[deleteriousone]

Originally Posted by dwanthny

It is easy to see why gweminence and I have this impression. When in the first post he sums up his problem as follows.

I do not wish to muck around with Calibre's folders (after the program has written them).
I sure would like to be able to determine the directory structure when importing books and can to some extent as far Author name is concerned with Manage Authors.

Originally Posted by dwanthny

Then continues the discussion about data being stuck in a proprietary program.

This was in response to why anyone would want to muck with directories.

Originally Posted by dwanthny

Wishing it indexed files instead of copying them.

I think this would be a good idea and why I would prefer an app like Lightroom over Aperture. This type of indexing is more efficient at least as to space used.

Originally Posted by dwanthny

And then continues on with a discussion of file name lengths. In calibre there is only one place where file names are truncated due to being too long and that is inside the calibre database / directory structure.

While this is not exactly accurate (Calibre does truncate file / directory name in it's copy of the file name) I was not referring to Calibre. I did say "in other apps and devices" The inaccurately is that technically the database is the .db files not the directory structure and files as they are records in the database.

Originally Posted by dwanthny

The plus is he does understand the limits and is trying to work within those limits.

I sure do and am. I do database design as part of my living and it would take me a good long time to write an app as complex as Calibre.

Originally Posted by dwanthny

I already discussed the fact that he can export all of his books out of this "proprietary program" in the exact format he wishes. Using the save to disk feature with a proper save template and possibly a custom column or two will create an external directory structure (as a back-up from this proprietary program) exactly as he imagines.

I am trying to avoid duplicating data (thank you Dr. E. F. Codd for his rules of relational database design). If I end up using Calibre for my ebook collection I may have to use a few gigabytes more hard disk drive space and break Dr. Codd's rule.

I will point out that the post from which you made this part of your reply was dealing with why people would want to much about with directory structure.

I did not think that I gave the impression Calibre was a "proprietary program", being open source I do not think the program itself would meet that definition. The database format might if the database cannot be opened by a third party software.
If I gave the impression of Calibre being a proprietary program, that was not my intent and maybe I should have worded my reply to the question posed differently .

Originally Posted by dwanthny

You certainly can jump through enough hoops to make calibre's directory look close to what he is describing but it will be LN_FN never LN,FN and there will be times when file names will be truncated.

I found this out.

Originally Posted by dwanthny

I wish him luck and will be glad to offer any assistance I can.

Any assistance is VERY MUCH APPRECIATED.

I have now Calibre setup so that it imports recognizing series and number in the series. I have given up on having it put the files in genre as when the books are imported. I will have to manually sort each book into genre for those authors that write both fiction and non-fiction books.

What I really want Calibre to do is also bring in the author's name listed as Ln, Fn by default so I do not have to use the Manage Authors function to change every author.

I really do not want to have to rename each file as this would be even more work for the files from the purchased DVD collections which had cryptic names which were linked to via html pages.

Calibre did a great job in my test with with these files reading the metadata. In fact once I get the author name import sorted out I will probably export from Calibre to better file name.

Thanks again for putting up with a noob. No animosity is intended in any reply which I have made. If any have been taken as being confrontational , I apologize.


wow, that a long winded post.
~ ted