Quick Guide to Shelf Management with calibre 0.9.1 & above (Touch / Glo / Mini /Aura)

[volpo]

Originally Posted by Mrs_Often

Yes Calibre adds the series info to the title of the books when they're copied over.

OK last question (for now ) If I copy over the books from calibre and they already exist on the Touch will I have duplicates? Basically do I have to delete the books off the Touch and the reload them?

Thanks,

V

[Mrs_Often]

Originally Posted by volpo

OK last question (for now ) If I copy over the books from calibre and they already exist on the Touch will I have duplicates? Basically do I have to delete the books off the Touch and the reload them?

Thanks,

V

Hm, actually, I'm not sure. If the title wouldn't change you would not get duplicates. But since the title changes, maybe you will get some database issues.

In any case, safest is to delete the books from your Touch first, then eject and unplug so the Touch knows the books are gone. Then reconnect and add the books again with their new series info.

(It might work to just copy them onto the old versions of the books but previously that caused the Kobo to delete the book. I vaguely recall the Kobo driver has been taught to first delete books from the Kobo before putting the same book back to prevent this deletion, but I'm not 100% certain, plus, you're changing the title so I'd go the safe route )

[volpo]

Originally Posted by Mrs_Often

In any case, safest is to delete the books from your Touch first, then eject and unplug so the Touch knows the books are gone. Then reconnect and add the books again with their new series info.

Thanks again.

BTW you actually don't Mrs_Often at all.

V

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Mrs_Often

Hm, actually, I'm not sure. If the title wouldn't change you would not get duplicates. But since the title changes, maybe you will get some database issues.

In any case, safest is to delete the books from your Touch first, then eject and unplug so the Touch knows the books are gone. Then reconnect and add the books again with their new series info.

Unfortunately, you need to delete and then send. It doesn't matter if you use calibre to do the delete or the device. With the current driver and firmware, doing this in a single session is safe.

The reason is that the device processes each book the first time it is seen to extract the metadata to the database. If you replace a book, it will use the book, but won't update the metadata from the book.

(It might work to just copy them onto the old versions of the books but previously that caused the Kobo to delete the book. I vaguely recall the Kobo driver has been taught to first delete books from the Kobo before putting the same book back to prevent this deletion, but I'm not 100% certain, plus, you're changing the title so I'd go the safe route )

No, the driver doesn't do that. The last change was to update the file size in the database when replacing a book. That prevented the device from deleting the book if there was a change. It is safe to do this in most cases.

[Mrs_Often]

Originally Posted by volpo

Thanks again.

BTW you actually don't Mrs_Often at all.

V

Haha, thanks

Originally Posted by davidfor

No, the driver doesn't do that. The last change was to update the file size in the database when replacing a book. That prevented the device from deleting the book if there was a change. It is safe to do this in most cases.

Ah, hm, I wonder where I read that then? Maybe it was a dream. Thanks for the extra explanations


Edit: nope, didn't dream it...

Originally Posted by Calibre release notes 0.9.15

Kobo driver: When resending a file to the device, update the filesize in the Kobo db to prevent the device from deleting the file.
Closes tickets: 1100607

...so apparently my memory made the preventions of deleting the file have a bigger 'fix' than in reality.

[BobC]

Calibre 0.9.20 ; Glo 2.4.0

I've set up shelf management as described in the first post and the driver has correctly created a new shelf on the Glo with one book in it which I have just added to the Glo. Calibre is set for automatic metadata management.

However the books that are already on shelves on the Glo (added directly on the device) are not showing up in Calibre as being on shelves. The added book (above) when looked at in the device view in Calibre, shows up in a "Collection" with a name the same as the new Shelf. Other books show up variously in collections "Read", "Im_Reading" (clearly automatically assigned by the Glo) and "ToRead" (a shelf I set up on the Glo itself), but the books in Calibre don't appear in the custom column I set up for associating Shelf names with books.

What seemed to be missing is a reference in Calibre to a collection for my "Favourites" shelf on the Glo, however when I added a book to that shelf using Calibre it appeared on that shelf on the Glo.

Effectively what I'm seeing is a "one-way" synchronisation. Is it possible to retrieve into Calibre the shelf assignments that I have made on the Glo so that the books on "Favourites" and "ToRead" show up in Calibre as on those shelves ?

BobC

[davidfor]

Sorry, the shelf management is one way. The device list shows the current state on the device, but nothing is taken from the device to update the calibre library.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Sorry, the shelf management is one way. The device list shows the current state on the device, but nothing is taken from the device to update the calibre library.

Thanks for that - at least I now know I haven't done anything wrong.

BobC

[Corpsegoddess]

Peter, quick question about this.

If I have already existing shelves on my Kobo that I created there manually (ie., not using your method stated on page 1 of this thread), and if I institute your Calibre method for creating shelves made from series, will this cause a problem if I already have shelves made for a series?

For instance, let's say I have a shelf for Nancy Drew already on my Kobo. I made the changes to my Calibre based on your page 1 recommendations, so Cailbre *should* create a "Nancy Drew" shelf the next time I plug in my Kobo. Will there be a problem since one already exists? Should I delete the existing shelf *before* I plug my Kobo in again? Am I making any sense whatsoever?

[PeterT]

You are making sense, and I don't think there will be a problem of any type. Davidfor has been quite careful in his logic, and I really don't think there will be any issues.

Hopefully David will see this and chime in if he can think of any.

[Corpsegoddess]

Originally Posted by PeterT

You are making sense, and I don't think there will be a problem of any type. Davidfor has been quite careful in his logic, and I really don't think there will be any issues.

Hopefully David will see this and chime in if he can think of any.

Obviously, if Calibre is creating the shelves for me, then of course I'll delete the ones I've manually made on the Kobo; there's no need to populate them through the device (and have to constantly REpopulate them every time I have to do a reset).

I just want to make sure I'm not going to send my Touch into a tizzy by giving it conflicting information of any kind.

And thank you for the extremely clear instructions!

[PeterT]

Originally Posted by Corpsegoddess

Obviously, if Calibre is creating the shelves for me, then of course I'll delete the ones I've manually made on the Kobo; there's no need to populate them through the device (and have to constantly REpopulate them every time I have to do a reset).

I just want to make sure I'm not going to send my Touch into a tizzy by giving it conflicting information of any kind.

And thank you for the extremely clear instructions!

No issues at all. I've been using calibre for shelf management since shelves were added to the beta releases of the firmware, and version 0.1 of the new driver.

[davidfor]

The calibre driver doesn't care how the shelf was created. If the name matches the shelf name in the columns it is configured to use, the shelf will be used without changing it. And it will also delete shelves if it removes all the books from the shelf and the option is set and.

The shelf name has to be an exact match; spelling and case. On the device you can create shelves with leading and trailing spaces and different cases. So, you can have "AAA", "AAA ", "aaa", " AaA" as all different shelves on the device (there is a programmer at Kobo that is lucky I wasn't in the code review). The driver won't match the shelves with leading or trailing spaces, and will only match with the shelf with exactly the same case.

[Corpsegoddess]

Originally Posted by davidfor

The calibre driver doesn't care how the shelf was created. If the name matches the shelf name in the columns it is configured to use, the shelf will be used without changing it. And it will also delete shelves if it removes all the books from the shelf and the option is set and.

The shelf name has to be an exact match; spelling and case. On the device you can create shelves with leading and trailing spaces and different cases. So, you can have "AAA", "AAA ", "aaa", " AaA" as all different shelves on the device (there is a programmer at Kobo that is lucky I wasn't in the code review). The driver won't match the shelves with leading or trailing spaces, and will only match with the shelf with exactly the same case.

Thank you! I figured you had it all worked out, but I'm paranoid about having all my bases covered.

I appreciate the info.

[PeterT]

Originally Posted by Corpsegoddess

Thank you! I figured you had it all worked out, but I'm paranoid about having all my bases covered.

I appreciate the info.

Oh... Did we mention that if you make a shelf called 'Brick me' your Kobo will self destruct??