Series Titleization?

[evandy]

Sorry if this has been asked before, but I didn't see it in a quick search:

Any chance of adding the ability to prefix a title with a series ID during the "Export to Device" process? For example:
Have 12 books in the Honor Harrington Series
Set a "Series Prefix" metadata property to "[HH_{series_index}] "
During export, the book's metadata information is modified to add the prefix prior to all the book titles?

I'm sure everyone with a kindle can see where I'm going with this, since we have no folders... :|

I'd like not to have to mangle the titles directly in the Calibre library.

[GRiker]

@evandy: Take a look at using a catalog on your Kindle, there are lots of easy ways to navigate your library. See the sticky thread 'Creating Catalogs'.

G

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by evandy

Sorry if this has been asked before, but I didn't see it in a quick search:

Any chance of adding the ability to prefix a title with a series ID during the "Export to Device" process? For example:
Have 12 books in the Honor Harrington Series
Set a "Series Prefix" metadata property to "[HH_{series_index}] "
During export, the book's metadata information is modified to add the prefix prior to all the book titles?

I'm sure everyone with a kindle can see where I'm going with this, since we have no folders... :|

I'd like not to have to mangle the titles directly in the Calibre library.

I don't have a Kindle, but it sounds like you just want to have the file renamed during export to:
"HH_01 - On Basilisk Station.ext"
When it's stored with the title:
"On Basilisk Station.ext"

That's easy. Just set the Sending to Device format string on Add Books page of Preferences to:

{author_sort}/HH_{series_index} - {title}

Of course that applies the "HH" to all exports, so you might prefer:
{author_sort}/{series}_{series_index} - {title}

and then just use "HH" as your series name.

If OTOH, you are asking to modify the internal metadata of the book, (perhaps that's important for a Kindle?), then I can't help.

[sjohnson717]

I hear you. It would be nice if the series name and number could be made the prefix of the book TITLE as part of the conversion.

What I've done (manually) is rename all books with the series name. For instance, Bond 1 Casino Royale, Bond 2 Moonraker, and so on. I mean you don't want to read them out of order after all.

A preferred approach would be what you suggest. It's not the filename at issue; you can indeed do what is suggested above. It's the book TITLE. And in fact, I can see no reason why you wouldn't want this by default. If a book is in a series, prefix the series name and number to the book title when converting to epub.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by sjohnson717

I hear you. It would be nice if the series name and number could be made the prefix of the book TITLE as part of the conversion.

The concept of "book TITLE" depends on the format and to a lesser extent on the platform you read on. What's the title of "HH_01 - On Basilisk Station.txt"? txt format has no true internal metadata.

That's why I was wondering what's important for a Kindle. If it uses internal metadata, not filename, (and has no concept of series) then you're right, you'd want that data to reflect series info, but I'm reluctant to have anything other than the true title in that field, at least inside Calibre. I can see why others would want to modify the title when exporting to some formats, or to certain devices.

[evandy]

Originally Posted by Starson17

I don't have a Kindle, but it sounds like you just want to have the file renamed during export to:
"HH_01 - On Basilisk Station.ext"
When it's stored with the title:
"On Basilisk Station.ext"

Alas, i don't want the file name changed, but rather the title field of the metadata.

[evandy]

Originally Posted by Starson17

If it uses internal metadata, not filename, (and has no concept of series) then you're right, you'd want that data to reflect series info, but I'm reluctant to have anything other than the true title in that field, at least inside Calibre. I can see why others would want to modify the title when exporting to some formats, or to certain devices.

It does. And I agree: I don't want to muck up the title inside my Calibre library. But it would be nice to munge it during the export process.

[sct-n]

Originally Posted by GRiker

@evandy: Take a look at using a catalog on your Kindle, there are lots of easy ways to navigate your library. See the sticky thread 'Creating Catalogs'.

G

Hi been searching this forum for something like this, as i too am finding it hard to navigate without the series in the title.

I have made the catalogs and just quietly they are friggin awesome. But am i supposed to be able to go from the catalog to the actual book? If so then please someone tell me how, if not then while they are awesome, they dont fix this problem.
Does anyone have a fix for this?


cheers.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by sct-n

I have made the catalogs and just quietly they are friggin awesome. But am i supposed to be able to go from the catalog to the actual book?

The short answer is no, but GRiker who created the catalog portion of Calibre does have a workable solution.

Originally Posted by GRiker

Unfortunately, Amazon disabled the ability to jump from one book to another directly via an embedded link.

It is possible to jump indirectly, though slight tedious. When you find a book in the catalog that you want to read:

* Type the name of the book, e.g., War of the Worlds
* Toggle right twice on the joystick so that 'my items' is highlighted in the search bar, then click
* The progress spinner animates in the upper left of the screen.
* When the search results are displayed, move the highlight to the book you want to read, toggle right once to display the jump options:
o Go to Last Page Read
o Go to Beginning
o Go to Location...
* Select an option, click to jump to the book

G

[sct-n]

Thanks for the very fast response.

Is good enough for me! Cheers.

would be a bit harder to teach less technical minded people, but by the time i convince people to buy one i'm sure there will be a better system.

thanks again.

[mores]

Okay, what would an iPhone+Calibre user do?
I tried modifying Calibre's file structure, but that didn't do anything. Do I need to re-import everything?
Since I'm so bad with book names I need to get the series name and number in front of the title in Stanza.
Help

[itimpi]

You could try and use Calibre2Opds to create online catalogs for use with Stanza. Many users have used Calibre2Opds in conjunction with Dropbox or a web server to store their libraries on the web. That way you have complete access to your books all the time. The Calibre2Opds catalogs include a Series view within the catalogs.

[mores]

I don't need an online library of my books since my iPhone has more than enough space. But just because it's possible, I might try that
So the "solution" would be not to download the books onto my iPhone and read them later, but always download just the one book I plan to read, then delete it so as to keep my book list neat and tidy.

hmmm ...

I think I'd prefer a way to get a [Series-Series#] tag in front of the book title in my stanza catalog.

Which bugs me since I got rid of all those when I imported into calibre and started setting up the series feature. Argh
I guess it would be rather simple to come up with a script to add a series thing in front of the book title using values from the series fields.
Could this be done in SQL? Something like "set title = [series+series#] + title where series != 0"
Not sure if I am able to get a result outside of a PHP server environment.

[itimpi]

The best way would be to raise an enhancement request that allowed the user to specify a mask for the name to be embedded in a file to allow it to be different to the information stored against that book entry in Calibre. This would allow you to keep the metadata in Calibre tidy. For some devices (e.g. Kindle) Calibre allows the Author Sort field to be sent in place of the Author field - so such an approach already has a level of precendent.

BTW: One advantage I have not mentioned of the Calibre2Opds approach is that although it does not show up at the title level in the Stanza library listing, you CAN see the series information if you drill down into the book info. It seems Stanza takes the Book Info from the catalog entry rather than from the book itself.

I must test to see if the same is true of the Book Title as then Calibre2Opds could be enhanced to do what you want during the Calibre2Opds catalog generation rather than having to change Calibre.

[mores]

Good idea, will start a ticket.

By the way, Stanza also sees the series info when I click on the book info - so it is in there, but Stanza just ignores it in the book list. I use the calibre content server to transfer books