Librarian
 

This thread is for any discussion, bug reports, request or suggestions for my newly-released addon - Librarian. Let me know what you think!

This is by far my favourite addon :)

I have a few suggestions:

I think it should be account-wide. When I have read a book on one character I would only want to know about new books on others. This will also mean that the books that you read before installing the add-on on one character can be incorporated into a general library when other characters read them.

There should be a way to group books into categories or tag them, so that you can easily find the ones you want. Any library is only as good as the organized card catalogue :)

There could be some statistics. How many books you have total. How many pages, words. How many books out of all in the game (is this possible?). How many are notes, scrolls, books, etc.

Thanks again for a really great add-on!!!

There is a list of upcoming improvements on the addon's description page, and one of those is to include support for sharing books across characters. Another is to count how many books you have read in total.

Your suggestions on showing how many pages and words are in a book is a great one, I'll add it to the list. The categories one is interesting too, I'm not sure exactly what it would entail but I will definitely look into it. Thanks for your awesome feedback!

If you are going to implement account wide recording, please consider making that as an option. Personally, I like it per character.

I've released a new version of the addon. It includes a new "Words" field which shows you the word count of each book.

As always, let me know if you discover any bugs with this new feature.

I installed librarian well after I started and I stop to read everything. Is there a possibility to merge librarian.lua files with other players going anywhere similar to what is being done with the ESOhead.lua file?

There isn't any built-in way to share your books with a friend's library, but when you get the Eidetic Memory perk, I'll be able to re-import books your character has already read but that haven't yet been added to Librarian.

1.0.4 is out, which adds the much-requested feature of account-wide book sharing. Now you can read books you found on other characters, as well as skip re-reading a book you have already seen.

There were a lot of changed to the underlying data structures of the addon in this update. I spent extra time on this version playing it, and making sure that the upgrade should be seamless, but if you want to be extra safe, I'd recommend backing up the Librarian.lua file in your SavedVariables folder (this is where the actual book database is stored). If you have any issues once the addon has been updated, please zip up and attach that file to a reply in this thread, and I'll run it up myself to see what could be causing the problem

Hmmm, I'm not seeing my account wide books on my characters, only their own discoveries. Selecting the option at the bottom doesn't seem to have an effect.

Is the new version retroactive with previous found books?

Thanks!

Good point, I should probably mention that each character's books get moved to the account-wide database when the addon starts, so initially you will need to log each character in once in order to populate the shared library.

Got it, makes sense now. Thanks.

Quick bigfix release, 1.0.5. ThadOptimus kindly notified me that marking books as read / unread wasn't working properly, so I've pushed a fix while on a coffee break at work. Hopefully I didn't break anything!

There is a known issue with the keybind tooltip at the bottom of the screen, where it doesn't always show the status of the highlighted book. I didn't have a chance to fix that just now, so I'll push a fix for that in a few hours.

Another bugfix release has gone out - 1.0.6.

This fixes another small issue where the unread / read keybinding display was not always working correctly. It also adds a new alert message similar to a level up / lore book message, replacing the old chat alert when a new book is added to the library.

Hi,

So i have the latest version of Librarian and about 250 books which means the books file is quite large. Every time I try to log out or quit the game the time it takes is either very long or my whole system freezes completely. When I remove Librarian addon, everything is quick and snappy. I have included my database for you to check out and test.

Can you add an option to turn off the lore book/level up alert when a book is added to the library?

I was worried that this might become an issue as libraries get larger. The fact that the game needs to load and save the entire library at game login/logout isn't very efficient. I'll begin looking into methods of making this process faster, but any gains in that area may be hard-earned, so for the moment, you'll just have to bear with me. Sorry about that :(. I might be able to defer loading of the saved variables until after the login process has completed, but if that causes the game to freeze once you have loaded in that's arguably worse than having a longer loading time.

I knew someone wouldn't like the new alert :) Sure, I'll add in an option to toggle between the new alert and the old method that just logged something to chat.

Awesome! Thank you!

The problem isn't so much with loading (although that will also become an issue), but rather with the saving. I noticed that lua database is only created once you logout or quit which means that a lot of writing has to be done at that one time. This is also the moment that freezes my system (I suspect it is due to the fact that your addon is still writing and telling that the game cannot close while the game itself is saying that it has to close, or sth). Couldn't the writing be done at the time of discovery?

Where does the game keep it's own book data? How do you get information from the game that the character is reading a book? The game probably tells its own internal database that a book with thisandthis id should be displayed. Couldn't you store that id and use the games own database to display books? This way you wouldn't have to store the text. Or at least not load it constantly.

The game only allows an addon to say that a particular LUA table should be persisted between sessions, so there is no way to trigger saving of data manually. As for retrieving book data from the game itself, the API that the game exposes to addons (including the default book reading UI) only provides data for books that the current character has found. For all others, it returns an empty title and body. Once a character gets the eidetic memory perk it would be entirely possible for me to remove the database completely, but then the cross-character book reading ability would be lost, which is something a lot of users have requested.

Unfortunately, I don't have a character nearly high enough to unlock Eidetic Memory, but when I do I will probably work on making the cross-character database optionally able to be removed once the character gets the Eidetic Memory perk. You would lose some features but the load time of the addon would become almost nothing.

In the meantime, I still have some ideas about compressing the data or aggregating it into a smaller number of records which may reduce the loading / saving speed enough that none of this is an issue any more.

1.0.7 is out, it adds the much-requested option to select what type of alert to show when a new book is found. The options are None, chat-only, banner-only and both.

This is INCREDIBLY helpful, and now one of my three favorite add-ons. I was a little surprised they didn't simply build this into the game.

Thank you so much for taking the time to write this. It's beautifully implemented.

Is there any chance that you'll add it to Curse, so that those of us oldtimers who still have Curse Premium accounts won't have to keep manually updating it?

Not commenting one way or the other on whether or not the author chooses to upload it to Curse, as that is completely their prerogative, but you don't need to update it manually. Check out Minion, our addon manager. :)

Thanks for your support! I'm really glad you like that addon and I'm working hard to make it even better (and faster).

Although I don't have any personal issues with curse.com, I won't be uploading the addon there - at least for the moment. I don't want the ESO addon scene to become fragmented like it did with WOW, where there were multiple sites, multiple addon managers, and them multi-site addon managers, with all the controversy behind stealing bandwidth and advertising revenue. The community here at ESOUI is wonderful, their tools for deploying new versions of my addon are excellent, and Zenimax's own support document on creating addons links to the wiki here, which I take as an unofficial endorsement. It certainly has the largest database of addons for ESO currently.

As Cairenn suggested, I'd highly recommend checking out Minion, it should be all you need for managing your ESO addons, and it doesn't require a premium subscription to enable automatic updating. Sorry if that wasn't the response you were hoping for.

That seems perfectly reasonable. I've loved ESOUI for years, but - in the interest of keeping my own PC streamlined - I simply don't want to install two add-on managers. Curse allows me to keep Skyrim, TESO, Minecraft, and WoW each updated. I'm hesitant to add another program to my system tray.

Nevertheless, I'm sufficiently impressed with your add-on that I will gladly keep coming here to get new updates. It's a wonderful addition to my gaming experience, and an obviously polished labor of love.

You can also mark the addon as one of your Favorites, and then enable the setting to be emailed when one of your favorites is updated. ;)

Long freezes at logout/reloadui
 

Hi,

I'm another user like ilmarine getting really heavy saving/logout-times. I'm up to only 400 books, and each time I do a /reloadui or try to logout the game completely freezes, I timed it a couple of times, landing at 53 seconds pretty much each time before it exits the game, or starts the reloadprocess (it is under one second with librarian disabled. no other addons were active). I can only imagine how long the freezes will be once I near the several thousand books that exist :eek:

If you're sticking to having the text saved in a variable because of people wanting to read books across all characters, I'm saying that this usability issue overshadows that wish by far. There's an option NOT to have books readable across all characters, but it still seems to use a full-text savedvariable?

If there's a chance to get another logic for the addon (for instance as ilmarine suggested, just pulling the text from the books found by the character from the API), perhaps make it an option (so as to preserve the current for those needing it) I would be very happy.

Thanks for your addon, it has been invaluable to my lore-philic playstyle.

long loadscreens/crashs
 

i am having the same issues.
long loadscreens and then crashes to the login screen since today....
yesterday and the days before it was only some "ok, i have to wait ages but it will reload".
Now it kicks me out of the game. If i disable your addon the /reloadui loadscreen neads 2-3 seconds.
Its really sad, because i love this addon and i love it that i can go questing and read the books later!

i hope you could fix this issue fast!

The problem with only using the API is that the addon is then useless until your character gets the Eidetic Memory skill. I, for one, don't have it yet.

The size of your library is not the only issue here. I know the game can write out huge amounts of data quickly, because while working on the addon yesterday it tried to write out a cyclic saved variable and I got an 8GB file in less than a minute before I end-tasked the game. There is something else going on here and when that is sorted there shouldn't be any performance issues regardless of the size of the database.

I'm working on it as fast as I can, I promise!

I'm wondering if those of you who were having performance issues while loading / exiting the game would mind downloading a new beta version of the addon. If you go to the Librarian addon page, then to the Other Files tab, you should find a version 1.0.8 there.

Although I don't think you will have any issues with data loss, its always advisable to take a copy of your Librarian.lua file from your SavedVariables folder before you install.

Try it out and let me know if it has relieved any of your loading / logout performance issues. The freezing while scrolling issue should also be fixed.

Great success! Don't know what you did, but the beta version completely fixed the issue for me. Logouts and reloaduis are instantaneous now. Great job :)

Woot! Thanks for verifiying it for me so quickly. I've pushed that version live and now I can move back onto features.


1.0.9 is now out which includes the performance changes of 1.0.8 and also includes a new unread book counter.

Here is a Librarian.lua that produces errors with version 1.0.9 and a screenshot of the errors when the addon starts.

Thanks for taking a look at it.

Thanks a lot for posting that. I've pushed a new build (1.0.10) which fixes this issue. I'm annoyed that I didn't pick up on those errors when I did the performance improvements. It just means my testing needs to improve!


If you have a bunch of books you've found in the interim, you can give me your new Librarian.lua file, and I can merge it with your old one. Certainly now you should switch back to your old saved variables because they should upgrade just fine.

Hi all, I've posted a new beta version of the addon that adds a frequently requested feature - it will now import any missing books from your Lore Library / Eidetic Memory.

If you're willing, I'd love a few people to try it out (especially those with Eidetic Memory - I wasn't able to test this part of the feature) to see if it works properly. Please take a backup of your Saved Variables first - although I don't expect any issues, it's always a good idea to have a backup copy lying around.


You can grab the beta (1.0.11) from the Other Files tab of the addon description page.

Thanks to all those who tried out the beta version. No-one reported any issues, so I've combined it with a new full-text search feature and released version 1.0.12.

Thanks to everyone for bearing with me through the brisk development schedule and any issues that cropped up along the way. I've only got a couple of new features to develop and then the pace should slow, resulting in a more stable addon.

I've released a new version of Librarian today, 1.0.14, which adds the ability to toggle books from the reader view itself. It also adds an indicator to the reader display if the book is unread. This indicator can be disabled from the settings screen if you wish.

I've pushed a new version (1.0.15) that fixes an error that was occurring when viewing a new book. My apologies to everyone inconvenienced by this bug slipping through. Let me know if anyone experiences any further issues with this latest version.

A new version of the addon has been checked in - 1.0.16. This version has a couple of bugfixes and adds a new optional reloadui reminder. Once you have found a configurable number of new books in a session (by default 5), the addon will write a message to the chat log prompting to do a /reloadui so that in the event of a client crash, as few books as possible are lost.

What I would like is a completely different addon to be able to interact with this mod and use text to speech to read the books to me.

My eyesight isn't what it used to be and I struggle reading lots of on screen words'

Editing the Librarian.lua in SavedVariables shows they are all there in text form, just need someone who knows what they are doing to be able to do this (which unfortunately ins't me else I would try)

Many many thanks, a great addon

Unfortunately, this is almost certainly not going to be possible. There is no way for an addon to get data out of the game into an external text to speech engine, and writing a text to speech engine in lua inside the game is out of the question.

As requested: saved variables, screenshots, and addon list.

Original report:

Deleting the saved varaibles file does not help. It may be due to addon conflicts, but it is strange that something would affect another addon's setting panel in such a way.

That entire chatbox, from scrollbar top to bottom is the same error if I hover over the settings panel.

Thanks for that. It appears that there can be issues when a lot of addons are loaded and / or they make a lot of use of LibAddonMenu for their settings panels. Clearly the two of you that have reported issues both have a lot of addons running.

For the meantime, disabling some addons that have a settings menu that you don't need should provide relief from the issue temporarily. Tonight I'll try installing a bunch of addons that the two of you have in common, and see if I can replicate and then make my addon immune to.

Do you have issues with the settings panels of other addons as well? It seems odd that Librarian would be the only one experiencing problems, when I don't use many settings at all compared to a lot of addons.

I'm well aware of the anchor issue that occurs when too many addons are pulling from LibAddonMenu. I've dealt with it before and purposely slimmed by addon folder down by more than half. The list I provided you is the slimmed version, and I don't consider that a lot by a long stretch.

However, in the other case I've dealt with this error, it was completely benign and actually had no ill affect on any of my addons. That isn't the case here with Librarian, in which it's causing a massive string of errors and invalidating the settings panel. This I haven't seen before.

After testing, it seems to be directly linked to S'rendarr.

I can reproduce the error every time with only Librarian and S'rendarr activated. With S'rendarr deactivated, but Librarian and the rest of my list enabled, there is no issue.

I could cross-post this error over on that addon's page if you like, as well. Due to how this particular anchor error is occurring with no variance (unlike when I was testing the benign type), I don't think it falls into the same vein as before and might be a different problem with either one or both of the addons in question.

But, I can't code, so what do I know? Hopefully this helps.

Sorry. I thought I was posting in the forum thread. Looks like we found the culprit though.

That is great information, and very useful. It certainly would indicate that this is an interaction with s'rendarr and Librarian only, and dominoid is also running s'rendarr. I think Librarian will still run as it is, just without the settings menu? So hopefully for the moment that will tide you over. Tonight I'll install s'rendarr and should be able to figure out the issue relatively quickly. Thanks for doing the legwork for me!

Hopefully something is figured out.

I would have tested conflicts before my original posting, but it didn't seem like a conflict error at first! But either way, Librarion is still functional even with the error going on, so long as I don't go near it's setting's panel. So, at least there's that.

Thanks again to both of you, your help was invaluable.

Turns out that a newer version of LibAddonMenu has been released which requires that each settings panel has a header (In addition to the main header at the top). S'rendarr had updated to this newer version and LibStub was loading the newer version (as it its purpose). I added a header (with an empty string, so it doesn't display anyway) and also updated to the newer version of LibAddonMenu as well. New version is ready to download.

The docs for LAM have always said this... :confused:

Quite possibly, and I'm not blaming you Seerah :) I tend to only read enough documentation as required to get something working.

Just wanted to say how much I love this add-on. I'm the opposite of the guys with 30 add-ons and stuff all over the screen. I prefer Wykkyds full immersion which removes everything from my screen and Library Manager to handle my books. This add-on is especially nice if I pick up book 2 before book 1. When I finally get book 1, I can read it in order. Thanks for this add-on.

Many thanks.

Would it be possible for someone to write and addon to extract each book from your lua to a text file? Or is that also outside the scope of what the Addon software allows? Obviously the text could be extracted outside of the game, but what I would like to do is as follows.

Open up my book library
Select one or more books I want to read
Extract them to a text file.
Then use my text to speech software on my second monitor to read the text file (outside of the game although the games still running on main monitor).

Am I writing in the correct thread, I see another thread thats much longer than this one that appears to be discussing the same addon?

Thanks a superb addon

Addons are only able to write to their SavedVariables file, and this only happens when logging out or during a /reloadui.

What you could do is to use the unread flag (or some other flag which the addon doesn't have yet), and once you have marked the books you want to read, press your keybind for reloadui, and the saved variables will be written. The reloadui only takes a few seconds. You could then have an external program read the book text out of the saved variables file and speak it to you.

You could provide an option to place the text of the book in an edit box, then the user could copy-paste the text to another program.

Hey, this could be done with my newest addon Harven's Book Copy. It is compatible with Librarian.

Many many thanks, just tried it and it's exactly what I need.

Eidedic Memory Problem
 

I don't know if this is a game problem or a problem with the addon, but when you get awareded Eidedic Memory from the mages line it seems that it doesn't update correctly with the books that you've already picked up. It showed 0/X for all of the lines under Eidedic Memory even for books that I know were picked up. I don't know if they have to be marked as read to show up or what the problem was, but the books that I have picked up afterwards seem to show up. Honestly I don't really know if this is the add-on or if it's a game bug.

That is pretty weird. Eidetic memory is a part of the game, not my addon, so if eidetic memory is not showing that a book has been found, that shouldn't have anything to do with Librarian. As a test, disable Librarian and see if it has an impact, but I'm pretty certain it won't. If you aren't seeing any books read at all, get in contact with Zenimax support as there may be a problem with your account / character.

I've released version 1.1.2 of Librarian which fixes a serious bug that would result in the loss of your Librarian database when the Waterlogged Journal was found in Craglorn.

Librarian file corrupted
 

Hi,

I have updated Librarian to version 1.1.2 and it has corrupted the Librarian file in SavedVariables folder. By corrupted I mean that all books were deleted, except of Lore books. Is there any way to recover that file? It is really frustrating... Is there a way to import books? Is there any other lore-geeks who could send me their files?

Thank you,
Vitaliy

It looks like a serious issue brought about by changes in the latest patch. Please, PLEASE take a copy of your Librarian saved variables before logging in, while I work on a fix.

If you have lost your data, you will be able to import it again from the Lore Library, but the read/unread and date found fields will be reset.