[chaley]

Originally Posted by Inukami

Thanks Chaley for your comments.



I'm assuming that as you haven't responded to this question, it is not possible or not worth your while?

I am not the developer of iOS CC so I can't answer that sort of question. In fact, I don't own any Apple equipment and I have never used iOS CC, which is why my answers about iOS CC are often oblique. You can get more information about iOS CC development here.

I'm not sure what you mean. How does Android support multiple users?

Android has supported multiple users since Lollipop (Android 5). See this article and this article. For example, I have accounts on my phone for both my wife and me because she often doesn't carry her own phone when we are out together.

My understanding after asking Uncle Google is that iOS does not support multiple users.

I decided to separate my libraries into one for books and one for comics. But I have heard from others that it is better to have one library with virtual libraries instead.

I will have a fiddle and see if the virtual library works for one library although what is the best solution? And could I do this just with a custom column. I would like to sort by type, i.e Book or Comic

1) Just have a custom column in Calibre with Book or Comic and use that custom column in CC to sort them into those two categories. If I only use a custom column, would this limit my other sorting abilities. I note that CC doesn't let you sort by multiple columns. Whereas Calibre will let you sort by multiple fields/columns/tags right like format > author > tag?

Again using Android CC (aCC) as my benchmark, sorting is always multi-level, where "multi-" is "3". If you sort by author then by tag you end up with a list of authors within tags. Once you have sorted 4 times the earliest level is dropped away.

However, I am not talking about sorting but am instead talking about searching. In aCC, if you long-press on an value in the grouping drawer, for example "Comic", aCC will restrict what you see to books with "Comic" in that column. You can subsequently sort the list however you want, group by other values in other columns, etc. This is very close to calibre's virtual library feature. The big difference is that in aCC you cannot search while you have restricted what you see (but you can "group").

2) Or sort by using a virtual library. In your FAQ, How do I see/use my calibre virtual libraries in CC? mentions how I can do this by adding a custom column to the book listing the virtual libraries the book is in. If I set it up this way, would I be able to sort further once I was in the comic virtual library? For example, click on the comic virtual library and then search by language and then fantasy.

I am not sure if we are using "sort" and "search" in the same way. To directly answer your question: yes, you can search after sorting, but I don't think this is really what you want. As I noted above, I think you want to restrict what you see in CC to books with a particular value in some column (e.g., a virtual library). in aCC, once you do that by long-pressing on a value (e.g., Comic) you can sort and group, but you cannot search. The reason: the restriction uses the search facility to do its business.

The above notwithstanding, grouping is very close to searching. For example, if you restrict (using long-press) to "Comic" then you can group on a tag or a language, further restricting the displayed books to that language, in effect "searching" for that value.

In other words what is the difference from using the virtual library in the custom column from just using a custom column only for filtering the two types? Or am I not understanding sorting properly. Hope that makes sense...

Inukami

If your virtual libraries are defined by a single value in one custom column then there is no effective difference between the two. The virtual library column will contain the same values as the other custom column. However, if your virtual libraries are more complex then the two aren't the same. For example, you might have virtual libraries for Comics that include some sub-genre, which probably means that the calibre virtual library "search expression" references multiple columns. In this case the virtual library column will contain the results of the search, allowing that result to be used in CC.