Batch Conversions

[SludgeMan]

I would like to do batch conversions on a screen that does not display all of my books. I have hundreds of books and am adding more all the time. Displaying all of the books I have would quickly become too confusing. Is there a way to remove books that are listed on the screen without removing them from the computer? I guess what I need is more flexibility when displaying only the books I want to work with, and removing selected books when I'm through. Is this possible with Calibre or not?

[chaley]

By 'on the screen' do you mean via the calibre GUI? If so, then the search mechanism should do what you want. Search for something by typing in the search box, and you see only the books that match that 'something'. You can go further and create a named search for the query, then use that named search in the 'restrict to' box, creating virtual sub-libraries.

Things work best if you use tags to identify books you are working on. For example, if new books are given the tag ToDo, then searching for ToDo will show you those books. Once you have finished hacking the book, remove the tag. Starting with release 0.7.17, you can have calibre automatically put tags on books when they are added, simplifying the process (preferences -> general).

[theducks]

Originally Posted by SludgeMan

I would like to do batch conversions on a screen that does not display all of my books. I have hundreds of books and am adding more all the time. Displaying all of the books I have would quickly become too confusing. Is there a way to remove books that are listed on the screen without removing them from the computer? I guess what I need is more flexibility when displaying only the books I want to work with, and removing selected books when I'm through. Is this possible with Calibre or not?

what chaley said.

Then Save that search and use it as a Filter (the left of the search)
Example:
I have a custom (date) column "Last_Edited" (#edited)

I want to see what still needs work
I apply the saved search filter, "NotEdited"

   #edited:false

Presto, a slightly smaller list
(OK, so my example topic could be better chosen )

[SludgeMan]

Thanks for the help, but I think I need to buy a dedicated batch conversion program first, the come back to Calibre to set up the books properly. Once I have them in a format I can read on my Palm Pilot, I'll use Calibre to sort everything out. Thanks again for the help.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by SludgeMan

Thanks for the help, but I think I need to buy a dedicated batch conversion program first, the come back to Calibre to set up the books properly.

Could you post back here if/when you find such a program? There are a *lot* of people who use calibre to batch convert books (both GUI and command line), and they will be interested to hear about tools that improve on calibre somehow.