[dailyalice]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

Since AO3 actually has an explicit cover feature, perhaps we should put make_firstimage_cover: false under [archiveofourown.org]...

Ah, I hadn't realized they had an explicit cover feature, but it makes sense that they would and that would simplify matters for that site. Excellent.

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

Here's the thing: On update, FFDL will never *remove* an existing cover just because it didn't find one on the site. It used to do that, and that upset the people who make their own custom covers because it would zap them.

That makes sense, I'd wondered about the behavior and was trying to suss it out for myself. Had seemed like existing covers stayed which was sometimes what I wanted and a nice feature and sometimes not what I was going for. Usually the former, though. Easy enough to remove covers by editing the metadata and/or the ePub with the Modify ePub plug-in as you mentioned (which is what I'd been doing as needed).

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

Removing the undesired covers: use the Modify Epub PI to remove the covers from the epubs. Then use calibre's Edit Metadata ('e' key) on the whole group at once and Remove Covers (or Set from Ebooks) to get them out of calibre, too.

Then you can use Update Always (with update cover) in FFDL if you think there might be other images that could be picked up for cover. After you've added the cover_exclusion_regexp, of course. I'd tested a couple first, before doing the lot.

Thanks. I'll give the cover_exclusion_regexp some tries to see how it goes. Appreciate your help! I want to learn regular expressions myself, but seem to always get sidetracked or forget what I once knew. I still know how to navigate in vi after years of not doing so very often so you'd think I could handle this.

I think I may just fix the covers by making "make first image cover" false for the ones I need to fix at AO3 for now.

As ever, I appreciate your help and love the plug-in.