Quote:
Originally Posted by itimpi
I find that as I am past the bulk input stage, one of the commonest cases for encountering a duplciae is that I add a newer (and normally better) version of a book. I would certainly like an easier way of saying it is the NEWEST one that is important and over-write the existing copy. At the moment I find I have to go through the Edit Metadata route to achieve this (or add as a duplicate and then merge) - and cannot simply do it via the standard Add Books route.
Hopefully this will be one of the issues that will be kept in mind if a more effective dialog on what to dump and what to keep is developed.
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When I wrote the autosort/automerge code I configured it so that new formats automatically overwrote older ones. During my bulk import stage, I really had no preference for new/old, and during later stages, I only added better copies. I found it convenient to improve a format, or locate a better one, outside of Calibre, then just drag it over and have it replace the existing one.
I was aware that my default of overwrite could cause loss of book formats you don't want overwritten. There was risk of an error by the code that identifies author/title, etc. of matching books, and pointed it out to Kovid when I uploaded the source, but for me, it just worked better, even with that risk (I always keep my source).
Kovid felt that the standard philosophy of Calibre is to always default to the lower risk option - in this case that option was to not overwrite existing formats. I understood why he preferred that. For a period of time, I ran custom code with my reverse default, which worked better in my work flow. I thought about offering an option switch or tweak to "default overwrite" to control the option switch to "autosort/automerge", but there are already so many options ...