[chaley]

Originally Posted by jjmcgaffey

Well - for me, it definitely would be worth it. I carry a lot of books with me - in fact, I was about to upgrade from a 32Gb card to a 64Gb (which contains, basically, books and music). I can read my existing books just fine, but I can't add to them - it's very disconcerting. I'd be very happy if CC gets access to the SD card. I have the latest version (issued 4/1/14), which says it does something about this, but I still can't add a book to my (SD-located) library.

The changes were to give an error message when writing to the SD card failed and to refuse to allow changing CC's folder to a read-only SD card folder. Nothing was added to allow using the single app-specific folder.

I use FBReader as my reader, and ran into problems with it - it writes to a "cache" folder, which by default is the same place as its library (which is also CC's library). However, it's simple to change the cache folder to be elsewhere (it pops up to complain, and you can change the folder on that window) - so now it's writing to cache in internal memory, but can still see the library on the SD card. It doesn't, apparently, actually need to write anything to the books themselves.

Good to know that one can work around the problem.

The clearing data is problematic - less for uninstalling than for getting the data cleared, that sounds very unfriendly. I do use clearing data to deal with various freeze-ups for apps, though I don't think I've ever needed it for CC. If I were going to uninstall CC, I expect I'd sync first, or not be too surprised if the books were gone too.

Fully agree with you -- nuking the folder on clear is extremely unfriendly. Unfortunately it is Android itself that deleted the folder. We app writers have zero control over it.

I do have a Note 3 that I've upgraded to KitKat, so I'd be happy to be a tester if you need one. I've rooted other devices, but haven't this one (yet); I'm pretty familiar with fiddling around (sideloading, etc).

There is one possibility that we are not able to test. It might be possible to manually create the app-specific folder, then use CC's change library dialog to move CC's library to that folder. It might even be possible for CC to create that folder. Who knows?

CC's app-specific library folder on the SD card should be
Android/data/com.multipie.calibreandroid/files
If you are running the latest version of CC then there is an example of this folder on the devices main memory. The debug log is stored there now instead of in the library (because we might not be able to write the library).

CC might be able to write to that folder if it exists, which means that CC's existing library folder dialog would permit changing the library to that folder. CC might be able to create the "files" folder if the parent folder (com.multi...) exists. Or perhaps nothing will work because the folder must be created by Android with specific permissions.

For right now, I guess I'll have to ignore CC (wahh! just after you added Date Read, too!) and copy stuff to the folder more directly (hmmm, wonder if WebDAV will work, or if I'll have to go USB or pull the card out?), then get it directly through FBReader. I'm not _yet_ going to root just to fix this, but if I find it's broken other stuff as well, I may have to.

If you can get books into a folder on the SD card then you can probably use CC's scan for books to find them and match them with your calibre library. CC does not write to that folder except when adding or deleting books.