Tag browser: custom icons per category value?

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by chaley

Code to remove invalid columns from the tag browser icon rules is now in calibre source.

Automatic? Might be annoying when renaming column lookup.

[ownedbycats]

I think I've had the same issue when dealing with icons and such. Idealy I'd like dialog to change to another column instead of deleting. Don't know how much work.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Automatic? Might be annoying when renaming column lookup.

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Automatic? Might be annoying when renaming column lookup.

What else would you have it do? If when you open the tb icon rules editor, it finds a column in the rules that *can't* be there, should it leave it to break something else later? Leave it there but hide it (it can't be edited) in hopes you will eventually create a valid column with that lookup name? Try to work around having item values in the rules that don't exist? Having the editor protect invalid data isn't something I think is reasonable.

As we have discussed several times before, changing lookup names doesn't propogate through calibre. Because of the problems that arise when reusing lookup names I have considered keeping a list of former names and rejecting any that match.

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

I think I've had the same issue when dealing with icons and such. Idealy I'd like dialog to change to another column instead of deleting. Don't know how much work.

Much more than I am willing to do. I won't stand in the way if someone else wants to attempt it.

[chaley]

I found a ton of small problems caused by non-existent lookup names. While fixing these I backed out the "remove" code. It now tries to deal with the problem. The user can now either a) change the lookup names and the invalid column values, or b) leave the bad data and hope for the best.

Another fixed problem: changing the "Show only categories and values available in the current library" threw away all edits. It is no longer possible to change that check box once edits have been done.

There are probably edge cases in how the UI handles correcting the bad data. In particular, undo doesn't work in the case where an invalid lookup name was changed to a valid one.

The changes are in calibre source.

[ownedbycats]

Is there a way to display a or something for invalid lookups?

[chaley]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Is there a way to display a or something for invalid lookups?

Display where? Invalid where and how?

[ownedbycats]

I can't think of the word. Like a message but not. In the L&F > Tag Browser > Icons to mark the invalid lookups.

I had a minor stroke at the end of last year and have a touch of aphasia.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

I can't think of the word, but a message or something. In the L&F > Tag Browser > Icons. To mark the invalid lookups.

In L&F / Tag browser / Icon rules, missing icon files are already marked with like this:


As you can see, the tool tip also says the icon file doesn't exist.

If the icon file does exist then the icon from that file is shown.

I thought you might be asking for a default icon in the tag browser for icon files that don't exist.

[ownedbycats]

Ah. Yes, good.

[ownedbycats]

Question: When multiple categories share one icon (E.g. in #fanficcat, display a game controller for all games without an individual icon), what's the best way to do this?

For column icons, I was using a regex (foo|bar|xyz), but I find that's hard to maintain.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Question: When multiple categories share one icon (E.g. in #fanficcat, display a game controller for all games without an individual icon), what's the best way to do this?

For column icons, I was using a regex (foo|bar|xyz), but I find that's hard to maintain.

I can think of three ways to do this:

• Assign the icon to each category (and children if needed), not worrying about the duplication of icons on the hard disk. This is the most direct method. It suffers from not being able to change the icon for all usages in one operation. Its advantage is you can quickly fix seeing the wrong icon for a category directly in the tag browser.
• Write a template that checks the item_value and picks the icon. This is probably very similar to what you are doing with column icons. You could use a switch-if checking single values instead of a regexp.
• Write a template that picks an icon for a category. Override the template by directly assigning other icons to categories. It isn't obvious that this would be better than either of the above.

Personally, I would use the first method, assuming I'm not frequently changing the actual stored icon that goes with a category and categories don't come and go frequently.

[ownedbycats]

Thank you.