Quick Guide to Shelf Management with calibre 0.9.1 & above (Touch / Glo / Mini /Aura)

[wwaldo]

Thanks David, that fixed it.

[garyn]

I am not sure if this is possible, I have been reading this thread until my eyes bleed and have only succeeded in confusing myself.

I have a Kobo Glo and yesterday did a factory reset due to being so confused. I have now somehow managed to have my Kobo Glo set up a new shelf for my authors and adds books to the correct ones.

What I am now looking for it to do is to make shelves or collections for the different genres of the books, so if I want horror all my books with horror in the tags on calibre will be found on that shelf.

If that is possible would it then put the books already on the device into the relevant collections or would it only move the new additions? I have it set on automatic.

Thanks in advance

[PeterT]

With metadata management on Auto all books will have their shelves updated whenever the device is connected.

[garyn]

The only thing I have done different to the post on page 1 is change the name ( not lookup ) to genres (in place of series).

Onto part 2 of the original post where would I type in #myshelves as there doesn't seem to be anywhere unless it is the template thing.

Also is there anything else I need to do to be able to create the Genre shelves? I want them to automatically update device with the relevant shelf. Horror, Thriller, Detective etc etc.

Ideally this would come from my tags column.

http://prntscr.com/4s3zk0

Thanks again

Confused.

[PeterT]

The field where you currently have Authors can contain MULTIPLE fields, so for instance Authors, #MyShelves would place each book both on a shelf based on it's author, and optionally shelves based on the content of the custom column #MyShelves.

In fact you can list as MANY values as you want there. I currently have #myshelves, #readstatus, series, #newsshelf, #monthadded in mine (admittedly I should remove #newshelf as that is left over from some experimentation I had done). These values are:
#myshelves - Manually defined shelves for books
#readstatus - Computed value based on %read of each book
series - One shelf per series
#monthadded - Computed value as to when a book was added to calibre

[garyn]

PeterT Thank you for your time so far.

As you can see I have managed to create a Genres tab in calibre. I now have 2 queries to ask of you.

1) Is it possible to get (my) the genres to update themselves direct from the tags tab? or do I need to add the information myself through custom metadata?

2) How on earth do I get the genres to show up on my device. It's times like this that it sucks to be a computer novice.

http://prntscr.com/4s5444

[garyn]

PeterT many thanks I have it working now.

Srry for all the questions and I appreciate your patience.

Once again many many thanks
Gary

[slantybard]

I have switched from the KPW2 to the AuraH2O recently and I am trying to manage my metadata between calibre and the Aura H2O. Having read through this thread and worked to set up things properly with the KoboTouchExtended driver to manage my bookshelves on the Aura, I am confused as to whether the actions are working as expected and my expectations are incorrect, or if I haven't done things right.

I am trying to get bookshelves based on my "tags" only. I don't care about authors, titles, series, readstatus, or other shelf types. As such, I put in "tags" into the customize shelves box of the driver prefs. When connected and sending my library over to the Aura, all the shelves correctly formed (awesome, thanks for making this really easy compared to the kindle).

Now, when I change a book from one shelf to another on the Aura, I want calibre to automatically change the tag in its metadata the next time I connect. Ie, if I read book "x" that is in my "Currently Reading" shelf and then I change its shelf to "Sci-Fi" on the Aura, then I want to see the tag metadata change inside calibre when I reconnect the Aura to my computer.

However, when I connect my Aura to the calibre, this does not happen and instead, my shelves on the Aura are overwritten to reflect the tags set in calibre. I am wondering if this is the expected behaviour of the plugin and I am incorrect in assuming that the plugin and calibre can handle 2 way metadata syncing, or if I am doing something wrong.

If I am doing something wrong, I can attach a debug log for anyone to examine. If my expectations are wrong, please let me know so I can adjust my metadata practises. Thanks for any assistance.

[PeterT]

Syncs are one way... calibre to the device.

[the4a]

I'm having a similar issue. I can send books to my Kobo Glo and delete them just fine, but I cannot manage shelves. I've upgraded to the latest firmware and the latest version of Calibre, and I keep getting the same error:

calibre, version 2.6.0
ERROR: Error: Error communicating with device

disk I/O error

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\device.py", line 87, in run
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\device.py", line 532, in _sync_booklists
File "calibre_plugins.kobotouch_extended.device.driver" , line 337, in sync_booklists
File "site-packages\calibre\devices\kobo\driver.py", line 923, in sync_booklists
File "site-packages\calibre\devices\kobo\driver.py", line 2212, in update_device_database_collections
File "site-packages\calibre\devices\kobo\driver.py", line 2674, in check_for_bookshelf
File "site-packages\calibre\devices\kobo\driver.py", line 2584, in get_bookshelflist
OperationalError: disk I/O error

[davidfor]

the4a: I have responded to your post in the calibre forum.

[Shadowjack]

I have just moved from the Sony 650 to the Kobo H2O. Thanks to the information in this thread I was able to get Collections to work (for the most part). The one thing that is not working the way it used to on my 650 is the order of books within a series. The collection is created for each series but the order is not maintained. Is the only solution to rename the books so that a title sort puts them in order or am I missing a simpler solution?

Thanks.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Shadowjack

I have just moved from the Sony 650 to the Kobo H2O. Thanks to the information in this thread I was able to get Collections to work (for the most part). The one thing that is not working the way it used to on my 650 is the order of books within a series. The collection is created for each series but the order is not maintained. Is the only solution to rename the books so that a title sort puts them in order or am I missing a simpler solution?

Unfortunately, yes. My Kobo Utilities plugin has a cheat that uses the "Date added" sort in shelves. But, that sort has been broken in the last few firmware versions. As you have the books on the device, you can use the "Update metadta" function of the utilities plugin to change the titles in the database on the device. This can use a metadata plugin to do this.

[Bald Eagle]

Having done that very same step just yesterday I came up with using

{series_index:0>5.2f|| - }{title}

for the title as described in the first post on this thread (I do use the fraction part of the series index, else the series_index:0>3s as described there would have been sufficient).
However, every collection's sort order is 'Recent' by default and has to be switched to 'Title' manually.

@davidfor
Your post suggests that that is a function of the Kobo plugin and not of the device. Have I understood you correctly? If so, can that be made (or is it already) a plugin option?

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Bald Eagle

Having done that very same step just yesterday I came up with using

{series_index:0>5.2f|| - }{title}

for the title as described in the first post on this thread (I do use the fraction part of the series index, else the series_index:0>3s as described there would have been sufficient).
However, every collection's sort order is 'Recent' by default and has to be switched to 'Title' manually.

Unfortunately, you have to set the sorting for each collection. There isn't a way to set the default sort.

@davidfor
Your post suggests that that is a function of the Kobo plugin and not of the device. Have I understood you correctly? If so, can that be made (or is it already) a plugin option?

It is a function in the utilities plugin that takes advantage of something in the firmware. But that function is broken in the firmware.

The utilities plugin can change the date a book is added to the collection. This should allow you to sort the collection using "Date added" and show the books in series order. But, the date added sort is broken on the device. It has been since FW3.1.1 or FW3.2.0.