I have carefully reviewed each option for my Bad Words List plugin and none are satisfactory.
- Add a book extenstion to store just the bad word data (confuse the reader)
- Store bad word data for each book in the db (clutters the db)
- Store the bad word data for a book in the book itself (if multiple formats do I append to each one)
- Create bad word data, summarize into metadata tag, delete bad word data (requires user to rescan to see the actual data)
- Create a parallel folder structure outside of Calibre to contain the bad word data (difficult for the user to maintain)
Furthermore, if I widened my horizons, the bad word plugin would become just a Scan Word plugin that could operate on multiple lists (bad words, historical words, urban words, etc.). These might be useful to authors and individuals studying word usage in period books. Now instead of having just one list result per book, there could be several. Storing these in an Attachment folder would be easy and save significant space in the db.
The best solution appears to be an "Attachment" folder in each book folder that any plugin could drop files into and manage. Would it be difficult to enhance Calibre to include an "Attachment" folder in each book folder? Initially Calibre's only responsibility for this folder would be:
- Move/copy the folder with the book whenever the book is moved/copied
- Delete the folder when the book is deleted
I don't want to write up an enhancement request unless this is relatively easy to achieve.