Trouble with organising

SusieQ100 · 11-08-2010, 06:12 PM

Hi there, I´m relatively new to Calibre but so far I´ve found it dead easy to use. But there´s one thing I can´t work out, and I´ve tried searching the forum with various search phrases and still haven´t found the answer to my question.

Which is: When I have a collection of books in the library and I want to change the order in which they show up on my Sony Reader PRS-300, how do I do that (in simple terms, please!). For example, I have the Sue Grafton "Alphabet" series of books; in the library, and thus the Reader, even though I thought I uploaded them in the order in which they appeared, they now show up incorrectly. All I wish to do is "pick up" the appropriate "line" (that is numbered) and move it to the correct place. i.e. in both the library and the Reader the collection shows "A is for...; B is for...; D is for...; C is for...; "I wish to simply move the "C" and "D" around. Is that possible??

Hope that my question is clear, and I look forward to any replies - in plain english, please!! I get the idea that everyone here is very technical!

jackie_w · 11-08-2010, 06:22 PM

I have this set of books. When I click on the Title column in the Library view (in order to sort by Title) they come out in the correct order. If yours don't, as a first step, I would suggest looking very closely at the Titles you have entered for books 'C' and 'D' in the Edit Metadata window - maybe leading spaces or multiple spaces in the titles.

chaley · 11-09-2010, 05:18 AM

@SusieQ100: The grafton series is one example where calibre's title sort generation falls down. In particular, the book 'A is for Alibi' ends up sorted under 'is', because calibre thinks that the book's title is similar to 'A Perfect Nightmare', which should sort under 'P'. In other words, calibre is treating the 'A' is an article, not a full-blown word in the title.

Before I go in, is this your problem? If jackie_w's suggestion fixes it, then we don't need to get 'technical'.

OK, since you are still reading, there are three possibilities to consider. Reacting to these possibilities include changing 'tweaks', something you might find 'technical'. Many people have succeeded. If something isn't clear to you, ask.

The first possibility: you don't want calibre to do leading article detection, ever. In other words, you want both 'A Perfect Nightmare' to sort under 'A' and 'The Anarchist' to sort under 'T'. If this describes you, please see this post and this post for what you can do to change calibre's behavior.

Second possibility: you want calibre to do leading article detection on the library view, but you want books on your 300 to be in strict order (no article detection). In this case, change only the save_template_title_series_sorting tweak described in possibility one.

Third possibility: you want leading article detection, but you want to fix 'A is for Alibi' (and any other book with a title beginning with 'A is'). In other words, when you click on the title column to sort by title, you want 'A is for...' to sort under A, but 'A Perfect Nightmare' to sort under 'P'. To do this, you must change the tweak 'title_sort_articles' to be

Code:

title_sort_articles=r'^(A|The|An)\s+(?!is)'

I note that you live in the Netherlands. If you read books in Dutch, you might also want to add the Dutch articles to the list. For example, to add 'Het' to to the list, it would become:

Code:

title_sort_articles=r'^(A|The|An|Het)\s+(?!is)'

SusieQ100 · 11-09-2010, 06:27 AM

Thanks, both. These solutions would indeed help with that problem, but I guess I didn't really use the best example for what I'm trying to do. Maybe this is better: I have a number of series, for example the Harry Bosch by Michael Connelly, Jack Reacher series by Lee Child, etc. I want to have them listed in the Sony in the order in which they came out, and no matter how I try I can't get this to work! Maybe the only solution is to literally upload them one at a time???

itimpi · 11-09-2010, 06:32 AM

On the Sony if you have filled in the Series Name and Series index fields under Calibre, then when sent to the Sony they should show up with the Series Name used as a collection name, and with the books in the correct order according to the series index. It does not matter what order the books are sent to the Sony, Calibre automatically inserts them into the correct order in e Collection. Note, however, that this assumes you have Calibre set to do automatic collection management on the Sony rather than manual.

If you want something else such as the titles to be amended to get the series information included as part of the title on the Sony then you need to look at the Calibre Plugboard functionality to get the title amended to the format you want.

chaley · 11-09-2010, 06:39 AM

Ahhh...

You are using a Sony PRS-300, the same as I am. I can confirm itimpi's post; if I look at collections I see series, and if I look at a series I see the books in series order, not title order.

Check:
1) that you are running the latest version of calibre, 0.7.27
2) that you have put something into the series column
3) that the numbers in the series column are correct

If all of these are true, and you are not seeing series-based collections on your 300, then we have some more trouble-shooting to do.

BTW: If you use calibre to manage your collections on your 300, you might want to turn automatic metadata management on. When on, calibre will update the metadata (series, title, etc) in the Sony's database whenever you connect the device. On the other hand, it will delete any hand-added (or Sony Reader SW-added) collections. To turn this on, go to preferences -> sending books to devices, and change metadata management.

BTW 2: I use a plugboard to add the series information to the title when I send a book to my sony. That way I can see that information when browsing by title. I prefer the information to be at the end of the title, but many people prefer it to be at the beginning. For some ideas, look at the first post in this thread.

SusieQ100 · 11-09-2010, 04:39 PM

Thanks again for the help. I'll keep you posted!

thekidsmom · 11-09-2010, 11:12 PM

I'm wondering if my problem could be solved by the above solutions? Inside calibre, I have re-titled my books based on the order I want to read them (01title, 02title, etc).

However, they do not show up in the same order on the Nook. Do you guys have suggestions as to how I can get the order to match on Nook and Calibre?

Am I over-thinking this? Thanks!

itimpi · 11-10-2010, 04:52 AM

How are you transferring the books to the Nook? Are you using Calibre facilities such as "Send to Device" or "Send to Folder" or are you using some other way? The reason for asking is that the metadata only gets updated in the book if you use the Calibre facilities.

thekidsmom · 11-10-2010, 08:15 AM

itimpi-thanks for the question....

To get the book into Calibre the first time, I did 'find books', then 'convert books' if it was necessary.

Then I did 'send to device' to get it from Calibre to Nook.

However, after I change the title, I am NOT 'sending to device'...I'm assuming syncing takes place without doing that....what am I doing wrong?

Thanks in advance for all help.

chaley · 11-10-2010, 08:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by thekidsmom

However, after I change the title, I am NOT 'sending to device'...I'm assuming syncing takes place without doing that....what am I doing wrong?

Not sending to device again.

Calibre never autosyncs books. For certain devices, most notably sonys (but not the nook), calibre can autosync metadata.

Edit: calibre does autosync news if you ask it to do so. However, there is no way to get it to autosync anything else.

thekidsmom · 11-10-2010, 08:26 AM

'Not sending to device again.'

OMG...is the solution really going to be that easy? I can't wait to drop off the kids at school and get back to this....thanks SO for your help.

As with the OP, I tend to overthink this stuff....I'll report back.

thekidsmom · 11-10-2010, 10:10 AM

ok...so I went back and 'sent to device' books whose titles I had changed.

original title: All I Ever Wanted
new title: 01All I Ever Wanted

What I ended up with was Calibre reading my device & telling me I had 2 books called 01All I Ever Wanted

but Nook showing All I Ever Wanted two times....no sign of a 01 anywhere.

(underline for reading ease only)

I'm going to go get caffeine and tackle this again. In the meantime any additioanl pointers would be appreciated.

Thanks guys.

SusieQ100 · 11-10-2010, 12:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chaley

Ahhh...

You are using a Sony PRS-300, the same as I am. I can confirm itimpi's post; if I look at collections I see series, and if I look at a series I see the books in series order, not title order.

Check:
1) that you are running the latest version of calibre, 0.7.27
2) that you have put something into the series column
3) that the numbers in the series column are correct

If all of these are true, and you are not seeing series-based collections on your 300, then we have some more trouble-shooting to do.

BTW: If you use calibre to manage your collections on your 300, you might want to turn automatic metadata management on. When on, calibre will update the metadata (series, title, etc) in the Sony's database whenever you connect the device. On the other hand, it will delete any hand-added (or Sony Reader SW-added) collections. To turn this on, go to preferences -> sending books to devices, and change metadata management.

BTW 2: I use a plugboard to add the series information to the title when I send a book to my sony. That way I can see that information when browsing by title. I prefer the information to be at the end of the title, but many people prefer it to be at the beginning. For some ideas, look at the first post in this thread.

Yes! It works! I did have to spend the whole morning setting and checking the series orders, but once I had changed the metadata management to automatic it all went smoothly. Thanks!

thekidsmom · 11-10-2010, 09:37 PM

[QUOTE=thekidsmom;1208667]ok...so I went back and 'sent to device' books whose titles I had changed.

original title: All I Ever Wanted
new title: 01All I Ever Wanted

What I ended up with was Calibre reading my device & telling me I had 2 books called 01All I Ever Wanted

but Nook showing All I Ever Wanted two times....no sign of a 01 anywhere.

(underline for reading ease only)
QUOTE]

I also made sure that I've got metadata mgmt set to 'automatic'....which tells me that 'Calibre automatically keeps metadata on the device in sync with the calibre library, on every connect'. So shouldn't the title order of books inside the nook reflect the same title order showing in calibre?

I can tell that calibre is an extremely robust and powerful program--sadly, my brain is not equally powerful and robust. HELP!

11-08-2010, 06:12 PM	#1
SusieQ100 Enthusiast Posts: 28 Karma: 10 Join Date: Nov 2010 Location: Netherlands Device: Sony Reader PRS-T2	Trouble with organising Hi there, I´m relatively new to Calibre but so far I´ve found it dead easy to use. But there´s one thing I can´t work out, and I´ve tried searching the forum with various search phrases and still haven´t found the answer to my question. Which is: When I have a collection of books in the library and I want to change the order in which they show up on my Sony Reader PRS-300, how do I do that (in simple terms, please!). For example, I have the Sue Grafton "Alphabet" series of books; in the library, and thus the Reader, even though I thought I uploaded them in the order in which they appeared, they now show up incorrectly. All I wish to do is "pick up" the appropriate "line" (that is numbered) and move it to the correct place. i.e. in both the library and the Reader the collection shows "A is for...; B is for...; D is for...; C is for...; "I wish to simply move the "C" and "D" around. Is that possible?? Hope that my question is clear, and I look forward to any replies - in plain english, please!! I get the idea that everyone here is very technical!

11-09-2010, 05:18 AM	#3
chaley Grand Sorcerer Posts: 11,733 Karma: 6690881 Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: Notts, England Device: Kobo Libra 2	@SusieQ100: The grafton series is one example where calibre's title sort generation falls down. In particular, the book 'A is for Alibi' ends up sorted under 'is', because calibre thinks that the book's title is similar to 'A Perfect Nightmare', which should sort under 'P'. In other words, calibre is treating the 'A' is an article, not a full-blown word in the title. Before I go in, is this your problem? If jackie_w's suggestion fixes it, then we don't need to get 'technical'. OK, since you are still reading, there are three possibilities to consider. Reacting to these possibilities include changing 'tweaks', something you might find 'technical'. Many people have succeeded. If something isn't clear to you, ask. The first possibility: you don't want calibre to do leading article detection, ever. In other words, you want both 'A Perfect Nightmare' to sort under 'A' and 'The Anarchist' to sort under 'T'. If this describes you, please see this post and this post for what you can do to change calibre's behavior. Second possibility: you want calibre to do leading article detection on the library view, but you want books on your 300 to be in strict order (no article detection). In this case, change only the save_template_title_series_sorting tweak described in possibility one. Third possibility: you want leading article detection, but you want to fix 'A is for Alibi' (and any other book with a title beginning with 'A is'). In other words, when you click on the title column to sort by title, you want 'A is for...' to sort under A, but 'A Perfect Nightmare' to sort under 'P'. To do this, you must change the tweak 'title_sort_articles' to be Code: title_sort_articles=r'^(A\|The\|An)\s+(?!is)' I note that you live in the Netherlands. If you read books in Dutch, you might also want to add the Dutch articles to the list. For example, to add 'Het' to to the list, it would become: Code: title_sort_articles=r'^(A\|The\|An\|Het)\s+(?!is)'

11-09-2010, 11:12 PM	#8
thekidsmom Connoisseur Posts: 60 Karma: 10 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Texas Device: Galaxy Tab 3, nook, Nexus 7, iPad	A little knowledge is a dangerous thing... I'm wondering if my problem could be solved by the above solutions? Inside calibre, I have re-titled my books based on the order I want to read them (01title, 02title, etc). However, they do not show up in the same order on the Nook. Do you guys have suggestions as to how I can get the order to match on Nook and Calibre? Am I over-thinking this? Thanks!

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11-08-2010, 06:22 PM	#2
jackie_w Grand Sorcerer Posts: 6,206 Karma: 16228558 Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: UK Device: Kobo: KA1, ClaraHD, Forma, Libra2, Clara2E. PocketBook: TouchHD3	I have this set of books. When I click on the Title column in the Library view (in order to sort by Title) they come out in the correct order. If yours don't, as a first step, I would suggest looking very closely at the Titles you have entered for books 'C' and 'D' in the Edit Metadata window - maybe leading spaces or multiple spaces in the titles.

11-09-2010, 06:27 AM	#4
SusieQ100 Enthusiast Posts: 28 Karma: 10 Join Date: Nov 2010 Location: Netherlands Device: Sony Reader PRS-T2	Thanks, both. These solutions would indeed help with that problem, but I guess I didn't really use the best example for what I'm trying to do. Maybe this is better: I have a number of series, for example the Harry Bosch by Michael Connelly, Jack Reacher series by Lee Child, etc. I want to have them listed in the Sony in the order in which they came out, and no matter how I try I can't get this to work! Maybe the only solution is to literally upload them one at a time???

11-09-2010, 06:32 AM	#5
itimpi Wizard Posts: 4,552 Karma: 950151 Join Date: Nov 2008 Device: Sony PRS-950, iphone/ipad (Marvin/iBooks/QuickReader)	On the Sony if you have filled in the Series Name and Series index fields under Calibre, then when sent to the Sony they should show up with the Series Name used as a collection name, and with the books in the correct order according to the series index. It does not matter what order the books are sent to the Sony, Calibre automatically inserts them into the correct order in e Collection. Note, however, that this assumes you have Calibre set to do automatic collection management on the Sony rather than manual. If you want something else such as the titles to be amended to get the series information included as part of the title on the Sony then you need to look at the Calibre Plugboard functionality to get the title amended to the format you want.

11-09-2010, 06:39 AM	#6
chaley Grand Sorcerer Posts: 11,733 Karma: 6690881 Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: Notts, England Device: Kobo Libra 2	Ahhh... You are using a Sony PRS-300, the same as I am. I can confirm itimpi's post; if I look at collections I see series, and if I look at a series I see the books in series order, not title order. Check: 1) that you are running the latest version of calibre, 0.7.27 2) that you have put something into the series column 3) that the numbers in the series column are correct If all of these are true, and you are not seeing series-based collections on your 300, then we have some more trouble-shooting to do. BTW: If you use calibre to manage your collections on your 300, you might want to turn automatic metadata management on. When on, calibre will update the metadata (series, title, etc) in the Sony's database whenever you connect the device. On the other hand, it will delete any hand-added (or Sony Reader SW-added) collections. To turn this on, go to preferences -> sending books to devices, and change metadata management. BTW 2: I use a plugboard to add the series information to the title when I send a book to my sony. That way I can see that information when browsing by title. I prefer the information to be at the end of the title, but many people prefer it to be at the beginning. For some ideas, look at the first post in this thread.

11-09-2010, 04:39 PM	#7
SusieQ100 Enthusiast Posts: 28 Karma: 10 Join Date: Nov 2010 Location: Netherlands Device: Sony Reader PRS-T2	Thanks again for the help. I'll keep you posted!

11-10-2010, 04:52 AM	#9
itimpi Wizard Posts: 4,552 Karma: 950151 Join Date: Nov 2008 Device: Sony PRS-950, iphone/ipad (Marvin/iBooks/QuickReader)	How are you transferring the books to the Nook? Are you using Calibre facilities such as "Send to Device" or "Send to Folder" or are you using some other way? The reason for asking is that the metadata only gets updated in the book if you use the Calibre facilities.

11-10-2010, 08:15 AM	#10
thekidsmom Connoisseur Posts: 60 Karma: 10 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Texas Device: Galaxy Tab 3, nook, Nexus 7, iPad	itimpi-thanks for the question.... To get the book into Calibre the first time, I did 'find books', then 'convert books' if it was necessary. Then I did 'send to device' to get it from Calibre to Nook. However, after I change the title, I am NOT 'sending to device'...I'm assuming syncing takes place without doing that....what am I doing wrong? Thanks in advance for all help.

11-10-2010, 08:26 AM	#12
thekidsmom Connoisseur Posts: 60 Karma: 10 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Texas Device: Galaxy Tab 3, nook, Nexus 7, iPad	'Not sending to device again.' OMG...is the solution really going to be that easy? I can't wait to drop off the kids at school and get back to this....thanks SO for your help. As with the OP, I tend to overthink this stuff....I'll report back.

11-10-2010, 10:10 AM	#13
thekidsmom Connoisseur Posts: 60 Karma: 10 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Texas Device: Galaxy Tab 3, nook, Nexus 7, iPad	ok...so I went back and 'sent to device' books whose titles I had changed. original title: All I Ever Wanted new title: 01All I Ever Wanted What I ended up with was Calibre reading my device & telling me I had 2 books called 01All I Ever Wanted but Nook showing All I Ever Wanted two times....no sign of a 01 anywhere. (underline for reading ease only) I'm going to go get caffeine and tackle this again. In the meantime any additioanl pointers would be appreciated. Thanks guys.

11-10-2010, 09:37 PM	#15
thekidsmom Connoisseur Posts: 60 Karma: 10 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Texas Device: Galaxy Tab 3, nook, Nexus 7, iPad	[QUOTE=thekidsmom;1208667]ok...so I went back and 'sent to device' books whose titles I had changed. original title: All I Ever Wanted new title: 01All I Ever Wanted What I ended up with was Calibre reading my device & telling me I had 2 books called 01All I Ever Wanted but Nook showing All I Ever Wanted two times....no sign of a 01 anywhere. (underline for reading ease only) QUOTE] I also made sure that I've got metadata mgmt set to 'automatic'....which tells me that 'Calibre automatically keeps metadata on the device in sync with the calibre library, on every connect'. So shouldn't the title order of books inside the nook reflect the same title order showing in calibre? I can tell that calibre is an extremely robust and powerful program--sadly, my brain is not equally powerful and robust. HELP!