How not to capitalize titles from meta data?

[rogue_librarian]

Is there a way to turn off capitalizing of book titles for downloaded meta data? It's not appropriate in German or French, and I find myself going into the title field every time to undo the auto-capitalization. Surely there's a way to turn this off?

On a case by case basis would be best (it's useful in English), but I'lll turn it off completely if I have to (and that is an option).

Many thanks in advance.

[itimpi]

Not as far as I know. If you let the metadata update the title field you are at the mercy of the metadata supplier as far as case is concerned.

Do you even need the downloaded metadata to update the title field? If not you can simply disable that update.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by itimpi

Not as far as I know. If you let the metadata update the title field you are at the mercy of the metadata supplier as far as case is concerned.

Do you even need the downloaded metadata to update the title field? If not you can simply disable that update.

So itimpi, you're saying that calibre does not auto-capitalize the title field when downloading metadata you just get whatever the metadata source supplies. I never have the metadata download overwrite my title so I wasn't sure. Thanks for the info.

[speakingtohe]

I used to get lower case metadata often and never do now, so calibre might capitalize the titles in newer versions. I like it this way but some mightn't.

The change case option (right click menu) works from both the metadata and the gui and is easier than retyping manually.

Helen

[rogue_librarian]

But it doesn't really work with German, e.g., where only nouns are capitalized. Sure, I can use lower-case for the whole title, but I'll still need to change back the remaining words. I'd rather the meta data were correct (if it is), and Calibre left it alone.

Can anybody confirm that this is, in fact, not Calibre's doing but that the meta data comes in that way, i.e. improperly capitalized in the first place?

[Ortep]

Originally Posted by rogue_librarian

Can anybody confirm that this is, in fact, not Calibre's doing but that the meta data comes in that way, i.e. improperly capitalized in the first place?

I'm always fighting with Calibre because it does NOT capitalize.
Smile, I'm Dutch and the first thing I see when I read German is ALL those capitals. We only capitalize the first word in a sentence. But in a book title we can capitalize. The only exceptions are words like 'de' and 'een' (the and a)

But I have to do that by hand, Calibre isn't doing it for me unless I select Change Case -> Title Case. When I download meta data from an external source I'm dependant on that source.

[jbienko1]

Originally Posted by Ortep

But I have to do that by hand, Calibre isn't doing it for me unless I select Change Case -> Title Case. When I download meta data from an external source I'm dependant on that source.

Unfortunately does not true. Calibre automatically set Title Case in 'title' field during metadata update regardless of source data.
I'm sure of that, as I'm in process of writing my own plugin for metadata download from polish source. The title downloaded from source is capitalized (meaning - only first word of title starts with capital letter). I do not change the case of title. And after metadata update the case is changed to title case.

e.g.:
Gra o tron (title from source)
Gra O Tron (after metadata update)

And this is generally an error.

[Ortep]

Originally Posted by jbienko1

Unfortunately does not true. Calibre automatically set Title Case in 'title' field during metadata update regardless of source data.
I'm sure of that, as I'm in process of writing my own plugin for metadata download from polish source.

I just tested it again. Calibre does NOT set title case.

I used the title:

Het Leven, Het Heelal en De Rest

The source it uses lower case for en and it stays like that.

The lower case for en is correct. The upper case for De is incorrect. It shows up in Calibre exactly as it was in the source as can be seen from the plugin that grabs the meta data

[jbienko1]

Originally Posted by Ortep

I just tested it again. Calibre does NOT set title case.

I used the title:

Het Leven, Het Heelal en De Rest

The source it uses lower case for en and it stays like that.

The lower case for en is correct. The upper case for De is incorrect. It shows up in Calibre exactly as it was in the source as can be seen from the plugin that grabs the meta data

So, please, test again - for example searching for:
"Gra o tron"
In goodreads.com you have:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6184496-gra-o-tron
So only first word is capitalized. Rest is lowercase. It is ok for polish language.

After import metadata to calibre you have:
Gra O Tron
which looks as oddly in Polish "A song Of ice And fire" in English.

[marcinb]

To remove auto capitalization comment out two lines in file base.py

--- 373,374 in version 0.16
        if mi.title:
            mi.title = fixcase(mi.title) 
---

Don't forget to remove base.pyc and base.pyo

[kovidgoyal]

Title case is "intelligently" corrected. This works well for english titles, not so well for others. If you are writing a plugin for another language, you can disable this by simply not calling the clean_downloaded_metadata method or implemnting your own logic for it.

[jbienko1]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

[...] you can disable this by simply not calling the clean_downloaded_metadata method or implemnting your own logic for it.

This is EXACTLY what I need. Thanks.

[Massreader]

@kovidgoyal:
I do not have any idea concerning programming.

You say "Title case is "intelligently" corrected."
Does this mean Calibre DOES set title case?

If so, I still do not understand why there is no option in the Calibre GUI to leave the title as it comes from the metadata provider.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Massreader

@kovidgoyal:
I do not have any idea concerning programming.

You say "Title case is "intelligently" corrected."
Does this mean Calibre DOES set title case?

If so, I still do not understand why there is no option in the Calibre GUI to leave the title as it comes from the metadata provider.

What he is saying is the particular Metadata Source plugin contains the case control code.
Your example: Goodreads would affect all languages if the author disabled the feature.
I turned OFF Title and Author lon ago as I was tired of the source correcting my correct entry (I had the dead tree copy in my hands).

[milatext]

@kovidgoyal:

I realy love your work and your plugin for amazone metadata too. Thank you very much for all your work!

But the "intelligent correction" makes me crazy. I have changed the source to german amazone, which provides correctly capitalized title datas for german books. But with your plugin almost all capitalizations get incorrect and I had to correct them manualy for hours and hours. It would be realy very helpfull, if autocorrection could be set off bei a simple button or so in your amazone plugin gui as I am not a programmer and can not write my own plugin.

Thank you in advance.