New to the scene, libprs500 / conversion questions

[mflood]

Hello folks! I just recently purchased a PRS-505, and as a result, I've been slowly browsing these forums for the last few days. Seems like a great community you have here, and I'm glad I found this place. </shameless flattery>

Anyway, I've been experimenting with Kovid Goyal's excellent libprs500 program. I'd been looking for something of its sort for quite a while, and it seems to be exactly what I need. I do have some questions regarding its use, though.

1) Do converted files get saved in the library1.db file?
2) When I remove files from libprs500, do they get removed from library1.db?
3) Is there a way to convert multiple ebooks at the same time, using this program? Everyone seems to say no, and the bulk convert option is obviously disabled, but when I select multiple files and hit the convert button, it starts asking me to confirm all the meta data, book by book. Presumably, once I finish that, it will sequentially convert the books. This is what I want. . .but the two times I've tried this, the program has crashed ("libprs500 has experienced an error, and needs to close." etc.) on the fourth or fifth meta data confirmation box. Is this likely to be a bug with my file (meaning it might work with others), or is this simply due to the fact that the program doesn't support it? Alternatively, is there a better program to do bulk conversions with ?

Thanks in advance. Oh, and I'm running XP, and libprs500 0.4.24. Of final note is that I'm a CS student, and very comfortable with computers. I'm new to the ebook scene, but feel free to talk tech.

[NatCh]

I'm afraid I don't know the answers to your libprs questions, but I do want to welcome you to MobileRead, mflood!

Which will, as a side effect, bump your thread to the front of the new posts, where it's more likely to get seen by someone who does know the answers you're after.

[mflood]

Thanks NatCh! I appreciate the welcome and the bump. It's always hard to catch on to the bumping etiquette of a new forum. :P

Anyway, now that you've presented me with this opportunity, I think I'll update my questions here.

1) The library1.db file doesn't change in size no matter how many ebooks I import into libprs, or convert to lrf. So I guess my question now is simply "when you import books and convert them, where are they stored?" I'm just curious how that system works.

2) Regardless of how many I do at once, or which files I use, libprs crashes with the same error I mentioned before when I try to do multiple ebooks. So I guess that question is answered. I'd still appreciate it if someone could point me to a program that would convert multiple files at once, though. I've heard that some of the command line tools will do it, but that you generally have to write a script to get it to batch convert. I wouldn't know how to write such a script without quite a bit of research, but I'm fairly confident I could implement one if someone could share, along with vague instructions.

Any takers? I'll thank you bunches, and stuff.

(thanks again, Natch)

[kovidgoyal]

The books are stored in library1.db, I'm not sure why you're library1.db file is not increasing in size. On unix,

ls -l ~/library1.db

As for multiple conversions crashing that's caused by a bug in the version of PyQt most linux distros use. You have to upgrade PyQt manually to 4.3.1 to fix this.