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

[Toris]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Unfortunately, the pseudo shelves "Im_Reading / Collection" etc are not available to us via calibre. What I have done though is make use of David's Kobo Utilities plugin to create a "Reading" (and a "Finished") shelf based on the percentage read of a book. See this post for how I did that.

Remember that you don't have to resend books for the shelving to change; as long as calibre is configured for Automatic Metadata management (Preferences | Sending books to devices | Metadata Management) the act of connecting the device to your PC and having calibre detect it is sufficient to force the shelving to be updated.

In fact, using David's Kobo Utility plugin, it's suffient to select the option in the plugin to "Refresh the list of books on the device" to force the shelving to be updated.

So now, to keep my lists current, my workflow is the following.

1. Attach Kobo to PC
2. Select all books in the Library view that have On Device set
3. Right click and select Kobo Utilities | Store/Restore current bookmark
4. Select the Store option
5. Force the Kobo Utilities to Refresh the list of books on the device
6. Eject the Kobo

(I should note that I have the Kobo Utilities plugin appearing on the Main toolbar / Main toolbar when a device is attached and The context menu for the books in the calibre library menus)

Now, my Finished and Reading shelves contain the most recent books I am reading, and have finished.

How would I incorporate this to the shelves sorter you wrote for me earlier?

(This one: {:'first_non_empty(field('#myshelves'), field('Series'), 'Uncategorized')'})

If I add to this, there is Template Error.
If I make it separate, it is just ignoring it?
The read status is updated, but it makes no shelves.

Ok, now I got it to work, when made separate. But...it dupes books to the finished and reading shelves? Can it be made to move them?

[PeterT]

@Toris: Lets step back and have you define for me in one post how you want the shelving to work. I'll try to come up with a simple approach for you ok?

[Toris]

Originally Posted by PeterT

@Toris: Lets step back and have you define for me in one post how you want the shelving to work. I'll try to come up with a simple approach for you ok?

Thank you,

yes that would be best.
( I apologize in advance if any is unclear, my migraines have come back, and meds do not work on mine.)

So, I wanted the shelves, as you wrote them for me before. With the shelfname/series/uncategorized sorting, then when they are reading/finished they are moved to the shelf.

I think this is possible, but as I say I am not clear right now

I would also like this, if it is possible:

To be able to separate 2 devices, kobo touch (mine) and a kobo mini she is getting in a few days.

I do not know if this can be done? or if I can work around it?

Thank you very much for your help.

[PeterT]

Multi devices is a problem; currently David's Kobo Utilities only support a single custom column for reading percentage, so all getting of info from the device(s) would go into the same column.

Let's make sure I understand the rest:

- Topic shelves: books with Topic in #myshelves are put in Topic shelves.
- Series shelves: books with Series field are put in Series shelves.
- Neither: books with no Topic or Series go in a shelf, Uncatagorized.

Now, books that are being Read are they to stay on their initial shelf as well as the Reading shelf, and the same for Finished books?

If so, I think the following two columns should suffice

Lookup Name:    shelfname
Column Heading: Shelf Name
Type:               Column built from other columns
Template:{:'first_non_empty(field('#myshelves'), field('Series'), 'Uncategorized')'}

Lookup name:    readstatus
Column Heading: Reading Status
Column Type:    Column built from other columns
Template:       {#koboreadpct:'cmp($, 100, cmp($, 0, '', '', 'Reading'), 'Finished', '')'}

Then add both #readstatus and #shelfname to the fields listed in either the Kobo or Kobo Extended driver configuration.

So in this case books would be on both the corresponding Topic / Series / Uncategorized shelf as well as either the Reading or Finished shelves.

If on the other hand you want to move books from the initial shelves onto Reading or Finished you would simply change the shelfname definitioin to

Template:{:'first_non_empty(field('#readstatus'),field('#myshelves'), field('Series'), 'Uncategorized')'}

and only use the #shelfname in the driver configuration.

In this case books would be on both the corresponding Topic / Series / Uncategorized shelf and then, once you have started them only appear on the Reading shelf, and when finished only on the Finished shelf.

[jackastor]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Multi devices is a problem; currently David's Kobo Utilities only support a single custom column for reading percentage, so all getting of info from the device(s) would go into the same column.

Let's make sure I understand the rest:

- Topic shelves: books with Topic in #myshelves are put in Topic shelves.
- Series shelves: books with Series field are put in Series shelves.
- Neither: books with no Topic or Series go in a shelf, Uncatagorized.

Now, books that are being Read are they to stay on their initial shelf as well as the Reading shelf, and the same for Finished books?

If so, I think the following two columns should suffice

Lookup Name:    shelfname
Column Heading: Shelf Name
Type:               Column built from other columns
Template:{:'first_non_empty(field('#myshelves'), field('Series'), 'Uncategorized')'}

Lookup name:    readstatus
Column Heading: Reading Status
Column Type:    Column built from other columns
Template:       {#koboreadpct:'cmp($, 100, cmp($, 0, '', '', 'Reading'), 'Finished', '')'}

Then add both #readstatus and #shelfname to the fields listed in either the Kobo or Kobo Extended driver configuration.

So in this case books would be on both the corresponding Topic / Series / Uncategorized shelf as well as either the Reading or Finished shelves.

If on the other hand you want to move books from the initial shelves onto Reading or Finished you would simply change the shelfname definitioin to

Template:{:'first_non_empty(field('#readstatus'),field('#myshelves'), field('Series'), 'Uncategorized')'}

and only use the #shelfname in the driver configuration.

In this case books would be on both the corresponding Topic / Series / Uncategorized shelf and then, once you have started them only appear on the Reading shelf, and when finished only on the Finished shelf.

Peter, Can there be multiple templates? for the extended driver.

regards

Jack

[PeterT]

You can have as many fields mentioned in the shelf field in the driver configuration. Just separate them by commas.

[khahoon]

Hey thanks, for the plugin. I found this topic through my question https://www.mobileread.com/forums/new...eply&p=2573024.


I think that this is working mostly. Except that I think that it is overriding the device shelves names. Is it possible to retain the device shelves and add the Calibre series as a secondary shelve? It would work more like additive behavior.


thanks

[khahoon]

Btw I just realized that this plugin duplicates books on the device if one copies a book to device to couple times. While this sounds like a reasonable behaviour, would not it be much better if it would just overwrite books if they match? It would be very nice if there was an option to define this behavior in the plugin menu.



I have found this issue accidentally. I just thought that I could update the metadata on the device by copying over them, which led me to discover that my books on Kobo were duplicated.


thanks

[khahoon]

Originally Posted by vice-versa

after a factory reset and a brand new database, the shelves without a book in it aren't deleted... I had to remove them manually

Same here, it seems like the driver does not remove the empty shelves.

Edit:

It works. I take my complain back. You have to make sure that device metadata management is set to something different than "manual"

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

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by khahoon

I think that this is working mostly. Except that I think that it is overriding the device shelves names. Is it possible to retain the device shelves and add the Calibre series as a secondary shelve? It would work more like additive behavior.

There is no way to tell if the shelf was made using the device, was synced to the device from another device or created by the driver. So, no, this won't happen.

Originally Posted by khahoon

Btw I just realized that this plugin duplicates books on the device if one copies a book to device to couple times. While this sounds like a reasonable behaviour, would not it be much better if it would just overwrite books if they match? It would be very nice if there was an option to define this behavior in the plugin menu.

I have found this issue accidentally. I just thought that I could update the metadata on the device by copying over them, which led me to discover that my books on Kobo were duplicated.

Yes, you can put multiple copies of a book on the device. The most common is to put one in the main memory and one on the SD card. You can also have different formats of the same book. These won't change.

The only problem is if you change the save template or the metadata used by the template. In this case, sending a book again will use the new name that is generated from the template. This will mean two copies of the same book. What should be done in this case isn't completely obvious and different people will want different behaviour. I don't think a change in what happens will have much benefit.

Originally Posted by khahoon

Same here, it seems like the driver does not remove the empty shelves.

Edit:

It works. I take my complain back. You have to make sure that device metadata management is set to something different than "manual"

Yes, calibre and the driver have to be configured correctly for everything to work. And this is the most common step that is missed.

[vice-versa]

Hello, I had to use Calibre with Ubuntu now as I had a crash on my HD with windows and though I tried to configure it properly, I can't make it create shelves. What information am I to give for somebody's help on configuring it properly (I litteraly copy and paste what information there was and the first post of this thread to do it, but it didn't work) ? Though I manage to set the title properly for my taste (number in the serie, then title), but the shelves is not created and therefore, the books aren't put in them (And I had a serie with 33 books in it... quite painfull to do it manually)

[vice-versa]

I understoud part of my error, but not all : now if I manually fill the "myshelve" column, the book are sent on the correct shelf on the device, but I can't manage to automatically fill the "myshelve" column with the serie name. If anybody could give some advise(s) to achieve that, it would be greatly appreciated.

[PeterT]

What I for one have done is to have multiple entries in the driver's configuration box.

I right now have the following columns listed:

#myshelves,  #readstatus, series

#readstatus is a custom column that gets filled with whether a book is being Reading or Finished (based on the % read of the book)

#myshelves is a custom column that contains all the custom shelves I want to add a book to (entries like Manuals, or Cooking for instance)

series is the standard calibre series column.

So in fact, a book could (hypothetically) be contained on all three of my custom entries, or, more commonly on two (series and #readstatus).

[S1mcoe]

Hi Peter,

I joined this forum today for the express purpose of saying thanks to you for your Shelves guide. With 5 minutes of tinkering I improved my kobo experience tenfold, all thanks to your thorough tutorial.

So, MUCH OBLIGED!

-S1m

[PeterT]

Originally Posted by S1mcoe

Hi Peter,

I joined this forum today for the express purpose of saying thanks to you for your Shelves guide. With 5 minutes of tinkering I improved my kobo experience tenfold, all thanks to your thorough tutorial.

So, MUCH OBLIGED!

-S1m

Thanks for the kind words And welcome to MobileRead.