Calibre Has a Mind of It's Own

[johnelle]

I usually use modified date sort order when loading books. Lately Calibre on one machine seems to be off in never never land (like Windooz) doing something and I see books that I haven't touched in months showing up at the top of the modified sort order. I have not idea what in the world is going on.

Is there a way to look at a log or something to figure out what its doing.

Any idea what setting might have changed so that Calibre is doing stuff in the background that I didn't ask for?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by johnelle

I usually use modified date sort order when loading books. Lately Calibre on one machine seems to be off in never never land (like Windooz) doing something and I see books that I haven't touched in months showing up at the top of the modified sort order. I have not idea what in the world is going on.

Is there a way to look at a log or something to figure out what its doing.

Any idea what setting might have changed so that Calibre is doing stuff in the background that I didn't ask for?

An existing Tag (in thos books) changed case because one of your new books updated it.
This is nothing new, and is one of many reasons that last_modified can not be relied upon

[fidvo]

It has to do with the Artificial Intelligence module added to Calibre in the latest version. It still has some bugs. Hopefully they'll be fixed by the time it achieves self awareness. One little bug and suddenly you have computers trying to take over the world, robots rising up against humanity, and the end of the world as we know it. Hopefully nobody has the novelizations of the Terminator movies in their Calibre library, since they might give it some ideas. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. On the other hand, maybe we'll get lucky and Calibre will become a fan of Isaac Asimov.

Sorry. The title of your post was too tempting for my warped sense of humor to pass up.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by fidvo

It has to do with the Artificial Intelligence module added to Calibre in the latest version. It still has some bugs. Hopefully they'll be fixed by the time it achieves self awareness. One little bug and suddenly you have computers trying to take over the world, robots rising up against humanity, and the end of the world as we know it. Hopefully nobody has the novelizations of the Terminator movies in their Calibre library, since they might give it some ideas. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. On the other hand, maybe we'll get lucky and Calibre will become a fan of Isaac Asimov.

Sorry. The title of your post was too tempting for my warped sense of humor to pass up.

Is that a variation on:

"Do what I want... Not what I told you to do"

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by fidvo

It has to do with the Artificial Intelligence module added to Calibre in the latest version. It still has some bugs. Hopefully they'll be fixed by the time it achieves self awareness. One little bug and suddenly you have computers trying to take over the world, robots rising up against humanity, and the end of the world as we know it. Hopefully nobody has the novelizations of the Terminator movies in their Calibre library, since they might give it some ideas. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. On the other hand, maybe we'll get lucky and Calibre will become a fan of Isaac Asimov.

Sorry. The title of your post was too tempting for my warped sense of humor to pass up.

You'll be glad when it comes to pass that it is only Calibre standing between humanity and its enslavement by the robot hordes! We will raise statues of Kovid the savior across the land, we will read from the holy Calibre books and we will rejoice!

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by theducks

An existing Tag (in thos books) changed case because one of your new books updated it.
This is nothing new, and is one of many reasons that last_modified can not be relied upon

- this can be confirmed by looking at Library->Library Maintenance->Library metadata backup status

The backup files are written in a separate background thread at about 1 book/sec (on my rig at least). So if I delete a tag that is used on a 1,000 books it will take about 15 minutes to write the 1,000 fresh metadata.opf files. It's done this way so that the user can continue to do their work.

And if you close calibre down before it finishes writing the backups it'll continue writing them next time calibre is run against the same library. The calibredb backup_metadata command is available to do any pending metadata.db writes (without the delay), I run it against all my libraries when I quit calibre .

FWIW : I have a custom column (Last Change Date) that I maintain manually using F2->'='->Enter on the Book list cell. The '=' sets a date to current datetime (Now)

@chaley - Would be be nice if Shift+F2 set a date to 'now', and if Ctrl+F2 cleared a date/number .

BR

[theducks]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

- this can be confirmed by looking at Library->Library Maintenance->Library metadata backup status

The backup files are written in a separate background thread at about 1 book/sec (on my rig at least). So if I delete a tag that is used on a 1,000 books it will take about 15 minutes to write the 1,000 fresh metadata.opf files. It's done this way so that the user can continue to do their work.

And if you close calibre down before it finishes writing the backups it'll continue writing them next time calibre is run against the same library. The calibredb backup_metadata command is available to do any pending metadata.db writes (without the delay), I run it against all my libraries when I quit calibre .

FWIW : I have a custom column (Last Change Date) that I maintain manually using F2->'='->Enter on the Book list cell. The '=' sets a date to current datetime (Now)

@chaley - Would be be nice if Shift+F2 set a date to 'now', and if Ctrl+F2 cleared a date/number .

BR

= sets it to Now
- set it to Undefined

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by theducks

= sets it to Now
- set it to Undefined

Yeah, but once you've tabbed to the cell, its three 'keystrokes'

1. F2' to open the cell,
2. '=' to paste in the current date and time
3. 'Enter' to close the cell.

My 'would be nice' to chaley is one keystroke Shift/F2.

The thought was inspired by what chaley did for the Tags cell, where Shift/F2 opens the Tags Editor. And you've probably forgotten who it was that instigated the '=' for Now and '-' for Clear

BR

[chaley]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

@chaley - Would be be nice if Shift+F2 set a date to 'now', and if Ctrl+F2 cleared a date/number .

I can partially do this. The way things are built an editor must be opened when F2 is pressed. Modified F2 can change the value of the field, but the enter will still be necessary to save it.

Kovid suggested that CTRL+F2 clear all field types, not just dates and numbers, so that is what I did.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by chaley

I can partially do this. The way things are built an editor must be opened when F2 is pressed. Modified F2 can change the value of the field, but the enter will still be necessary to save it.

Kovid suggested that CTRL+F2 clear all field types, not just dates and numbers, so that is what I did.

Thanks chaley - I didn't really expect you to take up my 'nice to have', good idea of Kovid's to make Ctrl+F2 work on all column types.

Eric Idle (curiosity) asks -- if you can send a '-' and a '=' into the editor's msg loop, then why not send a following {ENTER}? I'm sure you would've, if you could've

BR