Plugin ideas... add yours here

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

Actually, you should be able to configure Open With to pass the PDF or RTF to your batch file or script without reading the metadata.opf file.

The reason I chose the cover is because all selected books have a cover but not all books have an RTF or a PDF - although they all have at least one of those formats and many have both. I read the metadata.opf because it has the data that I want to inject into the PDF and RTF files. What's more it's in the same format - XML.

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

The down side is Open With only operates on one book at a time, not all selected books.

Darn, I hadn't tried it yet - went to bed in instead.

What would be involved in making it operate on multiple books in a serial fashion? But that takes me back to your original suggestion - and the perils of python...

However I can still use OpenWith to initiate a refresh of the metadata in the RTF and/or PDF of a single book - in error correction mode.

So, for me and my skills set, extracting the paths from the library database as per theducks suggestion looks the best way to go. I've never used SQL in a script, but if it get's too hard then I'll retreat to the familiar territory of C

Maybe once I have a working system I'll summon the courage to grapple with python to extract the paths and write them to a textlog as per JimmXinu's suggestion

BR

[davidfor]

@BetterRed: Rereading these posts, it sounds like you are wanting the equivalent of "Modify ePub". I believe it works by calling calibre functions to make changes to the library copies of epubs. If calibre can already do this for PDFs and RTFs when sending the books to devices, maybe this would be a better model for what you are doing. In any case, it has the code for looping over a list of books and handling a particular format.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by davidfor

If calibre can already do this for PDFs and RTFs when sending the books to devices...

Thanks for your ongoing interest davidfor

AFAIK Calibre doesn't update the XMP metadata in PDF's when it saves to disk, or sends to folder as a device; same goes for RTF. Kovid is not interested in changing Calibre in this regard ===>>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/calibre/+bug/1075794.

And I'm not that interested in learning python, besides I wouldn't want to commit to contributing and maintaining Calibre plugins.

Remember I already have a working solution - via the use of a temporary library. All I wanted was to streamline that process by updating the books in situ. I wasn't looking to change how I update the PDF & RTF XMP metadata - that's working.

Using the idea from theducks I can now create a text file with the paths to books of a given status ID, and using your Open With idea I can refresh the XMP in a single book. And if push comes to shove, I can use the temporary library solution.

If an Update XMP Metadata in PDF and RTF files plugin happens to turn up then I'd be happy to test and use it.

My baseline requirement is integration of the metadata into file system search indexing. Apart from that I'm not sure why else you'd need the metadata as XMP in PDF or RTF files.

Thanks BR

[rav555]

It would be handy to organise a library using the Dewey Decimal system. I know that there are other systems and that Dewey is proprietary, however maybe a ISBN to Dewey can be written.

[rav555]

It would be handy to either sort by file type or show the file type in the database field.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by rav555

It would be handy to either sort by file type or show the file type in the database field.

Using the Tag browser (or typing in a search formats:EPUB and not formats:Mobi) allows you to see books that exist in any (or combinations). doing this allow the resultant list to still be sorted by any column

[Chris Jones]

When I pick up a book I pretty much always go to the computer and take a look at what they have to say about the author and I generally end up reading the wikipedia article, and sometimes using it as an entry point to navigate to external links provided in the references section... if for instance I need a second opinion..

With this in mind, and since a wikipedia article can easily be manually converted to the .epub format and downloaded/added to a given author's shelf/list/folder in the calibre library, I was wondering if anybody had come up with a plugin/extension/script that would automate the process. The point, where I am concerned, is that it would save you (me.. that is..) a trip to the computer when you are looking forward to a long lazy read on your couch/settee.

I was thinking of something where you would only have to click on a button for the download to start, using default settings for such matters as target urls's and language(s) that would only rarely need to be overriden ..

I guess the script or calibre add-on might optionally want to check the wikipedia(s) article once in a while to make sure the local version is current.

The little gadget I had in mind might be even more useful in circumstances where you are not twenty feet away from the computer but rather when you happen to be trekking in the middle of nowhere, or perhaps in a hospital bed and there is no way you can quickly go online.

I have only been looking at e-books for a few weeks, so there are bound to be many implications that I do not see at this point, but I thought that this approach makes more sense than hosting and entire copy of one (or several) wikipedia(s) on an e-reading device--I believe that's possible as well, but I have no idea how you would navigate the copy. I don't own an e-reader, so it's not all that clear in my mind at this point.

My understanding is that while much of the older stuff is in the public domain, this may not be the case for useful prefaces, notes, appendices, timelines, bibliographies, etc. that you find in printed books and that the latter may still be copyrighted.

Not sure if that functionality would be useful to the community at large.. and not sure either if wikipedia would be agreeable in the first place. I have read some of their legalese and they do not look kindly on anything that looks or feels like a bot.. For all I know they might consider such practices an infringment of their policy.. especially if the extension sports a sync'ing feature that would more likely than not result in a bunch of tasks running in parallel happily hammering away at their servers.. (?)

Anyway, I hope I have understood how this thread was designed to operate and that I will not cause the moderator(s) any additional headaches..

P.S. Maybe a bit more info about my setup might clarify what I'm driving at. Over the last couple of weeks or so, I have built a central .epub repository under Calibre that has already grown to c. 6000 books, 1500 authors, in 12 languages, all for private use for family & friends.

[Gunnerp245]

@Chris Jones
Like this?
[GUI Plugin] Wiki Reader.

From the Index of plugins sticky.

[Chris Jones]

Originally Posted by Gunnerp245

@Chris Jones
Like this?
[GUI Plugin] Wiki Reader.

From the Index of plugins sticky.

Thanks..!

Fancy me writing the specs months after someone else wrote the software.. Perhaps people like me need a meta-search engine that returns the proper keywords when you can't think of them..

In any case, that's pretty much what I was looking for, except perhaps for the fact that I was hoping for something that would automatically search for the article(s) for each author, somewhat like the metadata/cover download rather than have to paste each particular article's url.

With my 1400+ authors, it also wouldn't hurt if I could find some way to run it in batch mode..!

And thank you very much for directing me to the plugin list.

[Sparkling]

An idea I had while adding new books is how much time it would save for me if there was a plugin which could set default values for new books (eg. for me I'd need it to create #read:no #tags:new #rating:3 to all books I add manually, by automatic adding and new empty books). Or perhaps the possibility to make one keyboard shortcut do these things.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Sparkling

An idea I had while adding new books is how much time it would save for me if there was a plugin which could set default values for new books (eg. for me I'd need it to create #read:no #tags:new #rating:3 to all books I add manually, by automatic adding and new empty books). Or perhaps the possibility to make one keyboard shortcut do these things.

If you had used a tri-state #read,and treat Blank as No, No as:*ell No

There is already a 'Tags to Apply when Adding' Preferences: Adding Books

Rating: ?? why rate a book you haven't read ?? Blank is good

[nml]

the plugin "Amazon.com" is pretty good. However thousands of books in Amazon.cn cannot be imported.
Please consider to add that, thank you!

[Sparkling]

Originally Posted by theducks

If you had used a tri-state #read,and treat Blank as No, No as:*ell No

There is already a 'Tags to Apply when Adding' Preferences: Adding Books

Rating: ?? why rate a book you haven't read ?? Blank is good

Oooh, I had somehow missed that so thank you
As for the rating, since I collect a lot more books than I have the time to read I like to sort the books after how soon I'd like to read them. Eg. When I get a new collection by an author I rate the book most important to read 4, the books I'm currently reading are 5 and books I want to read after I've read another book (like in a series) are 2. The others are 3. Gives a fast visual overview since unread books have stars of a different colour.
Keeps my to-read list (arguably ) reasonable and my head from exploding...

[juliusromo]

When you merge two libraries, (for example, one mobi, and one fb2), you can join books with auto-merge, based in title/author.

It would be nice to merge with a user-chosen column (for example, id_private, a self-made column....)

[Imagineer57]

Hi, I don't know if this has been suggested before - searching failed...

I would really like to be able to obtain metadata from kobo, where it's available, or at leadt the cover images used on the kobo site. Any hope?