shelf-like display of the covers of the book in a collection

[John F]

foice, although you may want to manually sort your library, I'm guessing that there is some criteria to the sorting. Maybe if you specified the criteria, someone could offer an easy way to do it with calibre.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

How did you even know you wanted to find that book, then? I'm not sure how you can want a specific book without having a specific identifying criterion in mind. "I really want to read this book that I remember nothing about!"

Keywords.
Calibre searches (default settings) look in All columns. The word might be in the summary, a tag (publisher and/or user supplied)
But the real power is a this but not if that search

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by John F

I was assuming that the OP wanted some other features/advantages of ebooks, not only to have them arranged like physical books in a library.

You can't have it both ways. It's the question of what's more important to you. And if the advantages of ebooks matter more, then why complain that you're missing the feel and sight of physical books?

Perhaps our reaction to the OP's question was somewhat extreme. But the thing is, there have been lots of people coming here over the years and whining how ebooks don't behave like paper books, how they can't use their favorite folder system with Calibre, how they miss the feel and smell of paper and so on. After a while it gets really annoying.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by John F

foice, although you may want to manually sort your library, I'm guessing that there is some criteria to the sorting. Maybe if you specified the criteria, someone could offer an easy way to do it with calibre.

You have no need to know how the actual Library is stored. The internals default to when added sequence number {id}. Calibre delivers or views the selected book. No rummaging in the stacks needed.

Actual displayed sort is almost instant. (searches that involve comments take a bit longer as the are not indexed and have to do it the old fashioned way. )

[John F]

Originally Posted by theducks

You have no need to know how the actual Library is stored. The internals default to when added sequence number {id}. Calibre delivers or views the selected book. No rummaging in the stacks needed.

Actual displayed sort is almost instant. (searches that involve comments take a bit longer as the are not indexed and have to do it the old fashioned way. )

I'm not sure what you are saying.

If foice would state their criteria, maybe someone could give a quick method.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by John F

I'm not sure what you are saying.

If foice would state their criteria, maybe someone could give a quick method.

I got the feeling that they just wanted to manually drag and drop the books around, based on how they felt about them at the moment. I could be wrong, of course, but what else is there that Calibre can't base its sorting on?

[John F]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

You can't have it both ways. It's the question of what's more important to you. And if the advantages of ebooks matter more, then why complain that you're missing the feel and sight of physical books?

...

Did the OP say they wanted the feel of real books. I thought they mentioned sort and library shelf look. Sorting can already be accomplished, and the look would be a new feature.

And again, no reason to go back to pbooks, unless that is truly "all you want".

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by John F

Did the OP say they wanted the feel of real books.

Yes, they did, as was pointed out already. Specifically, that they missed it. And that they had a taste for a physical experience.

[John F]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Yes, they did, as was pointed out already. Specifically, that they missed it. And that they had a taste for a physical experience.

I see "look&feel", which to me is more of a visual/GUI thing, then a "physical feel" (as in touch/handle/smell). I think most people are smart enough to figure out they are not going to get the physical feel of books from calibre.

[nabsltd]

Originally Posted by DNSB

See the attached image for an example. A prequel would get a series index such as 0.5, etc. the occasional time that there are two shorts between main entries, I use 0.3 and 0.6 as the series index.

I think this is pretty much standard these days. Even Overdrive has a short story listed as "10.5" in the series (Manhunt, Michael Bennet series).

For an arbitrary sort, though, I tend to start by numbering by 10s, which allows me to insert items in-between without making them seem "less important", which the 0.5 numbering for series entries does do. Also, the Series Manager plugin for Calibre really helps with re-arranging.

[nabsltd]

Originally Posted by DNSB

For an example, try finding the story Solstice on the Slab co-written by N. A. Grotepas in the Summer Solstice Shenanigans anthology using any directory structure where you not going to spend more time creating and maintaining the directory structure than reading.

Calibre is much easier, of course, but here's how I'd do it using file system:

1. Create a directory named "Books", and place each book in a subdirectory below that. Basically, what Calibre does, but without author directories.
2. Create a directory named "Authors" at the same level as "Books". Create a subdirectory for each author inside the "Authors" directory.
3. In the "N. A. Grotepas" subdirectory, create a symbolic link to the "Summer Solstice Shenanigans" subdirectory.

This allows you to search for an author, change to that author's directory, and see all the books they are related to. Think of the author as a type of "tag" for the book, and you can see that any other tag system you want can be set up the same way as the Authors directory (Genre, etc.).

Again, Calibre makes it far easier, because a database is designed to handle the relations that you would have to manually create using the file system, plus allows you to easily search for details that are not tag-like (ISBN, publication date, etc.).

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by nabsltd

Calibre is much easier, of course, but here's how I'd do it using file system:

1970s by someone clueless or too mean to buy a database!

Even physical libraries had a physical database, separate from the books: at least two card indexes.

Alao have fun doing that and maintaining it for thousands of books! Any database would be better, or even HTML pages* with the lowest links to the files, stored as they are on calibre!

(*Actual Web server optional!)

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by nabsltd

Calibre is much easier, of course, but here's how I'd do it using file system:

1. Create a directory named "Books", and place each book in a subdirectory below that. Basically, what Calibre does, but without author directories.
2. Create a directory named "Authors" at the same level as "Books". Create a subdirectory for each author inside the "Authors" directory.
3. In the "N. A. Grotepas" subdirectory, create a symbolic link to the "Summer Solstice Shenanigans" subdirectory.

This allows you to search for an author, change to that author's directory, and see all the books they are related to. Think of the author as a type of "tag" for the book, and you can see that any other tag system you want can be set up the same way as the Authors directory (Genre, etc.).

Again, Calibre makes it far easier, because a database is designed to handle the relations that you would have to manually create using the file system, plus allows you to easily search for details that are not tag-like (ISBN, publication date, etc.).

What I used to do before I switched to using calibre was similar to your suggestion. However, the point I made was that I was ending up spending more time copy/pasting authors, series, titles, etc. and tweaking my directory setup than I was reading books. At one point, I was looking at how I was storing the Grantville Gazette series and started looking for a better solution and ended up looking at calibre.

calibre made a lot of my cataloguing tasks exceedingly simple without spending an excessive amount of time on managing my ebook collection. As you said, I could search on almost any criteria including the ability to use multiple search criteria in a search at the cost of not managing the file storage, a tradeoff that I have never regretted.

[Aleron Ives]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I got the feeling that they just wanted to manually drag and drop the books around, based on how they felt about them at the moment.

This sounds like a great opportunity to install Windows XP and make use of its ability to drag files around into an arbitrary order. You don't even have to line up the icons in a grid, so you can get an optimal simulation of disorganised stacks of books in random spots on the floor!

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by John F

I see "look&feel", which to me is more of a visual/GUI thing, then a "physical feel" (as in touch/handle/smell). I think most people are smart enough to figure out they are not going to get the physical feel of books from calibre.

The post I quoted was in direct reply to one I had made in which I presented the closest possible visual simulation of a physical book shelf.

After I posted an image showing the nearest thing Calibre offers to a depiction of a physical book shelf, the OP responded as above.