I figured I would give the big three normal down loaders another check on their feature sets, of the features in them that matter to me that is.
Posting it as figured it might be of interest to others, since this topic keeps coming up from time to time, not just in this thread, but across the forum, and even in some other forums I go to.
Fanfiction Downloader Calibre Plug-in:
- Ability to process multiple links in one run: Yes.
- Sites supported: A large list. No AdultFanFiction.NET though. MediaMiner Support is better than Fanfiction Downloader .NET.
- Multiple chapter as separate file support: No.
- TXT output format: Yes.
- Chapter divider method: Not so good. The issue is it does not have a specific fixed tag method, such as *Chapter #*, like FanFiction Downloader .NET.
- Directory structure: Yes, in the file naming format specification. An oddity I noticed is it tended to place a number after this that seemed to correspond to the number in the database.
- File name structure: Configurable.
- Other: This had a odd bug, uncertain if it was Calibre or the plug-in itself... I installed the plug-in without error, but it refused to show in the toolbars until I shut down and restarted the program a couple times.
Fanfiction Downloader .NET:
- Ability to process multiple links in one run: Yes. Note this tends to crash or stop on first bad link.
- Sites supported: A decent list. The big three are on it. MediaMiner support is not as good as the Calibre plug-in, it does not allow for the Index Link.
- Multiple chapter as separate file support: No.
- TXT output format: Yes.
- Chapter divider method: Nice, at least in the ones checked it had a clear searchable standard tag method *Chapter #*.
- Directory structure: None, though it may be possible to do this in the file naming format specification.
- File name structure: Configurable.
De-FFNet-izer:
- Ability to process multiple links in one run: No.
- Sites supported: Only FF.NET, as far as know. It uses the story code number, not even the normal URL link.
- Multiple chapter as separate file support: Yes.
- TXT output format: No, though Minimal comes closest, it still has more than want.
- Chapter divider method: N/A, since it by default, at least for me, split into separate file chapters.
- Directory structure, near as can tell, will only make a directory by the story name, this is not so good as I have stories that have same name in different fandoms I follow.
- File name structure: Fixed.
Were I to adopt these today to change my work flow and reading habits, I would have to:
- Design a custom companion program to further process the files created here, to split them into proper chapters, to re-date the files to match the respective last update, place into subdirectories, and to extract the generated author and direct links for use in browsers and feed readers.
- Use Fanfiction Downloader .NET for FanFiction.NET, FicWad.COM, MediaMiner.ORG, and AdultFanFiction.NET. My MediaMiner.ORG links would need alterations to use the pattern this program is expecting to see, but would in the end be more consistent and allow for easier chapter break parsing than using the Calibre plug-in for it.
- Use Fanfiction Downloader Calibre plug-in for other sites not supported by the .NET program.
- For sites not supported by either of the above that are primarily HTML based sites use instead PageNest (I had used Page Nest in the past for some sites like Anime Adventure). While it can be tricky to configure, it can get the job done if it is straight TXT or HTML.