filenames and file duplication

[CheriePie]

I'm trying to get up to speed with Calibre. I realize it's pretty feature packed but it's not yet very user friendly so I need to refer to the user manual and posts in this forum whenever I try to do anything.

My current issue revolves around filenames and duplication of files. Whenever I add a new PDF by dragging it to the interface, it creates a new copy of that PDF with the author and title swapped, i.e. I added Lori Handeland - In the Beginning.pdf and Calibre creates another copy in it's new directory structure named In the Beginning - Lori Handeland.pdf. How can I change this behavior so that (1) it doesn't create duplicate files on me and (2) it doesn't switch around the naming structure I prefer to use on my files?

I noticed the Advanced tab and the regular expression reference there, though it states that page is for calibre to know how to pull metadata from the filename. If I change this here, will it also change the way Calibre outputs filenames?


Also, I don't care for the behavior of minimizing going only to the system tray/notification area. It's not like this is a system utility, right? So before others who like that feature bash me over the head, let me just ask if there's any way to disable that and have it act like a normal app on a user configurable basis. Because I really don't care for it. If I minimize the app, I want to be able to look down at my taskbar and know it's still running.


Thanks for any help you can provide.
~Cherie

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by CheriePie

So before others who like that feature bash me over the head, let me just ask if there's any way to disable that and have it act like a normal app on a user configurable basis. Because I really don't care for it. If I minimize the app, I want to be able to look down at my taskbar and know it's still running.

Yes, just go into config dialog and turn of the Use Task Tray setting.

BOb

[kovidgoyal]

There is an option in the configuration dialog to disable the tray icon. You cant change the file names calibre assigns to files it stores in its library.

Creating copies is a feature, the idea being that it doesn't disturb your original files.

[CheriePie]

Ah hah! And yeah I just found the filename thing on page 3 of the FAQ thread here. I wasn't sure I'd find it so quickly.

And d'oh on my missing that system tray option. I must've gone past that several times in trying to find things in the configuration. (I'm still not sure on what a couple of them do, single file save for example, but I was going to finish reading the user guide before asking any more.) LOL

I suppose I should uncheck the "show notifications in system tray" as well? I don't know what that does differently as I haven't had any kind of notifications from the program.


Right now the problem I'm having is trying to force pagination. Like if a PDF file pages at a particular place, I want the resulting MOBI to paginate at that same place. I know that's probably discussed here somewhere though. (Feel free to point me to it if you know where it is though as searches are giving me way too many threads to look through.)


Thanks for the very useful program, and for the quick responses here too.

[kovidgoyal]

systray notifications has no effect if you've disabled the systray icon. Forcing pagination is not trivial, since calibre works from HTML converted from the PDF. If you convert to HTML from the pdf manually first, you can then insert style="page-break-before:always" on the HTML tags you want age breaks before.

[CheriePie]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

systray notifications has no effect if you've disabled the systray icon. Forcing pagination is not trivial, since calibre works from HTML converted from the PDF. If you convert to HTML from the pdf manually first, you can then insert style="page-break-before:always" on the HTML tags you want age breaks before.

*groan* Not a trivial task for 300 and 400 pg ebooks. Might be useful for the shorter ones though.

I actually have a request in to one of the publishers who gave me a book to review, asking for anything other than a PDF, preferably a mobi, so that's one less needing conversion.

[CheriePie]

I noticed that Mobipocket Creator creates an XML file in addition to the HTML when going from PDF to MOBI (prc). I'm not sure if calibre does this as I haven't looked for any of the intermediate files but I figure it works similarly.

Anyway, I noticed that the XML markup specifically specifies page containers (not sure that's the right word but they're tags that encapsulate everything that should appear on that page). So I'm wondering if calibre can use this information to know when to place the manual page breaks (assuming it too creates output files the same way, using HTML and XML as an intermediary. For that matter, I wonder why Mobipocket Creator doesn't do this already since it's the output from that program I'm looking at right now. (It did handle some of the h1-h3 tags better than calibre did though.)

[kovidgoyal]

calibre's pdf to html conversion engine tries to strip page breaks from the pdf as in most cases this is what is desired. Otherwise you'd have page breaks all over your reflowable ebook which would not look so good

[CheriePie]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

calibre's pdf to html conversion engine tries to strip page breaks from the pdf as in most cases this is what is desired. Otherwise you'd have page breaks all over your reflowable ebook which would not look so good

Is there a way around this on an as-needed basis? The couple of PDF's I'm trying to convert definitely work better with the page breaks in the same place they are in the original PDF.

Perhaps stopping the conversion at the html stage and using one of the command line utilities? Cuz that's what I'm trying to accomplish right now, getting the pages to break in the same place they did in the PDF.

[kovidgoyal]

You can use the pdftohtml command t convert the PDF to html. (it should be in your calibre directory).

[CheriePie]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

You can use the pdftohtml command t convert the PDF to html. (it should be in your calibre directory).

Thanks, I figured that's the one. I just need to figure out which commands to use with it, and how to make it do what I want. I still need it to wind up in MOBI in the long term. I just wanted to look at the html calibre outputs. There may be no benefit to me in doing this at all, and I'm already spending too much time on it so I might just have to make do with what I've got now.

I just don't see why I can't have some part of this process keep track of where the page breaks are in the original pdf and let me use them in the ending output file. That's the ultimate goal I want to try to get to.

Anyway, thanks for your input and I'll get back to playing around with this tomorrow or Sunday.

[sirbruce]

Sorry to jump into this thread, but I wouldn't mind if Calibre automatically inserted page-breaks before each Chapter it detects.

[kovidgoyal]

calibre does automatically insert page breaks before every capter it detects, unless you tell it not too