[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by emanuensis

All is fine and good, however i am running into some difficulty with porting collections around.

Since calibre doesn't have "collections" I'll guess that you mean tags? If my answer that follows has nothing to do with your question then please define what you mean by collections.

Originally Posted by emanuensis

It seems that Calibre does not like to eat its own dog food. Ie if i "save to disk" any collection it puts it out in a hierarchy of folders. Fine. BUT when i try to read it in again Calibre will only read files (or collections of files) NOT folders.

Folders have nothing to do with how calibre stores metadata (author, title, tags, publisher, etc...).

Originally Posted by emanuensis

So is there any way of modifying either the input or output of C to get a compatible collection?

Since calibre stores all tags in the metadata as the book is saved to disk you must ensure that when you go to re-add the book to a new library that you have the Read metadata from file contents rather than file name box checked under Preferences - Adding books.

Originally Posted by emanuensis

i would like to set up "several" instances of Calibre. Using C Portable i can have multiple instances.

I have no idea why you want to do this and your idea may in fact be the absolute best solution for you. But on the surface it seems as if you are creating a lot of work for yourself. If you want any further input explain your situation to us, there might be a better way to accomplish your goal.