It seems amazing to me that the explosion of tablet readers and, for many people the frequent associated manipulation of ePub files, has not sparked Microsoft to add ePub metadata to the Details pane of its Explorer's File Properties window.
I've looked in vain for a Windows Explorer plugin that will populate the Details pane of its Properties windows. This way relevant information for an ePub could be be shown in Explorer and, even better, in Explorer replacements such as Directory Opus, XYplorer, Total Commander, etc.
A great advantage would be that not only your library manager (e.g. Calibre), but also your preferred file manager would display relevant (and missing data) for ePubs. For instance, I find that Calibre often cannot add metadata to a new book if it doesn't already contain an ISBN number.
An example of such a capability was done years ago with the
Alissa's Mobihandler. However, the Mobihandler did not include Subject data, which for home libraries would represent a very all important
Tag (to use Calibre terminology). Likewise, as already mentioned above, knowing early on if the ISBN is already included saves time.
I have some 4,000 books in Calibre and use
COPS to make them available on a modest
home server. Being able to see in my file manager an automatic pop up (i.e. Info Tip) with already available key ePub metadata, would be a great feature. For ePubs such data can presently be made to include
only a thumb print.
Would anyone know how to go about creating such a plugin?