Quote:
Originally Posted by Rellwood
@BetterRed...Thank you. I will now check out the Author Links. I'm still a bit unclear about the linking between libraries.
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There is no out-of-the-box way to link books to one another within or between libraries. They can be of course, be associated within a library, by virtue of having common properties (column values) - authors, tags, series, publisher etc.
The Reading List plugin can be used to create arbitrary lists of books, and a book can be in multiple reading lists - but I'm not sure I would want to use it to create permanent arbitrary links between books. I might use it to create of list of cookbooks having recipes for Rabbit Pie that I could peruse at leisure. But once the rabbit was caught, the pie baked and eaten then I'd probably remove the Rabbit Pie Reading List
But let's say I have Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert in both French and English.
A book has a Language metadata column, so in this instance they will be different, so I need two book records.
If I order the book list by author and title (or title and author) then the two editions will be adjacent (or close to) thus it should be apparent to me that I have the two editions. But if I order the book list by publisher and acquisition date then that wont be true.
This is where file links can be used. I have a long text column called Notes. So into Notes for the French edition I would insert a link to the folder for the English edition labelled "Language Edition - English", and into Notes for the English edition would I do the reverse. Additionally I have a column icon rule that displays a chain icon in the book list if a Note exists containing "Language Edition". The icon is merely an indicator, I look to the Book Details to see why its there. If I were to click on the "Language Edition - English" link in book details, that folder will open up.
Or, da-da-de-dah... I could tab to the Author cell and tap 'Q' and a Quick View window would 'popup' showing all the books I have that were written by Flaubert in all languages. See
Quickview
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rellwood
I guess my main question would be, is there a way to copy to library, or an import go faster using a feature that has until now not been available?
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When you copy or move books or libraries it will be relatively slow no matter how you do it, because every bit and byte has to be read from one location and written to another location; and with a move the book or library must deleted from the source location. How slow will depend what sort of devices, and if there are two devices (source and destination) how they are connected etc.
The exception is with a move, if the source and destination are on the same device, and the file system on the device supports hard-links (and maybe some other factors) then calibre will make use of hard-links to effect the move, which should be considerably faster because the contents are not read, written, and deleted. Only the file system indexes are changed, and they are optimised for speed.
A recent enhancement to calibre is a feature targeted at making it easier to Export one's calibre data (libraries and configuration) from an 'old' computer and then Import that data to a fresh calibre install on a 'new' computer.
One suggestion - if you're using Windows, install a copy of calibre portable as a testbed, learning vehicle. Use it to explore calibre features and experiment with ideas before applying the lessons learnt to your real library. And be prepared to throw it away if its gets broken.
One other thing. IMO it's best not to view the Trash Can as a part of your backup scheme, treat it as an 'oops' bucket - ie 'oops' I didn't mean to do that, lets get it back. This is especially true for calibre - if you remove a book from a library you can't restore it directly from the Trash Can, you have to restore it to 'working storage' and add it back into the library
I'm going to leave it at that for now.
BR
Working Storage ??? Where did that pop up from, I did write a few COBOL programs in the 60's for Caterpillar - possibly the worst job I ever had.