Ubooquity V3, beta version

No worries man, no one was expecting this for September 21st anyway. 
I'm just glad Ubooquity isn't actually dead (as I'm sure many others are). Hope you can sort out your problems soon!

Any hints on what new features we can expect?

The most visible change is the display of the reading progress on books (by books I mean comics as well). 

But to do it I completely rewrote the way themes are managed. Until now you could only change the style and icons of Ubooquity with a custom theme. With V3, the whole HTML structure can be customized. This means a lot more freedom in the way collections can be displayed.

I also merged the "books" and "comics" parts in the code and the database (having two "chains" meant twice the work each I had to modify something), changed the language I use to develop Ubooquity, and dozens of other minor changes. I will write a full change log for the release. :)

What? Seriously? I thought this project was over. That's great news! I still use it. I really haven't found a better book library for PDFs than this one, especially if the PDF is lacking any internal or external metadata. Having a book library based on file structure has been key for my use-case. I'm waiting with bated breath. :)

With the theme rewrite do you have a theme template you could share that we could start working on ahead of the release?

That's the point of the beta version. :)

Binary's ready, I just have to finish the doc which explains how the templating system works.

I'll post it here as soon as it's ready (and write a release post later).

Here you go: https://vaemendis.net/ubooquity/downloads/Ubooquity-3.0.0.zip

Java 17 (or more recent) is required.

The documentation on the new theme system: https://vaemendis.github.io/ubooquity-doc/pages/theme-creation.html

And a description of the data (variables) made available to the theme, by page: https://vaemendis.github.io/ubooquity-doc/pages/theme-variables-reference.html

The variables are very unlikely to change before the release of the beta.
The default theme will (HTML and definitely CSS), as it is an awful mess in its current state.

Let me know if you have any question !

I'm giving it a try and it seems to work fine.

Did you change something to the way folder pictures are chosen? It used to be the cover of the first issue, alphabetically (provided folder.png is absent) but now it seems to chose a random issue? Or am I missing something.

Yes, the folder pictures were found using a very inefficient way that required several database requests. Now everything is done in a single requests, which completely ignores the user settings regarding sorting. 🤦‍♂️

I'll try to fix that !

Should be fixed in the official beta:

https://vaemendis.net/ubooquity/article23/ubooquity-3-beta

OK I'll try it. You might want to correct your link so that it's httpS, chrome didn't want to load it and firefox gave me a warning

Indeed, thanks !

I've installed it but it is still scanning my library. The initial scan seems to be faster than before at 149,000 and still going but not struggling on the odd files as it has done in the past. Looks like it will be done in about 14hrs instead of at least 24hrs

Hi, very happy to see this rising again from ashes ... !

Hope it will ultimatly accept rar5 .cbr.

In the meantime, it crashes (on my x64 Win 11 with the latest java RE) at start with "A java Exception has occurred" error.

Could you give me the exact version of Java you use ?

Also, the few log lines after the "A java Exception has occurred" would help too.

As for rar5, support depends on the RAR library used by Ubooquity (Junrar). I'm not sure it will be ever implemented: https://github.com/junrar/junrar/issues/23

Given that RAR files have no advantage over ZIP files for comics, I don't understand why this format is still in use though.

Was using jre-8u381-windows-x64 when first reporting the crash. I upgraded today to jre-8u391-windows-x64 and still crashes. Tested on another computer and same problem.
I must admit I don't know where to find the crash log ...
Only thing I can tell is that the crash message comes from "Java Virtual Machine Launcher", that the previous Ubooquity works great on theses computer, only the 3 beta crashes, and that on the other computer there is another message precising that the problems seems to come from "JNI" initialization system.

You are using Java 8, the new version of Ubooquity requires at least Java 17, hence the crash.

I understand that, however that version is the only one oracle is pointing to when looking for the JRE. I Have found nbo way to download somthing like a Java 17 JRE. See what happens when one is looking for the customers java download : https://www.java.com/en/ (clik on the Download link, it will redirect you to JRE 8.xxx.
I must be missing something. Has the JRE been replaced by something else ? 

Here is a link to JDK 17, though I used 21 as that was the first link I found and it is working.

https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/javase/jdk17-archive-downloads.html

Sorry, I am an old school java end-user, and was always told that JDK was for developers and JRE (runtime) for end user. Didn't noticed that Oracle ended JRE at version 8 ann I thought that there last JRE8u392 was teh corresponding runtime to their 21 JDK ... Thanks for pointing me. Maybe a link on the Ubooquity website would help some other dumb JRE users like me.
By the way, I discovered that Eclipse still offers an up-to-date (based on OpenJDK 21) JRE.

Ok it works with Java 21 SE. Nice update. Still wishing for RAR 5. Keep the good work. Thanks

I got the CBR's with no cover from my NAS, unpacked it and repacked it with zip .. 
no issue there. I am more happy that I do not have rar5 than that I have such issues. So little investment in my own time here .. 

Hi,

Had some issues with what seem to be rar5 (cbr files) , so if you install 7 zip and add it to your PATH in windows (or hardlink to 7z.exe) the following will convert them from a CMD window:

for %f in ("*.cbr") do ( 7z e "%~nf.cbr" -otempdir && 7z a -tzip "%~nf.cbz" .\tempdir\* -sdel && rmdir /S /Q tempdir && del "%~nf.cbr" )

i leave no warranty, ;)

Installed, scan complete: no problems. Nice quick and clean interface. Nice to be able to put content on read and not read, and the progressbar is appreciated too…!

Thanks for the feedback everyone ! :)

Great .. working in a test environment .. 

But see during scan 1 comic with broken image .. 

in the old version I have a front-cover.

Looks like that 'diacritical signs' are not well handled in the new version

Aéropostale -- Legendarische Piloten - 01 - Guillaumet

in linux in shell 'A'$'\303\251''ropostale -- Legendarische Piloten - 01 - Guillaumet.cbr'

I opened an issue on the Linuxserver/Ubooquity Github, they will update their Docker image when there is a stable release!

Also: Awesome work Tom!!!!!!!

They updated their docker image to include java 17 already, so if you put the jar file on your docker host you can bind mount it to "/app/ubooquity/Ubooquity.jar" and it will launch v3, :) 

Can confirm it works!

Hello Tom,

I'm very happy to see that the work hasn't been stopped on ubooquity. I've run the beta it on my PC, and it works fine. I haven't seen any issues

Good work :-)

Its been a long time waiting, just popping over to look at the beta.

Many thanks :-)

Im liking Ubooquity 3, so far.  The only thing Ive noticed is that the "uparrow" does not return to the main page.  It works fine on the "recent additions" page, but not from "comics", "books" or "magazines"

I think this problem occurs only, if you have "Bypass single root folder" activated.

Ah ha.  That was it.  Thanks!

Hello,

Thank you for all the effort and work on this new version.

The userName variable is only available on the login and home page. This does not allow you to validate if the user has a session into the library and other sections to add a logout button and other options, to close the session you must return to the home.

Greetings.

Hello Luis,

The logout button does not need the userName variable, it just redirects to the /?logout=true URL, which logs the user out.

Also, Ubooquity will not serve any page other than the login page if the user is not logged in. So I'm not sure I understand the use case for making the userName variable available on other pages.

Apart from displaying the currently logged user name on every page, what would you use it for ?

Have a  nice day !

Finally managed to get my Fantastic Fiction mod working in V3. Still some cludgy workarounds to sort out, but overall working as expected. Built on top of Northernlights for now. Works like FF in that all text and images bring up the book details.

I look forward to this being released, I would love to see my collection of books organized like that.

Nice !

About the workarounds, if you think about modifications that would make this kind of theme easier to make, let me know.

I can't make any promises, but if some easy to make modification to Ubooquity's code can help, I might as well throw it in.

Only major issue I had was the Progress bar / reading state was causing issues and had to be turned off (remove from page-library). This will cause not to display on comics etc. 

Tried to remove after page load with removeclass, but no go. I know the remove class works as I use it to remove the original cellcontainer classes so Ubooquity's books do not show. Only my classes.

I do not know if there is any way this could be turned off on selected categories?.