MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Calibre beta available that fully integrates custom fields

chaley · 09-19-2010, 05:12 PM

Edit: New information is underlined.

Dear all,

This beta makes a significant upgrade of calibre available for testing. This note describes beta release 0.7.906.

The major enhancements (that I remember) are:

Custom fields are usable in save-to-disk and send-to-device templates, and in collections. Template items like {#mycolumn} will substitute the value of the custom field into the template.
Various functions are available in templates, used for constructing context-sensitive folder paths. See the templates tutorial for details.
There is a new custom field type, ‘column built from other columns’ (composite columns). This type lets you construct *read-only* columns containing any of the available metadata fields, using the template syntax. For example, you can construct a column showing the ISBN by creating a composite column containing the template {isbn}. Fields like {format} and {author_sort} also work. You can even do ‘{tags:10.10}-{series}’ to build a column that contains the first 10 characters of tags, followed by a hyphen then series. These fields can be very useful in templates.
A new feature, plugboards, is now available for controlling what metadata is written into books during send-to-device and save-to-disk operations. A plugboard permits you to specify a template (which can, of course, use composite columns) to provide the data to write into the book's metadata. You can modify the following fields: authors, author_sort, language, publisher, tags, title, title_sort. This feature should help those of you who want to use different metadata in your books on devices to solve sorting or display issues. Please note: this feature does not affect calibre's metadata, nor does it affect what is written into a Sony's database.
For collections, putting #genre or #read (or any field's #lookupname) into the collections field in device customization will do what you expect. A tweak, sony_collection_renaming_rules, can be used to control how collection names appear on the Sony.
Custom fields are displayed in the content server and in book information. The standard content server display shows long fields (e.g., lots of tags) in an elided form. Full information is available by clicking on the book. A tweak has been added to select which custom fields to, or not to, display.
OPFs now contain custom field information.
The calibre device cache contains custom field information.
Metadata is automatically backed up to an OPF in the book directory. The first time you run a beta release, OPFs will be created for all your books at the rate of around 30 per minute. You can see how many books' metadata remains to be backed up by looking at the command 'Library Backup Status', available on the library pull-down. You can force a complete rewrite of metadata using the button on preferences -> advanced -> miscellaneous.
Calibre now has a database recover CLI command 'calibredb restore_database'. This command walks over a library gathering all the OPF files it finds (the ones made by the backup), then rebuilds the library database from that information. Custom columns are restored. Saved searches, user-defined categories, and saved conversion options are not restored. Restoration takes around 1 second per book.
Search & replace that uses/operates upon custom fields, can copy from one field to another, and can change the case of text. The command has two modes: text and regular expression. The text mode is easiest for simple replacements or when just changing case.
Bulk edit can now force series-type columns to empty, and can force renumbering to start at some value.
tweak-epub. See the forum post https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=99875.

The beta manual is available here.

This is a near-final beta release. We expect that the release will be final this week.

There haven’t been any changes to the database schema, which means that it is possible to try the beta, then uninstall and revert to a production release (an uninstall is necessary). I add the ‘possible’, because you will need to manually undo any changes to preferences (e.g., custom fields in templates), and the production releases will not like composite columns. The best approach is to copy your library, install the beta, then try a few things to see if it works well enough in your configuration. If it does not, then uninstall calibre, reinstall the production version, and switch back to the original library.

Please post comments on this thread.

I will edit this post as necessary to keep it up-to-date.

The beta is available at http://calibre-ebook.com/downloads/betas/. The .msi is for windows, the .dmg is for macs, and the other two are for linux.

09-19-2010, 05:12 PM	#1
chaley Grand Sorcerer Posts: 12,450 Karma: 8012886 Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: Notts, England Device: Kobo Libra 2	Calibre beta available that fully integrates custom fields Edit: New information is underlined. Dear all, This beta makes a significant upgrade of calibre available for testing. This note describes beta release 0.7.906. The major enhancements (that I remember) are: Custom fields are usable in save-to-disk and send-to-device templates, and in collections. Template items like {#mycolumn} will substitute the value of the custom field into the template. Various functions are available in templates, used for constructing context-sensitive folder paths. See the templates tutorial for details. There is a new custom field type, ‘column built from other columns’ (composite columns). This type lets you construct read-only columns containing any of the available metadata fields, using the template syntax. For example, you can construct a column showing the ISBN by creating a composite column containing the template {isbn}. Fields like {format} and {author_sort} also work. You can even do ‘{tags:10.10}-{series}’ to build a column that contains the first 10 characters of tags, followed by a hyphen then series. These fields can be very useful in templates. A new feature, plugboards, is now available for controlling what metadata is written into books during send-to-device and save-to-disk operations. A plugboard permits you to specify a template (which can, of course, use composite columns) to provide the data to write into the book's metadata. You can modify the following fields: authors, author_sort, language, publisher, tags, title, title_sort. This feature should help those of you who want to use different metadata in your books on devices to solve sorting or display issues. Please note: this feature does not affect calibre's metadata, nor does it affect what is written into a Sony's database. For collections, putting #genre or #read (or any field's #lookupname) into the collections field in device customization will do what you expect. A tweak, sony_collection_renaming_rules, can be used to control how collection names appear on the Sony. Custom fields are displayed in the content server and in book information. The standard content server display shows long fields (e.g., lots of tags) in an elided form. Full information is available by clicking on the book. A tweak has been added to select which custom fields to, or not to, display. OPFs now contain custom field information. The calibre device cache contains custom field information. Metadata is automatically backed up to an OPF in the book directory. The first time you run a beta release, OPFs will be created for all your books at the rate of around 30 per minute. You can see how many books' metadata remains to be backed up by looking at the command 'Library Backup Status', available on the library pull-down. You can force a complete rewrite of metadata using the button on preferences -> advanced -> miscellaneous. Calibre now has a database recover CLI command 'calibredb restore_database'. This command walks over a library gathering all the OPF files it finds (the ones made by the backup), then rebuilds the library database from that information. Custom columns are restored. Saved searches, user-defined categories, and saved conversion options are not restored. Restoration takes around 1 second per book. Search & replace that uses/operates upon custom fields, can copy from one field to another, and can change the case of text. The command has two modes: text and regular expression. The text mode is easiest for simple replacements or when just changing case. Bulk edit can now force series-type columns to empty, and can force renumbering to start at some value. tweak-epub. See the forum post https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=99875. The beta manual is available here. This is a near-final beta release. We expect that the release will be final this week. There haven’t been any changes to the database schema, which means that it is possible to try the beta, then uninstall and revert to a production release (an uninstall is necessary). I add the ‘possible’, because you will need to manually undo any changes to preferences (e.g., custom fields in templates), and the production releases will not like composite columns. The best approach is to copy your library, install the beta, then try a few things to see if it works well enough in your configuration. If it does not, then uninstall calibre, reinstall the production version, and switch back to the original library. Please post comments on this thread. I will edit this post as necessary to keep it up-to-date. The beta is available at http://calibre-ebook.com/downloads/betas/. The .msi is for windows, the .dmg is for macs, and the other two are for linux. Last edited by chaley; 09-30-2010 at 03:34 AM. Reason: Latest feature list