[GUI Plugin] FanFicFare

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by PandathePanda

With fanfiction.net, every no and then when you update the story it duplicates the IDs. you end up with 2 entries: not sure why it's happening.

I'm using 1.48 of calibre with 2.2.4 of the plugin.

I'm not sure how that's happening either. FanFicFare only ever sets the url identifier. (It did used to use uri instead, but that was literally years ago.)

And that's what's happening--you have both uri and url:

uri:https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10851660/
url:https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10851660/1/

And since FanFicFare always stores ffnet URLs with '/1/', I suspect you're getting the uri from somewhere else.

[Depletion]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

What you have now will effect the words 'Complete' and 'In Progress' if they appear in other metadata, too. Like the title. And the ^$ are so that if they someday change it to 'Completed' themselves you don't end up with 'Completedd'.

Aha, that might have been some fun questions down the road. I updated it with your suggestions.

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

I'm not sure how that's happening either. FanFicFare only ever sets the url identifier. (It did used to use uri instead, but that was literally years ago.)

I've seen this when some of the older stories I track have updated. It's just a thought, but if it's a story that you've had in calibre for some time now, that could be the reason.

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

That's a good point. I forget some people are particular about that.

However, I'm more likely to abandon the idea entirely than add a whole new database.

Here's another thought: the metadata could be kept in a long-text type custom column.

This offers certain advantages:

• It's not going to be polished away.
• It's visible to the user, so they know if a particular book has it.
• It could be populated/updated with 'Update Calibre Metadata Only' without having to do epub update.
• It can still be copied to other libraries, assuming they have the same column.
• Save time by not having to read the epub to get it.

Disadvantages:

• It's visible to the user, but they can 'not show' the column to hide it.
• User could poke at it and break it.

[BookJunkieLI]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

Here's another thought: the metadata could be kept in a long-text type custom column.

This offers certain advantages:

• It's not going to be polished away.
• It's visible to the user, so they know if a particular book has it.
• It could be populated/updated with 'Update Calibre Metadata Only' without having to do epub update.
• It can still be copied to other libraries, assuming they have the same column.
• Save time by not having to read the epub to get it.

Another advantage is that it won't change the order of the metadata at any point unless the user specifically goes in and changes it themselves.

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

Disadvantages:

• It's visible to the user, but they can 'not show' the column to hide it.
• User could poke at it and break it.

Point 1 - They can 'not show' the column but it will always be visible if they go into single Edit Metadata. It'll always be down the bottom but it'll be there.
Point 2 - It doesn't matter how you set it up. It's never going to be completely idiot proof.

My only concern is that the metadata in the column is properly labelled so that the user will know what they're looking at.

Otherwise I think it's a good alternative to your original idea.

[JimmXinu]

Version 2.2.5 - 07 May 2015

• Fix ficwad.com changing author URLs.
• Fix for ponyfictionarchive.net stories with neither In-Progress or Complete flag.
• Fix for grangerenchanted.com bad HTML summary causing crash.
• Update translations.

[Mandabar]

It's been a long while since since my last post, But I've come back for help

I've noticed this a few times when I went to import a large story, but I wasn't too worried about it at the time. Now I have one that I really want to import but am having the same issue.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6953451/1/Soul-Chess
This is the story, 1.8mil+ words. I'm not sure what's going on, but it's taking longer then 20 minutes and then caliber closes the task. Let me know what I should do to help troubleshoot or to fix this.

Thanks!

Picture of the Log http://puu.sh/hFC8a/9d247223f3.png

Edit: Once again I found a workaround, but still it take a large amount of time. Dunno if it's something I'm doing wrong still or not. Setting the Calibre setting under Misc to a high value (I did 60) for Aborting conversion jobs and it finished after about half an hour.

[Firedancer885]

Originally Posted by Mandabar

Edit: Once again I found a workaround, but still it take a large amount of time. Dunno if it's something I'm doing wrong still or not. Setting the Calibre setting under Misc to a high value (I did 60) for Aborting conversion jobs and it finished after about half an hour.

Nothing is wrong, I think. There were problems with fanfiction.net. If too many stories were downloaded at once, ff.net banned the user for a time. So Jimm put a function into the plugin to slow down downloads from that site.

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by Firedancer885

Nothing is wrong, I think. There were problems with fanfiction.net. If too many stories were downloaded at once, ff.net banned the user for a time. So Jimm put a function into the plugin to slow down downloads from that site.

What they said. It's less the 1.8m words and more the 208 chapters.

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by Mandabar

Edit: Once again I found a workaround, but still it take a large amount of time. Dunno if it's something I'm doing wrong still or not. Setting the Calibre setting under Misc to a high value (I did 60) for Aborting conversion jobs and it finished after about half an hour.

Long stories just have to take a long time to avoid getting blocked.

BTW, thanks for pointing out the 'Abort' option. I have it set to 'Never', so I never realized it could affect plugin jobs. I've submitted a pull request to Kovid to change the wording to include plugin jobs.

UPDATE - Kovid accepted the change, so the next version of calibre will say Abort jobs that take more than: and Max. simultaneous conversion/news download/plugin jobs.

[Mandabar]

My pleasure. Mine was set to 20 before I changed it to 60. I don't know if that is the default or not. It was affecting the plugin job obviously. Glad to help heheh

Yeah I've had other huge stories with no problems. Then again they were years ago, so I dunno if they just had less chapters or was before the change. Meh.

[JimmXinu]

New Test Version Posted with two new features:

Save / Reuse Metadata

• Add feature to optionally save all FanFicFare metadata to a custom column.
• Add related feature to update Calibre metadata from saved custom column, when configured.

Near the bottom of the Custom Column tab in FanFicFare config, look for Saved Metadata Column. Can only be used with 'Long Text' custom columns.

I figure the primary use case for this is people who are making changes to their Calibre columns and replace_metadata. Rather than hitting the site servers repeatedly as they update and test, they can update from data already in the library. (I had previously proposed putting this data inside the epub, but that metadata could be unintentionally removed by Calibre's Polish Book or other epub editing tools.)

Include Calibre Columns in FanFicFare Data

• Add feature to include pre-existing calibre column data in FanFicFare metadata on story updates.

On the personal.ini tab in FanFicFare config, look for Show Calibre Column Names. Clicking that will show you a list of the available columns as they are named in FanFicFare that you can copy/paste from. calibre_cust_ and calibre_std_ are prepended to avoid name collision.

For example: I have a custom column #extranotes to store notes that I don't want FanFicFare to ever overwrite. I've added to personal.ini:

[epub]
add_to_titlepage_entries:,calibre_cust_extranotes

Now, when I update a stories that has something in #extranotes, it also appears on the title page inside the generated epub. You could also use it as part of replace_metadata expressions for further fine control.

This feature was requested in the survey and, I believe, once in the forum. Note that this doesn't work on new books because they don't have any existing calibre metadata to pull in when creating the epub. It only works on updates.

I'm not entirely convinced that either of these features are worth the extra complexity. I'm interested in hearing others' opinions either way.

[ILB]

Thanks for working out these features.

For me "Include Calibre Columns in FanFicFare Data" is useful. I missed having the opportunity to add other metadata to the titlepage.
I included "Serie (calibre_std_series)" in my personal.ini and it works but with a book without series it appears as "Serie: None" on the titlepage. (see attachment, last line)
Is that intentional or is there a possibility to make it that it doesn´t appear at all if the metadata is empty?

As for "Save / Reuse Metadata" - I think it´s also helpful.

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

I'm not entirely convinced that either of these features are worth the extra complexity. I'm interested in hearing others' opinions either way.

How do you mean complexity? Is it difficult or complicated to maintain or does it nead a lot of disk space?

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by ILB

Thanks for working out these features.
...
How do you mean complexity? Is it difficult or complicated to maintain or does it nead a lot of disk space?

I meant exactly the sort of thing you asked about first--figuring out and dealing with all the little quibbles and issues with these features, such as why does Series show up when empty.

And FYI, there's another feature that's been around awhile that will inject series. See attached.

[ILB]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

And FYI, there's another feature that's been around awhile that will inject series. See attached.

It seems I misunderstood what these option causes and have therefore not used it.
Thanks!

As for empty columns showing up - it doesn´t bother me particularly.
It also seems as if not every empty column shows. I have also included ",calibre_cust_characters,calibre_cust_comment,cal ibre_cust_collections_ao3," and with these only the filled show up.

Maybe it´s the "calibre_STD_..." that shows generally. I tried it with "calibre_std_rating" and that shows also with "Bewertung: None".

[Tanjamuse]

Hi Jimm.

I've tried your newest test-version, while it's a good idea it makes for a very messy book details window (the one you get when you press I on the keyboard). Would it be possible to either hide that column from the book details or just store the information without showing it?