Getting Mobipocket authors to display correctly on Kindle
 

I just downloaded BAEN's Free Library (I owe them a fat donation) and spent a couple of hours with mobi2mobi stamping the files with proper title and author metadata.

Normally, when you download content from Amazon, the Kindle displays the author as First, Last but sorts as Last, First. With the mobipocket files I've stamped and added manually, it's sorting as displayed, so First, Last.

I guess I can restamp the files as Last, First, but I'd prefer to have them wholly integrated in the library. Anyone know if there's another EXTH category or something I can use to get them to display First, Last and sort Last, First?

Never mind, may have answered my own question. Looks like the Kindle automatically turns around Last, First into First Last on display, so I need to restamp that way.

That was kind of a nice functionality. I do not think there is a EXTH data field for another sort order. I think that epub can contain a sort key in the meta data so when we have epub readers we might have this functionality.

Does the Kindle not maintain a cache of book files it has found on the device? Where does it store bookmarks and history and so on? On the SONY you can edit the metadata in the cache to have it show up however you want (that's what libprs500 does).

I don't know about the cache, but I do know that bookmarks are stored in a seperate file for each book.

The Gen3 store bookmark in a special data file one per book. I do not think there is a reason to cache the meta data information since it is stored uncompressed and unencrypted in the first record of the file. It is as fast to read that data as to read a cache.

But maybe I just have missed a global cache file. I will look for it sometimes...

I don't know if the Kindle works the same way, but all other versions of the MobiPocket Reader create a file "bookname.mbp" (ie a separate file for each book). This file stores your current reading position in the book, user annotations, bookmarks, etc.

Does the mbp file also contain metadata? i.e. title and author?

The Kindle creates mbp files, too. As far as anyone can tell, it really is a mobipocket reader, with Amazon mobipocket files having the funky AZW extension.

I didn't look in them for metadata, since I didn't have a handy mbp editor hanging out. ;) There is no exposed way to edit the metadata "cache" though. Restamping the books with mobi2mobi --author "last, first" did what I wanted.

I have some batch files quick and dirtied now that will go through a tree of book files and stamp all the authors based on the directory names they're in. Once/if I get those cleaned up a little, I'll upload.

It seems to contain the title but not the author.

I find it hard to believe that the kindle doesn't maintain a list of books it has found somewhere on the drive, after all if it didn't, every time it was rebooted it would have to scan everything again, making reboot times unnecessarily long, but maybe it's on a part of the drive not exported via USB or it's in encrypted form somewhere.

Can't you just scan the books you need for the display? A global cache has to be updated and you have to write code for detecting new files and when files are removed so if you can get good performance without it it is an advantage not to have a cache.

The linux kernel has filesystem notify support, so you would be notified everytime a file/directory is changed and you could rescan it and update the relevant portions of the cache. Seems to me like a much more efficient system than scan on demand.

Do you know about applications that uses this notify support?

I still think that your solution leads to more complex code and more possibilties for strange bugs. If I designed a system I would avoid a cache if I could.

Most linux filemanagers