Plugin ideas... add yours here

[Divingduck]

Originally Posted by ddjohn

DivingDuck, I'm impressed that you are familiar with these files and potential softwares. I currently have HV Premier+ (just their complimentary package) and SandS Computing SWP. The HV Premier+ provides similar funtionality to the Iconizer, giving meta data regarding dimensions, stitch counts, thread brand and color, even how much thread is required per color. It would be incredible to pull any of that meta data into Calibre. I'll focus on what Better Read has covered, before leaping ahead to the metadata possabilities.

Thank you to all of you for your help.

A little bit. I use calibre for embroidery designs too

[petzi]

Thanks for the tip. Yes, I installed also BOL.DE. Afaik this is the only German metadata source plugins except amazon.de.

My problem is: I'm using calibre not also for "normal" books especially in humanities. These books often have a small circulation, no ebook version and are sometimes published by small publishers. They are definitely not bestsellers. It does not make sense to grab these metadata from all the many different publisher websites – therefore my idea to take metadata from the German National Library.

[petzi]

LibraryThing would another suggestion for a nice plugin with similar functionality as the GoodReads plugin has. According to Wikipedia has Librarything more than 2,000,000 users and 100 million books catalogued (Dec. 2015). It has a nice interface, is more multilingual as Goodreads and not so narrow linked with amazon.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by petzi

Thanks for the tip. Yes, I installed also BOL.DE. Afaik this is the only German metadata source plugins except amazon.de.

My problem is: I'm using calibre not also for "normal" books especially in humanities. These books often have a small circulation, no ebook version and are sometimes published by small publishers. They are definitely not bestsellers. It does not make sense to grab these metadata from all the many different publisher websites – therefore my idea to take metadata from the German National Library.

Most PI's are developed by the people who want them. I suggest you send a PM to the author of BOL.DE -- Pr.BarnArt. He may be willing to work with you in developing one for the GNL, he's developed a few non-Anglo metadata download PIs.

Given Germany has the 3rd highest number of active calibre users (after US and Spain) it's surprising there's only one metadata download site -- source ==>> Usage Statistics for calibre.

Originally Posted by petzi

LibraryThing would another suggestion for a nice plugin with similar functionality as the GoodReads plugin has. According to Wikipedia has Librarything more than 2,000,000 users and 100 million books catalogued (Dec. 2015). It has a nice interface, is more multilingual as Goodreads and not so narrow linked with amazon.

See post 30 in this thread ==>> LibraryThing metadata download plugin

I wonder if they've had a change of heart re automated downloads? Maybe someone knows.

BR

[petzi]

Thanks again. Yes, a good idea – I will get in contact with Pr.BarnArt.

And sorry: I haven't seen this thread on LibraryThing (LT). I will get in contact with people from LT and ask them. I used to use LT – I even paid for a lifetime license – but changed recently to Goodreads exactly for the integration with calibre. It seems to me that not allowing automated download is nowadays no good idea if you want to strengthen your business.

[ddjohn]

Originally Posted by Divingduck

A little bit. I use calibre for embroidery designs too

Divingduck, do you input the stitch data and dimensions manually, or have you found a plug-in to auto-populate that information? I am ecstatic to find we can use Calibre for machine embroidery design files and their related documentation, but it is going to be a major task to catalog all these files and their information.

[Divingduck]

No, there is no plugin. Up to now it's a more or less manual job as all programs do not offer an export for all metadata I like to see in calibre (and a lot of file formats do not offer metadata too. Taking this in mind, you need programs like Truesizer to generate the whole bunch of information (and most of them do not offer an export of all data).
Wilcom is the only program I know so fare that use a SQL based library with a combination of embroidery and design workflow software. But that is a expensive solution.

What I am doing with our files and calibre is from that perspective a lot cheaper but need for now (a lot) more manual work. Each embroidery file (in all formats) for a collection have an manually exported image as "cover" and a worksheet with design information. In addition there are project files and sometimes a set of additional files for a collection.

You need to spend a lot of time in generating, collecting, classifying and archiving these information as there are no existing general databases of metadata for commercial embroidery designs you can run a query. And believe me or not, if you talk about embroidery, everyone have a own understanding of "good embroidery metadata" and "classification ideas". Commercial embroidery companies and designer too.

Well, I too and it is a never ending "development" process over the time. I build up my own small embroidery library within calibre as I hate stupid directory structures for library things.

Thanks to Kovid and all the supporter. calibre is a nice and flexible pice of software

... for the moment only a direct support for embroidery files is missing

[petzi]

@BetterRed

Asking in this forum why not to develop for librarything.com a similar plugin as the Goodreads plugin is for goodreads.com, you answered:

See post 30 in this thread ==>> LibraryThing metadata download plugin

I wonder if they've had a change of heart re automated downloads? Maybe someone knows.

In the meanwhile I asked the staff at LibraryThing, but did not get an answer. Certainly this is not a good sign!

But I did find a page where some information about APIs and Services of LibraryThing is announced. I am not a programmer and do not understand everything, but it seems to me that there is the possibility for automated downloads. It says at the last line at the page LibraryThing Web Services API:

You are limited to a maximum of 1,000 requests per day.

Maybe this is not the right API or maybe 1,000 is not enough?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by petzi

downloads. It says at the last line at the page LibraryThing Web Services API:

Maybe this is not the right API or maybe 1,000 is not enough?

It is their Server.
That is THEIR restriction (rules).

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by petzi

@BetterRed

But I did find a page where some information about APIs and Services of LibraryThing. I am not a programmer and do not understand everything, but it seems to me that there is the possibility for automated downloads. It says at the last line at the page

Maybe this is not the right API or maybe 1,000 is not enough?

@petzi - Indeed, that does appear to be a step in the right direction.

Hopefully someone who is au fait with what calibre needs in a metadata download API can have a look at it and voice an opinion on its suitability - and maybe even put their hand up to develop, support and maintain a LibraryThing plugin

I assume 'you are limited to 1,000 requests a day' means -- downloads of metadata is limited to 1,000 books per user per day. That seems a reasonable limit to me - and I can't imagine they'd mean anything else.

IIRC some (all ??) metadata download plugins introduce a delay between successive downloads so as not to swamp the suppliers server.

BR

[PeterT]

I expect it means 1000 requests per API key per day.

[kovidgoyal]

Yeah that kind of API restriction is designed for other web services, not end user software. It means that if you made a LibraryThing plugin using the API, every single user would have to get thier own API key. At least for me that makes it not worth it.

[DaltonST]

ISBNDB.com is a standard Calibre metadata download source that requires a user key. 1000 ISBN lookups per day free.

IIRC, it is in a calibre/src file named isbndb.py.

[HarryT]

Would it be possible to develop a plugin to merge and split PDF files? I read a great many academic PDFs. Sometimes these are small articles and could benefit from being merged into a larger single PDFs. Sometimes the opposite is true and I'd like to extract a section of a larger PDF.

[DaltonST]

Originally Posted by ddjohn

Spoiler:

Calibre is great for cataloging many things. It started as eBooks, then moved to audio books, and documents, etc. As a catalog management system it is my favorite. Maybe my situation can be addressed by an existing Plug-In, I tried to search but did not find anything yet.

I find a need to catalog design files that are not traditional document file formats. These files are for machine embroidery designs. Common file format extensions are .VP3, .VIP, .HUS, .PEC, .PES, .PCS, .xxx, .SEW, .JEF, .EXP, .10*, .DST, .SHV, .DHV

There are several programs that machine embroiderers can use to "read" the files, so the ability to link these file formats to that external "viewer" is not necessary. Besides being able to import these file formats into a single "book", also able to add .PDF and .ZIP, thus keeping the design files associated with their color change instructions and the artwork. I would want to draw the "cover" image from either the .PDF or an image file. Author name would be the Vendor's Name for filing within Calibre.

Just for a point of reference, machine embroiderers are currently paying for design file "management systems" that are nothing more than Windows File Folders for grouping based on a single keyword. The ability to bring our files into Calibre and associate numerous keywords (as well as the Vendor Name) would be like giving every machine embroiderer a major Christmas Present. I hope this plug-in is possible and that someone will take on this project.

@ddjohn:

The MFI, Media File Importer, can do what you describe right now. [Edit: See the next comment that replaces the text that was here.]

[Edit: new] MFI can 'collect' all of the files with identical paths excluding the final file extension, and copy them collectively to the Calibre Library 'book' directory for the empty book that was created for that 'collection'. Refer to the OP for more details.

[Edit: See the attached image that replaces the text that was here.]

[Edit: new] MFI can currently decode only the metadata shown in the attached image for .pcs, .hus and .vip files. File formats that are usable for the other embroidery formats are hard to come by, which is why MFI currently only handles the 3 shown.

Do most Calibre users with embroidery libraries have "real" proprietary embroidery software to extract the metadata, especially for complex file formats like .pes that contain a .pec embedded within it? If they do, does their software create a text file with the metadata for each embroidery file format that can be imported by MFI to update Calibre custom columns? Or a .CSV file that could be imported to do the same thing, but en masse for an entire embroidery design library?



DaltonST