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Timboli · 01-16-2018, 07:30 AM

Don't get me wrong please. I love calibre and have been using it for years to great success, and are greatly thankful to Kovid Goyal & others for it.

However I use it every day, and some stuff I am forced to do is quite tedious. So in an effort to enlist sympathy and understanding, and hopefully encourage improvements to calibre, I thought I might describe it all here.

P.S. Kovid will probably be happy to know (if he recalls this topic), that I finally upgraded to latest calibre (from v1.41). Still use that old version on my offline Win XP machine though, where my main calibre database resides.

BACKGROUND
I am subscribed to BookBub, which means an email every day, which often results in me downloading at least one ebook ... often several ... mostly freebies, but the occasional cheapie. I add them all to calibre, sometimes using a program I created myself, called AZWPlug.

USAGE & ISSUES
I then edit the Metadata, because without fail it always needs it.
The author name is virtually always like so - Surname, First Name.
So I have to change that to First Name Surname. Would love a button to do that, but there isn't one.
Then, the ebook title usually has descriptive crap in it, and has mixed up case. Titles should always be Titlecase in my view. Would love a button to do that, but there isn't one.
So anyway, I manually edit to change those two things for each book.
Usually, if the ebook is part of a series, that will be in brackets and part of the descriptive text in the title. So I extract that and put it into the Series field.
I can put up with that, because it can be tricky, thanks to publisher.
Then where I need to, I convert to epub and mobi.
But I have always had an issue with the cover image, such that sometimes the converted ebook contains one and sometimes it doesn't.
Once again, not the fault of calibre, but the publisher.
But calibre could make it easy with some settings to fix.
There is a checkbox - Use cover image from source file. Or you can just browse to set another cover image.
I used to just set the checkbox, but that doesn't work for many ebooks, so now I always browse to the source folder of ebook and select the cover.jpg file.
That file is nearly always there. So I wish calibre had a checkbox to select the source folder cover.jpg file ... there is plenty of room to the right of the other checkbox.
The input field for the cover is readonly. Don't know why. That means you always have to browse. And guess what, it remembers the path of the last ebook cover you set. So you really do have to browse. Very painful.
However. In calibre v1.41, because I had no choice, and it made life slightly easier to get the correct cover path, I used the Open Container Folder button on main window, then grabbed the path from the resulting Explorer window.
I then click the browse button on the converter window, to get the file browser window to open, then paste the copied path in that, then select the resulting cover.jpg file that shows.
The latest version of calibre, makes grabbing the folder path a bit easier, as the Path link on the main window, now has a Copy Path right-click option, which saves me having to use Explorer.

I do all that for every ebook. A tedious process, that calibre could make far easier, by adding those things I listed in bold above.

So pretty please with sugar on top.

01-16-2018, 07:30 AM	#1
Timboli Sharpest Tool On Shelf Posts: 661 Karma: 2587836 Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Downunda Device: Kindles, Kobo & Samsung Tablet	Calibre Issues Don't get me wrong please. I love calibre and have been using it for years to great success, and are greatly thankful to Kovid Goyal & others for it. However I use it every day, and some stuff I am forced to do is quite tedious. So in an effort to enlist sympathy and understanding, and hopefully encourage improvements to calibre, I thought I might describe it all here. P.S. Kovid will probably be happy to know (if he recalls this topic), that I finally upgraded to latest calibre (from v1.41). Still use that old version on my offline Win XP machine though, where my main calibre database resides. BACKGROUND I am subscribed to BookBub, which means an email every day, which often results in me downloading at least one ebook ... often several ... mostly freebies, but the occasional cheapie. I add them all to calibre, sometimes using a program I created myself, called AZWPlug. USAGE & ISSUES I then edit the Metadata, because without fail it always needs it. The author name is virtually always like so - Surname, First Name. So I have to change that to First Name Surname. Would love a button to do that, but there isn't one. Then, the ebook title usually has descriptive crap in it, and has mixed up case. Titles should always be Titlecase in my view. Would love a button to do that, but there isn't one. So anyway, I manually edit to change those two things for each book. Usually, if the ebook is part of a series, that will be in brackets and part of the descriptive text in the title. So I extract that and put it into the Series field. I can put up with that, because it can be tricky, thanks to publisher. Then where I need to, I convert to epub and mobi. But I have always had an issue with the cover image, such that sometimes the converted ebook contains one and sometimes it doesn't. Once again, not the fault of calibre, but the publisher. But calibre could make it easy with some settings to fix. There is a checkbox - Use cover image from source file. Or you can just browse to set another cover image. I used to just set the checkbox, but that doesn't work for many ebooks, so now I always browse to the source folder of ebook and select the cover.jpg file. That file is nearly always there. So I wish calibre had a checkbox to select the source folder cover.jpg file ... there is plenty of room to the right of the other checkbox. The input field for the cover is readonly. Don't know why. That means you always have to browse. And guess what, it remembers the path of the last ebook cover you set. So you really do have to browse. Very painful. However. In calibre v1.41, because I had no choice, and it made life slightly easier to get the correct cover path, I used the Open Container Folder button on main window, then grabbed the path from the resulting Explorer window. I then click the browse button on the converter window, to get the file browser window to open, then paste the copied path in that, then select the resulting cover.jpg file that shows. The latest version of calibre, makes grabbing the folder path a bit easier, as the Path link on the main window, now has a Copy Path right-click option, which saves me having to use Explorer. I do all that for every ebook. A tedious process, that calibre could make far easier, by adding those things I listed in bold above. So pretty please with sugar on top. Last edited by Timboli; 01-16-2018 at 08:00 AM.