Custom GUI plugins for Calibre here...

[kiwidude]

Ok, I've just replaced the plugin formerly known as "Open format externally" with a new version called "Open with". The name I hope better reflects it's now more generic purpose - in hindsight should have gone with that name originally but better to rip the bandaid off now than let it live on for perpetuity...

In terms of functionality the main addition is to allow you to configure an application to launch with the cover.jpg associated with a book (not just the formats of the book), as requested by dwanthy above. Look at the updated example in the post or readme.txt for how to configure this. I have updated the screenshot and included images in the latest zip for Acrobat and MSPaint too.

Important notes for users upgrading
- I have renamed the required tweak value from "ofep_open_format_menus" to "owp_open_with_menus" (sorry, but hate leaving legacy names that are unrelated).
- Uninstall the "Open format externally" plugin using the Preferences dialog, and remember to remove it from your context menu/toolbars as well.
- Then install the "Open with" plugin using the latest zip, update your tweak name if you haven't already.
- Restart Calibre and then add to you menu/toolbar.

You can download with instructions at Open with plugin post.

[kiwidude]

A few of you may have seen my questions about custom dialogs (with your answers gratefully received) as I would like the few add-ins that require configuration to stop using tweaks. However it is quite a lot of work to change them, hence it is a "when it is done" exercise.

However I would love suggestions from some of the Python gurus out there as to how you would approach replacing the tweak values say for the "Open with" plugin. The way I see it there are two potential approaches...

The first is to a "simple" approach of a dialog that contains a large text area that the user directly replaces in the text in the same format they do currently in the tweaks file. Not hugely user friendly and prone to erroneous editing, but hopefully quick! However that tweak value is of course actually python code and not just a text string that you parse. So I would somehow need to persist and compile/retrieve that in a similar way (I guess) to what happens with tweaks.py?

The second option is to write a very complex dialog (or several) which is likely more user friendly but much more work. I imagine it would have some sort of grid on it displaying the currently configured menu items, with add/edit/delete buttons. Clicking add/edit would potentially open another dialog allowing input of the various column values. The command line arguments sub-array is a potential nasty to cope with. And of course there needs to also be the value persistence/retrieval.

Any suggestions welcomed - obviously the "less work the better" from my perspective.

[kiwidude]

I have updated this original post with the latest download zip and screenshot.

The changes since the v1.1 that was previously at that post include:
- Now requires Calibre 0.7.34 or later.
- Optional specifying of an encoding for the URL, to resolve issues with passing foreign language titles/authors to websites like Amazom.com as detailed from post #86 in this thread (was v1.2).
- Optional keyboard shortcuts for each website
- Icon for the top level menu item
- No longer requires manual deployment of the images inside the zip file to a resources\images directory within Calibre.

For users upgrading you should not need to do anything by default. If you do have a custom tweak value set then at some point you should add the additional columns expected for encoding and shortcut to your value. Refer to the post or readme.txt for the example of what it should look like.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

In terms of functionality the main addition is to allow you to configure an application to launch with the cover.jpg associated with a book (not just the formats of the book), as requested by dwanthy above.

Thanks, it works great.

[kiwidude]

*** This plugin has now been moved to it's own thread - download from the link below ***
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=118772

This plugin provides toolbar and keyboard shortcuts to moving forward and backward through your Calibre search dropdown history. By default Alt+Left arrow key will move back one search in your history, and Alt+Right arrow key will move forward one search. When added to your toolbar the default button action is to go back one search, and the dropdown allows you to move forward. You can repeatedly go back and forward through your search history without altering it's order in any way - which differs from selecting items in the search dropdown directly.

The intention is to offer a similar experience to a web browser of allowing you to "surf" back and forth between your search results. Also upon restarting Calibre you can quickly restore your last search by hitting Alt+Left. Another example usage is when you get "sidetracked" and want to run a query on another book/series/author and then most quickly return to your previous search results.

Special Notes

• Requires Calibre 0.7.35 or later. Relies on a Calibre search bug-fix as per ticket #8018
• As Calibre never represents "no search text" in your history, you cannot go back or forward to a "cleared" search, only to items listed in the search history dropdown. This is by design.

Installation Notes

1. Follow steps as per first post in this thread
2. If you wish to customise the keyboard shortcuts from their default, you can do so within the preferences dialog in the same screen you add the plugin. Expand the "User Interface Action plugins" section and select the "Walk Search History" plugin on this list. Click the "Customise plugin" button and type the text for your alternate shortcut key combinations.

Any feedback/suggestions welcomed. This plugin includes my first attempt at a custom UI for plugin preferences with persistence to a JSON file. It should hopefully prove useful to myself and others looking to implement similar UI features to plugins as ready-made examples of this are a bit thin on the ground at present.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

Important notes for users upgrading
- I have renamed the required tweak value from "ofep_open_format_menus" to "owp_open_with_menus" (sorry, but hate leaving legacy names that are unrelated).
- Uninstall the "Open format externally" plugin using the Preferences dialog, and remember to remove it from your context menu/toolbars as well.
- Then install the "Open with" plugin using the latest zip, update your tweak name if you haven't already.
- Restart Calibre and then add to you menu/toolbar.

You can download with instructions at Open with plugin post.

Calibre balked with syntax error in the 'cover' line, when I pasted the tweak from the reverenced post, and also from the read-me file
I thought it might be no paint.png icon, but that was in the zip.
THERE was an extra quote mark in the readme file version

BTW, I added a second cover line to use Patntshop Pro (8). (cropping covers is now a snap)

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by theducks

THERE was an extra quote mark in the readme file version

I thought I accidentally added the quote while pasting the Paint Shop Pro line.

Originally Posted by theducks

BTW, I added a second cover line to use Patntshop Pro (8). (cropping covers is now a snap)

The line using Paint is an example. I just changed it to Paint Shop Pro (older version 6) and moved it to the top of the menu. I don't see ever using Paint.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by dwanthny

I thought I accidentally added the quote while pasting the Paint Shop Pro line.



The line using Paint is an example. I just changed it to Paint Shop Pro (older version 6) and moved it to the top of the menu. I don't see ever using Paint.

Yup!, same here. I should just 86 that line. I Sigil just about every file, so it gets the top slot for me.

I even used PSP8 to screen capture it's Icon and make a PNG icon.

[chaley]

The next release (0.7.36) of calibre will have some new APIs that might be of interest to plugin developers.

1) custom per-book data.

Three methods:
db.add_custom_book_data(book_id, name, val)
db.def get_custom_book_data(book_id, name, default=None)
db.delete_custom_book_data(book_id, name)

book_id must be the DB book id, not the cache index. name is an arbitrary string. No name reservation is done. val must be a string, integer, bool, datetime, bytestring, dict, or list; or be recursively made from these types. For example, my test dict is

d = {'date': datetime.datetime.today(),
     'dict': {'a': True, 'b':'sss'},
     'list': [1, 2, 3]
     }

add_custom_book_data throws ValueError if book_id does not exist. It can also throw JSON exceptions.

get_custom_book_data does not throw exceptions. It returns 'default' if the data is not there or if any db or JSON exceptions are tossed.

delete_custom_book_data does what you expect. It shouldn't throw exceptions.

Data is automatically removed when a book is deleted.


2) Tag browser:

a) tags_view.model().find_node(key, txt, start_path)

Search for an item (a node) in the tags browser list that matches both the key (exact case-insensitive match) and txt (contains case-insensitive match). Returns the path to the node. Note that paths are to a location (second item, then fourth item, then 25th item), not to a node. If start_path is None, the search starts with the topmost node. If the tree is changed subsequent to calling this method, the path can easily refer to a different node or to no node at all.

b) tags_view.model().show_item_at_path(path, box=False)

Scroll the browser and open categories to show the item referenced by path. If possible, the item is placed in the center. If box=True, a box is drawn around the item. Intended to be used with the result of find_node, but any path will do.

c) tags_view.model().clear_boxed()

Remove all boxes from items in the tag browser.

d) tags_view.set_new_model(filter_categories_by=None)

Redisplay the tags pane, showing only items with name containing the string 'filter_categories_by'. This has no effect on the library view.

[kiwidude]

dwanthy/the ducks

Thanks for pointing out the extra quote in that "Open With" tweak example, sorry about any head scratching it may have caused. I have just edited the post and uploaded a new zip with the readme.txt which has it fixed (no changes to the plugin itself). And yeah, Paint was just an example that I knew for sure Windows users would have on their machines, sadly it's too crap an app for any useful editing...

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by chaley

The next release (0.7.36) of calibre will have some new APIs that might be of interest to plugin developers.

1) custom per-book data.

Sounds intriguing, what is the use case for this feature chaley that you had in mind? Obviously users have custom columns, which have the advantage of being viewable within the library and able to be searched etc. So what sort of data might a user want to store with a book that isn't readily visible?

Originally Posted by chaley

2) Tag browser:

Now this sounds like you might have seen my post wish list for the "Show in tag viewer" plug-in As you have done all the hard work are you going to finish the job and write the plug-in too?

[chaley]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

Sounds intriguing, what is the use case for this feature chaley that you had in mind? Obviously users have custom columns, which have the advantage of being viewable within the library and able to be searched etc. So what sort of data might a user want to store with a book that isn't readily visible?

GRiker is doing a plugin that needed per-book storage. I am not sure what it does. However, I volunteered some time back (in this thread)to build such a thing, and he took me up on it.

Now this sounds like you might have seen my post wish list for the "Show in tag viewer" plug-in As you have done all the hard work are you going to finish the job and write the plug-in too?

Nope.

The API is used in the newest release, but not in a way that replaces the plugin. There is now a 'find' box on the top of the tag browser that is used to search/filter the tags. There isn't a way to do the search directly from the library view, which is what I imagine the plugin would do.

This is in addition to multi-level categories, also in the next release. You can tell calibre to subdivide a category by first letter or by partitioning it into fixed-sized blocks. For partitioned display, the labels are under your control via a tweak -- the default is the first 4 letters of the first item and the first 4 letters of the last item, as in 'Adam - Flin'. You also have control of the number of items in a partition.

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by chaley

The API is used in the newest release, but not in a way that replaces the plugin. There is now a 'find' box on the top of the tag browser that is used to search/filter the tags. There isn't a way to do the search directly from the library view, which is what I imagine the plugin would do.

This is in addition to multi-level categories, also in the next release. You can tell calibre to subdivide a category by first letter or by partitioning it into fixed-sized blocks. For partitioned display, the labels are under your control via a tweak -- the default is the first 4 letters of the first item and the first 4 letters of the last item, as in 'Adam - Flin'. You also have control of the number of items in a partition.

Very cool, thanks for the info.

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by chaley

The API is used in the newest release, but not in a way that replaces the plugin. There is now a 'find' box on the top of the tag browser that is used to search/filter the tags. There isn't a way to do the search directly from the library view, which is what I imagine the plugin would do.

I just merged the latest source and gave this a go - very slick, nice job.

One suggestion for a possible improvement. Is there somewhere/how it would be possible to display "where" you are in the treeview, kind of like a breadcrumb type thing? Ideally an actual "path" displayed under the treeview or (less desirable as it requires moving the mouse) a tooltip. So it could display something like \Authors\S\ or \Authors\S\SomeName or whatever when it has scrolled to select an author within the S group.

Why? Because when you have custom groups with the author repeated in you will get multiple matches. You can keep clicking Find to work through them but it you have no idea which "group" you are within. You can identify by icon authors/series etc but not multiple custom groups. I would love it if the Find could be used as a way to check custom group "membership", without all the manual collapsing and scrolling

One further suggestion (yes I should be doing these as tickets). How about a button there somewhere to collapse the treeview?

[chaley]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

One suggestion for a possible improvement. Is there somewhere/how it would be possible to display "where" you are in the treeview, kind of like a breadcrumb type thing? Ideally an actual "path" displayed under the treeview or (less desirable as it requires moving the mouse) a tooltip. So it could display something like \Authors\S\ or \Authors\S\SomeName or whatever when it has scrolled to select an author within the S group.

The problem is, as always, real estate. If you can suggest a place to put the information that doesn't eat a lot of space, I would listen.

Have you tried '*foo' feature? Reducing the size of the tree might work better for you.

Why? Because when you have custom groups with the author repeated in you will get multiple matches. You can keep clicking Find to work through them but it you have no idea which "group" you are within. You can identify by icon authors/series etc but not multiple custom groups. I would love it if the Find could be used as a way to check custom group "membership", without all the manual collapsing and scrolling

The tooltip for a custom item already shows you the category name as well as the average rating.

One further suggestion (yes I should be doing these as tickets). How about a button there somewhere to collapse the treeview?

Qt has the API to collapseAll/expandAll, and I have thought about an expand-all/collapse-all option, but as usual I don't know where to put it. I am not in general a fan of right-click (people don't seem to notice that the functions are there), but that may be the right place.