Quick question...

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by Magic Man

Calibre manages its books using a filesystem, it doesn't store them in a db or other container so the point is moot.

I can understand perfectly that if there was a requirement two have more than one book directory with exactly the same name under the same author directory then there would need to be some form of unique identifyer in the book directory name to identify it, hence the id value

Version 1 of Calibre did exactly as you describe - it kept the files and metadata inside the database. File formats were completely inaccessible to the user, other than by the tools provided to Send to Device or Save to Disk. For performance and other reasons, later versions were rewritten to store the files in the OS file system and metadata only in the db, but Calibre still needed a unique reference to each file storage directory.

It's not hard to strip off the id, should you want to, but you should be aware that the entire file name is not used to create the folder name - only a limited number of the first characters in the title, plus the id. Should Kovid change to your proposed design, functionality would be lost, as the user often has no control over the title/author during initial import when metadata is read from inside the file being imported.

The bottom line is that Calibre uses the library folder/directory as part of its database, it needs to be uniquely named and that's not likely to change any time soon.

[Worldwalker]

It doesn't matter that calibre (currently) manages its files in a filesystem -- it's not your filesystem. It could name all its files 'George' for all the user cares. It used to use a database, today it uses a filesystem, tomorrow it may do something totally different. Calibre doesn't manage files, it manages books. If you have a book called "How to Read" that book may be in one file or many, it may be in a filesystem, a database, or partly in each, it may be in as many formats as calibre knows about, and none of that matters to the user; all that matters is that the book exists, it is, or can be converted into, certain formats, and if the user wants the file itself (in whatever format) it can be exported wherever and however said user wants. The particular way that calibre (currently) stores any or all of those formats -- which may be different tomorrow -- isn't any part of that.

Yeah, I'm starting to sound a bit testy about this. In the time I've been hanging around MR, every so often (thankfully, not as many times as we used to get) there are people who show up and ask "How can I make calibre not work like calibre?" That's why I wrote the post I reference in my .sig (and the reason it's there). Thankfully, none of the more recent ones have started out by insulting Kovid, but they were doing that for a while, too.

The bottom line, anyway, is that you have two choices: You can use calibre in the way it was intended, as a program to manage books with. Or you can get a program that manages files for you. But you have to pick one. If it's going to be a program to manage files, I wish you good luck; I have no clue what they are, but I'm sure someone here does and can help you. If it's going to be calibre, then you have to accept it managing books, forget about files entirely, and let it do what it does. And one of those things is treating calibre's private library as a black box, pretending it doesn't exist at all, and using the calibre GUI and native functions to interact with your books, instead of trying to have it both ways and treat them as files, too.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Even though I maintain a separate folder to keep my original files in, "just in case" ('m old, paranoid, and like as many backups in place as is prectical) I've found the more I use calibre, the less I visit that folder. In fact, the only time I go there anymore is to open it so I can drag my newly scanned books into it after I put them in calibre.

[Magic Man]

Thanks all for the replies, much appreciated and I fully understand your points.

I suppose my main issue is that, and certainly with a large repository of books, I just end up with a duplicate store - I guess I could delete the original directories from where the books are imported from but, as you say, the directory names are limited. In my ideal world I'd have Calibre managing my existing library and adding the converted books there directly. I'm perfectly happy with the way the directory structure and meta data storage is done - it could be a lot more convoluted like iTunes but thankfully isn't - the only concession being the numerical value in the directory name. I can live with that.

I've tried to think of it as a 'black box' but I know my converted versions from the originals are there, I know the downloaded cover art is there etc. so I want to keep that data and think of it as my ebook library outside of Calibre as well as in. No worries though.

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

Thankfully, none of the more recent ones have started out by insulting Kovid, but they were doing that for a while, too.

Wouldn't dream of doing that, the software is excellent and the best I've used for this purpose.

Thanks again...