Frustrated with GUI

[yocalif]

Hi, I'm a bit frustrated with the GUI, it is very probable that my issues are mainly due to a lack of understanding how things are suppose to work.

Specifically I'm talking about the left column, When I click on the News in left column all I expect to see is downloaded news sources in the center column. If I open the news bar in the left column I should see the individual news sources and be able to take +or- which to display. However when I click on News I get books mixed in with the news sources, this has made me very reluctant to add my entire epub library with is over a 1000 books because I mainly use Calibre now for d/l news. Now to just see news sources I have to click on 'Calibre' in Publishers. Also with the news issue, when I set up how many days to keep I put 1 day, but there is always 5 days saved maybe more I keep deleting the extra days ever 3rd or 4th day, very annoying. In fact I completely deleted and uninstalled calibre to correct this problem and again setup each news source for 1 day and again 5 or more days keeps getting saved.

Next books. Why isn't there a book header or tab category (not sure what they are called) in the left column. I want to click on 'books' and only see books.

Anyway Calibre is an awesome app, thanks so much for all the hard work.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by yocalif

Specifically I'm talking about the left column, When I click on the News in left column all I expect to see is downloaded news sources in the center column. If I open the news bar in the left column I should see the individual news sources and be able to take +or- which to display.

Click on Tags, then click on "News" inside the Tags to see what you want. I think you've found a bug. I've never clicked on the "News" button itself, but when I checked it, I see it does a search of "News:True" and that looks like a bug. AFAIK, there is no field called "news". It should probably do a search of "tag:news", which is the search you get doing it as I described. When you click on a specific news recipe name under News, it searches correctly - tag:"=News Recipe Name"

All news recipe created books are tagged as "news" and with the recipe name.

Next books. Why isn't there a book header or tab category (not sure what they are called) in the left column. I want to click on 'books' and only see books.

All entries in Calibre are books, even the news. If you want to see non-news books make the tag "news" into the minus sign (not the field entry for News, but the News entry under the Tag field as described above) or just type "not tag:news"

[yocalif]

StarSon17, thanks for the reply, I will try what your saying, however my point is that the UI is not friendly. To say Calibre sees everything as a book is not user friendly.
Book, magazines, news, are all separate ereading material so call it etext or some something else, so there can be a "book" category like "news".

Also clicking on the News category in left pane should only show News not books too. Imagine how upset I was when I put like 20 project gutenberg books on calibre and my 40+ news sources and clicked on news to delete 3 days of old news and deleted my project gutenberg books. It is very misleading and needs to be cleaned up.

I did try the Tag "N" > News, it showed something like 175 news items. In the center panel shown was the 175 news items, which were like 4 days of news. So I highlighted all but the current day, right click mouse and chose "remove selected books" and clicked. It deleted ALL the news items not just the selected ones.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by yocalif

StarSon17, thanks for the reply, I will try what your saying, however my point is that the UI is not friendly. To say Calibre sees everything as a book is not user friendly.

The UI is excellent. You just don't know how to use it yet.

Book, magazines, news, are all separate ereading material so call it etext or some something else, so there can be a "book" category like "news".

You should learn to use tags. Books created by recipes are all tagged as "News" and with their recipe name. It's easy to sort them out. If you want to tag ebooks you consider to be "Books," or "Magazines" just add those tags.

Also clicking on the News category in left pane should only show News not books too.

You found what I think is a bug. You should report it. You did something that, apparently, no one else has done before. IMHO, it's a minor bug. Just don't do that and you'll never notice it. Use tags instead.

Imagine how upset I was when I put like 20 project gutenberg books on calibre and my 40+ news sources and clicked on news to delete 3 days of old news and deleted my project gutenberg books. It is very misleading and needs to be cleaned up.

1) Don't delete things without checking what you're deleting, and
2) Why bother to delete them in the first place? They take very little space.

I did try the Tag "N" > News, it showed something like 175 news items. In the center panel shown was the 175 news items, which were like 4 days of news. So I highlighted all but the current day, right click mouse and chose "remove selected books" and clicked. It deleted ALL the news items not just the selected ones.

I just tried it and it worked correctly for me. I have no idea what you did wrong.

[DoctorOhh]

Windows XP sp3, Calibre 0.7.53

I usually hide the News from the Tag browser. I un-hid the news to see what it was doing. I tagged two random books with the News tag and downloaded 6 recipes, each auto tagged as News. I attached an image of the results.

The 6 downloaded recipes don't register at all under news and the two books I tagged as news somehow blend with the tag hierarchy feature and you see the results.

Like I said usually I hide the news label in the tag browser, but this doesn't appear correct to me.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by dwanthny

I tagged two random books with the News tag and downloaded 6 recipes, each auto tagged as News. I attached an image of the results.

The 6 downloaded recipes don't register at all under news and the two books I tagged as news somehow blend with the tag hierarchy feature and you see the results.

Like I said usually I hide the news label in the tag browser, but this doesn't appear correct to me.

A recipe autotags with the tag "News." By default, it also tags with the name of the recipe, although you can set this on or off. If a book has the tag "News" then all of the other tags (usually just the recipe name) show up on the tag browser under the "News" field. This system works OK if you leave everything at the default and don't use "News" as a tag for non-news items. You'll see a list of recipe names under the News heading in the tag browser.

The OP was complaining about the search results when clicking on the "News" field in the tag browser. I think it should return this search:

tag:"=news"

but instead it returns this search:

news:true

There is no "news" field, so this search fails.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by Starson17

A recipe autotags with the tag "News." By default, it also tags with the name of the recipe, although you can set this on or off. If a book has the tag "News" then all of the other tags (usually just the recipe name) show up on the tag browser under the "News" field. This system works OK if you leave everything at the default and don't use "News" as a tag for non-news items. You'll see a list of recipe names under the News heading in the tag browser

That explains it.

This actually sounds like a nice feature. Some books though could rightly be tagged news and if they have 5 other tags it could get nasty.

It still seems that recipes just tagged news should somehow be included under the News area.

Back to hiding this feature.

[Backdraft]

Originally Posted by Starson17

The UI is excellent. You just don't know how to use it yet.

I find this attitude, which seems to be shared among a few of the longer-term members on this board, annoying and condescending.

Comparatively speaking for a new user, the UI is far from excellent. There are too many icons going on (especially on smaller screens) and the method to customize/change them is tedious at best (drag-and-drop?), some icons are redundant within the menu and context toolbar, and the preferences menu seems very convoluted at first.

Yes, I'm very grateful for Kovid for developing this software, providing it free of charge and open source, and constantly updating it. Yes, I can realize (altho I'm no developer) that there are can be limitations with the Python language to create/add some feature or design. However, he (or the team?) is only one person, and what may be easy for him to grasp/work with may be fairly difficult for others. This is where things like user design/experience come into play, which Apple and to an extent Google understand as just as integral to their software (look at how iTunes, despite its bloat, separates everything into categories ie. Music, Audiobooks, Podcast, etc. on the left, and how Chrome has the simple Omnibar). I don't see how questioning the status quo, at least constructively, can not only help the design/usability of the software.

[Manichean]

Originally Posted by Backdraft

I find this attitude, which seems to be shared among a few of the longer-term members on this board, annoying and condescending.

The solution is incredibly simple: Don't just say "the UI sucks" or "your attitude is bad", but offer improvements instead. I have yet to witness a proposal for improvement to be shot down "just because", although you should be able and prepared to argue why your idea is better than the current way not only for you, but for the vast majority.

[kiwidude]

I would just add that it would be even more helpful if people start a new thread to discuss a specific idea. Badly named threads by being too generic are my pet peeve. This thread should have been called something like "News in tag browser not filtering correctly" or similar. With its current title it becomes a dumping ground for people to start adding any issue they feel relates to Calibre (or just general attacks which don't help anyone and lead the thread way off track as was proven on another thread recently).

If you have a particular suggestion to improve Calibre, then submit it as a feature request on the tracker. If you aren't sure about it and want discussion from others first, create a new thread for it if searching doesn't reveal one. Just don't call it "My idea to improve Calibre" etc - something like "Idea to improve toolbars" or whatever is relevant. Be specific - it will help keep threads on topic and may help attract more interest from the developers.

So to get back on topic - has the OP or anyone actually submitted a bug report for this news filtering issue? That will be the best way to either get it fixed if it is confirmed a bug or close this out for you.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by Backdraft

I find this attitude, which seems to be shared among a few of the longer-term members on this board, annoying and condescending.

It's not an attitude, it's an opinion. I think the UI is excellent. I think you don't understand how to use the tags. You can feel free to disagree on the quality of the UI, but if you do, then rollup your sleeves and make some improvements. I'm not a programmer, but when I found things I thought could be improved, that's what I did. That's what most of the "longer-term members on this board" have done. You found a bug. You would have done all users like yourself a service if you had reported it. I left it open for you to do that. You would have done an even greater service if you'd looked at the code and fixed it. Calibre is a joint effort by many people who are willing to work to make it better.

The bug you found is not a lot different from the very first fix I made - incorrect first name - last name reversing.

[theducks]

Calibre's Main UI is different from what I was used to (DOS/Unix/Windows/Linux). No ability to reduce the Toolbar to Text Only (or I missed a setting ).
I got over it and Customized the Bejezus out of it in preferences

Suggested UI changes happen all the time
Some start with polite discussion on: 'would this be useful', 'If we did this...'

Similar to your issue, I was having toolbar crowding problems after adding some (OK, many ) plug-in's and turned ON the then existing second toolbar, only to discover that the 'customize toolbar' (a feature that was added a while back) did not affect the split. A simple request for the ability and it was deemed 'of interest' by a developer and a revision (including some things I had not thought about )

My point is:
Suggest ideas that:
1) Have application to a broad range of Calibre users.
2) Support for mass production reading devices (just because you can read on it does not mean effort to support it will happen NOW)
3) Don't 'break' existing Calibre Libraries (Some early design decisions now block some good suggestions because the upgrade path would be painful to all)

Be willing to accept delay. Some developer must be willing to take on your project. On THEIR schedule.

Be willing to accept NO. Calibre is complex (even the Dev's forget parts of the feature set). Doing your change might block a 'in progress' project or break support for another class of user (might be platform specific).

[/rant]

[chaley]

I fixed clicking on news on 7 March (rev 7464.4.26) to make clicking on it (and also search) do nothing. The fix appeared in release 0.7.49.

Are those of you running that release or later still getting a search when you click on news? If so, can you give me a scenario?

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by chaley

The fix appeared in release 0.7.49.

I had a mistake in my batch file and I was starting the code base for 0.7.48 when I tested.

I can confirm that the current version (0.7.53) does not have this problem. If you happen to be poking around in that part of the code, later, you might consider setting it so that clicking on "News" searches for tag:"=news" That's what I'd expect if it did anything at all.

[yocalif]

I didn't beat up on Calibre I said I was frustrated and that the problem was probably mine as a new user lacking understanding.

HOWEVER, LETS BE CLEAR..

I point out that I have books, and news.
Instead of clicking on News I'm told to use tags.
Instead of clicking on Books, I'm told to use something else again.

I may be the only one that thinks this is confusing on this forum but it frustrates me, hence the thread title.