Before asking a question about calibre, please check the list of Frequently Asked Questions (http://calibre.kovidgoyal.net/user_manual/faq.html) in the User Manual.

Can anyone tell me why Calibre works on 4.80 like a charm and when I updated to 4.83
I am able to get the main page but cannot fetch news as nothing happens when I try for specific newspapers or periodicals that worked on the 4.80 edition?
Also, is it possible to get back versions on the Calibre website such as 4.80. At least if one has a working edition of the Calibre, and then tries to update to a new edition and it does not work, they can always go back to the edition that works..

Thanks in advance for any assistance.. I love the program and have used it every day and now I am stuck without and periodicals to read..
Moosejons Dad

I dont keep old versions, its too much work for me to maintain them. When you say nothing happens, what do you mean? Does the hourglass not start spinning?

The hour glass spins but there is no download of the periodical.

click on the hourglass and then double click on the job and post the log here (wait for at least 10 minutes after starting the download before doing this to ensure that the process is really hung).

I am using XP and prs 500. I waited the 10 minutes and the log showed

LOG:

Just the word log and no other information.

Hmm start a command prompt (press windows key + r and type cmd.exe). AT the command prompt type:

feeds2lrf --verbose Newsweek


What do you see?

I'm using 0.4.83 and Newsweek worked fine here. I'm using Windows with XP Pro.

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\David Levy>feeds2lrf -verbose Newsweek
Usage: feeds2lrf [options] ARG

feeds2lrf parses an online source of articles, like an RSS or ATOM feed and
fetches the article contents organized in a nice hierarchy.

ARG can be one of:

file name - feeds2lrf will try to load a recipe from the file

builtin recipe title - feeds2lrf will load the builtin recipe and use it to fetc
h the feed. For e.g. Newsweek or "The BBC" or "The New York Times"

recipe as a string - feeds2lrf will load the recipe directly from the string a
rg.

Available builtin recipes are:
'Ars Technica', 'Associated Press', 'The Atlantic', u'The BBC', "Barron's", 'Bus
iness Week', 'CNN', 'Christian Science Monitor', 'Die Zeit Nachrichten', 'ESPN',
'The Economist', 'FAZ NET', 'Globe and Mail', 'Google Reader', 'Jerusalem Post'
, 'Jutarnji', 'NASA', 'New York Review of Books', 'The New York Times', 'The New
Yorker', 'Newsweek', 'Outlook India', 'Portfolio', 'Reuters', 'Spiegel Online',
'Sydney Morning Herald', 'USA Today', 'United Press International', 'The Wall S
treet Journal', 'Washington Post', 'Wired.com'


Whenever you pass arguments to feeds2lrf that have spaces in them, enclose the a
rguments in quotation marks.

feeds2lrf: error: no such option: -v

C:\Documents and Settings\David Levy>

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\David Levy>feeds2lrf -verbose Newsweek


Try again with two dashes ('--' vs. '-') before the 'verbose'. So exactly like:

feeds2lrf --verbose Newsweek

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\David Levy>feeds2lrf --verbose Newsweek
Unable to detect proxy settings: [Error 2] The system cannot find the file speci
fied
0% Fetching feeds...
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "convert_from.py", line 61, in <module>
File "convert_from.py", line 42, in main
File "C:\Program Files\calibre\library.zip\calibre\web\feeds\main.p y", line 11
4, in run_recipe
File "calibre\web\feeds\news.pyo", line 473, in download
File "calibre\web\feeds\news.pyo", line 582, in build_index
File "calibre\web\feeds\recipes\newsweek.pyo", line 62, in parse_index
File "calibre\web\feeds\recipes\newsweek.pyo", line 114, in get_current_issue
File "urllib2.pyo", line 124, in urlopen
File "urllib2.pyo", line 381, in open
File "urllib2.pyo", line 399, in _open
File "urllib2.pyo", line 360, in _call_chain
File "urllib2.pyo", line 1107, in http_open
File "urllib2.pyo", line 1082, in do_open
urllib2.URLError: <urlopen error (10061, 'Connection refused')>

Looks like the new proxy detection code is failing on your machine. Do you have a proxy setup needed to access the internet from your machine?

I am afraid I am not that proficient in the running of my computer and have no idea what you are referring to...

Sorry...

Is your internet connection a direct connection to the web or is it via a proxy?

I was able to google and fix the problem...everything is now working okay.

thanks for all your help as I love this program.

In order to help me make sure this doesn't happen for other people, what was the fix?

My fix had to do with the startup of the computer..
I had used msconfig to list the startup programs and had eliminated some prior to downloading the revision..when I used google to find out what you meant by
"direct connection to the web or is it via a proxy", I realized I had eliminated some of the startups found in msconfig results.. I enabled all of the missing programs, found a "trojan slob" in doing so at the start up and then tried your program and everything worked out okay.. I attribute this to luck and remembering what I had done prior to your revision.

I hope this makes sense.

Moosejons Dad

I am afraid that I spoke to soon as I tried another periodical after downloading the nytimes which worked and the new download did not work.. below is the message I got.


Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\David Levy>feeds2lrf --verbose newsweek
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "convert_from.py", line 61, in <module>
File "convert_from.py", line 42, in main
File "C:\Program Files\calibre\library.zip\calibre\web\feeds\main.p y", line 92
, in run_recipe
File "calibre\web\feeds\recipes\__init__.pyo", line 72, in compile_recipe
File "c:\docume~1\davidl~1\locals~1\temp\calibre_0.4.83_ b9qpyi_recipes\recipe0
.py", line 4, in <module>
newsweek
NameError: name 'newsweek' is not defined

C:\Documents and Settings\David Levy>

newsweek with a capital N

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\David Levy>feeds2lrf --verbose Newsweek
Unable to detect proxy settings: [Error 2] The system cannot find the file speci
fied
0% Fetching feeds...
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "convert_from.py", line 61, in <module>
File "convert_from.py", line 42, in main
File "C:\Program Files\calibre\library.zip\calibre\web\feeds\main.p y", line 11
4, in run_recipe
File "calibre\web\feeds\news.pyo", line 473, in download
File "calibre\web\feeds\news.pyo", line 582, in build_index
File "calibre\web\feeds\recipes\newsweek.pyo", line 62, in parse_index
File "calibre\web\feeds\recipes\newsweek.pyo", line 114, in get_current_issue
File "urllib2.pyo", line 124, in urlopen
File "urllib2.pyo", line 381, in open
File "urllib2.pyo", line 399, in _open
File "urllib2.pyo", line 360, in _call_chain
File "urllib2.pyo", line 1107, in http_open
File "urllib2.pyo", line 1082, in do_open
urllib2.URLError: <urlopen error (10061, 'Connection refused')>

C:\Documents and Settings\David Levy>

Im afraid there's something off in the internet setup on your computer. That error message means that calibre is unable to connect to the newsweek server.

You asked me before about a proxy setup and I know I do not have one.. can you give me any place to look? It is strange that I was able to download the NY Times and when I tried another periodical, it did not work..
Thanks for your help.

Can you still download the nytimes?

The New York Times does not download.

then you need to redo whatever you did in the first place to fix it.

I know this is going to sound like a crazy question, but I found this site called Portable Applications (programs you install directly to usb storage devices) and I was wondering if Calibre could install on a usb portable device or it if it'll only run if installed on the PC.

I hope that makes sense.

In principle, it can. Actually getting it to work would be somewhat non-trivial. Basically you'd need to make sure that whatever directory calibre is installed in, is in your path before launching it. Also if you want to use the GUI, then you have to make sure that the library1.db file is in the same location (absolute path) on all computers, or when you launch the GUI you'd have to manually choose the location of an existing library1.db

In principle, it can. Actually getting it to work would be somewhat non-trivial. Basically you'd need to make sure that whatever directory calibre is installed in, is in your path before launching it. Also if you want to use the GUI, then you have to make sure that the library1.db file is in the same location (absolute path) on all computers, or when you launch the GUI you'd have to manually choose the location of an existing library1.db


Will have to try this out tonight on my spare usb device. :)

Just downloaded Calibre today (10-27-08) but I can't figure out how to do what I want to do. It installed just fine, and I have put the ebook in question in the library.

I use Vista.
My file is a non-DRM mobi book which I wish to convert to text in some manner. The threads I've researched said that I could use mobi2oeb to convert to HTML and then I can save as text. That is perfect for me. I don't care about meta data, I just need the text.

My problem is: I can't figure out how to use mobi2oeb. Did it download with Calibre? Do I need to get it somewhere else? And, when I have it, how do I use it? Is it a command that I need to go to C:/ or is there a field in Calibre I type it in? What is the syntax?

My apologies if this is covered elsewhere, but I haven't been able to find it. I've search on the Calibre forum, I read the FAQ, I've started reading the user's manual, which has a blank page on the ebook conversion page.

Can you steer me in the right direction?

Thanks,

AJ Starr

FYI: I will use the text in my TTS software to make an electronic audio recording. My eyesight is going and I prefer to listen to my books. Unfortunately, the older books do not have audio versions out there.

in the config dialog select epub as your output format. click convert. this will create an epub version of the file which you can unzip using winzip

in the config dialog select epub as your output format. click convert. this will create an epub version of the file which you can unzip using winzip


thanks for replying so fast. I had trouble finding your "config" because of the tiny icon, versus the other beautiful icons. I found it though, and now have a copy of the book in epub. However, I apparantly do not have winzip. I assume I can download it so I'll start searching.

I thought epub was a ebook format like lrf and prc, etc?

AJ Starr

I was able to convert the book the way I want. Thanks again for your help. Caliber is a great program.

epub is just zipped up html

Hi,

awesome program. I can't find the config icon to select epub. What am I missing.

Thank you.

Hi,

awesome program. I can't find the config icon to select epub. What am I missing.

Thank you.

Nevermind. Found it. It's the hammer icon to the far right of the search bar.

Works awesome

I hope this hasn't been asked before.... I've been searching FAQ's and searching this forum, so here goes...

Is there any way to change the default filename that Calibre saves to, from "Title - Author" to "Author - Title"?

I would prefer the later because it's much easier to manage... at least for me.
Thanks,
Joe

No there isn't

Can this then become an enhancement request? I have all my current eBook collection named with author-title

There's already an ehancement request for it.

Squee: I just downloaded Calibre, and I really like it--especially the tags and the rss feeds. My main problem with my PRS-700 was the software that came with it. Calibre fixes that and makes me a very happy reader, indeed.

Question: Are there plans to include support for the PRS 700's annotations in the future? Calibre is already exponentially better than the Sony-provided apps, but annotation support and search capability would make would make it flat out perfect, as far as I am concerned. :D

Thanks!

yeah, but my todo list is very long, so no firm commitments

yeah, but my todo list is very long, so no firm commitments

It will take Kovid a good three of four days to get to it. ;)

BOb

I'm surprised everyone likes the caliber program so much. I have assiduously followed the directions and can't get it to transfer a converted file to my device. I also cannot register on the caliber site, despite repeated attempts. And the search mode just hangs up when I try using it.
I bought the sony prs-500 on the strength of all the kudos for the caliber program, and am now extremely frustrated, having done all that was required...

If I remember correctly, to use Calibre to transfer docs to the PRS-500, you can't have the Sony software driver installed.

I didn't try to use it to transfer docs until I had a 505, so I never tried it with the 500, but I think you have to uninstall Sony driver as a prerequisite to getting Calibre to work.

HTH

I bought the sony prs-500 on the strength of all the kudos for the caliber program, and am now extremely frustrated, having done all that was required...

You have to install the driver for the PRS-500. It is no longer an option on the installer. There is a folder in the calibre directory that has the driver installer.

BOb

RE: Name files by "Author-Title" instead of "Tittle-Author"

There's already an enhancement request for it.


Ugh, I just started using Calibre, and this was the first thing I wanted to change...

I have many books already (1000 or so) in the file name format "Author - Series - Title"

I finally figured out how to get Calibre to edit the meta data based on file name so that that info is recorded (At least I think I did) ;)

A friend who stopped by saw me playing with the book files and wanted me to send him all the books from a series he was interested in.

So I just did a windows search on that author, and dragged the files to an e-mail to send to him.

Then I discover that Calibre renames the files "Tittle-Author" OUCH!

How is he supposed to know the order of the books? The series name and series_number has been stripped out of the file name.

So unless he also uses calibre, he will need to open each book to look at the meta data in his book viewing program to find out which title comes when. (If the info was recorded in the meta data)


I see that allowing alternate file name formats is in the "enhancement request" list.... But any idea how far down the list it is?


Also I see that the "Author" folders are saved as "First Name Last name" (Despite the fact that the file names were originally in the format Last, First Mi.)

Can changing the author file name format also be added to the "enhancement request" list?


Hmm, is the "enhancement request" list posted somewhere on the forum, so I don't make other post for features that have already been asked for? ( or do you prefer having 63 different people ask for the same feature, so you know how much of a priority to make it)

:thanks:
JB

Feature requests (and bug reports) belong in the ticket list at http://calibre.kovidgoyal.net/query

You can always add a comment indicating a particular request is important to you as well.

I have Windows Vista and when I first loaded Calibre it was brilliant. When an upgrade became available I un-installed the old version and then when I tried to load the new version it kept saying error can`t open file. Can anybody tell me where I am going wrong? When I tried to load my original version it would not load coming up with error messages. I even tried to delete the files that were left after the un-install but they can`t be deleted.
Thanks

I even tried to delete the files that were left after the un-install but they can`t be deleted.
Thanks

Are you sure you shut down calibre. Look in your task manager to see if the process is still running. If it is, stop it. You may be able to stop calibre from the task bar icon.

BOb

reboot and the uninstall calibre. To be safe delete the c:\Program Files\calibre directory. Then try re-installing calibre.

I just opened a ticket about this, because the link to forums was way at the bottom of the page but a link to tickets was up at the top. Anyway, I will try here as well.

In your list of supported formats you say "PRC". PRC is not a format. PRC (and PDB) is a container file for a Palm database. The actual format is indicated by a combination of two four-byte codes (the "type" and "creator" codes).

Not counting spreadsheets, game data files, etc. Just ebook formats, this includes:

Creator/Type Actual Format
REAd/TEXt Palm "Doc" (possibly old MobiPocket, see below at *)
ToGo/ToGo iSilo2
SilX/SDoc iSiloX
MOBI/BOOK MobiPocket (current)
Plkr/Data Plucker
PPRs/PNRd PalmReader
TR3C/TR3D TomeRaider 3

(*) MobiPocket mucked things up for a long time by using the Palm "Doc" creator/type codes even though they added OEB tags ... which meant that a reader program that recognized Palm Doc would "see" this file, and allow you to open it, but you would be faced with a mess of tags. Fortunately they have finally corrected this.

When you say in your documentation list that you handle PRC I assume you are actually referring to MobiPocket files ... but that if I tried, for instance, to run a Plucker or iSilo file through, it would fail entirely. And I wouldn't even want to guess what would happen with an actual Palm Doc file ... you probably recognize those codes but it would be missing the Mobi OEB tags ...

Anyway. It would be helpful if you were specific about the Palm format. "PRC" is not sufficient to identify a format.

I have a program for the PC that will let you take a look at the useful Palm
database header information (creator, type &
name-that-will-show-up-on-the-Palm) at
http://www.catslair.com/tech/palm/#pdbhdr

There is also a program at http://www.djw.org/product/palm/par/ that will let you see (and modify) the entire Palm header, including the name that will show when the file is loaded up on the Palm (this would also be the book title shown in the mobi reader index).

The ticket I opened for this issue, btw, is #1836

What exactly are you asking for. A documentation change? calibre will only allow you to convert PRC files with Textread/MOBI headers. It will complain if you feed it any other kind of PRC file.

What exactly are you asking for. A documentation change? calibre will only allow you to convert PRC files with Textread/MOBI headers. It will complain if you feed it any other kind of PRC file.

Which is what should be in the documentation. The formats list says "PRC" ... and that is not a (single) format.

btw: while iSilo is a proprietary format, Plucker is an open format and you might want to consider adding support for them sometime.

But for now, I would just like the documentation to be more specific about the whole "PRC" thing.

I've changed the formats entry in the FAQ

Hi everyone,
I've been using Calibre for over month now and suddenly I can't get it to open. I tried several times re-installing, but nothing. My OS is vista, and with McAfee service. I tried defraging, cleaning my registry, and completely turning off McAfee, but nothing works. I've read the FAQ, and it recommend posting the following: Microsoft Windows [Version 6.0.6001]
Copyright (c) 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\handyjones1 > calibre-debug -g
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "calibre\utils\config.pyo", line 494, in refresh
EOFError
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "debug.py", line 147, in <module>
File "debug.py", line 120, in main
File "calibre\gui2\main.pyo", line 1564, in main
File "calibre\gui2\main.pyo", line 76, in __init__
File "calibre\gui2\main_ui.pyo", line 162, in setupUi
File "calibre\gui2\library.pyo", line 615, in __init__
File "calibre\gui2\library.pyo", line 129, in __init__
File "calibre\utils\config.pyo", line 459, in __getitem__
File "calibre\utils\config.pyo", line 466, in get
File "calibre\utils\config.pyo", line 456, in refresh
File "calibre\utils\config.pyo", line 395, in parse
File "calibre\utils\config.pyo", line 317, in parse_string
TypeError: expected string without null bytes

I hope someone can give me some help in solving this. I really enjoy all the newspapers and mags. I should note that I'm not that computer literate, but can follow simple instructions.

Thanks,
Handyjones1

Looks like one of your settings files has gotten corrupted. I'm making a new release of calibre tomorrow which will workaround this problem. Alternatively, find the file named gui.py on your computer and delete it, then restart calibre

I know that this ranks right up there in the stupid question category, but I found the discussion threads, and can't find the download option.

And, does it function properly on Macs?

I know that this ranks right up there in the stupid question category, but I found the discussion threads, and can't find the download option.

And, does it function properly on Macs?

In the top-right area of the front page (http://calibre.kovidgoyal.net/ ), there are three rows of links. In the middle row (the one inside the boxes), the far-right link is "Get Calibre". Or, here's a shortcut: http://calibre.kovidgoyal.net/download

And yes, it works great on Macs. I'm still using a G4 with OSX 10.4, which I would assume is somewhere near the minimal requirement. However, I had to upgrade my version of Python to 2.5 separately to get Mobidedrm to run, so I cannot say if the current version of Calibre will work 100% with a "stock" 10.4 load (which includes Python 2.4).

I've changed the formats entry in the FAQ

Thanks. That helps.

Would you want me to put an entry in the wiki going into more detail about what "TextRead" and "MOBIBook" headers means, including how you can check on them?

Sure go ahead and a create a page about the PRC format.

@curtw: calibre will work with a stock 10.4 install

Hi, great soft kovidgoyal, really love it! I was wondering, is there a way to select a directory and all its subdirectories? I have over 20 000+ files in 100 s of directories and it seems extremely long to do it by directory one at a time, any faster way? (ie drive c select or dir and all its subdirectories?)

click the little arrow next to the add books button

Thanks! Cn't believe i missed that! Thanks again!

I think I need a Calibre for Dummys! I know this is mentioned previously as not being implemented, but I still have a question. Sony 700 on the way, Windows XP, have not yet used Calibre. I'm trying to get my books in order to be ready.

All my books are titled by author last name, author first name, series name, number in series, title of book. Do I need to change the title to Calibre's first name, last name, title (thus loosing the series and series number?) I know I can edit the metadata to get the series name and number (I think), but how does it show up on the Sony 700 - still author, title?

If I make series name, series number part of the books title will it show up in the order of the books in the series? If so, I know I would be losing the actual title, but maybe it is worth it.

Thanks for any help.

Lynn

Similar question. I have my books named:

Author - Series ## - Title
(?P<author>[^_]+) - (?P<series>.*?) (?P<series_index>[0-9]*?) - (?P<title>.+)

Author - Title
(?P<author>[^_]+) - (?P<title>.+)

How do I combine the two so they're just one regular expression? :thanks:

Once you start using calibre, file names become un-important. calibre stores all information in its own database. When you send the files to the reader, calibre will create a "collection" for each series and (provided you send all the books in series over at once) arrange the order of the books in that collection by series number

Similar question. I have my books named:

Author - Series ## - Title

(?P<author>[^_]+) - (?P<series>.*?) (?P<series_index>[0-9]*?) - (?P<title>.+)


Author - Title

(?P<author>[^_]+) - (?P<title>.+)

How do I combine the two so they're just one regular expression? :thanks:

Surround the series + number + - part in parentheses and follow it by {0,1}

Surround the series + number + - part in parentheses and follow it by {0,1}
Thanks for the quick response.

The modified expression works ok with files named Author - Title

For:
Author - Series ## - Title

it gave me the following:
Title: Title
Author: Author - Series ##
Series: No match
Series Index: No match
ISBN: No match

I also tried (?P<author>[^_]+) - ((?P<series>.*) (?P<series_index>[0-9]*) - )?(?P<title>.+) but it gave me the same result as above.

Question, what does [^_] signify? Is it necessary for Calibre to make the author match or can I change it to something else? I've tried grouping the ' - ' with other parts of the expression and the series info always ends up as part of the author name unless both instances of ' - ' are present. Methinks the regex for author might be a bit too greedy?

Fix found:
(?P<author>[^_]+?) - ((?P<series>.*) (?P<series_index>[0-9]*) - )?(?P<title>.+)

Thanks for the help. Really loving Calibre. :)

Can I do this in Calibre: import books to the Calibre library from a compressed archive? The hypotetical situation is like this - for the sake of saving some disk space there are more ebooks (different formats) compressed into one zip or rar file. Is there a way in Calibre how to work with the books in the archive w/o having to extract them first? If not can I propose it as a requested feature? Thanks.

calibre assumes archives contain single ebooks as this usage is more common.

I just decided to import my ebook library into calibre.

I notice the "Series" column is empty, no idea how to get that one filled, I should look it up I guess...

But another thing I noticed, and can't explain.

Some titles come back as "Unknown". And I can't figure out why (all my books are in the mobipocket format)

Example:


<dc-metadata ...>
<dc:Creator>Herbert, Brian; Anderson, Kevin J.</dc:Creator>
<dc:Title>Legends - 00 - Hunting Harkonnens</dc:Title>
.....
</dc-metadata>
(Herbert, Brian - [Legends of Dune 00] - Hunting Harkonnens.prc)


<dc-metadata ...>
<dc:Creator>Herbert, Brian; Anderson, Kevin J.</dc:Creator>
<dc:Title>Legends - 01 - The Butlerian Jihad</dc:Title>
.....
</dc-metadata>
(Herbert, Brian - [Legends of Dune 01] - The Butlerian Jihad.prc)

It will show "Hunting Harkonnens" as "Unknown", while the "Butlerian Jihad" shows with the complete title.

I also noticed it shows Kevin Anderson as Author and no mention of Brian Herbert...


How can I correct this, because I don't want to update all missing data...

Hello there ^^ (excuse me, it's my first message and I'm already complaining XD)
I have downloaded the calibre file for Mac and impossible to open it (it says that the image disk is corrupted or broken). Can someone help me ?

@sweetpea

If you're importing te prc flies from a directory that contains OPF files, the metadata in the OPF files may take precedence. Also some PRC files have missing metadata and there is no alternative to correcting them

@sweetpea

If you're importing te prc flies from a directory that contains OPF files, the metadata in the OPF files may take precedence. Also some PRC files have missing metadata and there is no alternative to correcting them

Nope, that directory only contains PRC files and all OPF files are the same (except the name of the files, naturally). I made them all myself, and it was all done with copy/paste and change some titles and file names...

where are these OPF files?

where are these OPF files?

I made two directories, one contains the HTML source (HTML + images + OPF file) files. The other the resulting PRC files. So, after I make the PRC file, I will move this resulting PRC to another directory:

so, it would be like this:

ebooks\HTML\[G - L]\Herbert, Brian\Legends of Dune\Herbert, Brian - [Legends of Dune 00] - Hunting Harkonnens.opf
ebooks\PRC\[G - L]\Herbert, Brian\Legends of Dune\Herbert, Brian - [Legends of Dune 00] - Hunting Harkonnens.prc

I pointed Calibre to the ebooks\PRC directory.

What does running the command

mobi-meta filename.prc

on the PRC files give you?

And how do I do that?

open up a command prompt (look in the start menu for it) and type

cd "c:\path\to\the\folder\with\the book in it"

then type

dir

to make sure you are in the correct folder

then type

mobi-meta "filename.mobi"

I'm new to ereaders and to this forum so forgive me if any requested information is discussed elsewhere. I'm trying to decide if I'd like an ebook reader and which to get, currently leaning towards the Sony PRS-700. However, I'd like to better understand how I'm going to generate the files that I want to read, how does Calibre work, is it a replacement for (or instead of) the Sony program (or Kindles).
Based on what I've read over the past 2 weeks, I'm not sure I'm interested in buying any eBooks because I don't want to be annoyed with the extra work associated with the DRM stuff. Sounds like I have to register the reader with the seller (Sony or Amazon, unless I buy an BeBook or other foreign device) who will then control what I can do with the device that I paid for.
I have many documents that I would like to read (and be portable). I am a scientist and so I have many PDF files - a quick test a the local Borders showed how the 700 could work with PDF files.

Question 1: Is there any way to tell from the properties of a PDF file whether the text is reflowed or an image? A PDF file I created from Wikipedia worked rather well, while PDF's that I copied from scientific journals (graphs and equations) didn't work as well.

Question 2: If I'm not going to need the Sony program (is there a conflict with Calibre), then to read a Word DOC file, can I just save it as an RTF file?

Question 3: Can I download the user manual for Calibre from somewhere so that I understand better what it's doing and how I will use it on my computer.

Question 4: Which computer (or all) should I use. I have a home desktop computer, family laptop computer and my main computer at work ( a laptop). When I travel for work (frequently at present) I'll have the work laptop with me. But, there is a firewall at work.

I was able to copy ePub files to an SD card and read load the book on the PRS-700 so that would be an effective way to read free books.

Question 5: I'm concerned that buying DRM books will make it more complicated for me to read all the other documents that I need access to. In that case, I may just use it to read free books and my technical documents and wait for the market to settle.

Question 6: I am also teaching myself Russian. I read somewhere that the LRF file structure can include font information. Can I read cyrillic text on the 700?

Sorry for so many questions, but the procedures for reading technical documents aren't usually discussed.

I have Calibre up and running beautifully.

I have books sorted by Author, A-Z

Within the author, however, I notice that the series numbers do not sort chronologically.

All of Agatha Christies books are together, but the series numbers are mixed up.

If I sort by series number, the authors are mixed up.

Is there a fix for this? Granted, its not earth shattering.........Thanks for any help.

search by series first, then by author

If sorting by series and then by author still leaves some of them out of order you need to check the Author Sort field in the metadata. This is actually the value sorted on when sorting the author column.

search by series first, then by author

That did it!! Thank you.

I used the Fetch News button to schedule automatic downloads of the recipes included in version 0.5. I've decided that I don't want some of the feeds anymore. How do I "unschedule" these automatic downloads?

In the fetch news dialog, look under subscriptions

If sorting by series and then by author still leaves some of them out of order you need to check the Author Sort field in the metadata. This is actually the value sorted on when sorting the author column.

Its amazing the 'little' things that will leave them out of order.

If some are listed as "last name, first name"
and some are listed as "last name, first name middle initial"
They won't sort.

Also, the 'series number' must be the same.

Some I had inadvertently transposed the number, but when I changed it they sorted perfectly.

new to calibre....How do I use it to create an online catalog of ebooks on my website? Step-by-step would be nice.... :)

Calibre was meant to run on your PC, not on a remote website (unless, of course, you have a dedicated server and can run all sort of apps on it). Calibre has a built-in http server for serving online catalogs.

For shared hosting, if you want something you can upload to your website, check out Calibre2Web (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33388) (currently Windows only) by itimpi. Instructions are in the zip file. You just upload the generated XML files along with a copy of your Calibre library to your webhost. It even presents you with a hierarchical/categorical view of your library ala-Stanza which is something currently missing from the built-in Calibre server.

Just remembered, ChrisZA made a very clear, easy to follow guide over here:
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=42023

I apologize if this has been asked before, I couldn't find it searching but the only search terms I could think of were pretty broad.

If I convert a file outside of Calibre, is there a way to add it to an existing Calibre record? For example, if I have a PDF and use either the Calibre command line tool or Mobi to convert it can I import the converted mobi file into Calibre without creating a second record with the same title?

I tried just copying the file into the same directory, but it wasn't recognized.

Use the edit metadata dialog to add a format to the book

Use the edit metadata dialog to add a format to the book

Thanks!

Yes - use the "Edit Metadata" option for the existing book entry. That dialog gives you the option to add new ebook files to that entry.

hi,

it's been a couple of days since i got calibre. everything is ok except sending the books to my device via the content server; i tried changing the port but it always ends up with an error message saying "port 8080 isn't free on 0.0.0.0" i'm not familiar with ports, what do you think the problem is?

hi,

it's been a couple of days since i got calibre. everything is ok except sending the books to my device via the content server; i tried changing the port but it always ends up with an error message saying "port 8080 isn't free on 0.0.0.0" i'm not familiar with ports, what do you think the problem is?

Someone else had this same problem recently. Port 8080 is either not available or blocked on your machine. Try port 8787.

BOb

nope, it doesn't work. and i also noticed that the "test server" button isn't active.

basically that message means something is either using the port calibre is trying to listen on or is blocking calibre from listening on the port (try disabling firewall/antivirus apps) temporarily to see if they are causing the problem.

ok, first i disabled both the antvirus and windows firewall, and rebooted; didn't work. then enabled them and made an exception to calibre in windows firewall, it still doesn't work. i feel like i'm missing something obvious here. i'll paste the log if it helps:

[08/Apr/2009:01:13:57] ENGINE Shutting down due to error in start listener:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "cherrypy\process\wspbus.pyo", line 184, in start
File "cherrypy\process\wspbus.pyo", line 147, in publish
File "cherrypy\_cpserver.pyo", line 90, in start
File "cherrypy\process\servers.pyo", line 53, in start
File "cherrypy\process\servers.pyo", line 251, in wait_for_free_port
IOError: Port 8787 not free on '0.0.0.0'

[08/Apr/2009:01:13:57] ENGINE Bus STOPPING
[08/Apr/2009:01:13:57] ENGINE HTTP Server cherrypy._cpwsgi_server.CPWSGIServer(('0.0.0.0', 8787)) already shut down
[08/Apr/2009:01:13:57] ENGINE Stopped thread '_TimeoutMonitor'.
[08/Apr/2009:01:13:57] ENGINE Bus STOPPED
[08/Apr/2009:01:13:57] ENGINE Bus EXITING
[08/Apr/2009:01:13:57] ENGINE Bus EXITED
[08/Apr/2009:01:16:19] ENGINE Bus STOPPING
[08/Apr/2009:01:16:19] ENGINE HTTP Server cherrypy._cpwsgi_server.CPWSGIServer(('0.0.0.0', 8787)) already shut down
[08/Apr/2009:01:16:19] ENGINE No thread running for _TimeoutMonitor.
[08/Apr/2009:01:16:19] ENGINE Bus STOPPED
[08/Apr/2009:01:16:19] ENGINE Bus EXITING
[08/Apr/2009:01:16:19] ENGINE Bus EXITED

Not really all that log says is that calibre is unable to listen on port 8787, unfortunately, I'm no windows networking guru, so I don't really know how to query the system to figure out what is causing the block

netstat -a -b
shows all ports and processes which opened them.

i guess there's something wrong with my computer which needs formatting. sorry for taking up your time and thank you all for your advices and help.

Encountered error message when view the fetched news feed:

"(10061, 'No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it')"

This is shown for all news feed, including the built-in ones.

The downloading process itself does not show any error message. But all the file sizes are 0. When trying to view it, saw this message in the file.

I am behind a proxy, guess that could be the reason.

Any idea how to fix this?

BTW, I was able to retrieve news feed successfully with the mobipocket reader, on the same machine.

try setting the HTTP_PROXY environment variable to the settings for your proxy

try setting the HTPP_PROXY environment variable to the settings for your proxy

Cool, it works perfectly after setting the variable.

Great work kovid!

PS. the variable is HTTP_PROXY, in form of domain_name:port_number

Have some problem of reading Chinese news feed.

I have applied the unicode font hack as mentioned in

http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20644

I am reading a news feed from a Chinese news paper

http://realtime.zaobao.com/news.xml

When I choose the LRF as output format, I am able to view the Chinese characters correctly on PRS-505. Only thing is that the titles and links font size is too big. (Same behavior when viewed with calibre internal viewer)

When I choose the EPUB as output format, the calibre internal viewer can view it correctly and the font size is fine.
However, the PRS-505 can not view it properly. All Chinese characters are replaced with '?', and the reader reboots after turning a few pages.

Any idea?

That is a known feature of epub format on sony reader. Sony reader uses different fonts for displaying epub files than LRF files. You need to set epub files to use LRF fonts.

To do that in news recipe add this line to it:


extra_css = '@font-face @font-face {font-family: "serif1";src:url(res:///opt/sony/ebook/FONT/tt0011m_.ttf)} body{font-family: serif1, serif} .article_description{font-family: serif1, serif} p{font-family: serif1, serif}'

Hmm..i am new. Where can i get a dictionary?

That is a known feature of epub format on sony reader. Sony reader uses different fonts for displaying epub files than LRF files. You need to set epub files to use LRF fonts.

To do that in news recipe add this line to it:


extra_css = '@font-face @font-face {font-family: "serif1";src:url(res:///opt/sony/ebook/FONT/tt0011m_.ttf)} body{font-family: serif1, serif} .article_description{font-family: serif1, serif} p{font-family: serif1, serif}'



There are some difference now. The main menu page still remains '?', while the section menu page have garbage characters. Jumping to the article page will reboot the device.

Looks like calibre did not do GB2312 to UTF8 conversion.

Is there a complete reference manual of the recipe syntax and commands?

Looks like calibre did not do GB2312 to UTF8 conversion.


Calibre does not detect always correctly the native encoding. It is better to supply it manually. Use encoding parameter in your recipe for this.


encoding = 'gb2312'


See here the list of valid encoding names in python
http://docs.python.org/library/codecs.html


Is there a complete reference manual of the recipe syntax and commands?

Of course look here http://calibre.kovidgoyal.net/user_manual/news.html

After I run the feed2disk, which commands do I need to run for mobi book?

I tried oeb2mombi I gives this exception:

"
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "writer.py", line 634, in <module>
File "writer.py", line 630, in main
File "writer.py", line 601, in oeb2mobi
File "calibre\ebooks\oeb\base.pyo", line 1067, in __init__
File "calibre\ebooks\oeb\base.pyo", line 1535, in _all_from_opf
File "calibre\ebooks\oeb\base.pyo", line 1268, in _spine_from_opf
calibre.ebooks.oeb.base.OEBError: Spine is empty
"

html2epub worked fine for the same html tree.

Another problem is: the epub seems does not contain the pictures.

This seems due to the fact that I ran the feed2disk with -o option.

That caused the image URL to be created wrongly:

The correct one should be:
file:///C:/ebook/zaobao/feed_12/article_0/images/img1.jpg.jpg

Instead, feed2disk used this wrong one:

file:///C:/ebook/zaobao/feed_12/article_0/zaobao/feed_12/article_0/images/img1.jpg.jpg

looks like a bug

Run feeds2mobi or any2mobi

yes that works, Thank you!

I love Calibre and it emails to my kindle. But the format is listed as EPUB, MOBI. I didn't enter EPUB, and can't find it entered anywhere else. Can you tell me why that is?

If I leave Calibre running, and it downloads news, how can I set it to automatically convert and email.

Thanks for all you do. Debra

you can double click on the formats list to change it. If you leave calibre running it will automatically email downloaded news to you.

you can double click on the formats list to change it. If you leave calibre running it will automatically email downloaded news to you.

How does it know to convert it first?

Set your output format to MOBI (next to the red heart) and th enews will be downloaded in MOBI format

Have some problem of reading Chinese news feed.

I have applied the unicode font hack as mentioned in

http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20644

I am reading a news feed from a Chinese news paper

http://realtime.zaobao.com/news.xml

When I choose the LRF as output format, I am able to view the Chinese characters correctly on PRS-505. Only thing is that the titles and links font size is too big. (Same behavior when viewed with calibre internal viewer)

When I choose the EPUB as output format, the calibre internal viewer can view it correctly and the font size is fine.
However, the PRS-505 can not view it properly. All Chinese characters are replaced with '?', and the reader reboots after turning a few pages.

Any idea?
Edit the CSS of the ePub to add in the Chinese font. Then you should be able to read it fine. See http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=36361

That is a known feature of epub format on sony reader. Sony reader uses different fonts for displaying epub files than LRF files. You need to set epub files to use LRF fonts.

To do that in news recipe add this line to it:


extra_css = '@font-face @font-face {font-family: "serif1";src:url(res:///opt/sony/ebook/FONT/tt0011m_.ttf)} body{font-family: serif1, serif} .article_description{font-family: serif1, serif} p{font-family: serif1, serif}'

And you can also ass in the CSS code and install the Times New Roman italic and bold fonts as well to give true italics and true bold.

I recently installed Calibre and it looks quite useful. I have over 800 eBooks mostly in Mobipocket format. As expected several hundred of these did not have metadata which was picked up by Calibre. I would like to make use of the "metadata from filename" option but I have my eBooks named in 2 different ways.

NotSeries: Genre_Author_Title
Series: Genre_Author_SeriesName#_Title

for NotSeries this works: (?P<tags>.+)_(?P<author>[^_]+)_(?P<title>.+)

I'm not sure how to add in the series information so that it will continue to work for both title types. Any suggestions are welcome!

This is my first update to calibre so I just wanted to verify the process. Are the steps below correct?

1) Close all calibre windows.
2) Right click on the calibre system tray icon and choose Quit.
3) Remove calibre using Add/Remove Programs (or the Start Menu option, Uninstall calibre).
4) Once process ends, find and run the updated calibre installation file.


Lastly a couple of questions:

Will the library metadata be retained., or must it be re-entered when updating?
Can the library path be changed without re-entering the books or metadata? (Assume books are moved to a completely different hard drive and file structure: C:\Books\<author>\<title>.<ext> to G:\Library\Books\<author>\<title>.<ext>.)
Is there any way to group book genre files seperately? Adding a Fiction, Manuals, News or equivalent folder between ...\Books\<author>\ in my example above?
Similiarly, can authors be grouped alphabetically within a genre? (I've noticed with so many authors my system is slowing down a bit.)


Thanks in advance for the answers. :)

yes, yes, yes, not yet, not yet

1) Close all calibre windows.
2) Right click on the calibre system tray icon and choose Quit.
3) Remove calibre using Add/Remove Programs (or the Start Menu option, Uninstall calibre).
4) Once process ends, find and run the updated calibre installation file.


Sure. You don't have to uninstall the current version.


Will the library metadata be retained., or must it be re-entered when updating?


Yes.

Can the library path be changed without re-entering the books or metadata? (Assume books are moved to a completely different hard drive and file structure: C:\Books\<author>\<title>.<ext> to G:\Library\Books\<author>\<title>.<ext>.)


Yes.

Is there any way to group book genre files seperately? Adding a Fiction, Manuals, News or equivalent folder between ...\Books\<author>\ in my example above?


Yes, you can group books by genre, however it in no way affects the way they are stored in your hard drive.

Similiarly, can authors be grouped alphabetically within a genre? (I've noticed with so many authors my system is slowing down a bit.)


You can select a single genre and sort by author.

BOb

- You can combine steps 1) and 2) by doing CTRL-Q from the main Calibre Window.
- Step 3) is unecessary - simply install the new Calibre release over the old one.

Thanks for the answers. I did check the User Manual and the FAQ and found nothing about installing or updating that would answer those questions.

Kovidgoyal,
I noticed you said "not yet" for the hard drive structure (genre and/or alphabetical folder grouping) questions. Does this mean these things are on your "to do list"?

I'm asking because at the moment I'm looking to generate a fairly large path/tree structure, probably like this:
<Drive>:\eLibrary\<Subject>\<Genre>\<Alphanumeric>\<Author>\<Filename. ext>

The eLibrary is meant to be long-term data storage for multiple sets of data. Besides text-based data (fiction, RPGs, manuals, poetry, et al), I'm also going to include manga, music, images, movies, etc. I would prefer to use one structure through out. However, as I stated before, I have noticed that Windows can bog down when dealing with >500 children (folders or files) in a parent.

By using the path structure I outlined above, I'm hoping to avoid this problem. Each finer sort helps to keep the number of sub-folders within an acceptable response time. It might be better for me to consider a file server and/or NAS, but I'm just not that knownledgeable on networks... yet.

I'll have to go read another ebook. :bookworm:

yeah, it's on my todo list, but 500 is really riduculous. Windows really bogs down with only 500 entries in a node?

Windows really bogs down with only 500 entries in a node?
It depends. But yes, it can happen.

It depends. But yes, it can happen.

is this with ntfs only or fat32 as well?

I'm using WinXP SP3 with an AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual Core processor 4200+ (2.21 Ghz) and 2Gb RAM on SATA 1 hard drive with a NTFS partition.

Windows Explorer is the most robust file management software to use as far as dealing with large numbers of children and system response time. Occasionally when issuing a File Open/Save command, response time will slow down. Other software is not as robust or can CTD from too many nodes.

I must admit I have a humongous library of material I'm storing. When I built this computer system I never imaging I would need so much data storage. But that was also before I was actively collecting some of this stuff.

(BTW, having nothing to do with calibre, I'm looking for any software that allows mass or batch file property changes. I need to add metadata [keywords, tags, authors, artists, dates, etc] to some of the non-book, non-music collections. PM me if you know of anything.)

Great program Kovid!

I was wondering, I have a jetBook that supports a hierarchical file structure in the form of AuthorLast, AuthorFirst>Title>FileName.Format

Exactly like Calibre saves files to disk. This format provides the best menu experience, and the only improvement I can think of would be to have a top level folder for genre, but since I tend to confine my reading to one or two genre it doesn’t matter to me.

The question I have is when I save to the removable drive that my jetBook presents to my Vista OS, it saves all of the formats that I have in the library, in my case ePub and PRC. Then I have to open each author folder and delete the unwanted file format. Also since the jetBook only supports USB 1.1, the time necessary to save several hundred books becomes significant, and if I have to save multiple copies it becomes even more unacceptable. Is there a way to specify to only save one format?

Thanks in advance!

There is a save single format option. Also, the 0.6 release of calibre should create a folder structure automatically when sending files to the jetbook via the send to device button.

Regarding the Windows capability to handle multiple files per folder.

I haven't done testing in recent windows applications -- I think my work was way back in win 2000. However, at the time the problems was in Windows ability to do string math. Basically, file names were kept as characters and all the files in a directory were stored by the OS as one long string. As the size of the string became too large, file operations would really slow down. One thing to allow more files was to use shorter file names since this would shorten the total string size.

Also, I'm not sure of my recollection, but I believe the entire path was stored with each file name in the directory. Therefore, anything to make the path shorter (/n/f/r instead of /name/french/revolution) would speed things up considerably.

As I said, I'm not sure if these limitations still exist, but if you are seeing a slow down with the number of nodes then this is something that could be checked.

Michael

Interesting, thanks.

emellaich,

Thanks for the reminder. You are correct :thumbsup:. There does not appear to be any changes for later versions of Windows.

From Wikipedia: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filename#Comparison_of_file_name_limitations)
Although NTFS allows each path component (directory or filename) to be 255 characters long and paths up to about 32767 characters long, the Windows kernel only supports paths up to 259 characters long

Did a search but couldn't find anything, but I am sure the answer is here somewhere.

Let's say I import 50 books via calibre. I know that the files are also copied to the new folder that I specified in the setup. Now let's say I rename a few books, cleaning up tagging errors, etc. Where are the updated files that have been updated? The reason I ask is because I had to switch computers recently, and I took all of my updated books from the output folder after adding it to calibre, but none of the updated information was in the files, only the original names, authors, etc.

Where do I look for the files with the corrected information? I think that I looked in both the original and the destination folders but neither of them had the updated names.

The files that you imported are (as you discovered) unchanged. The updates are held in the Calibre metadata database.

If you want the information in the files to be updated then you export them (Save to Disk) from Calibre. This information would also be updated as part of a "Send to Device" command or if you did a conversion.

Regular Expressions help!

All of my eBooks are 'Last Name, First Name - Title' (or 'Last Name, First Name - Series ## - Title').

My current regex is:
(?P<author>((?!\s-\s).)*)\s- (?P<title>.*)

This gives me:
Author = 'Last Name, First Name'
Title = 'Title' or 'Series ## - Title'

Title is what I want. Author is backwards. Is there any way to make <author> be something like <author-sort> or <author-last>,<author-first>. I know nothing of python or regex and everything I've done was with searching around mobileread and guess&check so feel free to talk to talk down to me. :)

Also, why isn't there a nice list of popular regex on the Calibre site? I would think that would be very FAQ-ish.

I'm afraid there's no way to get the author the way you want. But you can easily adjust the regex to work for files with and without the series, someone with more time than me will hopefully come and help you. As for making a FAQ, if you compile a list of regexs, I'll be happy to add them to the FAQ.

Thanks for replying.

And I don't want Calibre to remove the series name from the title since I read nearly all of my eBooks on my Kindle and having the series name in the title help keep my series together.

Thanks for replying.

And I don't want Calibre to remove the series name from the title since I read nearly all of my eBooks on my Kindle and having the series name in the title help keep my series together.

Yeah that my main problem with Calibre... All my tittles had the Series Info and Vol # in the file name. (Last, First - Series # - Tittle.txt)

But if I want to read the book on another computer (or device) that does not have Calibre installed, Since Clibre has renamed the file, all that data is lost.

Thanks for the great program!! (already made my contribution...)

I'm new to Calibre, so am probably missing something obvious but:

I converted a dozen books from a variety of formats to epub, and they're all getting a 'cover' page showing the title of the book, the date of the conversion, and "Produced by calibre 0.6.1", whether the book has a 'real' cover image or not. If it has a real cover image, then that's "page 2".

I don't mind having the "Produced by calibre" information in the file at some point, but I really don't want it to be the first page that shows when I open the book. Is there some way to change this?

Thanks!

Choose an actual cover and it will replace the default cover

I can't wait to try the new version - I am getting a new computer and will download it there. Here is my question:

It looks so neat, I would like to put all my books in Calibre. Can I upload them from my kindle?

Not directly. You have to use the save to disk button to save the books from the kindle to your hard disk and them import them from your hard disk to calibre

Is there any way to disable generation of a table of contents when converting with calibre?

what format are you converting to and from?

what format are you converting to and from?

rtf to lrf. I could easily convert the rtf to html but that sometimes leaves large gaps between paragraphs in the lrf.

I know I can remove any table of contents in the document but calibre sometimes gets stuck when it tries to autogenerate a TOC.

This is the code I see in the job detail tab:

Converting RTF to XML...
Parsing XML...
Converting XML to HTML...
Parsing all content...
Parsing index.xhtml ...
Referenced file 'styles.css' not in manifest
Parsing styles.css ...
Generating default TOC from spine...
Merging user specified metadata...
Detecting structure...
Auto generated TOC with 0 entries.

And it keeps converting for ages without any progress.

That means the TOC generation has completed. So that's not where it stops. open a ticket and attach one of these rtf files

That means the TOC generation has completed. So that's not where it stops. open a ticket and attach one of these rtf files

Done. There appears to be some problems converting some rtf files to lrf.

rtf to lrf. I could easily convert the rtf to html but that sometimes leaves large gaps between paragraphs in the lrf.

I got the same problem.
Disappeared when asking MS Word to save rtf as "html, filtered".

I got the same problem.
Disappeared when asking MS Word to save rtf as "html, filtered".

I'll try that. I tried renaming the file to txt but the formatting is destroyed.

Not directly. You have to use the save to disk button to save the books from the kindle to your hard disk and them import them from your hard disk to calibre

Ok, thanks!:thanks:

Hello!

I installed Calibre on my laptop and Stanza on my iPhone. I start the Server (in Calibre), I connect the iPhone with my laptop - but calibre does not detect my iPhone. And when I try to send something to the Reader, it says "no device connected" ...

What's my fault?

I installed Calibre on my laptop and Stanza on my iPhone. I start the Server (in Calibre), I connect the iPhone with my laptop - but calibre does not detect my iPhone. And when I try to send something to the Reader, it says "no device connected" ...

You access the Calibre content server from Stanza iPhone and not the other way around. First, add a firewall exception for Calibre in case you have one running. Then, on the iPhone, start Stanza and go to Shared Books. Your laptop should show up. Note only files in ePUB format will be shown in the library.

You access the Calibre content server from Stanza iPhone and not the other way around. First, add a firewall exception for Calibre in case you have one running. Then, on the iPhone, start Stanza and go to Shared Books. Your laptop should show up. Note only files in ePUB format will be shown in the library.

I know that. I tried it. It does not work. In Stanza (on the iPhone), the message is: network unreachable - ALTHOUGH the network to my PC shows up as connected in the Wi-Fi settings of my iPhone:blink:

So, this seems not to be a problem of calibre/stanzw, but one of connecting my iPhone to my PC ... but as I said: the PC-WiFi-network shows up in the WiFi-settings list of the iPhone. I select it. But then I can neither share my books nor, e.g., open a webpage in safari ...

anyone got an idea?!?

Wild guess: Firewall problem?

lol - no. But I found out, that connecting iPhones to home-networks seems to be a common problem

http://www.everythingicafe.com/forum/wifi/iphone-3g-software-3-0-not-connecting-to-bt-home-hub-50924.html

http://www.everythingicafe.com/forum/wifi/iphone-detects-wifi-network-but-doesnt-connect-online-with-it-11857.html

http://www.everythingicafe.com/forum/wifi/iphone-not-connecting-to-wi-fi-already-read-the-other-threads-6641.html

....

why old versions of calibre are not available? the current version (0.6.4) is broken (it does not recognize my PRS-505) and I don't have any previous versions to download :(

Ok looks like a good programme, But when I connect my Bebook Calibre just sits there and doesn't detect my Bebook, I've selected Endless Ideas on the wizard and windows detects my device when I press ok to connect on it and brings up my ebook readers directory within windows but nothing on Calibre :blink: I've running Vista 64, Is Calibre compatible with Vista 64 ? Or I'm I doing something wrong ?
Thanks.

With you BeBook connected post the output of runnnig

calibre-debug -g

in a command prompt

Thanks for the reply kovidgoyal, I've just installed 6.5 and it's detected my bebook, I'm off to play about with Calibre:D

I use Calibre on my Mac together with the Sony PRS-505 and it works great, thank you Kovid.

The only problem for me is that I can not convert .doc-files (Word documents) to LRF. I have tried to save the .doc file to .rtf within Word and then convert the rtf-file to LRF but that does not work either. Is Calibre going to be able to convert doc-files in the future?

The best way to convert doc files is to save them as HTML

So I've had a play about with Calibre and it doesn't seem to be doing what I ask it to do :( , I'll explain, When I select my book or books to upload into my bebook, Calibre asks me if I can to auto convert my books before uploading to my device, I choose no because they are already in the format that I want .RTF, When I click no Calibre has popup of uploading to device but does nothing i.e no upload :rolleyes:
If however I click yes and select say Mobi or other output in the prefs I get multiple auto convert box popups for one book :blink:
The hour class has multiple jobs on it with progress bars that don't err progress :( Or do so very very slowly:
http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/927/progressn.jpg

The other thing I've noticed is when I add my books to Calibre then go into my HD book folder where I told Calibre my books location is, There are two copies of each book one in a folder with the calibre library number in brackets and my original file ? Is there an option to stop this ?
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/7682/multifiles.jpg

Metadata, I've noticed that if the book is a trilogy and starts with the series name (The Voyage Of The Jerle Shannara Ilse Witch) I get no matches found message, Yet if I go to the isbndb.com site and paste the book name in a get multiple book options to pick from.
Thank you in advance.

When I select my book or books to upload into my bebook, Calibre asks me if I can to auto convert my books before uploading to my device, I choose no because they are already in the format that I want .RTF, When I click no Calibre has popup of uploading to device but does nothing i.e no upload :rolleyes:


Apparently .rtf is not one of the formats that the BeBook driver supports adding. So, calibre thinks you have no valid format to put on the device. I think in the .6.0 version there is a way to specify what formats you want to put on the device and the priority order. Take a look at the config section.

The other thing I've noticed is when I add my books to Calibre then go into my HD book folder where I told Calibre my books location is, There are two copies of each book one in a folder with the calibre library number in brackets and my original file ? Is there an option to stop this ?


No.. when you "add" a book to calibre it is imported into the calibre database (file system). Your original book is not touched at all. There is currently no way to tell it to "link" to the file rather than manage it. Unless this is a new feature in .6 that I am not aware of. I have to admit I haven't been following the new versions as much since the version I have does what I need it to. I do plan to upgrade eventually though.

BOb

Thanks for the reply bob, But what do you mean Bebook doesn't support .rtf adding all my current ebooks are .rtf as they seem the most stable on the bebook fw, And that shouldn't matter if I'm using Calibre to convert them prior to copying to my bebook surly.
So every time I want to add a book to Calibre I'm going to get a copy ? That's going to fill up the hard drive quickly !

Thanks for the reply bob, But what do you mean Bebook doesn't support .rtf adding all my current ebooks are .rtf as they seem the most stable on the bebook fw, And that shouldn't matter if I'm using Calibre to convert them prior to copying to my bebook surly.


I am not saying your BeBook doesn't support them but the BeBook "driver" in calibre. For every device that calibre supports via the "send to device" there is a "driver" program that knows how to detect, talk to, and place books on that specific device. Within that driver is a list where it tells calibre what ebook formats it supports and what priority to give them.

For example, for the Sony it might say, this device supports LRF, EPUB, RTF, TXT and prefers them in that order.


So every time I want to add a book to Calibre I'm going to get a copy ?


Yes.


That's going to fill up the hard drive quickly !

Of course, ebook files are pretty small when compared to hard drives these days. But you can d/l your books to a download folder. Add them all to calibre then delete them. TaDa one copy only.

BOb

Of course, ebook files are pretty small when compared to hard drives these days. But you can d/l your books to a download folder. Add them all to calibre then delete them. TaDa one copy only.
BOb

Ahh got ya I suppose support will get better for .rtf bebook in calibre's future releases:rolleyes:

Kinda takes the automated point out of calibre if I've go to go into my book folder and manually delete double files :chinscratch:

Ahh got ya I suppose support will get better for .rtf bebook in calibre's future releases:rolleyes:

Kinda takes the automated point out of calibre if I've go to go into my book folder and manually delete double files :chinscratch:

I know that Calibre has hooks where you can add stuff. I assume there is an "after add book" hook where you could create a script that deletes the original file.

Although, I am pretty this would never be on by default in calibre... Kovid doesn't want people complaining that calibre deletes there books.

BOb

Thanks for the reply bob, But what do you mean Bebook doesn't support .rtf adding all my current ebooks are .rtf as they seem the most stable on the bebook fw, And that shouldn't matter if I'm using Calibre to convert them prior to copying to my bebook surly.

What he is saying is that the calibre BeBook driver is not recognising that .rtf is a format supported by the BeBook. It sounds as though you should raise a ticket that .rtf should be allowed on the BeBook without conversion. If you are using the 0.6.x releases, have you checked to see if the right-click menu allows you to send a specific format including rtf.

So every time I want to add a book to Calibre I'm going to get a copy ? That's going to fill up the hard drive quickly !
Yes. This is deliberate design decision to leave the original alone. If you are happy for calibre to manage all your ebooks, then you can delete the original.

It sounds as though you have set Calibre to use the same library location as your current ebooks. This is bad practise as you are going to get calibre creating its own folder and file structures at that location mixed up with your own. It is better to treat the calibre library as a "black box" at its own dedicated location.

It sounds as though you have set Calibre to use the same library location as your current ebooks. This is bad practise as you are going to get calibre creating its own folder and file structures at that location mixed up with your own. It is better to treat the calibre library as a "black box" at its own dedicated location.

Totally agree... and this should be stressed during the initial use of calibre when it asks you to select a folder for your "library".

BOb

What he is saying is that the calibre BeBook driver is not recognising that .rtf is a format supported by the BeBook. It sounds as though you should raise a ticket that .rtf should be allowed on the BeBook without conversion. If you are using the 0.6.x releases, have you checked to see if the right-click menu allows you to send a specific format including rtf.

Yes. This is deliberate design decision to leave the original alone. If you are happy for calibre to manage all your ebooks, then you can delete the original.

It sounds as though you have set Calibre to use the same library location as your current ebooks. This is bad practise as you are going to get calibre creating its own folder and file structures at that location mixed up with your own. It is better to treat the calibre library as a "black box" at its own dedicated location.

Yes I get that you wouldn't want your book deleted or corrupted, And I'm still in the testing phase with calibre so I've copied some of book my files into the calibre book folder just in case they get deleted\corrupted :p

But if I select do not auto convert my .rtf files shouldn't calibre upload them as is ?.

The best way to convert doc files is to save them as HTML

Thanks, works great!
:thanks:

Hi,

I'm new to eBook Reader and recently got a PRS-700. Then I found out about Calibre, great & amazing app. I especially like the News Fetch features.

However:

1. I want to feed news from some Vietnamese site and all I got is garbage characters. Reading the FAQ, understand I will need to do some firmware/font hack in order to read Vietnamese properly. I did try searching the net and only found the instruction for PRS-505. Any idea where is the instruction for PRS-700?

2. I schedule a news fetch (English) once a day at midnight. But some of the time, in the mornal wake up, I found Calibre created many same items in the library. I any idea?

Much appreciated for the feedback.
Phongdt

Am I correct to using following sequence in converting cyrillic book from RTF format to EPUB format with Calibre:
1. convert RTF to HTM
2. customize in the Calibre program HTML to ZIP plugin to UTF-8
3. convert book in Calibre to EPUB

yes assuming your html files are actually utf-8

Hi. I've read the Calibre FAQ twice and all of this thread once without noticing the answers to these questions, so I may be asking new questions. I'm hoping that some kind and patient soul will help.

I've been reading ebooks for several years on my Palm, resulting in multiple copies of the same book in a variety of formats. I'm planning to use Calibre to help me organize these books. Also, borrowing a friend's 505 firmly demonstrated the importance of correct metadata when putting books on a reader. My problem is that I'm holding out for the new 600 before I purchase my reader. I'm going on a series of long trips starting in mid-September and it's very likely that I'll have a day or two at most to load books before I go. I have time right now to load books into Calibre, but no reader to play with to make sure I get it right. Experience has taught me that a clean database is a thing of beauty while dirty data is a tedious nightmare, so I want to do it right the first time. Being on an 18 hour flight with no more books to read because they weren't loaded right would also be a bad thing. In no particular order, here are some questions.


When I do a backup, which files do I need to grab? I'm assuming everything in the Calibre folder and the Calibre library, but are there any other files that I need to worry about?
Do I understand correctly that the easiest way to move Calibre from one computer to the next is to save to disk?
If Calibre is currently on an external hard drive, will it throw a fit if it ends up with a different drive letter on a different computer, or is it OK with that?
Is there any way to merge different Calibre libraries. Right now, I'm confining myself to working on my laptop, but at some point I'm going to want to move this to my server computer.
I noticed that when I convert a book from input format to e-pub format, I end up with two copies of the book in the Calibre library, with one copy showing up in the list. I'm assuming that when I send that book to the device, the e-pub version will be the one to go?
What about books that are in non-reader compatible formats like Lit and Pdb. Do they get converted on the fly? Is it better to be converting now because it will take a long time? Did I mention that I'm not going to have a lot of time with the reader to get everything loaded properly?
What's the best way to manage series? I've accumulated quiet a few Star Trek books. They all have different authors, but I really want them to all be together, preferably on one SD card so they don't gum up the works too badly. Does Calibre have a gracefull way to handle that? I almost want to have two Calibre libraries-one for the fanfic and one for the normal stuff. Is this possible on the same computer?
If the answer to that last one was yes, how do I pull this off?
Am I correct in assuming that the Sony will gracefully handle the Series section and arrange those books under Category? How exactly does that work? I'm guessing that it's, say, Category, CS Lewis, Narnia, and then a list of books starting with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe?
Is there any way to track which books are on the reader and which are not? It's easy enough now, with 54 books in Calibre and no reader, but what happens when I have 500 in Calibre and 100 on the reader. Do I have to do side by side comparisons to see what's already there? Will the reader reject an identical book if I try to reload it? Do people use tags for this sort of thing so they can easily see what's on the reader. Will this become an area that I can sort by when a reader is attached, the way that I can by format and publisher now?


Have I asked too many questions now? :o Thanks to all of you who take a shot at any of these.

http://calibre.kovidgoyal.net/user_manual/faq.html#how-do-i-move-my-app-library-from-one-computer-to-another

the best way to merge is to save one library to disk and import it on the other computer.

calibre will automatically send the correct format and if it is not present convert on the fly.

Hi. I've read the Calibre FAQ twice and all of this thread once without noticing the answers to these questions, so I may be asking new questions. I'm hoping that some kind and patient soul will help.

When I do a backup, which files do I need to grab? I'm assuming everything in the Calibre folder and the Calibre library, but are there any other files that I need to worry about?

You'll need atleast to grab the Calibre library, including the metadata.db file! If you install the same version of Calibre on a new computer then you don't need the Calibre program files.

Do I understand correctly that the easiest way to move Calibre from one computer to the next is to save to disk?

IMHO, no. just copy the whole library part over to the new computer and point Calibre to that folder. Done


If Calibre is currently on an external hard drive, will it throw a fit if it ends up with a different drive letter on a different computer, or is it OK with that?

It won't find its metadata.db file and will create a new one. Just point Calibre to the new location by using the preference.


I noticed that when I convert a book from input format to e-pub format, I end up with two copies of the book in the Calibre library, with one copy showing up in the list. I'm assuming that when I send that book to the device, the e-pub version will be the one to go?

It looks like you're doing something wrong. I'll give an example how I do it:
Assume I have downloaded an epub to D:\Downloads\Test.lit I'll then start Calibre which will have its library located at D:\Calibre\Fiction, I'll then drag and drop the D:\Downloads\Test.lit into Calibre which will create the following folder structure:
D:\Calibre\Fiction\Unknown\Test(xx)\Test.lit
Notice that I'll have only one entry listed in Calibre!
Then I'll convert to epub without changing Author or Title. This will give my an additional file: D:\Calibre\Fiction\Unknown\Test(xx)\Test.epub. So now I have one book managed by Calibre with two formats and a THIRD original still in D:\Downloads.
Calibre will send the epub to your device if you haven't changed the default order of preference which you can do by going into Preferences -> Plugins -> Device Interface plugins -> sony 505. There you can select the order and which formats to send to your device.


What about books that are in non-reader compatible formats like Lit and Pdb. Do they get converted on the fly? Is it better to be converting now because it will take a long time? Did I mention that I'm not going to have a lot of time with the reader to get everything loaded properly?

Get converted on the fly to the preferred format and send over. Time to convert depends on size and format and your computer ofcourse. (simple Atom based pc versus quad core AMD/INTEL screamer PC makes a difference :) )


What's the best way to manage series? I've accumulated quiet a few Star Trek books. They all have different authors, but I really want them to all be together, preferably on one SD card so they don't gum up the works too badly. Does Calibre have a gracefull way to handle that? I almost want to have two Calibre libraries-one for the fanfic and one for the normal stuff. Is
this possible on the same computer?

Tagging as the end up as Collections on your Sony, Multiple tags are allowed. Calibre allows you to send to SD card instead of internal memory.
For the multiple library thing. That is possible when using a .cmd file (windows) or .sh file (Linux) which sets a couple of environment variables and then starts Calibre. Search the forums since I found it there too. If needed I can attach my version which I use on our network to let people have access to different libraries using Calibre.


Am I correct in assuming that the Sony will gracefully handle the Series section and arrange those books under Category? How exactly does that work? I'm guessing that it's, say, Category, CS Lewis, Narnia, and then a list of books starting with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe?

No, corect me if I'm wrong. I use Tags within Calibre which become Collections. A book can have more then one Tag and it will be visible in more than one Collection.


Is there any way to track which books are on the reader and which are not? It's easy enough now, with 54 books in Calibre and no reader, but what happens when I have 500 in Calibre and 100 on the reader. Do I have to do side by side comparisons to see what's already there? Will the reader reject an identical book if I try to reload it? Do people use tags for this sort of thing so they can easily see what's on the reader. Will this become an area that I can sort by when a reader is attached, the way that I can by format and publisher now?

There is no way, as far as I know, to track which books are uploaded and which aren't. The reader will accept the book the second time without warning and atleast reset its 'Continue reading at' setting, maybe even bookmarks etc.


Have I asked too many questions now? :o Thanks to all of you who take a shot at any of these.
Those are a lot of questions and I wouldn't have (try) to answer them all, in more or less detail, if it wasn't for the fact that you don't have access to a reader now to check some of the asked things. Most of it is try it, know it, remember it.

Good luck with your cataloging/converting and ofcourse happy reading later on.

Regards,

Joop

Tagging as the end up as Collections on your Sony, Multiple tags are allowed. Calibre allows you to send to SD card instead of internal memory.
For the multiple library thing. That is possible when using a .cmd file (windows) or .sh file (Linux) which sets a couple of environment variables and then starts Calibre. Search the forums since I found it there too. If needed I can attach my version which I use on our network to let people have access to different libraries using Calibre.


No, corect me if I'm wrong. I use Tags within Calibre which become Collections. A book can have more then one Tag and it will be visible in more than one Collection.


Regards,

Joop

Joop,

Thank you for taking the time to answer some of my questions.

I'm still a little confused about how to organize books in a series. It's interesting that tags allow a book to show up in more than one collection and gives me new ideas, but what about the Series column. Will it also generate collections? And if it does, will the books in that collection be organized according to series order? My problem is that I often read a series in order, but I don't always remember which book comes next. Since 01- First Book title doesn't work well on the Reader, I'm looking for other ideas.

Off to search the forums now for how to maintain more than one library at a time.

:thanks:

Joop,

My problem is that I often read a series in order, but I don't always remember which book comes next. Since 01- First Book title doesn't work well on the Reader, I'm looking for other ideas.

:thanks:

This is how I organize series:

In the Title, I put author last name - series name - number in series - title in series. It appears in the collections under the author name, so it is easy to see the various series under each author. Since I do not look up books by title alone, this organization works for me.

Joop,

I'm still a little confused about how to organize books in a series. It's interesting that tags allow a book to show up in more than one collection and gives me new ideas, but what about the Series column. Will it also generate collections? And if it does, will the books in that collection be organized according to series order? My problem is that I often read a series in order, but I don't always remember which book comes next. Since 01- First Book title doesn't work well on the Reader, I'm looking for other ideas.

Off to search the forums now for how to maintain more than one library at a time.

:thanks:

I think I noticed once that a series ends up on my reader in the order I add it to Calibre.
One thing I would like to see from Calibre is the possibility to add the series number to the title which would solve the problem.

Joop

Series creates a collection and books in taht collection are ordered by series index (provided you send all the books int he series to the device at once).

There is no mention of the upward pointing arrow to Eject Device next to the Sony Reader Icon in the manual! Might want to include that. With an earlier version of calibre I had multiple instances of the main reader memory and the storage card left in /Media. With the latest version 0.6.10 that seems fixed!

Can Calibre be set so it will not detect Sony Reader?

Disable the driver in Preferences->Plugins

Hello,

First, I have to said that I like very much calibre!

I have a question :

Can I import ALL news of a website with rss? For example, the website http://carfree.free.fr/ have 1639 news on its database. Can I download them all with calibre to read them on my cybook? Actualy I can catch maximum 20 of them.

Thank you very much for your answer.

Laurent

The maximum number of news is set in the recipe. You can probably edit it and change that.

I can't have more than 10 news with this code :

class AdvancedUserRecipe1253297273(BasicNewsRecipe):
title = u'CarFree France'
oldest_article = 5000
max_articles_per_feed = 3000

feeds = [(u'CarFree France', u'http://feeds.feedburner.com/CarfreeFrance')]

That feed contains only 10 items

I can't have more than 10 news with this code :

That may be all that is in the feed.

BOb

Thank for your response.

Do you know if it's possible to create a feed who contains more than 10 item even if I'm not the webmaster?

Thank for your response.

Do you know if it's possible to create a feed who contains more than 10 item even if I'm not the webmaster?

Nope. But, sometimes there is an archive feed.

BOb

Sorry if this is a redundant question and if this is the wrong area to post this. Buying my PRS505 tomorrow. Here is the question. I have read about Calibre but I don't understand if it is meant to replace the Sony software or can both be used? I know with the Sony software I can download a book I purchase from the Sony/Google book store. Can I also do the same with Calibre along with everything else it does of course.

Also will Calibre run under Win 7 64 bit.

Thanks.

Oldgoat

I know with the Sony software I can download a book I purchase from the Sony/Google book store. Can I also do the same with Calibre along with everything else it does of course.


No. Calibre doesn't interface with any eBooks stores.

Yes, it will run as a 32-bit app on Win7 64-bit.

BOb

I have read about Calibre but I don't understand if it is meant to replace the Sony software or can both be used?

I ran into some trouble with the Sony software crashing if books were added manually to the reader, and even the reader itself crashing (I have a PRS-600) if you fiddle with it. Calibre seems to adhere pretty well to the library standards used by Sony so they probably can be used complementary, but really, I found Sony's software so incredibly irritating and useless that I've switched entirely to Calibre. Being european, Sony did not do much more than add a link to a webshop for purchases, so no big loss there either.

Calibre and Sony's eLibrary software are incompatible: eLibrary won't work after you've used Calibre. See this FAQ (http://calibre.kovidgoyal.net/user_manual/faq.html#i-used-app-to-transfer-some-books-to-my-reader-and-now-the-sony-software-hangs-every-time-i-connect-the-reader) from the calibre website.

The whole point of getting a Sony prs-600 for me was the freedom from DRM and corporate stores. Calibre just expands that freedom.

Calibre and Sony's eLibrary software are incompatible: eLibrary won't work after you've used Calibre. See this FAQ (http://calibre.kovidgoyal.net/user_manual/faq.html#i-used-app-to-transfer-some-books-to-my-reader-and-now-the-sony-software-hangs-every-time-i-connect-the-reader) from the calibre website.


Only if you use it to transfer books to the Sony. I just use Calibre as an eBook librarian, and for doing format conversions, and that usage is perfectly "compatible" with the Sony eBook Library software.

Calibre and Sony's eLibrary software are incompatible: eLibrary won't work after you've used Calibre.

They're fine to use as long as you only use one or the other each time the Reader is connected.

You're reading too much into that FAQ answer, as it's explaining how to recover if you've messed up by trying to use both at the same time/during the same session. If you remember to only use one or the other but not both each time it's connected, there's no problem.

The underlying reason is that the Reader uses a single file to keep track of 'meta' information, such as collections, and this is written to by both Calibre & the Sony software when either updates something on the Reader. The file will be saved when the Reader is (safely) unmounted, so using one or the other is safe if there's a disconnection between them, but if you're not the type to remember this, then the simple answer is to stick to one or the other for the transfer and just export/import from/to the other via the PC's hard disk.

I've logged on to the Calibre home page several times today and can't seem to get the program to download for Windows.

Any suggestions?

whitney, try http://sourceforge.net/projects/calibre/files/0.6.17/calibre-0.6.17.msi/download

I also had problems downloading from https://dev.mobileread.com/dist/kovid/calibre/calibre-0.6.17.msi.

I also had problems downloading from https://dev.mobileread.com/dist/kovid/calibre/calibre-0.6.17.msi.

It might have had something to do with our load balancer not properly redirecting the download at that time, or a connectivity issue. It seems to be working again; feel free to contact me directly should there be a problem again. :cool:

I've searched FAQs and skimmed this thread -- please forgive me if I've overlooked the answer to what seems a pretty basic question: Can I transfer books from my eBookLibrary and Digital Editions library to my Calibre library? I'd like to keep everything in Calibre if it's possible. Thanks. Neil

They're fine to use as long as you only use one or the other each time the Reader is connected.

Thanks for the explanation. This is good to know. And I'm glad they're not *completely* incompatible. Although I have to say having worked with both for about a month now, Calibre is the superior tool.

Can I transfer books from my eBookLibrary and Digital Editions library to my Calibre library? I'd like to keep everything in Calibre if it's possible.

The short answer: yes. I've done it. Someone more knowledgeable can jump in here, but my observation is that files that you download from the net using eBookLibrary are stored in a specific directory (on Windows: My Documents\My Books\eBook Library and "My Digital Editions"; on my Mac: ~/Documents/My Books/eBook Library/). But it only stores the location of ebooks you import into it from your hard disk. It apparently does not make a copy of those files. When you move, rename or delete those files, eBookLibrary complains it can't find them anymore. You simply add those files in Calibre, which does make a copy of the files.

Thanks James Tiberius: I'll take a look now and see if I can work it out. Very best. Neil

I've not found here the usual "Requested features" thread so I'm posting my suggestion / request here (feel free to point me to the right place for next time though). I've been using Calibre a lot in past few days mainly to load my new PRS-505 with some books I've aquired in the past and so far my only quible with it is that you need to use the mouse to double click on Author / Title / Tags fields to amend them which is OK for a few books here and there but for a "bulk" renaming and adding of authors and tags it's a bit tedious as it's much faster to work with keyboard only.

Would you consider an option to add the Edit option for those fields to the Context menu (together with View / Save / Remove) or is there any option to assign this to a shortcut keys? Also it would be nice to be able to "edit" those fields (e.g. paste) in multiply selected books - very usefull mainly for adding Authors to series of books or Tags etc.

Thank you.

Click the arrow next to the edit meta information button

Click the arrow next to the edit meta information button

Oh - thanks! I must have bee REALLY blind to NOT see that :smack:

So now just to be able to do edits WITHOUT mouse and I'll be a happy bunny ;)

use the arrow keys to navigate and press the space bar to type

use the arrow keys to navigate and press the space bar to type

You sir made my day today - Thank you again. :2thumbsup

use the arrow keys to navigate and press the space bar to type

OK - I've just found one MAJOR problem with the space bar option - it will ERASE all the text in that box I'm trying to edit which is NOT always required - in the contrary most of the times I'm just EDITING already present text in there :( Any way in current version to open the edit function via keyboard and keep the original text there so it could be only amended (like Shift Space or something similar)? Or maybe the option in the setting to choose if the box should be cleared or not when using the space bar?

Also - what about amending the Tooltip when you with the mouse at the editable box to mention apart of the "Double click to edit" to also say "or Space bar to enter text"?

Press ctrl+Z after pressing spacebar

Press ctrl+Z after pressing spacebar

I SWEAR I've tried that as a first thing when text was deleted and it didn't work for me and now it does - well wonky fingers I guess - you seem to have an answer for everything (so far) ;)

Unfortunatelly - I've just found out that you can't bulk edit on device or mem card directly - only in Library itself. And yes - do do it a "wrong" way around but I prefer to simply load some books directly to the device or mem card and then just edit titles or tags.

EDIT:
Also found out that despite being able to move columns in the Library view (to have let's say Tags next to Title for an easy "keyboard only" editing this will NOT affect the columns order in the device / mem card views :( Oh well - one can't have everything ;)

Also found out that despite being able to move columns in the Library view (to have let's say Tags next to Title for an easy "keyboard only" editing this will NOT affect the columns order in the device / mem card views :( Oh well - one can't have everything ;)[/QUOTE]

Really? How? - no doubt I'm being very stupid..

Thanks for Calibre! It is superb. I afraid am stuck reading on the laptop until I get my eBook device. I have a couple of questions I didn't see addressed in this FAQ.

Is there a way to launch an eBook directly to the eBook viewer without having to open the main library application? I know the reader app is calibre-parallel.exe but by trying to open it from the command line or shortcut specifying calibre-parallel.exe as the opening program fails. I would just like to have a shortcut on my Windows desktop to open my current book.

Where does Calibre store it's bookmarks? I'd like to sync them between my work laptop and home laptop.

Is it possible to import RSS feeds from a OPML file?

the viewer app is ebook-viewer.exe

bookmarks are stored in the epub file itself or in the calibre settings if the viewed file is not epub

no

DoH! How did I miss that! I guess I was looking at task manager to try and determine the executable. Works fine specifying ebook-viewer.exe as the opening app.

Thanks!

hi I wanted to duplicate Calibre on my Mac that uses bootcamp. I copied the library over to the win7 side and installed 0.6.21 on the win7 machine. I pointed it to the database and it showed up. Following your advice in the FAQ I ran a integretity check. I gett he follow error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\dialogs\config\__init__.py", line 760, in run
File "site-packages\calibre\library\database2.py", line 1764, in check_integrity
File "site-packages\calibre\library\database2.py", line 386, in fget
File "site-packages\calibre\library\sqlite.py", line 162, in run
DatabaseException: Connection closed
Remote


Any ideas as to the issue?

Odd, do normal operations like adding/deleting/editing metadata etc work?

When I convert rtf to lrf any images contained in the rtf becomes very small thumbsize even though they were full pagesize and the jpegs are 800x600. Anything I should do before converting? thanks!

does that happen only when converting to LRF or epub as well?

When I convert rtf to lrf any images contained in the rtf becomes very small thumbsize even though they were full pagesize and the jpegs are 800x600. Anything I should do before converting? thanks!

I ran into this a few weeks back with one book converting to epub. I didn't think much of it and don't recall the book, but it did take too large pictures and convert them to thumbnail size.

What book were you converting?

Thanks for the quick reply kovidgoyal and sorry for my late one. Yes it's the same when I convert to epub as well. All rtfs I've converted so far had the same results - thumbnail size images for imbeded jpegs.

OK open a ticket and attach one of these RTFs and I'll have a look.

again, sorry for my late reply. I use 2 PCs (1 Vista, 1 Win 7) and 1 laptop (WinXP). In case you don't remember me I was the one with the Vista problem of Calibre not "appearing" in Vista, when run, it seems to be running normally but it's not there! It's there in the Task Manager but seems to be in the background only.
Anyway this is the reason for my late replies. My work PC is the Vista so I am on it 90% of the time.
So sorry again, I this is a noob question but how do I open a ticket?

So sorry again, I this is a noob question but how do I open a ticket?
If you go to the Calibre home site (http://calibre.kovidgoyal.net/) you will see that there is a reference to ticket's in the menu bar across the top of the page. View ticket will always be there. As long as you have logged in then New Ticket will also be there. Note that to log in you have to register to get a username/password - but that is free.

I've created a ticket and attached a cample of the rtf and converted lrf files. It's ticket # 4050. Thanks! By the way, has anyone ever had my problem with the "backgrounded" Calibre when run in Vista? I have just assumed it's a Vista glitch.

So, I am perfectly happy with my current conversion software (I was an ABC converter person) - now use Stanza as it converts to every type that I need to juggle between BeBook, iLiad, Kindle and iPhone, however, I have heard a lot of fab things about Calibre. I thought of trying it out, then read this thread... really, are there so many problems with this software or is it simply a matter that the 'issues' are posted here?

I'll download it and try it, however, I am not as excited as I was *sigh*

I don't imagine this software is any better or worse than any other piece of software (in general). In other words, their are some bugs. But then, Kovid is constantly working on it, with help from some other programmers on various aspects.

Perhaps the most telling thing is that almost every user who posts wants a slightly different program feature set. Some things critical to me are useless to the next person. So their are lots of requests, complaints, debate, comments, etc.

now use Stanza as it converts to every type that I need to juggle between BeBook, iLiad, Kindle and iPhone, however, I have heard a lot of fab things about Calibre. I thought of trying it out, then read this thread... really, are there so many problems with this software or is it simply a matter that the 'issues' are posted here?

I'll download it and try it, however, I am not as excited as I was *sigh*

I was an early fan of Stanza, and still love their iPhone app-easily the most used app on my iPhone, despite its ePub limitations (which I hope they'll address :p )

But their Desktop Stanza app is not even in the same league as Calibre-just in terms of conversions alone. Even the devs at Lexcycle recommend using Calibre for anything more than simple conversions. Whether you buy into how Calibre organizes your files, handles metadata, etc (what a lot of the discussions tend to be about)... or not, you really should try it's conversions, especially coming from how Stanza handles the task-you should see a vast improvement .

(for the record, I do buy into not just the conversions, but the library organization, and the metadata handling :p I love it.)

I have downloaded and installed Calibre 6.25 and have watched the very helpful demo; however, where is this Welcome Wizard that appears in the video? I have a Mac and I downloaded and placed the app in my applications folder. I have activated Calibre by double-clicking on the app and it has all my books. But, I never have found a Welcome Wizard or the great user interface depicted in the demo. Help!!!!

Are you sure this is the first time you ran calibre? You can always rerun the welcome wizard by clicking the arrow next to the preferences button and selecting run welcome wizard

Hi, I'm a newbie - just started using calibre last week, and I'm a happy user! :thanks:

One question: I'm converting from .txt at the moment; the .txt file contains line breaks which are ignored so the lines get unwrapped (which of course is what I want!) but now and then, e.g. with poetry, the lines start with a few spaces, and should not be unwrapped. Is there a way to tell calibre to do this?


(I'm smoothreading texts for Distributed Proofreaders, pgdp.net - smoothreading is one of the last stages before the text gets uploaded to project Gutenberg)

calibre supports sophisticated markup for TXT files using a syntax known as markdown. See http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax

If you're procesing a markdown TXT file, you should set the Use Markdown setting TXT Input in the calibre conversion settings.

Thank you!

I just tried checking the markdown checkbox. The result is not what I'm looking for, but I guess what I want cannot be had :rolleyes:

The poetry (or block quote) that starts with a few spaces now remains wrapped, and is shown in a different font. Great - except that on my iPhone the lines are way too long... Not something you can solve, I think. Just a case of conflicting wishes - make the lines short enough to fit on my iPhone screen, but don't unwrap! I don't know how to solve that puzzle, so I guess your software won't know either.

Well, I'll manage anyway, and thanks very much for the fast response!

Thank you!

I just tried checking the markdown checkbox. The result is not what I'm looking for, but I guess what I want cannot be had :rolleyes:

The poetry (or block quote) that starts with a few spaces now remains wrapped, and is shown in a different font. Great - except that on my iPhone the lines are way too long... Not something you can solve, I think. Just a case of conflicting wishes - make the lines short enough to fit on my iPhone screen, but don't unwrap! I don't know how to solve that puzzle, so I guess your software won't know either.

Well, I'll manage anyway, and thanks very much for the fast response!

You could try to format it by hand in Sigil maybe.

I do not have publications or newspapers in my library – it’s exclusively books – and struggle a wee bit with the ‘Published’-column/field. I would want to use that for the Published/Copyright Year and find having the month displayed aesthetically unpleasing. I appreciate it’s not the end of the world; I can just put everything to Jan or whatever. But, then again, it *does* bother me. It also adds time to the updating effort (I have some 1200+ books needing updating).

Could ‘Published’ possibly be split into two columns/fields or will that make it nightmarish for people who do manage publications in Calibre? Or is there perhaps a simple way to work around this that I just don’t get?

I'm afraid you can't customize the way the date is displayed.

Understood. Ta.

Sorry, I guess this question has been asked before but I just can find the answer:
I want to customize the built-in recipes for the NYT, BBC and others. How can I limit the number of posts per feed?
Also, as I'm tweaking the recipes, I try to download the same recipe frequently, but for some reason, it would not let me do that more that once a day per recipe. I download, say, the BBC. Since it's taking too long I cancel it, and then try to tweak it so it downloads fewer posts on each feed. Once I'm done tweaking, I try to download the BBC again, but it doesn't work! That's true for both scheduled and unscheduled recipes.
Thanks! Calibre rocks!

Hi,

I've been using Calibre to make ebooks, and it was to my delight that for one book, I ran it through Calibre and found when I loaded it onto my Kindle that there were chapter marks! I could actually jump from chapter to chapter.

It didn't work for the last few chapters at the end, but still, I was thrilled.

The only thing is, I can't figure out how I did it in the first place and haven't managed to do it again.

Help please? (Calibre works great btw!)

IIRC it will work if you have the TOC detection options setup correctly for your input document.

IIRC it will work if you have the TOC detection options setup correctly for your input document.

Oh... >_< what would be the correct options to set up? I really don't even remember messing with anything TOC related so I have no idea how I did it the first time.

Thanks for the fast reply.

Read the conversion section of the User Manual, that's where this is explained.

Read the conversion section of the User Manual, that's where this is explained.

I'm sorry, I thought I looked through the manual well enough, guess I didn't. Thanks again!

:help: Can someone help me I got a hanvonn516 reader for xmas,have downloaded Calibre put around a hundred ebooks in the library and connected
the reader to my laptop selected the book I wanted clicked send to reader
up comes no device connected yet reader is showing connected what
have I done wrong????? can anyone guide me through the steps I need an idiots guide as I am not very computer savvy. the manual is in fractured english and no help at all.

Thanks in advance Jim:blink:

calibre doesn't have support for the hanvon, see http://calibre-ebook.com/user_manual/faq.html#how-can-i-help-get-my-device-supported-in-app

Apologies if this is a repeat, but I can't see the issue anywhere except in the fault tickets on the Calibre page...

The latest version 0.6.30 fails under 32-bit Ubuntu 9.04 - it's complaining about GLIBC_2.10:


____________________ WARNING ____________________
Setting up completion failed with error:
__________________________________________________
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/home/kovid/build/calibre/src/calibre/linux.py", line 172, in setup_completion
File "/home/kovid/build/calibre/src/calibre/ebooks/metadata/cli.py", line 12, in <module>
File "/home/kovid/build/calibre/src/calibre/customize/ui.py", line 12, in <module>
File "/home/kovid/build/calibre/src/calibre/customize/builtins.py", line 393, in <module>
File "/home/kovid/build/calibre/src/calibre/ebooks/pdf/output.py", line 18, in <module>
File "/home/kovid/build/calibre/src/calibre/ebooks/pdf/writer.py", line 22, in <module>
File "ExtensionLoader_PyQt4_QtWebKit.py", line 12, in <module>
ImportError: /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.10' not found (required by /opt/calibre/libQtNetwork.so.4)



The only available 9.04 Ubuntu package is 0.4.143, and that will crash if an existing library (I previously used 0.6.28) is selected... which is rather a shame as this means the entire library must be recreated. Damn.

0.6.13 is available in 9.10 but - if installed to 9.04 - segfaults on starting.

I shall play with an upgrade to 9.10 and see what happens.

I don't suppose I can persuade Kovid to roll back a version?

Neil

After further investigation... upgrade to Ubuntu 9.10 works with 0.6.30, but it has to be installed from Kovid's site.
There's a version 0.6.13 in the 9.10 repositories, but it won't import (at least) existing .pdb and .lrf files - it has the 'no such function uuid' error discussed elsewhere here.

Thanks,

Neil

Previous versions of calibre are available from sourceforge.net

Just untar them into the /opt/calibre directory (or wherever you chose to install calibre)