[GUI Plugin] Author Book Count

[DaltonST]

ABC is designed to be used in the Tag Browser, and to be treated just like Tags are. It also can work hand-in-hand, if desired, with the ABC Hierarchy plugin. Both text values are combined for synergy.

Extract from the OP's Installation Notes:

1. Calibre > Preferences > Custom Columns > Add a new custom column called "author_book_count" with a title of "ABC" and with the default "text, with column shown in the tag browser". Uncheck the new column to hide it. Save your work and restart Calibre.

2. Calibre > Preferences > Plugins > Load Plugin from File and load the attached zip file. Save your work and restart Calibre.

3. Calibre > Preferences > Toolbar > Main Menu Toolbar and then add the icon for Author Book Count. Save your work. Close the window.

4. If you don't want to see the count in the Book Details view, go to Calibre > Preferences > Look and Feel > Book Details and customize the view to your taste.

5. The Calibre tag-browser defaults to sorting by Text instead of by Numbers within Text. To change this: Calibre > Preferences > Tweaks > Recognize Numbers Within Text When Sorting > and set numeric_collation = True.

[nynaevelan]

Originally Posted by DaltonST

ABC is designed to be used in the Tag Browser, and to be treated just like Tags are. It also can work hand-in-hand, if desired, with the ABC Hierarchy plugin. Both text values are combined for synergy.

Extract from the OP's Installation Notes:

1. Calibre > Preferences > Custom Columns > Add a new custom column called "author_book_count" with a title of "ABC" and with the default "text, with column shown in the tag browser". Uncheck the new column to hide it. Save your work and restart Calibre.

2. Calibre > Preferences > Plugins > Load Plugin from File and load the attached zip file. Save your work and restart Calibre.

3. Calibre > Preferences > Toolbar > Main Menu Toolbar and then add the icon for Author Book Count. Save your work. Close the window.

4. If you don't want to see the count in the Book Details view, go to Calibre > Preferences > Look and Feel > Book Details and customize the view to your taste.

5. The Calibre tag-browser defaults to sorting by Text instead of by Numbers within Text. To change this: Calibre > Preferences > Tweaks > Recognize Numbers Within Text When Sorting > and set numeric_collation = True.

Thank you but I don't think this will be able to meet my needs.

[DaltonST]

Just for you, new in Version 2.0.0:

Optionally, you may create a second new custom column called “abc_numeric”. Choose the type as “integer”. This custom column will be populated with the integer version of author_book_count, but only if the column exists. Search criteria valid only for integers would then be possible, such as: #abc_numeric:">7"

[nynaevelan]

Originally Posted by DaltonST

Just for you, new in Version 2.0.0:

Optionally, you may create a second new custom column called “abc_numeric”. Choose the type as “integer”. This custom column will be populated with the integer version of author_book_count, but only if the column exists. Search criteria valid only for integers would then be possible, such as: #abc_numeric:">7"

Thank you I appreciate you adding this feature for me.

[asllearner]

Great! I am looking forward to playing with it and will post some observations there soon.

Originally Posted by DaltonST

Dear asllearner,

Please see https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=243873 for the new ABC Hierarchy plugin that I wrote based upon your post.


DaltonST

[JSWolf]

Does ABC take into account Amazon's odd way of using last name, first name for author names? For example, would it find King, Stephen as a match to Stephen King?

[DaltonST]

It does not match anything to anything. It uses whatever Authors exist for each book. Bear in mind that although an Author may look like "Smith, George", Calibre stores it as "George Smith" in the name column of the authors table. "Smith, George" would be stored in the sort column of the authors table. ABC uses whatever Calibre has. Period.

In my Test Library, for example, Author ID 192 is (name,sort): "Brian W. Aldiss","Aldiss, Brian W."

If a user somehow has tweaked or changed Calibre to make the name the same as the sort, then ABC would still use the value stored in the name column. It uses what Calibre uses for Author name.

If "Brian W. Aldiss" is sometimes "Brian Aldiss" and also sometimes "Brian Wilson Aldiss" in your Calibre library, then there would be three (3) different ABC counts for him because there would be three (3) different versions of the same human being's name. Obviously, standardization of Author names is recommended via the excellent tools already available within Calibre. However, such standardization is totally out of the scope of ABC, which just counts books written by each Author in the authors table. It is up to the Calibre user to standardize their own libraries if they so choose.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DaltonST

It does not match anything to anything. It uses whatever Authors exist for each book. Bear in mind that although an Author may look like "Smith, George", Calibre stores it as "George Smith" in the name column of the authors table. "Smith, George" would be stored in the sort column of the authors table. ABC uses whatever Calibre has. Period.

In my Test Library, for example, Author ID 192 is (name,sort): "Brian W. Aldiss","Aldiss, Brian W."

If a user somehow has tweaked or changed Calibre to make the name the same as the sort, then ABC would still use the value stored in the name column. It uses what Calibre uses for Author name.

If "Brian W. Aldiss" is sometimes "Brian Aldiss" and also sometimes "Brian Wilson Aldiss" in your Calibre library, then there would be three (3) different ABC counts for him because there would be three (3) different versions of the same human being's name. Obviously, standardization of Author names is recommended via the excellent tools already available within Calibre. However, such standardization is totally out of the scope of ABC, which just counts books written by each Author in the authors table. It is up to the Calibre user to standardize their own libraries if they so choose.

Here is what I have from a KF8 eBook from Amazon... "Mariotte, Jeff". It's that way in Author(s) and that way in Author sort. In Author(s) another book I have is "Jeff Mariotte" and Author sort is "Mariotte, Jeff".

Would these come out as the same author? I would hope so.

[DaltonST]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Here is what I have from a KF8 eBook from Amazon... "Mariotte, Jeff". It's that way in Author(s) and that way in Author sort. In Author(s) another book I have is "Jeff Mariotte" and Author sort is "Mariotte, Jeff".

Would these come out as the same author? I would hope so.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You can answer this for yourself. For each book, with your mouse click the Path shown on the right side of Calibre's main screen within the Book Details. Note the name of the author embedded within the Path to the ebook. If the two books have the identical author from the perspective of Calibre, then they will share the same Path down to the author embedded within the Path. If not, they will be different.

I would bet that these are analogous to the patterns to your Paths:

"C:\Users\Public\Public eBooks\Calibre\Mariotte, Jeff\ABookName1(99999)\ABookName1 - Mariotte, Jeff.epub"

"C:\Users\Public\Public eBooks\Calibre\Jeff Mariotte\ABookName2(99999)\ABookName2 - Jeff Mariotte.epub"

If your 2 books are not within the same author-name subdirectory, then as far as Calibre is concerned, they do not have the same author. Calibre rules. ABC certainly uses who Calibre says is the author of each book based on the author id linked to each book in the books_authors_link table in the metadata.db database. 2 ids means 2 different authors. Period.

Jeff Mariotte is also known as Jeffrey J. Mariotte. If you own his book River Run Red, check that book too. It will have yet a third different author as far as Calibre is concerned.

This is the Plugin forum, not the Library Management forum, so I suggest that you get help in standardizing your author names from Library Management. Kiwidude's Quality Check plugin will gladly fix your author names having commas for you, resulting in Jeff Mariotte and Mariotte, Jeff being merged into a single Calibre author, Jeff Mariotte. If you want Jeff Mariotte merged with Jeffrey J. Mariotte, you will have to manually edit your author metadata. I suggest using Calibre > Alter Tag Browser > Manage Authors, Tags, etc. > Manage Authors. This tool could also be used to change Mariotte, Jeff into Jeff Mariotte, since Calibre places each unique author name on its own line within the Manage Authors tool. That would also be a way to prove that Calibre views the latter author names as different authors.

After changing the author names, recheck the Paths to their books. They should be in the same parent author name directory/folder, such as "C:\Users\Public\Public eBooks\Calibre\Jeff Mariotte\..........................". The books would have the identical author id at that point.

[DaltonST]

This is a "note to file" type of post regarding advice about resolving an ABC issue that may occur if your Calibre metadata.db ever becomes corrupted. The ABC job will fail with messages similar to those shown below, although the specific custom_column_n table will likely be different(i.e., not 4, but whatever was the next number available when you configured the custom column author_book_count).

To resolve the job failure as shown below, Quick Switch to the Calibre library that has the issue shown below, and then from the menu click: Library > Library Maintenance > Check Library.

Calibre will do a Vacuum of your metadata.db in order to defragment it. It will then (if you allow it, which you should) compare what your metadata.db says should be in your library directory structure, and vice-versa. Let it fix all problems it finds, and then rerun Library > Library Maintenance > Check Library until there are no more errors to fix.

It is a very good idea to run Library > Library Maintenance > Check Library at least once a month or so just on general principles.


The particular Calibre library for which the job shown below failed had duplicate book/author entries in its metadata.db and metadata for books that did not exist in the directory structure. Library > Library Maintenance > Check Library repaired it.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Example: Job Failure Caused by Corrupt metadata.db

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Starting job: Author Book Count
================================================== ==
Job: "Author Book Count" failed with error:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages/calibre/gui2/threaded_jobs.py", line 83, in start_work
File "calibre_plugins.author_book_count.main", line 57, in Get_all_author_book_counts
File "calibre_plugins.author_book_count.main", line 81, in Refresh_author_book_count
File "calibre_plugins.author_book_count.main", line 232, in Refresh_books_custom_column_x
IntegrityError: Foreign key violation: value not in custom_column_4
Called with args: (, ) {u'notifications': , u'abort': , u'log': }
-------------------------------------------------------------------

[DaltonST]

Version 2.1.1 of ABC has been released. Upgrade to this version is highly recommended.

DaltonST

[LadyKate]

Originally Posted by DaltonST

My choice of .pdf was not at all arbitrary.

The reason there is a .pdf file attached to this thread is that the Forum Rules disallow any zip attachments except for the PI itself in order to not confuse the scraper that automatically updates the PI Index.

A .pdf file is a single file, and does not need to be zipped. Neither do .rtf or .docx documents, for that matter.

When I converted the original MS Word document in which I wrote the instructions into HTML, multiple files were produced due to the images contained in the instructions. I cannot zip them per the Forum Rules. So, I converted my MS Word document to .pdf instead. Hence the attached .pdf file.

I did try converting the Word docx into a single-file .mht format that could simply be attached to this thread, but the result was a 1.1 megabyte .mht file instead of a 292KB .pdf file.

Within the PI itself, I could certainly use HTML instead of .pdf, since I can extract the HTML files just as I do the .pdf file when the user clicks on the "read instructions" sub-menu icon. It just seems like punishment to have to have 2 different formats because I cannot add an "HTML_Instructions.zip" file to this thread.

I am working on a new plugin that has an 18 page Word document filled with screen snippets and Powerpoint graphics. That PI has the same issue as this one. Also, I hope the Forum Rules concerning max-size of attachments is not bumped against for that PI, since even as a .pdf (and not .mht) it still will be over 1mb in size.


Regarding your suggestion to embed the viewer in the gui, I launch the instructions file (in both plugins) in a sub-process of the operating system that is independent of Calibre so that the instructions can be read even if Calibre is exited. That is why it is not embedded in the gui per you suggestion. Again, my decision was not arbitrary.

You could always make a nice little epub which has the advantage of being treated like a zip file if you really want the component files.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by LadyKate

You could always make a nice little epub which has the advantage of being treated like a zip file if you really want the component files.

Just RAR the ePub.

[Tanjamuse]

Can I use this plugin to do the following:

Compare the amount of stories based on the author column in calibre and an author ID Column. The Author ID column is an Custom column which is has the setup of a tags column? If not, is it possible to add it?

Thanks

[DaltonST]

My Author Book Count Hierarchy plug-in does co-author relationships already.

DaltonST