All of these are linked by a common thread, hence the combination into one post.
These all relate to library management, so here goes.
I've been using this product now for the best part of 12 months, and am immensely impressed with what it is, and how it works, apart from in one area, and that is library management.
1.
Deleting entries using the Delete key. Yes, I know that this is the wrong way of deleting an entry, as it leaves the book in the library, but unreferenced. It often happens (to me) because of switching backward and forward between Windows Explorer and Calibre, and encroaching senility. What would I like to see? Well, I really don't think that the current action is the best possible. I'd like to either see a warning message when the delete key is used, or a mechanism that deletes the item fully (from the library) when this action is taken. Preferably, I'd like to see both of these as options, as although I can't visualise why someone would want to remove a book from Calibre, but would like to keep the book in the Calibre library, there probably are more people than I realise who would like to have this choice.
2.
Deleting / merging duplicates. I like the feature that allows you, when loading new books, to choose not to load duplicates. Unfortunately, it is often the case that when actually loading books, they may not have sufficient identification to determine whether to delete them or not, and the form of the file name is often such that they aren't identified as duplicates. Searching for duplicates once the necessary "tarting up" has been done is a long and slow manual process. So far, I've only been able to manage it using an excel spreadsheet, with a column that has the sorted titles, and a second column, also with the sorted titles, but with the duplicates removed (Excel can do that). It is then a matter of going down both columns until there is a hiccup, and the unduplicated column suddenly gets out of step with the duplicated one, etc. I'd like to see a feature where a search can be made at a later time (than initial loading), perhaps looking for duplicates to a batch of recently added files, or a random batch of files, or perhaps, if it isn't too resource hungry, to the whole library. As there is usually much more information available one meta data has been added, perhaps it could be carried out on chosen fields, but that is getting a bit too ambitious, probably.
3.
The problem This should probably be raised as a defect, but I'm not sure that it is. As I said above, I have a nasty habit of deleting books (often that I don't mean to delete) using the delete key rather than the Remove Books button.
When I go to Library Maintenance, and select Check Library, I can see a list of books that have no Calibre entry - that I have "delete"d, but all I can do with them is delete them - there is no "restore" option for these books. This is a part of the problem, I suppose.
Trying to approach the problem from a different direction, I tried using the Restore Database command, but each time I've tried to use it, it's locked up solid at about 6%. I'm using the latest release (as of yesterday), in Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit, if that's any help, by the way.
As I said before, this is a small area of doom and gloom in what, to me, is a great piece of software, that is helping me to be quite attentive and engaged in my retirement. Thank you.
