[Starson17]

Originally Posted by Gary_M_Mugford

While I truly appreciate the automatic tools you've created and the after-the-fact tools from KiwiDude, I've got a couple of issues that an immediate confirmation of authorship would make life easier for me.

Thanks, however, I'm not looking for appreciation - I'm just trying to understand your use case. Do you add multiple books at once, or only one at a time? I agree that telling you the author would be useful for those who rely on Duplicates and add only one book at a time, I'm just not sure why you would want to do that?

Remember, the Duplicates Warning code only spots exact match titles and it ignores authors. Moreover, it provides no individual book processing. It's all or nothing - you have to add all duplicate titles or not add them, regardless of whether the author matches or not. That's why IMHO, Duplicates is only useful when adding a single book - so you can choose what to do. Since it doesn't do any "similar" title processing, even the single book add use case is limited.

The first is due to having entered in a LOT of books with lots still lying around (I use the database for real paper books, too). But it's been awhile and my immediate memory of what's gone in, flags. I'm old.

Automerge was written to allow you to add lots of books, all at once, and when the title and author are unique, it always creates a new record. When the author is not unique and the title matches very closely (punctuation, capitalization and leading articles are ignored) it will try to add it to the matching book record, if it's a new format, and then do what you tell it to do if it can't.

I'd like to know whether the title/author is unique before going through the after-the-fact examination.

What will you do if the title/author is unique vs. not unique? Specify if you are adding multiple books or only single books. Specify if you are adding different formats or only one format. Perhaps examples would help.

But I understand this is a sore spot with our leader and unlikely to be fixed in anything approaching the near future.

I'm not sure why you say that. AFAIK, Kovid is neutral on this, although it's probably low priority to change if he thinks the existing tools meet the user needs. That's why I'm trying to figure out how they fail to meet your needs. I understand that the Duplicates Warning is of limited value. That's just because it was an early bit of legacy code that has been superseded by Automerge, Merge and Duplicate Finder code.

I can't turn automerge on because I also use Calibre as a repository of my various articles from bridge magazines and sports publications. Not all of my work, especially in the bridge area. But I do wish to keep versions, just not multiple copies of the same version. (I adjusted articles for different publications. i.e. what I wrote for Bridge World appeared in the souvenir book for the Indian National Championships a year later in expanded form. That sort of thing). Plus there are articles like Mike Lawrence's 2 Over 1 Notes that are the not the same as MY 2 Over 1 Notes. It all gets messy.

Explain a bit more on this. The "Mike Lawrence's 2 Over 1 Notes that are the not the same as MY 2 Over 1 Notes" books would never be processed with Automerge. They have different authors. (it will appear in Duplicates Warning.) Suppose you add a new version of an article that has you as the author. Suppose Duplicates Warning triggers and tells you that you are the author of the existing record. (It won't if you have "version 1" etc. or "Written for ..." in the title. - It won't trigger Automerge in that case either.) What will you do with the information from Duplicate Warning? There's no way to look at the book. Do you just remember different articles and do different things based on your memory or does the title have some info about the version?

I've known about Kovid's touchiness on the subject and just wondered if any of you insiders knew why he has adopted that stance. KiwiDude explained as well as it can be explained. And I accept that.

I'm still not sure what "touchiness" or "stance" you're referring to. I'm familiar with the code in that area, and I may have some time in a week or so to get up to speed and possibly adjust it, I'm just trying to figure out the use case. I can't imagine that Kovid would be touchy about this kind of change.