Managing automatic syncing among multiple devices

[Doug-W]

I have two devices with two vastly different sizes, I'd like to be able to tag specific books, and specific authors to be synced to one, the other, or both and have those settings applied in the future as well.

IE: A nook and an android phone, I want all books by author X to be synced to both, if I get a new book that matches author X, it should by synced to both the next time the devices connect. In addition I'd like specifically books 3, 5, and 9 synced to the nook, while 3, 12, and 15 should be synced to the android.

The later I figure could just be custom tags of yes/no sync_nook / sync_droid but I'm not sure what the best way to set up the first part. I could I suppose create a saved search that lists the authors and the tags, and ondevice:false, and just send that to the device. But if the # of authors in this list gets past 10 or so that's going to be a pain to manage the text of the search. Plus it's still fairly manual, have to change to the saved search and click send to device each time you connect.

Is there an easier way I'm not aware of?

[Manichean]

I'm not sure what you actually want to do, since Calibre has no facilities for any syncing of books. The only thing automatically sent are downloaded news, and those are sent to the first device connected.
That said, why not just add tags to the books according to what device you want to send them to and use your idea with saved searches? If you tagged the books you want on the Nook with, say, "Nook", you could have a search

tags:"Nook" and ondevice:false

that would display the books you want to transfer to the Nook if that device is connected- I don't see where you'd have to change the search, just create one for each device.
You may also be interested in this plugin, although, from what I understand, it sends to the next connected device, as well, in the same manner the news do.

[Doug-W]

Originally Posted by Manichean

I'm not sure what you actually want to do, since Calibre has no facilities for any syncing of books. The only thing automatically sent are downloaded news, and those are sent to the first device connected.
That said, why not just add tags to the books according to what device you want to send them to and use your idea with saved searches? If you tagged the books you want on the Nook with, say, "Nook", you could have a search

tags:"Nook" and ondevice:false

that would display the books you want to transfer to the Nook if that device is connected- I don't see where you'd have to change the search, just create one for each device.
You may also be interested in this plugin, although, from what I understand, it sends to the next connected device, as well, in the same manner the news do.

The part about authors is what makes it difficult. I want everything by Author X on the Nook. Author X comes out with Book+1. I don't want to have to 'tag' that book as being destined for the nook, I want to be able to easily send to device BECAUSE it's written by Author X. Having to tag each new book as it comes in is what I'm trying to avoid.
I'm basically envisioning something like:
(author:"=Tom Clancy" or author:"=Stephen King" or author:"=Jim Butcher" or author:="Next person" or tag:=nook) and ondevice:false

But I'm seeing where there may be 30-40 authors in that query and it just sounds fragile at that point.

[Manichean]

In that case, go fully manual and just type in the search each time. You might want to have a look at the tag browser, as well, although I don't think it supports filtering by ondevice.

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by Doug-W

The part about authors is what makes it difficult. I want everything by Author X on the Nook. Author X comes out with Book+1. I don't want to have to 'tag' that book as being destined for the nook, I want to be able to easily send to device BECAUSE it's written by Author X. Having to tag each new book as it comes in is what I'm trying to avoid.
I'm basically envisioning something like:
(author:"=Tom Clancy" or author:"=Stephen King" or author:"=Jim Butcher" or author:="Next person" or tag:=nook) and ondevice:false

But I'm seeing where there may be 30-40 authors in that query and it just sounds fragile at that point.

Create a "User Category" for that set of authors e.g. MyCatName. Then right-click on the category name in the tag browser and choose "Search for books in category MyCatName". Your searchbar now contains something like: @MyCatName:True. Add to this whatever criteria you want like "@MyCatName:True and ondevice:false".

Store that as a saved search. So you can quickly bring up the search criteria you like when you plug in the relevant device.

As you add new authors, just add them to the user category, no need to change your search query. You might find my "User Category" plugin comes in useful for this as an easy way to add authors from the library view.