Reverting metadata to previous versions

[Anna H]

I read a lot of classics, which I generally get free from Project Gutenberg. The problem is, when I download metadata/covers for them automatically, they often come up with metadata/covers for weird editions or even completely different books. Is there a way to revert to the previous metadata/cover for the book? If not, could that be a feature in the future? (Though I will admit, it's much easier in 0.8.0, which I do appreciate.) It's a pain to go in and manually change everything back and then do the search from the "edit metadata" window.

Or is it possible to set preferences such that using ctrl-D brings up the screen so you can choose which metadata and covers you want to download?

[kovidgoyal]

Open the edit metadata dialog and click download metadata. Then you can revert the changes if you dont like them.

[Anna H]

Yes, but is there any way to revert the changes short of manually going to the fields and typing the old metadata in (assuming you remember it)?

[kiwidude]

Just click the cancel button in that dialog, none of the changes are saved until you click ok.

[Anna H]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that only works if you are going into the edit metadata screen for each individual book. Because if you just hit ctrl-D (on one book or several), it does it automatically without giving you a choice. In which case, if I understand correctly, there's no way to revert back to the original metadata.

This is somewhat annoying, because it prohibits using mass downloading of metadata for several books, and even slows down doing individual books because you have to go into that special screen to do it. Although, if you've got several books I guess what you do is do them all en masse, and then figure out which ones got the wrong metadata (about 1/4 for Project Gutenbberg books, since they are really old books which usually have either multiple editions on Amazon or have been out of print since long before Amazon came along) and then go in and manually look for metadata, praying that you find an edition with metadata that works, or if not that you can reconstruct what the right metadata should be.

Thank you for your help and the prompt reply.

(Randomly, it's interesting that Calibre seems to think that Project Gutenberg books are Webster's international editions, which are in English but designed for ESL students with glossary notes at the bottom of each page. No idea why, but when Calibre gets a Project Gutenberg book wrong, it's usually by identifying it as one of those. Sometimes it's by saying it's an illustrated version, or a play based on the book or something, but usually that it's got foreign-language glossaries.)

[kiwidude]

You aren't wrong in that both Kovid and I were talking about the individual metadata screen.

To be honest for the level of granularity of overwriting you say you want, treating each book individually is pretty much the only way it is going to work anyways. How else can it work? You select a bunch of books, and hit ctrl+d. Now you are saying you want some sort of opportunity to review the results before applying them. So you are going to need screen(s) to one by one compare all of the fields retrieved with the current value of each book. That isn't significantly different from what you are doing by using the Edit Metadata screen. The only difference is one less button click on Fetch metadata per book (you do know you can use the Skip button to stay "in" the Edit metadata screen to move to the next book, right?)

Don't get me wrong, I rarely use the Edit Metadata screen myself and mainly use Ctrl+D. But I don't ever get myself in a situation of metadata being "overwritten". When the book is added to Calibre, the only metadata it will have for me is title, author and (sometimes) series. I disable the metadata download overwriting title, and author I sometimes disable, sometimes not. For the rest there is no data to be "overwritten".

If it is an existing book that does have metadata and I only want a partial field updated (like Rating), then I only enable that checkbox in the metadata options. That is why I asked Kovid to add Select All/None buttons, to quickly toggle those settings.

As for covers - well I usually use my Search the Internet plugin to find the best possible cover one by one anyways, and so would make sure I click on the "Download metadata" button rather than "Download both".

Using bulk download is simply the wrong operation for you to be using if you want granular control over which books get updated and which don't. Filter/sort your books to just the ones you want to update, select the first, do your fetch, click Skip and repeat for the second etc if you need that.

[Anna H]

Thank you for your time.