Missing Metadata tags for Series and Series Index?

[JohnStaats]

There's no record of series/series index metadata tags being removed from Sigil 2.4.2 in the changelog.

Is it a legit bug or have they been removed/replaced by something else?

Thanks in advance, John Staats

[Turtle91]

Hi John - Welcome to MR!

Series and Series Index are not a Sigil function to add or remove; It is usually added by Calibre.

If you don't use Calibre to add them, you can add them manually. I have a Sigil Clip for that purpose. Once added Sigil does not remove them.

[retiredbiker]

OK this is strange. I've done many, many books with Sigil over the past couple of years, and have used the Metadata Editor function to add series and series index. Took it for granted that these entries were in there "out of the box".

Reading this, I went to look, opening Sigil with no book in place, and I find that in the "Add Metadata" panel there is no entry for series and series index.

So I loaded a book I've recently done, and there they are. But if you look inside the opf file itself, they appear like this example:

<meta name="calibre:series" content="Robert Macdonald" />
    <meta name="calibre:series_index" content="16" />

I have made all these books starting with the ODT Import plugin. Does this plugin add the "calibre:series" and "calibre:series_index" to the basic metadata editor somehow? The "calibre" part is not seen in the Metadata Editor, just series and series index.

Curious! The entries in the above opf were entered as in this image:

[KevinH]

Sigil's Metadata Editor does support adding calibre::series metadata but only under epub2.

Epub3 does not support them as epub3 has its own official collection and series metadata that Sigil supports.

Could you be editing an epub3 instead of an epub2? If so you should use the official epub3 series metadata.

https://www.w3.org/TR/epub-33/

Search for "belongs to collection" and "group-position"

[KevinH]

The Metadata elements and properties are created by the MetaEditor to make things human readable. You can mouse over things in the Metadata editor to get more information, or just look at what is produced by opening the OPF tab and looking.

[retiredbiker]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Sigil's Metadata Editor does support adding calibre::series metadata but only under epub2.

Epub3 does not support them as epub3 has its own official collection and series metadata that Sigil supports.

Could you be editing an epub3 instead of an epub2? If so you should use the official epub3 series metadata.

https://www.w3.org/TR/epub-33/

Search for "belongs to collection" and "group-position"

That was it. the new default is epub3, whereas the books I've been making are epub2. (All my old readers are still in the epub2 era, and they still work fine!)

[Turtle91]

I feel like an idiot...I completely forgot they added that to the metadata editor awhile back... sorry!

[JohnStaats]

Thanks so much for the replies. I've never used Calibre with my Sigil ebooks and was wondering if my memory was faulty.

I'll remember to default my files to epub 2.

[KevinH]

Or just use the epub3 to future proof your ebook collection. The epub3 spec is over 10 years old now and very few new e-readers support the older epub2 standard anymore.

[JohnStaats]

So for epub3 formats,

Add a Belongs to a Series value, add a Position , and then set its numeric value (if it's book 2, I set it to "2").

The description for Position refers to a "group" and not a "collection" so it's a little confusing.

https://i.imgur.com/FMBODPF.jpeg

[KevinH]

Here is what the spec says:

D.3.3 belongs-to-collection

Name: belongs-to-collection
Description:
The belongs-to-collection property identifies the name of a collection to which the EPUB publication belongs. An EPUB publication MAY belong to one or more collections.
It is also possible to chain these properties using the refines attribute to indicate that one collection is itself a member of another collection.

To allow reading systems to organize collections and avoid naming collisions (e.g., unrelated collections might share a similar name, or different editions of a collection could be released), EPUB creators SHOULD provide an identifier that uniquely identifies the instance of the collection. The dcterms:identifier property must carry this identifier.

The collection MAY more precisely define its nature by attaching a collection-type property.

The position of the EPUB publication within the collection MAY be provided by attaching a group-position property.

Allowed value(s): xsd:string
Cardinality: zero or more
Extends: Applies to the EPUB publication and can refine other instances of itself.

So yes, and you may want to add what type of collection it is as the spec says. I have attached a snapshop of making up this info for a public domain epub just to show you. See the attached image.

[JohnStaats]

Gotcha, and thanks for the clarification.

With so many authors writing books as a part of a series, I'm surprised the newer ePub format adds more hoops to jump through.

[DNSB]

The older (ePub2) standard didn't make any provision for series. ePub3 added that support. The closest to a standard for ePub2 series seems to be what calibre implemented.

[retiredbiker]

It is interesting that Sigil and Calibre convert series and position in slightly different ways in epub3 made from epub2. I assume both are "correct" if that is how to put it. And direct entry results in a third version of the data:

Original epub2:

<meta name="calibre:series" content="Robert Macdonald"/>
    <meta name="calibre:series_index" content="16.0"/>

After Calibre conversion to epub3:

<meta property="belongs-to-collection" id="id-4">Robert Macdonald</meta>
    <meta refines="#id-4" property="collection-type">series</meta>
    <meta refines="#id-4" property="group-position">16.0</meta>

After Sigil epub3-itier plugin:

<meta id="series" property="belongs-to-collection">Robert Macdonald</meta>
    <meta refines="#series" property="collection-type">series</meta>
    <meta refines="#series" property="group-position">16</meta>

And if I enter the data directly into a new epub3 book in Sigil this is what appears in the opf:

<meta property="belongs-to-collection" id="num">Robert Mcdonald</meta>
    <meta refines="#num" property="group-position">16</meta>
    <meta refines="#num" property="collection-type">series</meta>

No wonder epub3 is a bit tough to get the old head around.

[JSWolf]

https://www.w3.org/TR/epub/

<metadata …>
   …
   <meta property="belongs-to-collection" id="c01">Harry Potter</meta>
   <meta refines="#c01" property="collection-type">series</meta>
   …
</metadata>

However, what's missing from ePub3 is the series order.