Quick Guide to Shelf Management with calibre 0.9.1 & above (Touch / Glo / Mini /Aura) - Page 25

davidfor · 05-03-2014, 12:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by descartes

I want to have all my books on an sd card rather than on the Kobo’s internal memory.

My question deals with how to save the books onto the sd card using calibre. Should I do so with the sd card in the Kobo? Or should I save books to the sd card via my card reader and then place the sd card into the Kobo? Or does it really make a difference?

Strictly, it doesn't matter. If you add them to the card via a card reader, the device will process the books when you put it into the device. If the card in the device when connected, calibre will show all books on both the main memory and the card. The main library will show which storage the book is in. There are also separate lists for the main memory and the card. Personally, I find this very convenient for maintaining the books on the device.

glos · 05-03-2014, 05:21 AM

Hi

Thanks for this post, super useful!
I have some questions, though, not exactly about shelving, but on how books appear.
btw, I'm using the kobo touch extended to kepubify books and reading lists to sync the books to the device. (I don't think that changes things, right?)

Say I'd like to add informations from custom columns to the book, I see on the first post how to do it for the title, what if I'd like to add them to the author, is it possible? I remember reading someone doing it but I can't find it..

Ex for how it should look like on the kobo library view:

Book title
Series
Author - Y/N - word count

as the author is the shorter string I'd like to add a Y or N coming from the read (#read) column on calibre (Y for Yes, N for Unsorted, not No, as I don't use the No option) and the word count coming from the words (#words) column.

so I suppose I have to use the metadata plugboard, select epub, kobotouchextended, and then write the template for the destination field authors.
Can you help me with a template that would work?

Do I need to re-send all the books or is simply a question of updating the metadata on connect for it to work?

Would this potentially affect the author shelving if I one day decide to add "authors" to "#myshelves" on the plugin options, so as to have one shelf for each author?

and sorry for having so many questions!

davidfor · 05-03-2014, 06:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by glos

Hi

Thanks for this post, super useful!
I have some questions, though, not exactly about shelving, but on how books appear.
btw, I'm using the kobo touch extended to kepubify books and reading lists to sync the books to the device. (I don't think that changes things, right?)

Say I'd like to add informations from custom columns to the book, I see on the first post how to do it for the title, what if I'd like to add them to the author, is it possible? I remember reading someone doing it but I can't find it..

Ex for how it should look like on the kobo library view:

Book title
Series
Author - Y/N - word count

as the author is the shorter string I'd like to add a Y or N coming from the read (#read) column on calibre (Y for Yes, N for Unsorted, not No, as I don't use the No option) and the word count coming from the words (#words) column.

so I suppose I have to use the metadata plugboard, select epub, kobotouchextended, and then write the template for the destination field authors.
Can you help me with a template that would work?

You could start with:

Code:

{authors} - {#read} - {#words}

or

Code:

{author_sort} - {#read} - {#words}

That is fairly close but it will put "Yes" and "No" rather than the first letter. It also doesn't handle either of the two columns being empty.

Quote:

Do I need to re-send all the books or is simply a question of updating the metadata on connect for it to work?

Strictly, you need to remove and resend the books. But, the "Update metadata" function of the utilities plugin will now use the plugboards when setting the title and author. I added the a few weeks ago.

Quote:

Would this potentially affect the author shelving if I one day decide to add "authors" to "#myshelves" on the plugin options, so as to have one shelf for each author?

No, it shouldn't. The shelves are created from the metadata in the calibre library. The plugboards don't come into it at all.

The issue you will have is sorting on the device. The device uses the last name of the author for sorting. It has to work this out from the string. It usually takes the last word in the author name. With what you want to use, that will probably be the word count. But, of there is a comma in the name, the device takes it as "lastname, firstname" and sorts by the word in front of the comma. Because of that, I think the second version will work better. I'll be very interested to hear what happens when you try.

glos · 05-03-2014, 08:18 AM

Thank you davidfor, as always!

So, I tried:
Note I'm using latest calibre, latest plug-ins and Aura HD with 2.8.1
I used
{authors} - {#read} - {#words}
because all my authors are usernames (for fanfics) except a few and there's one in the pic, and I've tweaked author_sort to be the same as author because I like FN LN

I've created a new shelf with a few new books for the device, here's a picture showing what happens when i sort by author on that shelf.
So, it looks like it's sorting with the word number (weirdly, because a huge fic there was placed because its word count started by 2 only, same after a 54k book there's a 6k one).
IF i don't have a wc or a read value (ie: the books that were already on the device before I did this and only have the author in the author space) the books are sorted at the end of the list.
Those with - - because there's the undefined value for the read column don't mess up the order that goes with the first number of the word count.
And I don't really mind that there's Yes and - - , I know what that means and it's ok

I'm actually fine with this result, I don't sort much by author, I usually just search for one or just browse my shelves with date added or recently read order.
But I really like to immediately see if I've read the book or not and the word count [I used to put it on the cover of the fic if it was without a proper one but I had to go to the details to read it anyway, this saves me many clicks].

I'll soon delete and re-add all my other books so if you want more testing of other things... just tell me

descartes · 05-03-2014, 09:44 AM

Thank you gabby98 and davidfor for your replies.

davidfor, I was asking because when I used the ‘Save to disk’ option in calibre to save via the cardreader, the result basically duplicated the Calibre Library folder which has a folder for each author that also contains a folder for each book that contains the epub book, its cover and a metadata.opf file.

I then tried a second method, ‘Save to disk in a single directory’, that saved only the epub files themselves. I didn’t think that was correct since for some reason I felt it was important to have the metadata file export with the epub as well. I mean, isn’t that how the kobo knows what plug-in mods have been made with respect to collections, sorting, series, etc.?

Sorry, my bad... When I used the "Save to disk' option, I only selected (10) books; therefore, I saw (10) folders; however, when I used the other option, I selected (100) books and since the folder was set to 'sort by type', I saw the (100) epub files first instead of continuing to scroll through the entire folder contents to see the covers and metadata files.

Thanks again.

davidfor · 05-04-2014, 12:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by glos

Thank you davidfor, as always!

So, I tried:
Note I'm using latest calibre, latest plug-ins and Aura HD with 2.8.1
I used
{authors} - {#read} - {#words}
because all my authors are usernames (for fanfics) except a few and there's one in the pic, and I've tweaked author_sort to be the same as author because I like FN LN

I've created a new shelf with a few new books for the device, here's a picture showing what happens when i sort by author on that shelf.
So, it looks like it's sorting with the word number (weirdly, because a huge fic there was placed because its word count started by 2 only, same after a 54k book there's a 6k one).

It's sorting using the word count as a character string rather than a number. That means the count starting with a 1 will be before those starting with a 2 no matter how long the number is. i.e. 1111 will be before 222.

Quote:

IF i don't have a wc or a read value (ie: the books that were already on the device before I did this and only have the author in the author space) the books are sorted at the end of the list.
Those with - - because there's the undefined value for the read column don't mess up the order that goes with the first number of the word count.
And I don't really mind that there's Yes and - - , I know what that means and it's ok

I'm actually fine with this result, I don't sort much by author, I usually just search for one or just browse my shelves with date added or recently read order.
But I really like to immediately see if I've read the book or not and the word count [I used to put it on the cover of the fic if it was without a proper one but I had to go to the details to read it anyway, this saves me many clicks].

Personally, I find setting the reading status of the book to be better. That shows at the end of the line for each book in the list. Plus it can be used to filter the books in the list. The Kobo Utilities plugin can set this either from a column in the calibre library or for selected books.

Quote:

I'll soon delete and re-add all my other books so if you want more testing of other things... just tell me

I can't think of anything. But, you can set the author using the utilities plugin without removing and resending the books.

davidfor · 05-04-2014, 01:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by descartes

davidfor, I was asking because when I used the ‘Save to disk’ option in calibre to save via the cardreader, the result basically duplicated the Calibre Library folder which has a folder for each author that also contains a folder for each book that contains the epub book, its cover and a metadata.opf file.

I then tried a second method, ‘Save to disk in a single directory’, that saved only the epub files themselves. I didn’t think that was correct since for some reason I felt it was important to have the metadata file export with the epub as well. I mean, isn’t that how the kobo knows what plug-in mods have been made with respect to collections, sorting, series, etc.?

Sorry, my bad... When I used the "Save to disk' option, I only selected (10) books; therefore, I saw (10) folders; however, when I used the other option, I selected (100) books and since the folder was set to 'sort by type', I saw the (100) epub files first instead of continuing to scroll through the entire folder contents to see the covers and metadata files.

No, the Kobo devices don't use the OPF file. They read the metadata from inside the books. And the device has no knowledge of any the changes made by the plugins. They only read the basic metadata. Anything else is done by the driver.

The cover file is also not used. The devices generate the cover from the first page of all the formats other than kepubs. For these, the image file is extracted from the file.

You can prevent the extra files being created by changing option on the "Saving books to disk" page of the calibre preferences.

glos · 05-04-2014, 08:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by davidfor

It's sorting using the word count as a character string rather than a number. That means the count starting with a 1 will be before those starting with a 2 no matter how long the number is. i.e. 1111 will be before 222.

Personally, I find setting the reading status of the book to be better. That shows at the end of the line for each book in the list. Plus it can be used to filter the books in the list. The Kobo Utilities plugin can set this either from a column in the calibre library or for selected books.

I can't think of anything. But, you can set the author using the utilities plugin without removing and resending the books.

Thanks david, I'm following your suggestion and using the plugin to set the books I've read as finished with the "change reading status in the device library" option, that's all I need, so I've deleted the {#read} part from the plugboard and only kept the {authors} - {#words}.
Only thing I've noticed is that, because the device doesn't handle more than one author (at least I remember reading that, and I've always noticed my books with 2 had only 1 written) when the book has more than 1 author the word count is not added to the author string (not even the -, just one author).
It's only for a few books so np, just wanted to let you know.

Thank you for your help!

davidfor · 05-04-2014, 09:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by glos

Thanks david, I'm following your suggestion and using the plugin to set the books I've read as finished with the "change reading status in the device library" option, that's all I need, so I've deleted the {#read} part from the plugboard and only kept the {authors} - {#words}.

Glad that worked.

Quote:

Only thing I've noticed is that, because the device doesn't handle more than one author (at least I remember reading that, and I've always noticed my books with 2 had only 1 written) when the book has more than 1 author the word count is not added to the author string (not even the -, just one author).
It's only for a few books so np, just wanted to let you know.

Unfortunately, the way calibre writes the multiple authors to epubs is not the way Kobo expects them. Calibre puts each author into the OPF file that contains the metadata as separate entry. Kobo only reads the first it finds.

There are two solutions for this. The first is to use the plugboard to change how the authors are written. There is a thread here from last year started by GeoffR that discusses this. It includes the plugboard he used to solve this.

The other way is using the utilities plugin to fix the authors. If calibre shows the book as on the device, you can select it and use the "Update metadata in device database" to fix the authors. For what you want, the options to select are "Author" and "Use plugboard". That should fix the multiple authors and add your word count.

glos · 05-04-2014, 09:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by davidfor

Glad that worked.

Unfortunately, the way calibre writes the multiple authors to epubs is not the way Kobo expects them. Calibre puts each author into the OPF file that contains the metadata as separate entry. Kobo only reads the first it finds.

There are two solutions for this. The first is to use the plugboard to change how the authors are written. There is a thread here from last year started by GeoffR that discusses this. It includes the plugboard he used to solve this.

The other way is using the utilities plugin to fix the authors. If calibre shows the book as on the device, you can select it and use the "Update metadata in device database" to fix the authors. For what you want, the options to select are "Author" and "Use plugboard". That should fix the multiple authors and add your word count.

I've just tried with the plugin and it worked perfectly, it also does that to the authors that were like: "nickname (anothernickname)" or "nickname (anothernickname) & secondauthor"
I hadn't noticed but kobo wasn't seeing the parenthesis, too, so it fixed it.

descartes · 05-04-2014, 09:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by davidfor

No, the Kobo devices don't use the OPF file. They read the metadata from inside the books. And the device has no knowledge of any the changes made by the plugins. They only read the basic metadata. Anything else is done by the driver.

The cover file is also not used. The devices generate the cover from the first page of all the formats other than kepubs. For these, the image file is extracted from the file.

You can prevent the extra files being created by changing option on the "Saving books to disk" page of the calibre preferences.

davidfor - wow, thanks for that info! I'm sure can tell by my questions I'm a newbie to e-readers and know next to nothing.

So, I followed your advice and went to "Saving books to disk" in the calibre preferences. I made changes by only checking the boxes 'Update metadata in saved copies', 'Show files in file browser after saving to disk' and 'Convert non-English characters to English equivalents'. Does that sound about right?

Thanks again.

davidfor · 05-04-2014, 04:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by descartes

So, I followed your advice and went to "Saving books to disk" in the calibre preferences. I made changes by only checking the boxes 'Update metadata in saved copies', 'Show files in file browser after saving to disk' and 'Convert non-English characters to English equivalents'. Does that sound about right?

Those are the settings I use, so they must be right

With those settings, only the book file will be saved and the metadata and cover will be updated in the saved book.

descartes · 05-04-2014, 05:01 PM

davidfor - Cool! I'm getting eager to actually turning on my Kobo for the first time and using it.

One other question regarding the instructions at the beginning of this thread regarding metadata management:

Quote:

Configuring calibre's Metadata Management options

calibre has three options as to when it updates Metadata on the device. This also affects when the shelves are managed on the Kobo.

This option is managed as follows:

Preferences | Import/Export | Sending books to devices
The Metadata management selection has three options
Manual management: Calibre updates the metadata and adds collections only when a book is sent. With this option, calibre will never remove a collection.
Only on send: Calibre updates metadata and adds/removes collections for a book only when it is sent to the device.
Automatic management: Calibre automatically keeps metadata on the device in sync with the calibre library, on every connect
As can be seen from the descriptions, for full functionality of the Kobo driver, set the Metadata management to either Only on send or Automatic management. From my experience, I have seen the easiest option to be Automatic management.

If the option is set to Manual management, shelves will NEVER be removed.

What option should I set the metadata management to?

I'm going to have all my books on the sd card (sideloading?) and I will have the wifi disabled; I'm planning on never connecting to the kobo store, or sync, etc.

As always, thanks for your help!

davidfor · 05-04-2014, 11:08 PM

descartes: It is best to use the automatic setting. That way it is updated each time you connect. The "only on send" happens when you send a book. If you connect and don't send, the shelves and series info isn't updated.

descartes · 05-04-2014, 11:28 PM

Thanks again davidfor. I will use the automatic setting.

This prompts another silly question: I'm not exactly sure what you mean when you used the word "connect", e.g., "That way it is updated each time you connect."

I know I have to connect the kobo to the computer to charge it; however, I wasn't planning on installing the desktop software or activating the wifi. With the books on the sd card, I guess I presumed that if I ever took the card out to add/delete books, the kobo would make the updates to the shelves and series once the card was reinserted....maybe not?

I guess I need to find out more about how to sideload books.

05-03-2014, 08:18 AM	#364
glos Zealot Posts: 132 Karma: 1070185 Join Date: Mar 2013 Location: Italy Device: Kobo Aura HD	Thank you davidfor, as always! So, I tried: Note I'm using latest calibre, latest plug-ins and Aura HD with 2.8.1 I used {authors} - {#read} - {#words} because all my authors are usernames (for fanfics) except a few and there's one in the pic, and I've tweaked author_sort to be the same as author because I like FN LN I've created a new shelf with a few new books for the device, here's a picture showing what happens when i sort by author on that shelf. So, it looks like it's sorting with the word number (weirdly, because a huge fic there was placed because its word count started by 2 only, same after a 54k book there's a 6k one). IF i don't have a wc or a read value (ie: the books that were already on the device before I did this and only have the author in the author space) the books are sorted at the end of the list. Those with - - because there's the undefined value for the read column don't mess up the order that goes with the first number of the word count. And I don't really mind that there's Yes and - - , I know what that means and it's ok I'm actually fine with this result, I don't sort much by author, I usually just search for one or just browse my shelves with date added or recently read order. But I really like to immediately see if I've read the book or not and the word count [I used to put it on the cover of the fic if it was without a proper one but I had to go to the details to read it anyway, this saves me many clicks]. I'll soon delete and re-add all my other books so if you want more testing of other things... just tell me Attached Thumbnails

05-03-2014, 09:44 AM	#365
descartes Member Posts: 13 Karma: 10 Join Date: Apr 2014 Device: Aura ONE Limited Edition	Thank you gabby98 and davidfor for your replies. davidfor, I was asking because when I used the ‘Save to disk’ option in calibre to save via the cardreader, the result basically duplicated the Calibre Library folder which has a folder for each author that also contains a folder for each book that contains the epub book, its cover and a metadata.opf file. I then tried a second method, ‘Save to disk in a single directory’, that saved only the epub files themselves. I didn’t think that was correct since for some reason I felt it was important to have the metadata file export with the epub as well. I mean, isn’t that how the kobo knows what plug-in mods have been made with respect to collections, sorting, series, etc.? Sorry, my bad... When I used the "Save to disk' option, I only selected (10) books; therefore, I saw (10) folders; however, when I used the other option, I selected (100) books and since the folder was set to 'sort by type', I saw the (100) epub files first instead of continuing to scroll through the entire folder contents to see the covers and metadata files. Thanks again. Last edited by descartes; 05-03-2014 at 04:33 PM.

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05-03-2014, 05:21 AM	#362
glos Zealot Posts: 132 Karma: 1070185 Join Date: Mar 2013 Location: Italy Device: Kobo Aura HD	Hi Thanks for this post, super useful! I have some questions, though, not exactly about shelving, but on how books appear. btw, I'm using the kobo touch extended to kepubify books and reading lists to sync the books to the device. (I don't think that changes things, right?) Say I'd like to add informations from custom columns to the book, I see on the first post how to do it for the title, what if I'd like to add them to the author, is it possible? I remember reading someone doing it but I can't find it.. Ex for how it should look like on the kobo library view: Book title Series Author - Y/N - word count as the author is the shorter string I'd like to add a Y or N coming from the read (#read) column on calibre (Y for Yes, N for Unsorted, not No, as I don't use the No option) and the word count coming from the words (#words) column. so I suppose I have to use the metadata plugboard, select epub, kobotouchextended, and then write the template for the destination field authors. Can you help me with a template that would work? Do I need to re-send all the books or is simply a question of updating the metadata on connect for it to work? Would this potentially affect the author shelving if I one day decide to add "authors" to "#myshelves" on the plugin options, so as to have one shelf for each author? and sorry for having so many questions!

05-04-2014, 11:08 PM	#374
davidfor Grand Sorcerer Posts: 24,907 Karma: 47303748 Join Date: Jul 2011 Location: Sydney, Australia Device: Kobo:Touch,Glo, AuraH2O, GloHD,AuraONE, ClaraHD, Libra H2O; tolinoepos	descartes: It is best to use the automatic setting. That way it is updated each time you connect. The "only on send" happens when you send a book. If you connect and don't send, the shelves and series info isn't updated.

05-04-2014, 11:28 PM	#375
descartes Member Posts: 13 Karma: 10 Join Date: Apr 2014 Device: Aura ONE Limited Edition	Thanks again davidfor. I will use the automatic setting. This prompts another silly question: I'm not exactly sure what you mean when you used the word "connect", e.g., "That way it is updated each time you connect." I know I have to connect the kobo to the computer to charge it; however, I wasn't planning on installing the desktop software or activating the wifi. With the books on the sd card, I guess I presumed that if I ever took the card out to add/delete books, the kobo would make the updates to the shelves and series once the card was reinserted....maybe not? I guess I need to find out more about how to sideload books.

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