Questions/Problems downloading stories from fanfiction.net

[Melissa Cox]

Hello

I've been trying to download some very long stories (60 to 200 chapters or so) some of these stories download within half an hour or so some of which wont even after 2 hours.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9479178/1/The-Time-Warp

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10653608/1/Out-With-The-Old

I was wondering if you could give  any indications as to why that is?

Secondly, You have a caliber plugin, but I was wondering if you were ever going to release a interface based desctop application? I can't use caliber, it's not compattible with a screen reader like JAWS or NVDA.

Thank You very much in advance.
regards:

Melissa Cox.

[Jim Miller]

On 7/12/2015 2:43 PM, Melissa Cox wrote:
> I've been trying to download some very long stories (60 to 200 chapters
> or so) some of these stories download within half an hour or so some of
> which wont even after 2 hours.

> I was wondering if you could give any indications as to why that is?

fanfiction.net stories especially have to be downloaded slowly or else
the site starts blocking the downloading IP address. Each chapter is a
separate web request to the site with an associated delay. So stories
with many chapters have to take a long time.

There are also issues with the free web service limiting how much
processing time can be used each day.

> Secondly, You have a caliber plugin, but I was wondering if you were
> ever going to release a interface based desctop application? I can't use
> caliber, it's not compattible with a screen reader like JAWS or NVDA.

There is a command line version available now. A standalone GUI version
is something I want to explore someday, but I haven't so far.

I've no idea how well such an app would interact with a screen reader.
It could be the Python Qt5 GUI toolkit that calibre uses causing you
problems and I'd likely use the same thing.

> When the FFF working page comes up, it shows yor fic is being processed but it doesn't show a percentage, is there any way of implimenting that in the future? I'm using the web interface:

It can't now, but I'll consider adding a percent done feature.

> Secondly, if my computer dies, or has to be restarted, is there any way that I wouldn't have to download the entire fic again? will the fic continue to download even without the page open?

Yes, it will continue. If you still have the 'status' URL for the
running download, you can just return to it. You can also view all of
your finished downloads at:

http://fanficfare.appspot.com/recent

Jim

[Ben Smith]

The default delay is one second per chapter request. Plus a half second sleep time. Exceptionally huge stories may take several minutes just to grab the pages due to that.

[Melissa Cox]

is there any way to speed up the time by changing the downtime and sleep responces on the user config page?
I coppied the default.ini file, edited it, then posted it on here:
www.fanficfare.appspot.com/editconfig
thanks again:
melissa.
PS:
i've just tried to download another story, and recieved a service overquote error. What does that mean and how can I fix it?

[Jim Miller]

On 7/13/2015 1:16 AM, Melissa Cox wrote:
> is there any way to speed up the time by changing the downtime and sleep
> responces on the user config page?

You can increase the sleep times in user config, but there are minimums
hard coded for fanfiction.net. This is especially important for the web
service where hitting fanfiction.net too fast could get the download
service blocked for everybody.

> PS:
> i've just tried to download another story, and recieved a service
> overquote error. What does that mean and how can I fix it?

From the FAQ:
> https://github.com/JimmXinu/FanFicFare/wiki/FAQs#why-has-the-web-service-version-of-fanficfare-stopped-working

> Why has the web service version of FanFicFare stopped working?
>
> The web service (fanficfare.appspot.com) has a daily quota and it is likely this has been reached. It will usually start working again after a few hours.
>
> In earlier days, when FanFicFare's first incarnation (fanficdownloader) was made into a web service, Google App Engine offered larger daily quotas to free projects. (For a while, the original fanficdownloader developer (Roman) also paid for additional quota out of his own pocket.)
>
> Now, the free quota is offered on a first-come, first-serve basis until it's used up for the day.
>
> Generally, it is recommended to use the Calibre plugin or command line (CLI) versions if you want to more than occasional downloads.

[Jim Miller]

On 7/12/2015 2:43 PM, Melissa Cox wrote:

> I've been trying to download some very long stories (60 to 200 chapters
> or so) some of these stories download within half an hour or so some of
> which wont even after 2 hours.

Here's something that might help you some with those.

I've posted a test version that allows you to specify a range of
chapters to download by putting a range in square brackets after the URL.

That way, for new stories with many chapters you could start with only
the first few chapters or you could download by batches. (The plugin and
CLI have similar features.)

Examples:

Chapter 4 only
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/2565609/1/[4]

Chapters 6, 7, 8, 9 & 10
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/2565609/1/[6-10]

Chapters 1-10
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/2565609/1/[-10]

Chapters 150 and up
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/2565609/1/[150-]

Test version URL: http://2-2-10a.fanficfare.appspot.com/

Jim

[Jim Miller]

On 7/12/2015 2:43 PM, Melissa Cox wrote:

> Secondly, You have a caliber plugin, but I was wondering if you were
> ever going to release a interface based desctop application? I can't use
> caliber, it's not compattible with a screen reader like JAWS or NVDA.

Actually, NVDA does appear to work with calibre on windows for me. I
can't say how _well_ it works, but it does work.

Jim

[Yasmine Breton]

Hi

The plug works. Thanks. Only problem is that if I want to keep the different parts in my e-reader, I can't as all the files have the same metadata. Do you have a solution?

Thanks

Yasmine

[Jim Miller]

I assume you're talking about books with different chapter ranges not
having different titles (sorry about the screwed up subject before).

I don't have an immediate solution, but that's a good point. Let me
think about it for a bit.

[Jim Miller]

I've added a feature to the test version to add the chapter range to the
book title. Try it and see what you think:

http://2-2-10b.fanficfare.appspot.com/

Jim

[Yasmine Breton]

It works perfectly. Thanks so much.

Yasmine.