[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by tectonictigress

Working through the first question a bit more, I believe I did track down the issue - I was using "Update Existing Fanfiction Books" - this works on fics that still have tags remaining after the updated filtering in personal.ini is applied, but the fics I was having problems with should have had no tags after the filtering is applied - I then deleted the fic, and re-brought it in and it was filtered correctly with no tags, this was also the case for using test1.com

I would also comment that rather than deleting the book, you could probably clear the tags field. Since you didn't give any example story URLs, I assume you're happy with your solution.

Originally Posted by tectonictigress

Deleting and re-adding also worked for the capitalization issue for ships, even though I wasn't trying to apply any filtering or be left with zero tags in that case

FFF does a filter to make sure it doesn't try to add the same tag with different letter case, but only when 'Keep existing tags' is checked.

Calibre, on the other hand, keeps a database table of tag values for the whole library; and it only wants you to have one 'case' version. If you manually change it, Calibre appears to change the case for that tag on all books. But if you do it through FFF, calibre will map it to the same case as it's existing tag.

Originally Posted by tectonictigress

For the custom column question - here is an example fic: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19784374 - and below is the personal.ini, similar to before - mainly just looking for any guidance on how to properly be referencing custom columns in personal.ini

You can only set extra_valid_entries to custom columns using the personal.ini custom_columns_settings setting.

From (plugin-)defaults.ini:

Spoiler:

## (Plugin Only) - You can also populate calibre custom columns with
## the site specific metadata using custom_columns_settings (but only
## if 'Allow custom_columns_settings from personal.ini' is checked in
## the plugin GUI config.)  There are three parts, the entry name,
## then the label of the calibre custom column, then (optionally) a
## 'mode'.  'r' to Replace any existing values, 'a' to Add to existing
## value (use with tag-like columns), and 'n' for setting on New books
## only.  (Default is 'r'.)

## Literal strings can be set into custom columns using double quotes.
## Each metadata=>column mapping must be on a separate line and each
## needs to have one space at the start of each line.

## 'r_anthaver' and 'n_anthaver' can be used to indicate the same as
## 'r' and 'n' for normal downloads, but to average the metadata for
## the differents story in an anthology before setting in integer and
## float type custom columns.  This can be useful for a averrating
## column, for example.  Default is to sum the values of all stories,
## and numChapters and numWords are always summed.

#custom_columns_settings:
# cliches=>#acolumn
# themes=>#bcolumn,a
# timeline=>#ccolumn,n
# "FanFiction"=>#collection
# averrating=>#averrating,r_anthaver

Originally Posted by tectonictigress

For aligning ship names - this one (https://archiveofourown.org/works/21923320) has Michelle Jones/Peter Parker - and this one (https://archiveofourown.org/works/18638395) has Peter Parker/Michelle Jones - was just curious if it was possible to parse and alphabetize the tag to be more efficient, but otherwise I can just do it manually as below

Set sort_ships:true

From (plugin-)defaults.ini:

Spoiler:

## Reorder ships so b/a and c/b/a become a/b and a/b/c. '/' is no
## longer hard coded and can be changed and added to with
## sort_ships_splits.
sort_ships:false

## Each line indicates first a regex that should be used to split each
## ships entry and then, after => the string to use to merge the parts
## back together.  \s == blank space.
## Each part will have replace_metadata with key ships_CHARS applied.
sort_ships_splits:
 [ ]*/[ ]*=>/
 [ ]*&[ ]*=>\s&\s

Originally Posted by tectonictigress

I cannot update beyond Calibre 3.48 due to OS limitations, and I am currently using FFF 3.11.0 - are there any concerns I should have regarding updating FFF to newer versions, or will it remain backwards compatible? - If this is something you mention in release notes posted somewhere each time, could you please point me to a link where? I've seen the release notes mentioned here in posts, but wasn't sure if there was somewhere like a github page I can reference for the most recent version

I only support the latest version of FanFicFare. There is usually a more recent test version available, too; see link in my sig.

I will make some effort to support the last minor of each major calibre version back to v2 (so v2.85.1, v3.48 and v4.23).

However, I don't make it a habit of testing against older versions (or OS's other than Win10) unless I have reason to do so, like a specific complaint.

Unless a user tells me otherwise, I assume everyone is using the latest FFF on the latest Calibre.

Yes, there is a github repo with all the past releases:
From the first post of the thread:

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

This plugin brings the functionality of FanFicFare to Calibre. The source is available on the GitHub project home page. There's additional documentation and FAQs on the project wiki, including a page specifically about the plugin version.