Quote:
Originally Posted by theducks
Is the "on device" tweak, going to show us a "count" of how many places i a title was found?
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It shows the count of how many books on a device 'matched' a given book in the library.
"Oh", you say, "What does *that* mean?"
A book on the device and a book in the library match if any of the following are true:
1) title AND (author or author_sort) match (white space independent compare)
2) the books' UUID match. See below for some explanation.
3) the books' title and database id match.
Note for #2 and #3: When calibre creates a book in a library, it assigns it two identifiers. The first, the UUID, is intended to be unique across all books and calibre installations. The second, the database ID, is unique for a given library. Thus the UUID can be considered an exact match regardless of metadata. The database id is an imprecise match, because a totally different book in a different library could have the same application id.
The UUID will match if the *same book* that originated in a specific library was sent to the device. Note that 'same book' is not the same as 'same metadata' or 'same format'. The metadata can change completely. The only thing that matters is that the UUID hasn't changed.
The database id will match if the book in the current library with that database id has the same title as the book on the device. I thought that the probability of getting that far with books that do not match was sufficiently low to permit ignoring the authors.
Automatic metadata management plays a role here. It sets the UUID for matched books, so that changes downstream will still match.
In your case, you are tweaking and resending the same book, so the UUID should match no matter what you have done to the title and authors or other metadata. You will see a reasonably accurate count of books.
The count will not be trustworthy if you send the same book(s) from different libraries unless all copies of the book in question originated in the same library. My hope is that not many people do that. If you do, then my recommendation is that you follow the advice of Harry Nillson: 'Put the lime in the coconut, and call me in the morning.
