Calibre 7.36 Author Fields in Tag Browser is weird

[Maggie-Me]

thanks for the tweaks to turn off this feature

[hijack]

Ok, these are my mistakes, not yours.

After reading your comments about the 7.36 and my posts, I decided to do it right. First, I read the posting guidelines. Then I read all I could find about "Tweaks" in the manual. I'm impressed with all of Calbres abilities! I felt, and do feel, I can make the changes.

I downloaded 7.35 to have as a backup if needed. Lastly, before starting on the tweaking with 7.36 I copied a back-up of the folders that had calibres catalog/lists or what ever on a separate drive. (remember, I'm new at Calibre.)

That's when the disaster struck. (Mine, not yours)

When I went back to Calibre, all my lists were gone. I had no catalog.
My books were still on the PC, but not in Calibre.

I tried to find a way to recover and reclaim the existing list. Not having studied that subject yet, lets just say, I failed.

My main problem seemed to be it kept trying to go to the hard drive I put the back-up files on when I would try to recreate the catalog.

To wind this up, I did manage to create a new catalog. I'm adding my books back into a better folder structure that will be cleaner.

My Questions?

Could I have saved my Library with a simple procedure?
Any guesses on why it kept wanting to go to the back-up drives?

I did go back to 7.35 after all this happened. I see that 7.37 is now out. After following that awhile on the forums, I'll update.

I am going to read all I can find in the manual. All this is happening faster than I can read! I've been through the FAQs several times.

Thanks

Jack

[chaley]

Originally Posted by hijack

After reading your comments about the 7.36 and my posts, I decided to do it right. First, I read the posting guidelines. Then I read all I could find about "Tweaks" in the manual. I'm impressed with all of Calbres abilities! I felt, and do feel, I can make the changes.

Good. Although with what you wrote below, my guess is that you are also frustrated.

I downloaded 7.35 to have as a backup if needed. Lastly, before starting on the tweaking with 7.36 I copied a back-up of the folders that had calibres catalog/lists or what ever on a separate drive. (remember, I'm new at Calibre.)

These are good steps.

That's when the disaster struck. (Mine, not yours)

When I went back to Calibre, all my lists were gone. I had no catalog.
My books were still on the PC, but not in Calibre.

OK, this is seriously strange. Nothing should have emptied your library.

Briefly explaining calibre's library might help. The library is a combined file store + database. All the metadata is stored in a file metadata.db, which is in the root folder of the library (the one with all the author names in it). All the book formats, covers, and other like information is stored in the subfolders. Another folder, completely separate from your library, contains your preferences.

I assume that you mean 'catalog' as calibre's book display (it has other meanings in calibre). For the display to empty, one of three things must have happened.
1) The library folder's name was changed.
2) The metadata.db file was removed.
3) The preferences indicating where the library is stored were changed.

From here, I can't tell you which one (or ones) happened to you. My suspicion is that when you were doing your backup, you might have accidentally changed the name of the library. Alternatively, you accidentally moved metadata.db instead of copying it. One technique that has bitten me is to do a backup by renaming a folder, then copying the contents back to the original. It is easy to make mistakes during the copy-back.

If you are using Linux, you would also need to be careful about letter case. In linux, the files 'somebook' and 'Somebook' are different files and you can have them both. In windows and (I think) macos, you can't.

I tried to find a way to recover and reclaim the existing list. Not having studied that subject yet, lets just say, I failed.

My main problem seemed to be it kept trying to go to the hard drive I put the back-up files on when I would try to recreate the catalog.

This sounds like the preferences got changed.

My Questions?

Could I have saved my Library with a simple procedure?

Making a copy of the library folder is the best way to do a backup of the library. Note that I say a copy of the folder, not a copy of the content of the folder. It is too easy not to select everything in the library (such as metadata.db) when making a copy of the content.

Note that you should also make a backup of calibre's preferences folder (again, the folder, not the content).

Any guesses on why it kept wanting to go to the back-up drives?

Somehow in your experiments you aimed calibre at your backup? That could happen if you used 'change library' or played with the --with-library option.

I did go back to 7.35 after all this happened. I see that 7.37 is now out. After following that awhile on the forums, I'll update.

One suggestion: do one thing at a time. Play first with backing up your library, to be sure you can back it up. Also play with recovering it. Backups you can't use to recover are worse than useless.

Next, play with the configuration options using the release you have. Particularly related to this discussion are the change library commands that let you switch between copies of a library.

Last, when you upgrade, don't change anything else until you have satisfied yourself that the upgrade works.

Good luck!

[chaley]

Note for those of you who used tweaks to disable categorization in 0.7.36: the option structure changed in 0.7.37. Enabling/disabling and controlling the type of categorization is no longer a tweak. It is a GUI-available option, on preferences -> look and feel, and also on a right-click on the tab browser. The partition count is on preferences -> look and feel.

The templates used to for the partition display remain as tweaks.

[library addict]

Originally Posted by chaley

Note that you should also make a backup of calibre's preferences folder (again, the folder, not the content).

Where is this folder stored in Windows?

I always back up the Calibre Library folder, but didn't know this info was stored separately.

Also, thanks for the quick fix on the tags.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by library addict

Where is this folder stored in Windows?

I always back up the Calibre Library folder, but didn't know this info was stored separately.

The easiest way to find out is to ask calibre. Go to preferences -> advanced -> miscellaneous, press the 'open calibre configuration directory' button, and see where you end up.

Also, thanks for the quick fix on the tags.

Welcome.

[hijack]

Last, when you upgrade, don't change anything else until you have satisfied yourself that the upgrade works.

Good luck![/QUOTE]

Thanks for your help. I believe my mistake was included somewhere in your lists of possiblities.

I kept a copy of all your comments.

I intend on being very careful until I get to read all of the manual.

The only thing I'm going to work on now is getting my books all back into my library.

Then, I'll clean up all my extra back-ups so I'll know what I have.

After all that, I'll think about 7.37 or what ever is current at the time.

Thanks alot for your help.

Jack

[pusskins]

Thanks for 7.37 Still not entirely sure why my tags went but given the changelog and the fact that I'm still going through the books dh asked calibre to library and trying to bring some sense to the metadata I suspect I had an empty catagory or two.

But yippee skip I now have my catagories back and can find books by format for the different devices.

Thanks again, quick catch

Yours Aye,
Puss

[OtterBooks]

Hi. I recently downloaded 7.37 and noticed that the Author list in Tag Browser was sorted into subcategories by author letter. It may have done this in the previous version as well, but I just noticed it now. Anyway, I really liked it.

I was going through letter by letter, correcting metadata, and after changing an author name I noticed that suddenly the Author list no longer was sorted into subcategories, but one long list. I tried getting it back by choosing the various options in the right-click drop down menu for the Author tag, and none of the options appeared to change anything.

Obviously I did something to cause this, but can't get the letter sort back. Many thanks in advance and sorry for my noobishness/lack of clarity/failure to use the search function/smell.

[kovidgoyal]

the list is sorted into sub categories only is there are more than x number of items where x is set in preferences->look and Feel

[chaley]

Originally Posted by OtterBooks

HiObviously I did something to cause this, but can't get the letter sort back. Many thanks in advance and sorry for my noobishness/lack of clarity/failure to use the search function/smell.

You probably removed enough authors to fall below the limit, which defaults to 100. Go to preferences/look & feel and change the number to what you like.

[OtterBooks]

Ah ha. That was it. Thanks a bunch, kovidgoyal and chaley.

[Stampercam]

I really love the subcategorisation of authors by letter, this has been a great upgrade feature. What I'd like is to be able to click on (for example) A and not just see the authors in that subcategory but have all the books from all the A authors show up in the book list (I think that sounds better in my head somehow).

In the absence of that ability is there a search string I can enter that will show me all titles that have author surname starting with "a" or "b" etc?

[chaley]

This probably should have been its own thread rather than being added to this one. You are asking a different question, one that is probably of interest to many people.

Originally Posted by Stampercam

I really love the subcategorisation of authors by letter, this has been a great upgrade feature. What I'd like is to be able to click on (for example) A and not just see the authors in that subcategory but have all the books from all the A authors show up in the book list (I think that sounds better in my head somehow).

Others have asked for this. It isn't clear how to do this efficiently, so I haven't done it. I don't know that I ever will, as it isn't high on my own priority list.

In the absence of that ability is there a search string I can enter that will show me all titles that have author surname starting with "a" or "b" etc?

Use search with regexp. For these examples, I assume that your author_sort is set up LN, FN (Surname comma firstname). For example, to find books by authors with surname beginning with 'a', search for

author_sort:"~^a"

To find all authors with names beginning with a or b, search for

author_sort:"~^[ab]"

or

author_sort:"~^a" or author_sort:"~^b"

The same works for other fields. For example, to find series beginning with 'a', search for

series:"~^a"

By way of explanation, the quotes are there just in case there are spaces in the regular expression. In the examples above, the quotes aren't necessary, but I usually add them anyway. The ~ tells calibre's search to use the regular expression that follows the character. The regular expression is ^a. The ^ character says that what follows next must match the beginning of the field. The next character, a, is what must match.

For the example ^[ab], the [ ] indicate that any of the characters within the brackets must match.

[Stampercam]

Thanks Chaley, that answer has helped in many ways.... I've been playing with the regexp a bit to customise the searches but you have explained well what I wasn't clear on.

Cheers
Cam