Quick Tip for Titles

[OldLincoln]

I'm one who has always entered series data manually and usually changed the titles to: "series #: shortened title". Worked fine until I had metadata issues and had to go back to Amazon to find missing ids. IF the title and author are exact, download metadata usually found the missing identifiers. My modified titles broke and possibility of this happening,

My fix was to create a custom column with lookup name mytitle and column MyTitle.
Next a new Search & Replace with a Regular Expression Search Mode and:
Search Field = title
Search For: (.*)
Replace With: \1
Destination Field: #mytitle
Save as what you want

Highlight the titles you want to modify and run the S&R. The MyTitle column for selected books will populate with the titles data. Then make your changes in the MyTitle column. If you ever need to refer back to the Amazon site (without a current identifier), you have a chance with using download metadata.

I will use this for all my new books when adding them so I'm set.

[fidvo]

I couldn't quite follow your post (probably because it's late at night and I can't think straight) but it looks like you're breaking the first rule of Calibre:

Use the built-in columns for what they were meant for.

Don't store series information in the title column. Store the title information in the title column, and the series information in the series column.

Take it from someone who's made all the mistakes and learned the hard way that there's a reason for the way Calibre organizes things. In this case, there's a very simple reason: It's easier to merge fields than to split them.

If a field holds exactly one piece of data, you can use templates and plugboards to combine it with another field that holds exactly one piece of data. But trying to extract one piece of data from a field that holds two pieces of data is far more difficult. For instance, what if you want to look up a book and you can remember its title but not its author or series?

Go ahead and use your MyTitle column to store both the series and the title in one field if you want. You can even set up a custom column template to do the merging automatically. But take the series out of the built-in title field.

Do this, and you will thank me one day.

[eschwartz]

You really should be storing series in the series column.

Go to Preferences ==> Import/Export ==> Metadata plugboards and create plugboard rules to insert the series into the title when exporting a book from calibre (e.g. during send-to-device).

[OldLincoln]

Originally Posted by fidvo

I couldn't quite follow your post (probably because it's late at night and I can't think straight) but it looks like you're breaking the first rule of Calibre:

Use the built-in columns for what they were meant for.

Don't store series information in the title column. Store the title information in the title column, and the series information in the series column.

Take it from someone who's made all the mistakes and learned the hard way that there's a reason for the way Calibre organizes things. In this case, there's a very simple reason: It's easier to merge fields than to split them.

If a field holds exactly one piece of data, you can use templates and plugboards to combine it with another field that holds exactly one piece of data. But trying to extract one piece of data from a field that holds two pieces of data is far more difficult. For instance, what if you want to look up a book and you can remember its title but not its author or series?

Go ahead and use your MyTitle column to store both the series and the title in one field if you want. You can even set up a custom column template to do the merging automatically. But take the series out of the built-in title field.

Do this, and you will thank me one day.

I already thank you, you "burned the fuzz" off what I was thinking. I do use the series column and always have, but I wanted the series and title in the same column as I have a small monitor. The series is east of the title column. I didn't know I could automatically combine columns. Is the resulting column text something that could be edited? Some titles are very, very long (Blue Skies Over Montana - A Historical Novel of Montana in the 1860's); series (Historical Novels of Montana [1]). Well, I made that up but it's length is something I often run into.

So thank you for your advice and I have taken it to heart. Started out years ago using Calibre as is and let my library grow out from under me. Little late to standardize but it needs doing.

[eschwartz]

You can use templates in a custom column in addition to a plugboard.
But you cannot edit them directly.


I think it is good policy to explicitly edit the source fields but you can at least move the series column next to the title column.

[OldLincoln]

Of course you are right, after all you are a wizard! Someday I'll get a 27" monitor to replace my current 17".

[OldLincoln]

We'll I feel like I got a new saddle!!!! It works and now I have the series appear as part of the title in my FBReader. First plugboard I ever did. Thanks.

Next is to combine series with title into my custom MyTitles column via search & Replace.

[eschwartz]

No need. Create a column of type: column built from other columns.
Fill in the same template you used for the plugboard.



If you populate it via S&R then you will have to somehow get that info back into the original columns


One of my Custom Columns is "Title Save", indicating how the title will be... saved (on-device).

[OldLincoln]

I did what you said then made another plain column (EditCol) and bulk S&R from the plugboard sourced column into it. I now can populate the EditCol easily and change it how I like without messing up other stuff.

Heres why:
Plugboard sourced column that went to my reader:
"David Brunelle Short Story [2]: Beyond a Reasonable Doubt: A David Brunelle Legal Thriller Short Story (David Brunelle Legal Thriller Series)"

What I prefer to see and now is in my EditCol column:
"David Brunelle Short Story [2]: Beyond a Reasonable Doubt"

My next thing it to see if I can get the plugboard to use the my #editcol if populated and the current formula if not. Hope I'm not creating a monster (It's Alive!! ).

[eschwartz]

{series}{series_index:| [|]: }{title:re([(:].*, )}

will format the series in front, and chop off everything in the {title} that follows a ":" or "("

[OldLincoln]

I loved the idea but it doesn't consistently solve the problem. For example:
"Danny Logan Mystery [2]: Danny Logan 2: No Way to Die"

becomes:
"Danny Logan Mystery [2]: Danny Logan 2:"

It takes consistent inputs to get consistent results. We'd need a strong AI to work through the garbage naming lack of convention on Amazon, not to mention the changing of minds with changing names in series, titles, identifiers and authors. Fixing that isn't going to happen so I'll keep what i got till something works better.

Thanks for your help.

[fidvo]

Originally Posted by OldLincoln

I loved the idea but it doesn't consistently solve the problem. For example:
"Danny Logan Mystery [2]: Danny Logan 2: No Way to Die"

becomes:
"Danny Logan Mystery [2]: Danny Logan 2:"

It takes consistent inputs to get consistent results. We'd need a strong AI to work through the garbage naming lack of convention on Amazon, not to mention the changing of minds with changing names in series, titles, identifiers and authors. Fixing that isn't going to happen so I'll keep what i got till something works better.

Thanks for your help.

The second rule of Calibre is this:

Downloaded metadata is just a suggestion. In your example, Amazon helpfully broke the first rule by adding the Series to the Title field. That's why you should always review the metadata after downloading, and clean it up when necessary.

Someone with more experience with me might be able to help you construct a custom search for all books containing a number somewhere in the title. That could help narrow down your library to books likely to need the title field to be cleaned. If there aren't too many, you could go through them by hand and fix them. Otherwise, the proper regex in Search-and-Replace might work.

[PeterT]

Possibly add more metadata sources to the ones you use.

[OldLincoln]

In my experience with titles, more sources would simply repeat what the author/publisher named the book. It's the same name as shows on the cover. I've learned my lesson NOT to edit the original title so am doing it in custom columns. That's what all this has been about, and will continue on my end till the not is cracked - either it or me.