Kindle Fire and Calibre

[kovidgoyal]

OK removed the use of sub dirs from the driver.

[CRussel]

Query, Kovid: is there any way to have books being transferred to the Fire automatically have the [pdoc] tag removed if it's present? I've got a LOT of books in Calibre, and I'm sure they all have that tag. And if I do want transfer them to the Fire, I'd have to convert each and ever one of them to get everything to work correctly. Would be sweet if Calibre would do it automatically.

[kovidgoyal]

I'm not going to make that change to calibre at large, but it is a trivial change to make, so if you're willing to run from source, I can tell you what the change should be: In the file metadata/mobi.py at line 364, add the following two lines:

        if self.original_exth_records.get(501, None) == b'PDOC':
             update_exth_record((501, b'EBOK'))

Also make sure you unset the pdoc setting in MOBI output preferences.

[CRussel]

Fair answer, though I think it would be of use to most Fire owners, since it is definitely preferable to have our books show up as books, not personal documents. Not sure I want to always have to do this every build/version, but it's your call whether to change the overall source.

[kovidgoyal]

If you run calibre from source, your changes will persist across upgrades (you will upgrade by updating the source).

[DoctorOhh]

I don't have a Kindle but couldn't this be done by converting mobi to mobi and changing the mobi output from [PDOC] to [EBOK]?

[greycobalt]

I'm horrible at any parts of coding or any shenanigans, besides following instructions, but if you get Calibre running just like it used to on the Kindle 3, that would be swell. Also, thanks for your hard work...I doubt I would read nearly as much if I didn't have this program.

It does seem though that Fire has done away with the collections aspect, no?

[kovidgoyal]

Also, note that, IIRC, the pdoc field was only set on metadata writing, not conversion, so the actual MOBI files in your calibre library should not have them set.

[Qylie]

I agree thanks for all the hard work - I would not read nearly as much if Calibre didn't exist!

[gweminence]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Also, note that, IIRC, the pdoc field was only set on metadata writing, not conversion, so the actual MOBI files in your calibre library should not have them set.

Is there any way to tell that a given book has that set, short of converting it? Perhaps a column or something?

[Jeff L]

You can see the EXTH records with Mobi2mobi. I don't know if Calibre has a way to view it as well.

[gweminence]

Kovid, Calibre detecs the Fire fine, and sends books to it, fine (though my OCD-ness wishes it put them in the books folder, rather than the docs, lol...but mechanically, as discussed, this is moot, they show up under books tab), but, upon reconnecting, calibre does NOT recognize books that were sent in a previous session (from Calibre) as being on the device -- making both removing them with Calibre, and telling what's on the Fire when connected, problematic.

[gweminence]

For further edification: sending a book on the 2nd connect works fine, so Calibre is definitely 'seeing' the fire. Not sure what's up with reading the folder, though.

[SamL]

Originally Posted by gweminence

Kovid, Calibre detecs the Fire fine, and sends books to it, fine (though my OCD-ness wishes it put them in the books folder, rather than the docs, lol...but mechanically, as discussed, this is moot, they show up under books tab), but, upon reconnecting, calibre does NOT recognize books that were sent in a previous session (from Calibre) as being on the device -- making both removing them with Calibre, and telling what's on the Fire when connected, problematic.

Yes I noticed the same thing. Once I eject my device (Fire) and reconnect it, Calibre does not recognize that any books are on the device.

[kovidgoyal]

Odd. Try running calibre in debug mode (right click the preferences button) and post the debug log on connecting the Kindle.