[GUI Plugin] Find Duplicates

[transmitthis]

Can't get to Calibre at the moment, but last night I had the need to do a search for duplicate, similar "Series titles"... so I was just wondering if that's possible with this plugin.
A Fuzzy search in series would be nice too.

[kiwidude]

I don't understand the use case for this - can you explain more with examples of where it would be useful?

The Find Duplicates plugin is about finding duplicate books. So I don't see series comes into this - you may or may not have the series name column populated so it should be ignored when looking for duplicate books. What has been asked for in the past is the ability to take series name into account when excluding books from being duplicates, but that is a very different thing to intentionally comparing series?

If you want to find duplicated series names (for instance so the automated numbering doesn't get screwed up when you add a new book manually, or if you publish to a decide using series as your primary identifier) then the Quality Check plugin has this functionality already.

So in what circumstances would identifying books by series name only be useful? And what defines "Similar" for a series name? It is not as if like an author you can chop out initials, reverse FN LN etc?

Just not quite sure what you are hoping to achieve with such an option?

[transmitthis]

It was just that I wanted to check all my series's or serisi were in order, I know I could use the normal author search's but I get a lot of results that way, and thought that a check of series would be something I could just do quickly.

It don't matter, just wondering

[kiwidude]

Ok, not exactly showering me with examples there but you mentioned something which perhaps clicked for me.

Do you mean the situation where perhaps as the result of a metadata download pulling different series names you have something like:

Title: Book A Series: The Foo[1]
Title: Book B Series: Foo [2]

Is that what you mean? If so, then what you are asking for is not so much a duplicate search as some kind of series consolidation?

The Quality Check plugin has something related to this, with its "Check Series Gaps" functionality. However it would tell you that you are missing book 1 of the "Foo" series, and of course while strictly true that isn't really the case thanks to the series name fluctuation.

Have I hit the scenario you had in mind?

[transmitthis]

Sorry didn't want to go indepth, as it was just an idle thought one night..

When you have a series that's well, for example
Women of the Otherworld [4]
The Women of the Otherworld [4]
Women of the Other World [4]
A Women of the Otherworld [4]
Otherworld Women [4]

You can usually spot them by just using the tag browser and expanding Series, but when there far apart, like in the case of ones starting with a different letter, it gets harder.

Your duplicate checker is great for authors in that regard in that it matches similar / fuzzy etc. I was thinking about that specifically on Series field - that is all, not a request just a thought.

Thanks for the reply

[silentguy]

I really like your plugin and it's working great, but suddenly it keeps telling me "calibre, version 0.8.41
ERROR: Restart required: You must restart Calibre before using this plugin!" even after restarting. Any idea what could be causing this?

[silentguy]

Oh, and I found that fuzzy author sort seems to be confused. It says "- Fuzzy author matches compare using their surnames and only the first initial." bug it actually did "- compare using their first name and only the last initial."

[kiwidude]

@silentguy - your first error should be nothing to do with this plugin, as it has not changed for a long while and with 37,000 users others would have complained about it .

If you give some steps as to exactly what you are doing then we may be able to recommend something. If it is an error on screen paste the exact text in a spoiler, start calibre in debug mode if necessary.

As for the second, it isn't a bug, it is intentional behaviour. So "Kevin Anderson", "Kevin, Anderson", "Anderson, Kevin" and "Anderson Kevin" will all be reported as a match of each other. Yes it means you will get false positives as well but it is trying to weed out the more obscure duplicates with that check.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by silentguy

Oh, and I found that fuzzy author sort seems to be confused. It says "- Fuzzy author matches compare using their surnames and only the first initial." bug it actually did "- compare using their first name and only the last initial."

Seems normal, that's what "fuzzy" means.

[silentguy]

Okay, I see the sense in then fuzzy does, i just misunderstood the description.

Concerning the error, I have no idea what i did to get in this state. I was pretty sure that it is not caused by the plugin in itself but it's the only one to cause this error.
I just start calibre click the find duplicate button and i get the error I already posted:

Spoiler:

calibre, version 0.8.41
ERROR: Restart required: You must restart Calibre before using this plugin!

I checked the debug mode, there are no errors or other infos on the console when this message appears.

[kiwidude]

How very odd. All I can suggest is uninstalling the plugin (delete the zip from the calibre plugins folder) and try installing again. Make sure you haven't got antivirus or anything interfering. As I said above I would expect other users to have commented on this thread if they were experiencing something getting broken by the latest calibre. Will try it myself when I get home, haven't run it for a while.

[silentguy]

I did some debugging myself. The problematic part is in common_utils.py

The error occurs cause it fails to (re)load the pixmap containing the find_duplicates.png.
This in turn is cause by the the command "global plugin_icon_resources, plugin_name" not returning the needed values. when calibre is initialized this points to the right values, but when i click the button it contains references to another installed plugin, "Similar stories".
I have no idea why calibre feels the need to reinitialize the plugin or how those values are supposed to be set, but uninstalling the similar stories plugin fixed the problem. And it is repeatable, if i reinstall it the problem reappears

[kiwidude]

Well I think you should be blaming the similar stories plugin (which isn't mine)

I believe the developer of that re-used some code from my other plugins (that common_utils.py). I would guess that they have some sort of namespace conflict issue? Try posting on his thread.

[silentguy]

Kinda surprised that your other plugins don't cause this conflict, seeing how they all overrwite the "global plugin_icon_resources"... but it seems to work, so I asked him to maybe check with you too see what's wrong.

[kiwidude]

I've posted the answer on the other thread - as I guessed above it is just a namespace issue, as he is accidentally getting the globals from the Find Duplicates plugin instead of his own. Should be trivial for him to fix and re-release.