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kiwidude · 08-27-2011, 03:03 PM

@unboggling - I've not followed this thread in detail at all, but as you asked for feedback I will say that your "Metadata work habits" above has very little that is "simple" about it imho.

As a personal choice you can do what you like of course, but if you are trying to come up with a "here's a simple way to go about organising your library and working with Calibre" I think it is way too OTT. i.e.

_q4, ((fn, (mgc, (ya, [om, %sma, %su, r3

I wouldn't recommend inflicting that on anyone - seriously!

I guess it depends on what your goal is. If you are wanting to show people what you are doing to get their feedback, of course you should write (and do) what you like. If it is more focused on the "simple" side of things to help others get started with some "best practices", I think you should reduce the scope in some areas and push them into a more "Advanced usage" type section.

You are going through the Calibre discovery process as we all have, and only through experimentation will you find exactly the balance that suits. On past threads that have looked at what people use custom columns for, it is quite astounding the amount of detail some users store in their library.

I'm glad you are using some of my plugins, most of them came about because of ways that I wanted to work. I have spent more time "using" than "developing for" Calibre the last few months, and it has given me a chance to refine my own workflow and plugin usage. And with thousands of books in Calibre I have had to fine tune things for my needs to get the balance between what is "really important" versus just data for the sake of it.

For instance things like quality - I just use a yes/no column called #retail that tells me whether I have a retail quality version or something that isn't. I only keep books that are readable - if it is a poor quality OCR scan or whatever then I trash it. I mean, why keep crap? I have too many books to read as it is - and if I really want a book that I only have crap versions of I will just buy the retail version when it is available one day.

Just in case anyone was interested, this is my rough workflow/setup (I'm not suggesting in any way it is better, just publishing it for your info). I make no apologies for the fact that it sounds like an extended plugin advert - I wrote them mostly for my own usage and here is most of them I use daily.

Spoiler:

ePub rocks my world and is my "master", from which I convert to MOBI for my Kindle. If I had no Kindle, I would just keep ePub. I usually only buy ePub, or if it is cheaper I buy MOBI, convert to ePub and sometimes back again.
The only other format I ever keep (in the absence of ePub) is PDF for some childrens books full of images (or technical books). PDF conversions suck, and I only read those types of books on a tablet anyway. Well not that I read childrens books myself, but I do want to spoil my nephews one day with a tablet.
Once converted I chuck every other format outside of my ePub/MOBI. I've already made my choice to get the best quality version that is readable, why keep what I know for a fact I will never use?
When adding a book, I use hotkeys associated with the Quick Preferences plugin to switch between different regexes based on the filename. I only add books one or a few at a time using drag/drop. If the filename will not be a good match to my couple of regexes I just create an empty book for the author and type the title manually then drag/drop it.
After adding a book, I use the Extract ISBN plugin to give the metadata download a better chance of a match. If I remember, depends on how simple I think the title is. Only if it is a non fiction technical book do I allow Calibre to overwrite title/author.
I only use my Fantastic Fiction, Goodreads and B&N metadata plugins. Eating my own dogfood, and the best sources for cover images and series info imho.
Depending on how good the B&N image sizes returned are, I use Google images via the Search the Internet plugin to drag/drop a better quality cover.
I only use a simple set of genres (into the Tags column) as from the Goodreads metadata plugin. Dwanthny has a more complete set mapped but seeing a book as "Fantasy" or "Science Fiction" is enough for my needs for most books.
I don't make hard and fast rules about number of tags etc, you make it too hard for yourself. Sometimes a book screams at you for being cross-genre, like "Fantasy, Romance". And if that book is targeted at younger readers, it might be "Fantasy, Romance, Young Adult".
I do have a couple of other tag values I put in Tags - like "-" to indicate a wishlist item (empty book), just to use less space on screen than a column. But there only a couple, I've trashed others along the way.
I convert/cleanup books on an author by author basis, not "as I need them". But it is an ongoing time consuming mission. I can understand Jacki's points, but for me between the MOBIs I have to read on my Kindle now, and the ePub which will do me for years to come I have something that is perfectly readable.
In terms of cleanup I do have certain indents, margins, stripping fonts inserting page breaks things I do on the master. The #1 priority is that it is the best possible of the versions I have if I have multiple in terms of making sure it is not someone else's crappy conversion with lost quotes etc.
Any editing of books is only ever on the ePub, either with Tweak ePub, Sigil (via the Open With plugin), or the Modify ePub plugin to replace covers/strip jackets.
After the cleanup and mobi conversion, I use the Count Pages plugin to populate my #pages and #words custom columns. I like to see the relative size of books.
When I have read a book, I tick my #read yes/no column. Then I use the Goodreads Sync plugin to add it to my Read list. I then go to the website to specify the date read and my rating for it. One day I will enhance the Goodreads Sync pugin to allow doing all of that in one step from Calibre. I don't pull data from Goodreads into Calibre.
If it is a short story, I add a ", Short" to whatever the genre tag is. And I use the "Generate Cover" plugin to make a cover for it. I have a whole bunch of prefdefined images/fonts for different genres.
If I am keeping track of authors for friends/family, I use the "User Category" plugin to add the author to a category for each person.
In particular for sharing books with my parents I keep a #sent custom column to record which books I have sent them.
In terms of general day to day usage, I actually only use the View Manager plugin with a single view configured. However it has my sort order configured of by author/series/published/title with a hotkey. So I randomly click on column headings to sort data as I like it for cleanup purposes, then can hit my hotkey to get my preferred sort back in one keypress.
If you have a mishmash of series data and a lot of titles in the series, or I want to rename a series to shorten it, I use the Manage Series plugin
I also use the Search the Internet plugin mainly with FantasticFiction to create empty books for other books I want from the author or are upcoming etc.
Periodically I make use of a plugin like Quality Check to check the state of the library. However as I am pretty disciplined with this particular library in terms of not just "throwing thousands of books at once" in there, I'm happy to only do this every now and then.
I use meme's Kindle Collections plugin (brilliant) to organise my Kindle. However I use only a fraction of it's functionality. I organise my books by a single author_sort criteria, and don't manipulate my Kindle collections using it.
I don't stick my whole library on the Kindle, but I do put several hundred books on there across a range of genres so I can have a wide choice wherever I happen to be when I finish reading a book on it. Periodically I top it up and remove any books I have read off it.

08-27-2011, 03:03 PM	#156
kiwidude Calibre Plugins Developer Posts: 4,637 Karma: 2162064 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Australia Device: Kindle Oasis	@unboggling - I've not followed this thread in detail at all, but as you asked for feedback I will say that your "Metadata work habits" above has very little that is "simple" about it imho. As a personal choice you can do what you like of course, but if you are trying to come up with a "here's a simple way to go about organising your library and working with Calibre" I think it is way too OTT. i.e. _q4, ((fn, (mgc, (ya, [om, %sma, %su, r3 I wouldn't recommend inflicting that on anyone - seriously! I guess it depends on what your goal is. If you are wanting to show people what you are doing to get their feedback, of course you should write (and do) what you like. If it is more focused on the "simple" side of things to help others get started with some "best practices", I think you should reduce the scope in some areas and push them into a more "Advanced usage" type section. You are going through the Calibre discovery process as we all have, and only through experimentation will you find exactly the balance that suits. On past threads that have looked at what people use custom columns for, it is quite astounding the amount of detail some users store in their library. I'm glad you are using some of my plugins, most of them came about because of ways that I wanted to work. I have spent more time "using" than "developing for" Calibre the last few months, and it has given me a chance to refine my own workflow and plugin usage. And with thousands of books in Calibre I have had to fine tune things for my needs to get the balance between what is "really important" versus just data for the sake of it. For instance things like quality - I just use a yes/no column called #retail that tells me whether I have a retail quality version or something that isn't. I only keep books that are readable - if it is a poor quality OCR scan or whatever then I trash it. I mean, why keep crap? I have too many books to read as it is - and if I really want a book that I only have crap versions of I will just buy the retail version when it is available one day. Just in case anyone was interested, this is my rough workflow/setup (I'm not suggesting in any way it is better, just publishing it for your info). I make no apologies for the fact that it sounds like an extended plugin advert - I wrote them mostly for my own usage and here is most of them I use daily. Spoiler: ePub rocks my world and is my "master", from which I convert to MOBI for my Kindle. If I had no Kindle, I would just keep ePub. I usually only buy ePub, or if it is cheaper I buy MOBI, convert to ePub and sometimes back again. The only other format I ever keep (in the absence of ePub) is PDF for some childrens books full of images (or technical books). PDF conversions suck, and I only read those types of books on a tablet anyway. Well not that I read childrens books myself, but I do want to spoil my nephews one day with a tablet. Once converted I chuck every other format outside of my ePub/MOBI. I've already made my choice to get the best quality version that is readable, why keep what I know for a fact I will never use? When adding a book, I use hotkeys associated with the Quick Preferences plugin to switch between different regexes based on the filename. I only add books one or a few at a time using drag/drop. If the filename will not be a good match to my couple of regexes I just create an empty book for the author and type the title manually then drag/drop it. After adding a book, I use the Extract ISBN plugin to give the metadata download a better chance of a match. If I remember, depends on how simple I think the title is. Only if it is a non fiction technical book do I allow Calibre to overwrite title/author. I only use my Fantastic Fiction, Goodreads and B&N metadata plugins. Eating my own dogfood, and the best sources for cover images and series info imho. Depending on how good the B&N image sizes returned are, I use Google images via the Search the Internet plugin to drag/drop a better quality cover. I only use a simple set of genres (into the Tags column) as from the Goodreads metadata plugin. Dwanthny has a more complete set mapped but seeing a book as "Fantasy" or "Science Fiction" is enough for my needs for most books. I don't make hard and fast rules about number of tags etc, you make it too hard for yourself. Sometimes a book screams at you for being cross-genre, like "Fantasy, Romance". And if that book is targeted at younger readers, it might be "Fantasy, Romance, Young Adult". I do have a couple of other tag values I put in Tags - like "-" to indicate a wishlist item (empty book), just to use less space on screen than a column. But there only a couple, I've trashed others along the way. I convert/cleanup books on an author by author basis, not "as I need them". But it is an ongoing time consuming mission. I can understand Jacki's points, but for me between the MOBIs I have to read on my Kindle now, and the ePub which will do me for years to come I have something that is perfectly readable. In terms of cleanup I do have certain indents, margins, stripping fonts inserting page breaks things I do on the master. The #1 priority is that it is the best possible of the versions I have if I have multiple in terms of making sure it is not someone else's crappy conversion with lost quotes etc. Any editing of books is only ever on the ePub, either with Tweak ePub, Sigil (via the Open With plugin), or the Modify ePub plugin to replace covers/strip jackets. After the cleanup and mobi conversion, I use the Count Pages plugin to populate my #pages and #words custom columns. I like to see the relative size of books. When I have read a book, I tick my #read yes/no column. Then I use the Goodreads Sync plugin to add it to my Read list. I then go to the website to specify the date read and my rating for it. One day I will enhance the Goodreads Sync pugin to allow doing all of that in one step from Calibre. I don't pull data from Goodreads into Calibre. If it is a short story, I add a ", Short" to whatever the genre tag is. And I use the "Generate Cover" plugin to make a cover for it. I have a whole bunch of prefdefined images/fonts for different genres. If I am keeping track of authors for friends/family, I use the "User Category" plugin to add the author to a category for each person. In particular for sharing books with my parents I keep a #sent custom column to record which books I have sent them. In terms of general day to day usage, I actually only use the View Manager plugin with a single view configured. However it has my sort order configured of by author/series/published/title with a hotkey. So I randomly click on column headings to sort data as I like it for cleanup purposes, then can hit my hotkey to get my preferred sort back in one keypress. If you have a mishmash of series data and a lot of titles in the series, or I want to rename a series to shorten it, I use the Manage Series plugin I also use the Search the Internet plugin mainly with FantasticFiction to create empty books for other books I want from the author or are upcoming etc. Periodically I make use of a plugin like Quality Check to check the state of the library. However as I am pretty disciplined with this particular library in terms of not just "throwing thousands of books at once" in there, I'm happy to only do this every now and then. I use meme's Kindle Collections plugin (brilliant) to organise my Kindle. However I use only a fraction of it's functionality. I organise my books by a single author_sort criteria, and don't manipulate my Kindle collections using it. I don't stick my whole library on the Kindle, but I do put several hundred books on there across a range of genres so I can have a wide choice wherever I happen to be when I finish reading a book on it. Periodically I top it up and remove any books I have read off it.