accent (´) in names (Ex: "Capitán") was showed with a small question mark ("Capit?n") so no match appeared about that Book Character. So I erased all accents ("Capitan" instedad of "Capitán") and tried. To my surprise it seems that X-Ray Builder doesnt consider accents because even if it was "Capitan" instead of "Capitán", X-Ray showed the name correctly and also the mentions.

There are always been various issues with accented character support, though I thought most of that was resolved. In any case, it doesn't look like the book actually has 'Capitán' with the accent, in the copy you sent me anyway! So that's probably why it worked without it. It was un-accented in the alias file also.

Originally Posted by HawkJacq

6.- The Aliases were another problem but I fear it has no solution....From my point of view it isnt a great problem and I prefer mixed mentions that I can discard after reading, instead of less of them.

Yeah, that's a downside to the whole automatic process. It's up to you whether you'd prefer some more false matches or more accurate information. You can really fancy with the aliases using regular expressions and positive/negative lookahead/lookbehinds to make them match perfectly but that's a lot of extra effort without much gain.

Originally Posted by HawkJacq

7.- The Third Tab in X-Ray, the one that in my Kindle is called "Términos" (maybe "Terms" in English) sometimes shows "There was an error". In my last test it only appeared "there is no one found" in the actual page and in the Book. What is the purpose of this Tab? Can be edited?

The 'Terms' section is to what was previously 'glossary terms' from Shelfari. Basically, anything that isn't a character but could use defining. Sometimes places are there with a description, sometimes words that are made up specifically for the book, etc.
You can add any terms in the text file as well, but with 'Topic' as the first line instead of 'Character'!

Originally Posted by HawkJacq

8.- Analysing a book in English I bought from Amazon.com I noticed in X-Ray an additional Tab called "Images" in which screenshots of the Book were shown. I suppose this isnt implemented in X-Ray Builder but I believe is not a bad option with books (specially fantasy ones) that shows a Map in the first pages, as a way to quicky access to that Map.

Yeah, images are a feature I never had much luck implementing but haven't tried in a while. It's on my list of things to add!

Originally Posted by HawkJacq

9.- Is there a way to Edit Author Biography so as to avoid the Error shown in X-Ray Builder when is working?

There's an option to save the author's biography to a file (in settings) that you can then edit and it will load it. Not sure how well that works if the file doesn't exist to begin with, though. If it doesn't work, you can save a file called "ASIN.bio" in the ext folder, where ASIN is the author's ASIN (should show up in the log).

Originally Posted by HawkJacq

10.- When I started the book (the very first time), it showed the Goodread info box about the Book and its configuration. It seems that even using a text file for characters in X-Ray Builder (and no marking the Goodread option) it uses info from Goodreads. It seems I wrongly assumed that the text file bypasses Goodreads.

Yeah the text file is only for the X-Ray process, it still uses Goodreads/Amazon for the other extras. I'm hoping that we can re-arrange the interface to make that a bit clearer.

Originally Posted by HawkJacq

Well, I am going to work with another book, to see if it has similar results. I will mix Spanish Book with English metadata to see if X-Ray doesnt work again, and then I will use Spanish Metadata. I am also going to create a text file after searching for the Characters in the Web.

Good luck! I hope all is well.

[gers1978]

For some reason it's now generating different ASINs for me between Author/Start/Finish Actions and XRay files.

The ASIN for the book is B002RI9ZSG

When the Start/Finish/Author files are created, they are called:

AuthorProfile.profile.B006H2O704
EndActions.data.B006H2O704
StartActions.data.B006H2O704

But the XRay files are called:

XRAY.B002RI9ZSG.previewData
XRAY.entities.B002RI9ZSG.asc

This happens on all books - the author/end/start files contain correct ASIN, the XRay files don't.

[Ephemerality]

Originally Posted by gers1978

This happens on all books - the author/end/start files contain correct ASIN, the XRay files don't.

Wow! I must have uploaded a version that still contained the ASIN I was debugging... sorry! I've uploaded an h version that should have it removed!
Probably also part of the problem for HawkJacq when trying to switch between ASINs.

[gers1978]

Getting an error:

Author page found on Amazon!
Author's Amazon Page URL: http://www.amazon.com/George-Kimball/e/B001JPCMW4
Author biography found on Amazon!
Downloading author image...
Resizing and cropping Author image...
Grayscale Base-64 encoded author image created!
Gathering author's other books...
An error occurred while creating the new Author Profile, Start Actions, and/or End Actions files: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

[Ephemerality]

Originally Posted by gers1978

Getting an error:

I tried a build with that author and it went ok. I've uploaded a new beta version (2.0.16b) to the first post that might have a fix for your issue. Darrenmcg has made a number of improvements while I've been neglecting this project and working on Pokemon Go things

Noteworthy changes:
-GUI updates, most importantly a neat "Terms Creator" feature that allows you to build a list of terms with descriptions and aliases within the program and export the result to an XML file for use in building. I haven't played around with it much but all the buttons have tooltips and is mostly self-explanatory.
-Updates to Goodreads/Amazon searching
-Better previews
-Improved chapter matching
-Better image handling
-Option to extract info from an existing X-Ray to an XML file

[Ephemerality]

I have uploaded an experimental Calibre plugin to the first post, plugin-kindlexray-0.0.2.zip, as well as included some instructions on using it.
This plugin replaces the normal Kindle device plugin and will automatically find and copy over files built by X-Ray Builder when you use 'send to device' feature in Calibre (and still do what the original did via inheritance, hopefully without breaking things).
I created it a while ago and forgot about it, but it has been working pretty well for me so far.

[gers1978]

Another error:

An error occurred while opening the C:\Users\Mark\Downloads\xray-builder-gui-v2.0.16b\dist\BaseEndActions.txt file.
Ensure you extracted it to the same directory as the program.
Could not find file 'C:\Users\Mark\Downloads\xray-builder-gui-v2.0.16b\dist\BaseEndActions.txt'.
An error occurred while opening the C:\Users\Mark\Downloads\xray-builder-gui-v2.0.16b\dist\BaseStartActions.txt file.
Ensure you extracted it to the same directory as the program.
Could not find file 'C:\Users\Mark\Downloads\xray-builder-gui-v2.0.16b\dist\BaseStartActions.txt'.

[Ephemerality]

Originally Posted by gers1978

Another error:

An error occurred while opening the C:\Users\Mark\Downloads\xray-builder-gui-v2.0.16b\dist\BaseEndActions.txt file.
Ensure you extracted it to the same directory as the program.
Could not find file 'C:\Users\Mark\Downloads\xray-builder-gui-v2.0.16b\dist\BaseEndActions.txt'.
An error occurred while opening the C:\Users\Mark\Downloads\xray-builder-gui-v2.0.16b\dist\BaseStartActions.txt file.
Ensure you extracted it to the same directory as the program.
Could not find file 'C:\Users\Mark\Downloads\xray-builder-gui-v2.0.16b\dist\BaseStartActions.txt'.

Sorry about that, there was an update that moved the location of the files and I didn't update the zip file accordingly. I've uploaded a new version (2.0.17) to the first post that has them in the right spot and has some minor other fixes as well.

[gers1978]

Does this support KFX files?

[gers1978]

Spotted a new error:

[Image violates Posting Guidelines for size - MODERATOR]

Switching setting back to Amazon USA from UK, and the error doesn't happen

[Ephemerality]

Originally Posted by gers1978

Does this support KFX files?

I haven't looked into the KFX format at all, I doubt it will support it, at least not for a while.

Originally Posted by gers1978

Spotted a new error:
Switching setting back to Amazon USA from UK, and the error doesn't happen

That's normal; Alex Berenson doesn't seem to have a biography on the UK site, but he does on the US site. It's unfortunate because the page exists for him, but it doesn't have much content on it. If it just didn't exist at all, the builder would fall back to the US site automatically.

[Dr. Drib]

Moderator Notice

Please take a few moments to read our Posting Guidelines, in particular the part about the maximum image size allowed (600x600 pixels). Images that violate those guidelines may be deleted.

It is every member's responsibility to read our Posting Guidelines and follow them.

Thanks.

[gers1978]

Another error:

Error searching Amazon.com: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
at XRayBuilderGUI.DataSources.Amazon.SearchAuthor(Boo kInfo curBook, String TLD, Action`1 Log) in C:\Users\nick\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Projects\XRayBuilder\GitHub\xray-builder.gui\src\DataSources\Amazon.cs:line 67
at XRayBuilderGUI.AuthorProfile..ctor(BookInfo nBook, String TLD, frmMain frm) in C:\Users\nick\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Projects\XRayBuilder\GitHub\xray-builder.gui\src\AuthorProfile.cs:line 86
Failed to find Lionel Shriver on Amazon.com

[Ephemerality]

Originally Posted by gers1978

Another error

It's not finding the URL on the page for some reason; I searched that author and it parsed it fine so I'm not sure why. The latest upload (18b) will give a more meaningful error instead of just crashing. If it keeps happening, it will give you a URL to report.

[bballuk]

I've time I try and build X-Ray I get this error...

Error: No terms found on Goodreads.
Error while processing.

EDIT: After trying a few more books finally got one to build xray file. Do you know what causing all others to show above error? The books I'm trying are X-Ray Enabled on kindle site.