[GUI Plugin] Generate Cover

[adrian1944]

Thank you kiwidude for this and the other great plug ins especially search the internet

I have just installed the new version but still have one query where I cannot find the control to adjust my new covers and wonder if someone can help me with what is probably obvious.

All my series entries come out in roman numerals while i would like to have the choice of normal numerals but cannot see how to adjust this item

Has anyone considered a library here of images suitable for covers representing best examples of genre such as mystery or dark fantasy

adrian

[kiwidude]

Hi Adrian,

Preferences->Look and Feel->Use Roman numerals for series

I agree it would be great if people have images to share.

[TheD0ct0r]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

Changes in this release:

• Allow custom text field to be formatted using Calibre template engine
• Change custom text field so it is a multiline field for more space and complex content

That was quick! You rock even more! Thanks!

[adrian1944]

Am I missing something here with this plugin

I love the plugin itself and the idea behind it, but it is managing to frustrate me somewhat.

Every time I load the plugin all my carefully selected images have disappeared from the first screen and I can see no menu option to retrieve them. I have tried various combinations of saving and defaults without success.

I then try using the plus key to add the image again and it tells me the image is already there and do I want to overwrite it. Whichever answer I give no image appears in the list.

In the end I have to go to my image directory rename all my images and reimport them one by one .

Where are the already imported images stored? I suppose if I deleted them from there each time I would not have the renaming process.

I am concerned that i have missed something since no-one else has mentioned this issue




adrian

[kiwidude]

That sounds very odd. The images are stored in a subdirectory of your local calibre configuration directory. Go to preferences -> misc and click the open configuration directory button. This plugin will store the images in a resources/images/generate_cover subfolder from memory.

Please attach your Generate Cover.json file to a post for me to take a look. You will find this in the plugins folder of the same calibre configuration folder above. Also run it in debug mode by using ctrl+shift+r and see if there are any errors being displayed and post that here.

[adrian1944]

I have found the images

I think i have done the debug right.

this is the content of the log file

calibre Debug log
calibre 0.7.57
Windows-7-6.1.7600
Windows
('Windows', '7', '6.1.7600')
Python 2.7.1
Windows: ('7', '6.1.7600', '', 'Multiprocessor Free')
Failed to initialize plugin...
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages\calibre\customize\ui.py", line 524, in initialize_plugins
File "site-packages\calibre\customize\ui.py", line 55, in load_plugin
File "site-packages\calibre\customize\zipplugin.py", line 160, in load
File "site-packages\calibre\customize\zipplugin.py", line 255, in _locate_code
InvalidPlugin: The plugin in u'C:\\Users\\adrian\\AppData\\Roaming\\calibre\\pl ugins\\eReader PDB 2 PML.zip' is invalid. It does not contain a top-level __init__.py file
Starting up...
Migrating Generate Cover schema from prior to 1.2
Started up in 53.0329999924


here is the json file

hope this helps

adrian

[kiwidude]

You didn't attach the json file. However it looks like you have a plugin there that is causing errors on startup, so I would make sure you uninstall that ("ereader PDB 2 PML", whatever that is) . Also have you installed the very latest version of this Generate Cover plugin?

[adrian1944]

I still have the same problem and seem to have difficulties with uploading the json file which seems to be described by mobile read as an invalid file. I have tried deleting everything and reinstalling but still get the overwrite dialogue with no image added to image box.

I can manage the work around of continually renaming the images for the rest of this week and if the rumours are true of an imac upgrade this week i will move totally to that platform from windows which will hopefully resolve the problem a different way!

Thanks for your help and for creating these plugins

adrian

[kiwidude]

You can just rename the json file to have a txt suffix to attach to a post.

You haven't confirmed you are running the latest version of the plugin. Do that, delete your json file, remove th images from that directory I said above and that will be the same as a fresh installation.

[webe]

hi kiwidude,

thanks for your great plugin. It suits all my needs making a custom cover.

Well.., i should've said "nearly all".

Here my little problem: after making several covers-with-custom-text, i decide to change say the font-size of the custom text of all covers made so far. When i open a cover i get the custom text of the last-made-cover.
It would be nice to have the custom text of the cover i just opened, so i do not have to import the custom text again.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by webe

It would be nice to have the custom text of the cover i just opened, so i do not have to import the custom text again.

That would be nice. But I'm slightly confused. How is it going to know what text your cover, an image, has on it?

Then again I'm not a programer.

[kiwidude]

@webe - do you mean you are putting different custom text on each book?

There is no way for this plugin to know what text you used previously on a particular book currently. If you have a different custom text for different types of books (e.g. fantasy vs scifi or whatever) then you can create a different saved setting profile for each, and then quickly switch to that manually when you open the generate cover dialog. That is something you can do with the current released version. Of course it doesn't have to be genre specific - you could have a saved setting just for variations of your custom text. However that is the best I can suggest with what is there today.

An option I guess I "could" do in a future version is to save all your settings at the time you do generate cover into the book plugin data in the database. So a bit like when you do conversions, it would remember all the settings you used when you last generated the cover for that book as a default. That would save you the steps of manually selecting from your saved "default" profiles and restoring any custom settings you had done specifically for that book.

However that has complications of its own. What if you select multiple books, that were previously generated with conflicting settings? I think it could all get rather confusing. You get a similar situation that bulk conversion does of asking you whether to use the saved settings or the current values. So the UI becomes more complex. And you have the issues of stuff like what if you no longer have the image file used etc.

I'm not going to add extra stuff to the database/UI if it is the kind of thing you only need once in a blue moon as it is a fair amount of work. I find in my own usage that with a set of "default" saved settings I am happy just to have one click to override the "last settings" with choosing a saved setting in the situation of regenerating a cover. It doesn't happen often enough to have a need myself - I make sure my metadata is correct before I generate, and unless I decided I wanted to apply a new cover image/style to a whole bunch of books (in which case a saved profile will be what I want anyways) I don't need to revisit it.

[webe]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

@webe - do you mean you are putting different custom text on each book?

Thanks for your reply kiwidude

The answer is yes. But not on every book, only on the ones that have a title that doesn't fit in my 'speechbubble'. I'll attach an example. I use such a title as custom text in your plugin and edit it so that it fits in the 'bubble'.
I've a lot of books without covers, they all get the same cover, my self-made one. In the 'bubble': author and title.

I hope this clarifies my problem a little bit more.

[webe]

Originally Posted by dwanthny

That would be nice. But I'm slightly confused. How is it going to know what text your cover, an image, has on it?
Then again I'm not a programer.

Thanks for your reaction dwanthny.

Me neither, but i read somewhere that you can put text in an image file.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by webe

Thanks for your reaction dwanthny.

Me neither, but i read somewhere that you can put text in an image file.

Text as an Image.

Once it is placed into the Image, it is part of the image.

only OCR can help