MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - PDF metadata CreationDate and Save to disk

paulzag · 08-08-2010, 07:44 AM

Thanks Starson17 for the reply. I thought it would turn out to be something I wasn't understanding. Using calibre a bit more helps my understanding of the calibre way.

The other reason I want to update the PDF's is I use google desktop search more and more.

I'm putting all my ebooks into calibre, however many PDF's are industry or research specific and not created by information scientists. So the metadata is sadly lacking (many Authors are "Administrator"). However online fetch of metadata about the Official Rules of Basketball 2010 edition won't work. Nor will there be any fetching of metadata for a research report on a small Australian copper exploration company.

The PDF metadata creation date is however the closest thing to a publication date. And I'd like to keep that as the source of the Publication date. Do I need to hack the pdf import function (if this is not the best-practice use-case) or do I file an enhancement request (if what I want makes sense)?

I'd rather use one tool to maintain my collection.

I don't mind calibre storing metadata in it's database, but I ALSO want the files to be updated with whatever metadata suits the format. In this case, if I edit the Author, Title, Tags and Comments how do I best get that metadata back into the PDF file? 0.7.13 now smartly forbids saving files back into the library. Converting PDF->PDF seems a slow and inefficient way of updating the metadata.

This wouldn't be a problem for most of my ebooks as I'll read them on my devices. But these PDF's are likely to stay on my netbook which is my PDF reading device of choice.

I get that calibre is like iTunes for ebooks, but in iTunes I can save id3 tags back to the underlying files. Should the database ever get corrupted, I lose some of my data, but not the core tags.

Am I trying to force calibre to be something it's not?

08-08-2010, 07:44 AM	#4
paulzag Junior Member Posts: 5 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jul 2010 Device: eMachines eM250, iPhone	Thanks Starson17 for the reply. I thought it would turn out to be something I wasn't understanding. Using calibre a bit more helps my understanding of the calibre way. The other reason I want to update the PDF's is I use google desktop search more and more. I'm putting all my ebooks into calibre, however many PDF's are industry or research specific and not created by information scientists. So the metadata is sadly lacking (many Authors are "Administrator"). However online fetch of metadata about the Official Rules of Basketball 2010 edition won't work. Nor will there be any fetching of metadata for a research report on a small Australian copper exploration company. The PDF metadata creation date is however the closest thing to a publication date. And I'd like to keep that as the source of the Publication date. Do I need to hack the pdf import function (if this is not the best-practice use-case) or do I file an enhancement request (if what I want makes sense)? I'd rather use one tool to maintain my collection. I don't mind calibre storing metadata in it's database, but I ALSO want the files to be updated with whatever metadata suits the format. In this case, if I edit the Author, Title, Tags and Comments how do I best get that metadata back into the PDF file? 0.7.13 now smartly forbids saving files back into the library. Converting PDF->PDF seems a slow and inefficient way of updating the metadata. This wouldn't be a problem for most of my ebooks as I'll read them on my devices. But these PDF's are likely to stay on my netbook which is my PDF reading device of choice. I get that calibre is like iTunes for ebooks, but in iTunes I can save id3 tags back to the underlying files. Should the database ever get corrupted, I lose some of my data, but not the core tags. Am I trying to force calibre to be something it's not?