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Old 01-28-2018, 10:57 AM   #9
MicheleBS
Enthusiast
MicheleBS began at the beginning.
 
Posts: 27
Karma: 10
Join Date: Jul 2017
Location: Cesena (Italy)
Device: Kobo Aura One
My solution (sorry for the long post; please be patient).

The problem is that Kobo doesn't feel good with the idea of something that has been read by someone. If I finish a book, this doesn't mean that I don't want to flip it through again, in the future. And if I do, still that books is a book I have finished.

In fact, Kobo flags a book as "Read" when, the last page being shown, I turn page over again. This way, thoug, when I open a "Read" book again, only to examine specific excerpts or chapters, the book becomes "Reading" again (0%, 99%, or intermediate values: it depends on the page we lastly close the book at). Of course, I can manually flag it as "Read" through the extra options available for every book, but this is unquick and always un-permanenty, and needed every time for every book I want to flag: unfortunately, Kobo deosn't alloy multiple selection.

*

I make use of Kobo to store and read a huge number of (quite short) articles that I grab from the web and convert to .epubs (Firefox + GrabMyBooks, an invaluable duo), and in the end I need to flag them as "Read" in a more stable way than Kobo does, being sure that they will be somewhat "Read" even if I open them again. And I want to be able to do this directly with the Kobo, comfortably, wherever I find myself in that moment.

I find particularly comfortable with Collections: I add by default my unread articles to a specific Collection, called "Articles"; then, after the reading, I move them to another one: "Archive".

Calibre can manage the Collections (the Kobo driver also calls it Shelves); so, I created the custom column #collections and setted it as the Collections column through the driver options. I flag every new article I send from Calibre to Kobo with "Articles" in #collections, so that when it is added to Kobo, it already belongs to "Articles" collection.



The problem is that when I move a finished article from "Articles" to "Archive", and I do this with the Kobo disconnected from Calibre, Calibre doesn't recognise such an operation, and as soon as I connect the device, it tends to take back all to the previous state.

That's why this thread:

Quote:
«How to make Calibre to accept new Collections created with Kobo, and not to force Kobo to the previous status?»
My solution:
  1. Create the #collections column (comma separated text) and associate it to Kobo Collections
  2. Ask Calibre to ignore "Archive" collection, so that the articles moved from "Articles" and so flagged as "Archive", still maintain this flag also after connecting the Kobo
  3. Calibre won't remove the finished articles from "Archive", now, but still it will apply them the old "Articles" flag, in addition to "Archive"; this is annoying, because that way all the finished articles would also be "Articles", again, when the role of "Archive" is just to hide the finished articles, and to have a lightweight shelf containing only what I haven't read yet
  4. So, I make use of: Get shelves from device. With this useful option, I select with Calibre the .epubs I moved to "Archive" with Kobo, and send their Collection status (the flag "Archive") to the column... #collection, so that Calibre will agree with me that a finished article is a finished article, and when I disconnect the Kobo, Calibre won't intervene wrongly.



When I turn Kobo on, my homepage is "Articles".
But I know apart there's also an archive, including the most remarkable articles I have read in the past.


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