[davidfor]

Originally Posted by alternety

No - the little arrow does not work as in Windows. Nor provide a particularly (rationally) expected result. When you sort on a column, that becomes the sort order of the file. Pretty much everywhere I have been exposed to. The application does something different and not particularly useful.

In that case, we must have gotten our Windows from different places. In explorer, if I click the column headings, the list is sorted by that column. And there is an arrow placed in the column header to indicate a direction. Explorer puts it in the middle of the column heading, Outlook puts it immediately after the column name. But, explorer does have two arrows. One is to indicate the sort direction, and the other drops down some options.

But, OK, maybe my statement should have been: Just like any well written Windows application that displays columns of data that can be sorted by clicking the column heading

No, calibre was not supposed to be doing anything with the file. It was retaining ownership when it had no business to be doing so. No discernible way to tell it not to.

As Kovid mentioned, while the file is being added to calibre, calibre opens it. If you tried to do something with the file while that was happening, then Windows would stop you because another application had the file open. And it sounds like either you didn't wait long enough to try again, or you touching the file while calibre had it opened caused something else to go wrong so that Windows didn't think calibre had released it.

There is also some peculiarity in handling files. It will not recognize a file on the left hand side of explorer under a higher level folder. You must first select the higher level folder and then use the sub-folder names from the right hand side. Windows allows the opening of the files directly on the left side.

What were you doing in calibre when you saw this? Adding a book using the file chooser? If so, from memory, calibre can use the native Windows file dialog, or another one. I know I see the Windows one and that works the same as any other file dialog. To get the other file dialog, you have to change an option somewhere. Have you been fiddling with the preferences?

These responses pretty much follow my basic issue with using this application (which I find incredibly useful). It has to be me expecting something I see everywhere else. With no actual explanation or resolution. There really needs to be a manual created that does not use application specific jargon to explain how things work.

There has been an incredible amount of effort spent creating, maintaining, and expanding this application. So many answers to questions amount to: If you only understood things we do not tell you (i.e., can't find in the documentation), you would not have this problem. Defensive; not helpful. Over a couple of years, I find defensive (or you are just too lazy to learn) to be a very common response. It appears to me that the developer(s) approached this with the perspective of documents rather than usability by non "document" people. I may be quite incorrect, but this is the impression I have gained in trying to understand the application functions and terminology. It is not real supportive of people that just want to keep a library.

Meaningful documentation must not include having to go to a forum to understand basic operations. Please expend some of the volunteer effort to making understandable and detailed documentation.

I think the only response I can make to this is: Thank you for volunteering to rewrite the documentation.

That is what you are doing, isn't it? I mean, if the current developers/writers can't get it write, then someone with fresh eyes really needs to come in and do it. That way they can get it right so that any new comers to understand. And as you obviously understand what is wrong with it, then you would be a great person to do this. So, thank you.