[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by darknessangel

This argument may hold some water for normal books (sci-fi, etc.) which you just read once.

Nice start, taking a dig at the SF readers and calling our books "sci-fi" -- and I seem to get the implication you think we're doing really well to read at all.

But it fails horribly, when (like me) you have a library of 20k books on diverse subjects, mostly scientific, you NEED a folder structure like in a normal library!

Calibre is not the point of failure in this case.

#1 you rarely look for an author, you look for Science ->Chemistry->inorganic chemistry-> intermetallic phases, not for "J. H. Westbrook" who I don't know and I don't really don't want to know.

tag:"=intermetallic phases"

Or, at its most detailed, in case you have books that are chemistry but not science, inorganic chemistry but not chemistry, etc., etc., you could go all the way to :

tag:"=science" and tag:"=chemistry" and tag:"=inorganic chemistry" and tag:"=intermetallic phases"

You don't have to worry about where they're stored, or the file names, or anything else -- just every book that has something about the subject. That also means that if you have a book that covers several different topics in inorganic chemistry, you could give it multiple tags, rather than limiting it to a single classification like your directory tree would.

#2 When you use reference books... you read them more than once!

Amazingly, not all calibre users are empty-headed, frivolous "sci-fi" readers. We store a lot of things in calibre. Technical references of all types are a big one. And we read a lot of books more than once.

#3 It becomes really helpful to have a structure when most of your metadata is wrong or missing.

Aside from the obvious need to fix your metadata, the simple solution is to tag your books as you import them. When you import books on subject X, you bulk edit them to add "subject X" to their tags. Or "subject X", "sub-topic Y", and "detail Z" if appropriate.

#4 For sake of OCD people and for the eventuality that you want to give part of your library to someone... it is good to keep libraries separated from each other! I don't want to literally hunt for every author for 30 books on "catalysis" if I want to give it to a colleague!

Select tag "catalysis", export to disc, hand it to him.

#5 I don't think it's difficult or impossible to implement. Calibre does the same as iTunes but iTunes can keep the folder structure.

What is this new trend of insulting the developers as some sort of incentive to make them rebuild their software the way you want it?

You -- and several other people -- have said things that imply a challenge to Kovid and others to prove they're not reaaaaally stupid, and the acceptable proof being a willingness to throw away the whole design philosophy of calibre and rewrite it into something that challenger wants. I mean, seriously: if someone starts off by implying you're incompetent, stupid, ignorant, or just unconcerned about what you're doing, are you going to bend over backwards to help them out? Kovid is too nice a guy to defend himself from insinuations like this, but I'm neither a calibre developer nor a nice guy. So knock it off.

Ok, perhaps I'm overreacting a little, perhaps I'm just absolutely horrified at the prospect of my Library being thrown in a heap after I carefully organized it... but I think this option would make a lot of people very, very happy.

Your library is right where you left it. If you use your current folder names as tags when you import it into calibre, it'll be organized in calibre just as it is in the filesystem. AND you'll have the option of organizing and searching it in many different ways as well.

I do happen to be one of those contemptable "sci-fi" readers. And I have a lot of SF books in calibre (sorry, I can't keep calling it "sci-fi", even in quotes, because there's only so long I can endure insulting myself). I can find them by author or title, sure. But I can also bring up all my alternate-history SF. All my military SF. All my SF that is both military and alternate-history. Or that isn't. Etc., etc. If I want to find all my alternate-history SF short stories that are not military-themed and weren't written by H. Beam Piper, I can do that. Try that with your directory structure.

I would really love to see you trying to use a database. I can just imagine your post on the Microsoft forums:

Access sucks because I can't read my data with Notepad! How can I find what I want if I can't do a text search for it in Notepad? You need to get rid of all that binary data, and all that relational stuff, and just make Access a front end onto a big flat file! Other people can use flat files, I'm sure if you tried really hard you could too!

For that matter, I can see you complaining to Henry Ford about your Model T:

This car is no good. There's nowhere on it to hitch my horse to. And it's so heavy that even if I hooked my horse to it somehow, he wouldn't be able to pull it more than a couple of miles. You need to make it a lot lighter (maybe get rid of that heavy iron thing in the front) and put shafts on it so I can hitch up my horse.

Calibre will do exactly what you want, and do it better, if you use the tools that it has for doing that.