[nixR3ad]

I am continually tweaking the storage layout for my books on the Kobo Sage I use to run koreader. Part of this is because, for organization, I use a top level {#shelf} which becomes the sorting directory for the titles. A book about pirates might be part of the #history shelf. After I have 5 or more pirate books, #pirates becomes its own shelf. I'm also routinely removing and restoring titles on the device, and moving around a bunch of sidecar files gets tiresome or I forget them. I also don't like to use any directories except for #shelves. This allows me to have my (trivial) cover/metadata view of the books without having to drill into author/title directories.

I decided to switch to hash-based metadata lookups. I have some questions.

1. I assume any writes to the file itself will result in a broken hash. Fixing epub structure, and writing covers into the documents... is this absolute and guaranteed to happen?

2. If I load an epub onto the kobo with calibre and open it, creating an entry in the metadata table, then I download the exact file, with no changes made from, the OPDS server, and open it that way, will there be a mismatch?

3. How can I move the metadata for a specific book to another device or implement it elsewhere? Does exporting the highlights work this way?

4. I understand writing highlights to a PDF will change its hash value. The guide mentions setting different metadata settings for these. I don't see where I can readily change the metadata storage default for a title or group of titles.

Has anyone used this method with much success or improvements to their setup?