[NetSlut]

Originally Posted by Taylor514ce

Hmmm... after reading this entire thread, I'm with Kovid here. The thread began with a question about indexing the books on this site, then moved to "what about a tool to organize/index MY books", and one suggestion was, "use Calibre, that's what it does".

To claim that Calibre discussion is off-topic, then, is silly.

You're right.

I wasn't clear in my intentions, and I apologise to all for that.

Calibre doesn't do what I want. I know this is true, because I've used it and because of the discussion here.

I want a tool to do what I want. I also know this is true ;-)

Given those two statements, I'd like this thread to discuss any features other people would like to see in a tool of this sort.

I think that because this tool is more specialised than Calibre, it can co-exist peacefully. And, again, I want to say that I *like* Calibre. I like it converting stuff for me, and I plan to continue using it. I don't want anyone to think that I'm trying to replace because really, truly, I've no intention of doing that.

I understand the urge to write software, being a coder myself, but have you considered offering your SQL skills to Kovid?

I thought about it; I concluded that modifying someone else's code, especially when it's known to be sub-optimal, and trying to modify their architecture, and to introduce features that I consider to be important, just isn't feasible in this instance. If I write the tool myself, I can proceed at my own pace and prioritise things that I think are important.

Frankly, I don't care where the books are stored, as long as I can back them up. [...] If the best way to do that is to copy all your books to a central location, that's fine with me. I think Kovid's question, to paraphrase, "why do you care about folders?" is cogent. If the software lets you interact with the books, who cares what folder organization is used?

I think this is one of my fundamental points. I believe that some people *do* have a strong preference for the manner of their organisation. I have two separate methods myself; I know that some people prefer to use the Dewey Decimal System. We've heard how other people store their books in this thread. The reason we store them like this is frequently just because this makes sense to us, but sometimes, it's like an OCD ability; it *must* be put there, because that's what it belongs :-p

More than that, I believe users should have the ability to *choose* how they want it done. If they don't want to move things at all, great. If they want it organised by first letter of the third word, they should be allowed to.

I want to find particular titles, sort my collection various ways, have a nice search mechanism, a color scheme or tagging scheme I can customize (original format, original source, on the Reader or not, already read, paper version only, etc.).

Now that's exactly the kind of thing I want.

I'll be very interested in what you come up with, but I'm equally interested in existing tools.

I totally agree; the only reason for doing this, in the end, is to have more choice over how we want things to be done.