Calibre uses fulltitle instead of title when adding books

[PiperKev]

Whenever I import books from Standard Ebooks, whenever the book has a subtitle, calibre combines it with the title. For example, "Twenty Years Before the Mast" by Richard Henry Dana Jr. (https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/ri...efore-the-mast) has a subtitle of "A Personal Narrative of Life At Sea". Here's the relevant entry from the book's metadata before importing into calibre:

<dc:title id="title">Two Years Before the Mast</dc:title>
<meta property="file-as" refines="#title">Two Years Before the Mast</meta>
<meta property="title-type" refines="#title">main</meta>
<dc:title id="subtitle">A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea</dc:title>
<meta property="file-as" refines="#subtitle">Personal Narrative of Life at Sea, A</meta>
<meta property="title-type" refines="#subtitle">subtitle</meta>
<dc:title id="fulltitle">Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea</dc:title>
<meta property="file-as" refines="#fulltitle">Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea</meta>
<meta property="title-type" refines="#fulltitle">extended</meta>

After I import the book into calibre and unpack it, this is the title from metadata.opf:

<metadata xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:calibre="http://calibre.kovidgoyal.net/2009/metadata" xmlnspf="http://www.idpf.org/2007/opf">
<dc:title>Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea</dc:title>

calibre apparently uses the #fulltitle from the metadata instead of #title when importing. Is there any way to tweak calibre to ignore #fulltitle?

[BetterRed]

Pretty sure that would be a feature of the Standard Ebooks plugin.

You should raise the issue in the plugin thread.

BR

[PiperKev]

Actually, this happens when I do a straight import with the "Add books" button. I removed the Standard Ebooks plugin, restarted calibre, and added a book. No change.

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Pretty sure that would be a feature of the Standard Ebooks plugin.

You should raise the issue in the plugin thread.

BR

[DNSB]

That behaviour is pretty much how calibre imports the title. Some of the titles get ridiculous when it seems the title, subtitle, series and a couple of blurbs are part of the title. I'm looking at you Amazon...

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by PiperKev

Actually, this happens when I do a straight import with the "Add books" button. I removed the Standard Ebooks plugin, restarted calibre, and added a book. No change.

So, at a guess Add is grabbing the last of the "<dc:title id=…" entries.

Kovid will have to provide a definitive answer.

Long shot to try in the meantime:



BR

[ownedbycats]

See this thread:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh....php?p=4319719

[BetterRed]

Einstein strikes again…

[PiperKev]

?????

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Einstein strikes again…

[BetterRed]

The thread owb posted was started three months ago and it raised the exact same issue and it wasn't resolved then… the thread was started by you. Hence my comment which alludes to Einstein's alleged quote: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results".

A regex could strip a colon and what follows from a Title and I think you could apply it at Add time via the Action Chain plugin. I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't already exist -- have a look in ==>> Action Chains Resources

BR

[kovidgoyal]

yes, that's by design and no there's no way to change it.

[PiperKev]

Thanks, BR! Yeah, I probably should've bumped that thread rather than starting a new one. I guess I was hoping that Kovid would weigh in (as he did in this one), but I agree that was poor form on my part.

I'll try that Action Chain plugin! Thanks for the tip!

Originally Posted by BetterRed

The thread owb posted was started three months ago and it raised the exact same issue and it wasn't resolved then… the thread was started by you. Hence my comment which alludes to Einstein's alleged quote: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results".

A regex could strip a colon and what follows from a Title and I think you could apply it at Add time via the Action Chain plugin. I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't already exist -- have a look in ==>> Action Chains Resources

BR

[PiperKev]

Thanks, Kovid. If calibre hasn't changed, and Standard Ebooks metadata hasn't changed, something I didn't consider until now is the possibility that more of the recent Standard Ebooks' productions have included subtitles, and I just hadn't noticed it until lately...

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

yes, that's by design and no there's no way to change it.