Can library menu dropdown be sized?

[David Bowen]

Hello from way up north - Canada!
A big thanks for the "Calibre" program!!!!
And kudos to everyone that has contributed to make it even better.

Presently I've tried to put my rather large collection into catagories/subjects and then load them as individual libraries. I've found that the dropdown menu for "creating libraries" only allows you to view fourteen (14) libraries. I've spent days trying to catagorize my libary into fourteen individual libraries and I'm pulling what little hair I have out.
Can this dropdown menu be enlarged to accomadate more than fourteen libraries that can be selected from this menu?
Can the a user specify size?
Can anyone help me on this - before I yank the last remaining follicle from my scalp?
Thanks in advance.
David

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by David Bowen

Can this dropdown menu be enlarged to accomadate more than fourteen libraries that can be selected from this menu?
Can the a user specify size?

I'll pass on my curiosity of why you need so many libraries, with tags, series and custom columns using more the 14 libraries is a foreign concept to me.

There is no direct user configurable area to increase the history list beyond 14. I suspect if you run from source there might be a way to change this value.

Hopefully someone knowledgeable in running from source will give you a hint.

Good Luck.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Well, I'm curious. Seriously, it might give a clue how to further help.

[David Bowen]

Thanks for your quick replies.
To answer your questions (and curiosity) my present library contains 13750 books and I'm trying to only "load" the books that cover a certain subject/topic to make them easier to search and find information. Some of my subjects have close to a thousand books. I'm new to using Calibre and thought that putting books into a related subject library was the easiest way to go. I would then tag them within their individual libraries. I also plan to share my collections and not everyone wants everthing I've got, therefore I could just give them smaller libraries that interest them. In addition the physical size of these books is close to 285gb.

David

[kovidgoyal]

looking at the code I don't see any limitations on the number of items in the Quick switch menu, as far as I can see it is only limited by your screen height.

EDIT; Never mind I was wrong, the relevant line to change in the source code is line 35 in choose_library.py

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by David Bowen

Thanks for your quick replies.
To answer your questions (and curiosity) my present library contains 13750 books and I'm trying to only "load" the books that cover a certain subject/topic to make them easier to search and find information. Some of my subjects have close to a thousand books. I'm new to using Calibre and thought that putting books into a related subject library was the easiest way to go. I would then tag them within their individual libraries. I also plan to share my collections and not everyone wants everthing I've got, therefore I could just give them smaller libraries that interest them. In addition the physical size of these books is close to 285gb.

David

Ok, based on what you just said, you should be able to keep everything in one library. Calibre pretty much has no limits on how much it can handle (there is probably an upper limit but there probably haven't been that many books written yet). The only problem you might run into is it might take a little bit longer to open calibre.

When you want to share your books (you might want to look into the legalities of that if any are still under copyright), you can do a search based on genre or whatever, then use Save to Disk to save the results of the search to a folder that you can pass along to whoever.

The whole purpose of calibre is to manage your books for you. While there are valid reasons for having multiple libraries (for example, roommates, married couples, families, etc. wanting to keep each ones books separate from the other's when sharing a computer, etc.), trying to presort books will limit calibre's ability to work for you.

I have two active libraries, and inactive one for future use, and plans for a fourth one. The main library is for my books; all my books, no matter what kind (except for the exceptions below). Any amount of separation I may want is as simple as perdorming a search or multilayered searches. I have to look in only one library to find what I want.

The second active library is for my comic books only. I put them in a separate library because I use different columns and I didn't want to junk up my main library screen with them.

The inactive library will house my sheet music and songbooks which will use another, completely different set of columns (I haven't worked out how to set that up yet). If I set up a fourth library, it will be for technical articles, possibly including tech magazines (I haven't worked out how to set that up either).

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by David Bowen

To answer your questions (and curiosity) my present library contains 13750 books and I'm trying to only "load" the books that cover a certain subject/topic to make them easier to search and find information. Some of my subjects have close to a thousand books.

You might want to look into restricting your library. In the attached image you can see that I have 12522 books in this library, but in the Restrict to box I have restricted the GUI to a saved search called classics. While this restriction is in place the GUI will pretend that I have a library of just 461 books. You can easily switch from one restricted search to another, effectively limiting the books you are dealing with at any one time.

You'll notice that even the tag browser on the left reflects this restriction and limits what it shows to authors, series, tags etc that are part of this restricted search.

[David Bowen]

Thanks go too all of you (dwanthny, ladt Fitzgerald, and Kovidgoyal)!!!
I wish that some of the Big Corps would give me this type of service.
I really didn't expect the good advice you guys and gals gave me would come back so quick.
I've now got some good ideas to try.
Sincerly -Thanks a bunch!

David

[beckywc]

How do you establish restrictions?

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by beckywc

How do you establish restrictions?

The Restrict to box has a drop down selection of your saved searches. Simply selecting a saved search in this box will invoke that search as a restriction. To remove the restriction you must choose the empty entry at the top of the restricted dropdown list.

[suecsi]

This works really well - I always restrict Calibre to open to books that I have not marked as Read.