Quote:
Originally Posted by stisev
... and attempted to read some metadata for a bunch of my files. Calibre decided to rearrange ALL of the folders/naming structure of my eBooks, which (dare I say) annoyed me greatly, creating duplicate entries which took a little time to remove. I also noticed, the absolutely horrid directory structure calibre used. Good lord... Name of book/Author/-file.zip-. To make things worse, there is no way to change this behavior. Calibre is configurable in every other fashion I can think of except this:
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Calibre does not *force* you to do anything.
You can have your own library in your own set of intricately crafted folder structure.
Just take care when you install Calibre and it asks you where it is supposed to put the library. *Calibre library*. Just set the Calibre Library folder to reside somewhere where it won't mess up with your books. (*) When you import (or drag and drop) a file into Calibre library Calibre does not touch or modify the original file. It makes ITS PRIVATE COPY and stores it into $YOUR_HOME/Calibre_library/Author/Book directory. So what?
If you want to have the file modified by Calibre in your library (your folders), just right click the file and choose "save" from context menu.
If you like the way the Calibre organizes the books, go ahead and use its system. If you do not like it, just edit the metadata, or use it just to tag the books prior to uploading to your device, or just for format shifting, or for whatever you need, like I do.
No. The Calibre program is not perfect for you. It is not perfect for me. It might be absolutely perfect for its creator. I personally wish that Calibre used menus instead of big icons, I find message in the middle of Calibre main screen saying that there is a new version distracting. But this is MY fault.
I constantly grumble about library software from Sony. Because that is what we are stuck with by default and there is NO WAY to change it.
I can not complain about Calibre. If I really, *really* thought it does not do what I want or need, I am supposed to:
1. Try to persuade Kovid to change it
2. Try to motivate Kovid to change it (for example by promising financial donation or whatever)
3. Try to persuade other people to join me in persuading Kovid
4. Try to raise a bounty for programmer that will fork the development tree and implement my ideas (**)
5. Roll up my sleeves and start studying Python to try to change the program myself.
6. Start using Sony Library software so I CAN complain as much as I want ;-)
(*) If you have already installed Calibre and now you need to set the Calibre Library to reside somewhere where it does not mess with YOUR directory structure, just click on the hammer icon, and the very first entry is location of library. You can even have several libraries, just change them as you need.
(**) this has been dome many times. One of the most famous cases was when somebody started to collect money as bounty for hacker that would be able to install and dualboot Windows XP on the then-new Intel based Mac. If my memory serves me right the winner collected bounty of more than $9000. Consequently the Apple released the Boot Camp once the genie was out of the bottle.