Quote:
Originally Posted by untilnoon
i would like the option to have calibre companion stand alone as an app.
to be able to turn off sync to library or load books from library. all my books are on the sdcard and i would like to be able to select import from sdcard and for calibre companion to import info from that folder to populate itself. i do not want CC to copy all my books into it's own folder so now i have two sets of the same books.
when i add books to my sdcard i could have the option to automatically/manually update CC info.
CC does everything else i want an library app to do, open in reader of my choice, show data in books, sort as i choose, etc.
thanks kovid and everyone else who has contributed to both calibre and it's companion. they are both lovely. https://www2.mobileread.com/i/smiliesadd1/iloveyou.gif |
Thanks for the kind words.
I have considered something like this for quite some time. It isn't a straightforward problem.
First, note that CC depends on getting metadata from calibre. This won't change. Because of this restriction, there are only two ways to do what you want.
1) Do something like the leger calibre app. It wants a copy of a calibre library on the sd card. This sort of function would be hard to build into CC because it is so different from what CC already does.
2) Add the ability to import the metadata calibre saves when it connects to a device. In this scenario you would use "connect to folder" to put the books on the sd card. CC would read the ".metadata.calibre" file to get the metadata for the books. This approach also breaks certain CC suppositions such as separate folders for books, but it is easier to integrate into CC than #1.
Both #1 and #2 suffer from the KitKat SD card changes, making most of the SD card read-only. I don't know how you are getting to books onto the SD card, but we would need to work around this issue.
What would not work with CC is simply dropping books onto the SD card. That approach would mean that CC does not have calibre's metadata, and for many book formats would have almost no metadata at all. It also doesn't app much functionality to what you get with many reader apps.
I am considering adding a "cloud content server" option to CC, where CC could reach into dropbox etc and import books into CC. This is not what you want, of course, but it is somewhat germane to the discussion. It is also much easier to implement than either #1 or #2 above, and is probably of more general interest.