[Worldwalker]

I doubt if Kovid is going to completely change how calibre works and regress it from being a book manager to a mere file manager because people mistakenly believe that it is, in fact, a file manager.

It isn't. It's not supposed to be. It also isn't a meeting scheduler, a RTS game, or an IM client. That's not what it's for. Calibre is a library and book manager, and it does that very, very well. What it happens to do with its internal database (currently, though not necessarily permanently, implemented with files) is its own business. There are no user-serviceable parts inside.

I know that my original directory structure in calibre isn't preserved.

Actually, it is. Nothing happens to it. It's right where you left it.

Calibre, as part of its book and library management function, copies the files for the books it's organizing into its internal library and does its own thing with them. Note copies. Nothing happens to your original directory structure, and unless you decide to delete those files yourself, nothing ever will.

There might be the case that sorting books according to author is good and will take some time to get used to. But still there should be a choice for a user to decide himself.

Calibre is an ebook manager, not a file manager. It sorts books by author, title, series, publisher, or anything else you can imagine, and various combinations and subsets of those. It doesn't matter to the user what calibre is doing with the files under the hood -- it's not a file manager. It's a book and library manager. If you want your books sorted by type (fiction), genre within type (fantasy), series within genre (Free Bards), and author within series (Mercedes Lackey), calibre will do that without blinking. Another click and it will pull up all the Mercedes Lackey books for you, or all the books that are fiction but not SF or fantasy, or all the non-fiction related to tanks, or whatever else you've got your books tagged for. That's what calibre is all about.

The key is, you have to use calibre, not ignore calibre and try to use its internal files instead. That's what it's for.

If you just want to use calibre to convert formats, though I can't quite see why one would, then once you've converted your files to whatever you want, export them ("save to disk" in the menus) to wherever you need them to be, and they'll be right there, in whatever format you wanted, and you can organize them however you want.

You need to understand me here, calibre kicks ass but what if i decide to switch to some other software in the future , then i wont like the calibre's directory structure to drive to my ebook.

If you decide to switch to some other software in the future, you've still got your original files right in their original places. Or if you've deleted those, or done conversions that you want to keep, you can just export the files from calibre to wherever you want them, however you want them.

Suppose i have some matlab books, i would rather like them in a matlab folder not sorted according to author.

Is there some reason you can't use the original files? Or export 'em?

How can sent this message to developer?

Aside from the fact the English in that sentence makes my head hurt, Kovid (who, by the way, is very active on this board and reads all the posts -- he's just not going to respond to the ones like this) is not going to turn calibre from a book manager back into a file manager. You have a file manager. It came with your computer. If that's what you need, why run calibre? That's not what calibre is for. Trying to say it should be a file manager is like saying Windows Explorer should be a hex editor, and manage discs according to blocks and sectors, not files. It doesn't; it abstracts all of that and deals with files. Likewise, calibre abstracts the whole file layer and deals with books. A book is not a file, even though a book is made up of files, any more than a file is a series of disc blocks, even though it is made up of blocks.

In summary: Calibre leaves your original files exactly where they were, organized exactly as you had them, when it makes copies for its internal use. Those copies are locked in a disused lavatory marked "beware of the leopard" and should not be tinkered with. If you need to do something with/to the files that make up a book, do so with your originals (which are still right where they were), or export that book, in whatever format you need and to wherever you want it, from calibre. Pretend that its internal files are in a format totally inaccessible to you, because for all intents and purposes they might as well be. And read my .sig.

Oh, and no, Kovid is not going to change calibre into a file manager (or a meeting scheduler, or a RTS game, or an IM client) because you or anyone else want it to be one. If that's what you want, you've already got one; if you need a book and library manager, that's what calibre is for.