I didn't think bookshelves would work with pdfs because some features work on epubs, like highlighting and note taking, and not on pdfs. Alas, I can't get the shelves working on either.
I assumed that shelves were a way to organise files so that you could search for a file in a group rather than from a list of all files on the KT. I have tried the update but it doesn't work that way on my KT. I open the shelves and there is one untitled shelf that says '6 books'. I can edit, rename, delete, but the name I give it doesn't appear after I save it. I can add/remove items from the shelf and save the changes, but it doesn't remember the changes. When I open the shelf, it gives me the same menu as the library. Perhaps because it is the only shelf on the KT. I was hoping for a 'create shelf' option, and to be able to add files to it but I guess that is what you mean by 'trivial cases'?
Don't you mean that would require changing all the metadata to incoporate the info in the file name? Why would you have to rename the files? It would not be hard to extract the information from the filenames and stuff it into the metadata automatically. Calibre's "epub-meta" can easily be used in a simple shell script.
Yes, that is what I meant. But I don't know how to run a shell script in calibre's epub meta. I tried in the past to edit metadata in calibre so my files are not called things like 'template.p65' but the KT didn't recognise the changes that I thought I had made correctly. I don't want to spend time manually changing file data, even for 50 files that is a lot of time. I saw that the Kindle keyboard version doesn't read metadata, it uses the file names that you have used (that's how my friend's was set up anyway).
Because of the poor organising options, I can only use the KT for leisure reading and not work. In that sense it feels like a toy. When I heard about a device that ran a version of linux, I hoped that it would have the capabilities to be a researcher's companion (or be more open for programmers to be creative). I am at my desks a lot, but sometimes in the library, or working elsewhere. Having a proper scholarly library to hand would be a fantastic tool, looking things up I wasn't sure about etc from my pocket sized device. It saves me from being in a library, and having to carry different sets of books and prints of pdf articles around for each work session.
The Kindle Touch has collections enabled so a large library is workable, you can find stuff easily on it. I heard it also lets you highlight and take notes in pdfs.
Reading pdfs compared to epubs is tedious, yes I think fixing it is a priority. But I would like to be able to find pdfs as well as read them easily! Amazon offer a conversion service for Kindle, which I hear works very well on text only pdf articles, which is what I mostly have.
I have very little programming knowledge but I assumed that nearly all of the above mentioned features would be straightforward to add. It is very frustrating.