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Originally Posted by Sweetpea
I just yesterday discovered the Calibre Companion (haven't been keeping track on Calibre since August...)
I already like the application, but I do have two questions about it.
1) I save my files in a folder structure. I presume I can copy the save template I have in my Android driver plugin to the wireless driver window. But what about my plugboard? I don't want to use the "any device" as I have different plugboards for my Sony and Android tablet. Oh, and I presume I can't give a save template when I connect to the content server, but it will download the book in the folder I specified for the format.
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You can use a save template. Note that it applies to all formats. You cannot use a different template per format.
The plugboard device is SMART_DEVICE_APP. However, plugboards are of limited utility with CC unless you are not going to use CC's organization functions. Because CC "sees" calibre's metadata and can sort/group on it, there isn't any need to mess with the metadata inside the book (what the plugboard does). However, if you are using a reader app as an organizer instead of CC then you might want to use a plugboard, although even here it isn't clear. For example FBReader and Moon+ both can use title, author, and series metadata from inside the book, reducing the need to use a plugboard to mess with (for example) the title.
Books downloaded from the content server are stored in the appropriate folder for the format using the name "title - author.extension". If that file already exists then a tie breaker number is added to the end.
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2) When I connect my device using USB, I know Calibre reads the metadata file that is on my device. Based on that, it will check which books are on my device. But how does this work with the Companion? Does this use the same file? And if so, won't it mess up my USB connection? If not, how does Calibre sync the books in my library with the books on my device? Because the last thing I need is a full copy from my device to Calibre because Calibre thinks he doesn't have the books yet he can find on my device...
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CC neither reads nor writes the metadata.calibre file. Instead it uses its own database that contains the metadata for all the books that it has downloaded. When you connect CC passes this metadata back to calibre, where it is used to do on-device matching.
You can tell CC to scan the folders it knows about for "new" books when you connect. If CC finds books that are not in its db, it passes them to calibre for analysis. Calibre then passes back the correct metadata for any book that calibre matched in its library. Epubs are a special case: CC extracts the metadata from the OPF in the newly-discovered books and passes that back to calibre.
If your plugboards change the title or authors then this can foil calibre's book matching. Epubs suffer less from this problem because the internal OPF contains the book's UUID. Calibre prefers to match on the UUID over title and author information. As long as the books came from the library you connected to then the UUID should be correct.
It is probably best to use either CC or USB for android devices, not both. If you do use both, then for non-epub formats it is better not to use a plugboard for either connection so that calibre's book matching has the best chance of succeeding.