Manage book locations manually?

[Doranwen]

I'd given up on using Calibre for anything but conversions long ago, but I figured I might as well ask to see if this has even been considered in the intervening years:

Is there any way to use the features of Calibre without having it move or copy ebooks for me? I have my own extensive directory structure (with thousands of ebooks and related files in them) that is quite idiosyncratic (fiction books by author, except for children's, which are buried in an entirely different area; nonfiction by topic/subject, which is also quite idiosyncratic in how I have it organized). I absolutely do NOT want a program copying books where I don't want them, trying to duplicate the library, etc. I'm perfectly happy with where they are!

It *would* be nice, however, if there was a way to more easily search books, search *within* books, etc. (I'm wishing I could search within a set of ebooks I have, but I don't know a program that can do it, and my Linux Mint OS currently doesn't have a suitable way of searching within and bringing up passages.) But every time I see "oh, you can do this with Calibre" I'm brought once more to the "ugh, there's absolutely no way I can live with it trying to move/copy files on me".

So I ask - can that be turned OFF at all? I would honestly love to be able to add folders for it to scan - but NOT actually move or copy the books within - and then be able to organize a database of the books, launch them from within it, etc. Calibre would be neat if it didn't try to take over my organization for me. :P

[theducks]

Simple answer: NO!
Full Answer: https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq...lder-structure

IMHO your method is extremely limited. If you let Calibre MANAGE thing its way, you can file (tag) books 47 ways from Sunday, and FIND them with a few mouse clicks, and send them off to your chosen destination (device or Mail account)

[Sirtel]

As theducks said, no, and AFAIK it will never be considered.

That said, you can easily group and sort your books in Calibre based on the same criteria you have now. Virtual libraries, separate physical libraries, saved searches, tags, custom categories and so on. But yeah, if you're dead set on managing your books via a file manager, then Calibre is not and will not be for you.

[Doranwen]

Originally Posted by theducks

IMHO your method is extremely limited. If you let Calibre MANAGE thing its way, you can file (tag) books 47 ways from Sunday, and FIND them with a few mouse clicks, and send them off to your chosen destination (device or Mail account)

Actually, my method's not limited at all, except for not having a database for the rare times I want to look for a book that way. I remember most book titles and authors when it comes to re-reading, and I have a file manager (SpaceFM) with multiple panes and tabs open to various spots on my file system, which makes getting to any book I want just about as fast as typing it. I have no interest or time to spend hours (or days) tagging all of my many thousands of books so that I can find them the way I've already got them stored nicely. (When I want to find a nonfiction book on a subject, but don't know which one - a common occurrence - I can browse the subject folder and check out the ones I like. Plus my particular division of nonfiction topics probably makes sense only to me.) Also, I store all related files in the same folder, including pictures and even the occasional audio/video file, so a book-only folder system would be very limiting to me. Keep in mind that my usage may not look like yours or most people's!

For fanfics, I actually built my own database with LibreOffice Base (it's now a split db with Base as the frontend) to be able to generate recs lists and find fics by themes (I have a lot of lovely SQL queries). Calibre would be extremely limited compared to what I can do with that one! But it isn't suited to my regular books, as it doesn't have the gui layout that would make it easy to launch a book, and I have to manually add each fic into it to be able to set all the associations and connections properly (authors, themes, major and minor relationships, characters, etc.).

I read most of my books on my computer these days. The few exceptions, I either copy to a microSD card (for reading on an old phone that doesn't even work on wifi), or send to my newer phone via an FTP server (which I manage with Filezilla and the FTP app on my phone). I don't use a Mail account or cloud stuff with my ebooks.

It's just too bad there's not a program that offers the convenience of conversions without a library, and (very possibly a different program for this) ebook database (complete with launching) that *doesn't* try to take over the actual file management. Not all users want that (case in point right here), and there really ought to be one. Alas!

[PeterT]

You could use the GetFileName plugin to save the original path name in calibre. https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=278559

Sent from my Pixel 4a using Tapatalk

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Doranwen

It's just too bad there's not a program that offers the convenience of conversions without a library, and (very possibly a different program for this) ebook database (complete with launching) that *doesn't* try to take over the actual file management. Not all users want that (case in point right here), and there really ought to be one. Alas!

There's Alfa Ebook Manager. It also does some conversions, though not between all filetypes. It's not free, though.

[Doranwen]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

There's Alfa Ebook Manager. It also does some conversions, though not between all filetypes. It's not free, though.

*nod* The conversions aren't so bad - I just convert the file, copy the converted one to where I want it, and remove the file from the Calibre library so it's back to its usual very empty state. What I do wish for is having a way to add specific books or folders to a database, and be able to launch the books *from* there should I want to. I like the way I can already do it, but it would be very handy to have an alternate way, and for a project I'm starting on I have also been wishing for a way to run searches within multiple specific books simultaneously (but I don't know if even Calibre could do that one).

I've thought of creating Sword modules of the books I need, and importing them into Xiphos as supplemental books (even if they're not religious ones, the search features there are better than any other program I know of at the moment, and I'd be able to do a single search that would search any number of books I wanted by setting up a custom module list). But that may be a ton of work and not worth it, so we'll see.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Doranwen

What I do wish for is having a way to add specific books or folders to a database, and be able to launch the books *from* there should I want to.

As I said, Alfa may be what you want. As I understand from their webpage, that's exactly the way it operates.

[Doranwen]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

As I said, Alfa may be what you want. As I understand from their webpage, that's exactly the way it operates.

Thanks for the recommendation. I might consider it if it weren't Windows only. As a native Linux user, I've had mixed success using WINE to run Windows programs, and don't purchase any due to the chance of poor compatibility. I run a few in a VM, but a collection manager is one of the sorts that can't be run that way as it would require access to more than a mere shared folder between the VM and my native OS, and that's all the VMs get.

I've poked at Lucidor but it's a bit limited (epub only, for one), and Buka only works with pdfs. I have files in every format under the sun and rather than try to force epubs into pdfs (ugh) or pdfs to epubs (even worse), I'd rather leave them in their original format.

GCStar will launch books but they have to be added one by one (no folder imports, a necessity when one has thousands and thousands of books), Readerware Books Database is just a database for books, no launching option that I could see (I use a tiny simpler freeware program for my offline ones, and if it comes to just searching titles or authors, my OS's file search can handle that). Kavita appears to be more of a server to share with friends, complete with in-browser usage.

So unless there's one out there that I just don't know about, I'm going to guess it doesn't exist. Thanks for trying to help!

[Sirtel]

You know you can launch a book in the Calibre viewer directly from the file manager, without opening Calibre itself, do you?

[BetterRed]

@Doranwen - You can also put a links to files in a long text column, but if you move the file the link will not be repaired - see attached screen shots.

BR

[Doranwen]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

You know you can launch a book in the Calibre viewer directly from the file manager, without opening Calibre itself, do you?

Yes, I do that with mobi and azw3 books, for which I do not have another viewer capable of opening (as far as I know). It's the clunkiest and most sluggish viewer of all the ones I use, but it does work for those formats (which I rarely have to resort to anyway - I have much more epub and pdf, and those open with FBReader and Document Viewer by default).

Originally Posted by BetterRed

@Doranwen - You can also put a links to files in a long text column, but if you move the file the link will not be repaired - see attached screen shots.

Ah, I see. I rarely move them, but it's not an impossibility, and if I did, a whole chunk of files would move at once. But eh, at this point I've given up on trying to put my digital books in a library since the current OS lets me find individual books by title or author or subject fairly well (I really haven't had much trouble *finding* any books I want to find, in general), and everything else would require tons of work at this point. (I'd have had to start nearly two decades ago if I wanted to keep on top of it, and I'd have had a major problem when I changed OSes from Windows to Linux anyway.) If I want to create a custom library and I don't mind adding them one by one, GCStar definitely looks like the best option, as it has launching capability and excellent fields for organizing, lots of ways to sort and find. (I've tried using it for my digital films, but other projects captured my attention before I had a chance to finish adding them.)

I did find a solution to the issue of being able to search multiple books for words (the task that was the final prompt for this entire post, as my searching had indicated it might be possible to search within books using Calibre), after extensive searching and tweaking of search parameters online to pull up the right sort of thing (I kept getting results of pages full of terminal commands to find strings within multiple files via command-line).

While I have to make sure all the books I want to search are in specific folders (with no other books in those folders that I *don't* want searched), the program Recoll does an excellent job of showing multiple search results within any books that are in the folders I tell it to index, and it'll show user-customizable sizes of strings (synthetic abstract context words, they call it) before and after the word in question. If I searched Hamlet for the word "question", for instance, with 3 words for context, I would get a result something like "…that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler…" So it's not a custom library but at least it's possible to search specific folders of books and display multiple results that match the desired string, and it's able to search within all the needed file types.

While I don't think I will be using Calibre for anything more than converting and displaying the odd mobi/azw3, I do appreciate all the information, as it's helped me decide what will and won't work for my rather unique situation. (I don't know of anyone who organizes their files or uses their computer quite the way I do mine..) I'll leave this as a definite recommendation for anyone who wants an excellent "search within books in folders" program to try out Recoll - it's apparently available on Windows and Mac as well as Linux. Might be overkill for most, but for the few who need that sort of search capability, it's fantastic. I'm relieved to have found it.