Duplicate Books: / Cancel/ Replace/ Add

[Maggie-Me]

Hi, if this has been covered sorry... would it be possible to add to the dialog, when you have a duplicate book one of the options would be to "Replace" ?

Thanks

[atjnjk]

Go to: Preferences > Adding books > Check "If book with similar titles and authors found, merge the new files automatically"
With that, whenever you add a duplicate book, it will be merge/replace.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by atjnjk

Go to: Preferences > Adding books > Check "If book with similar titles and authors found, merge the new files automatically"
With that, whenever you add a duplicate book, it will be merge/replace.

If I understand this feature, if the book being added is a duplicate, but in a different format, it will be added to that record. If it is the same format the book being added will be deleted it will not replace the existing book.

[Worldwalker]

There are times it would be good to make the decision to replace on a per-book basis.

[Maggie-Me]

Originally Posted by dwanthny

If I understand this feature, if the book being added is a duplicate, but in a different format, it will be added to that record. If it is the same format the book being added will be deleted it will not replace the existing book.

that's how I read it, if you add a book with the same author, title and format it is ignored..

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

There are times it would be good to make the decision to replace on a per-book basis.

Yes it would. This gets mentioned pretty frequently in the forums and so is the answer. Which incidentally is to wait until an all-singing, all-dancing new dialog is introduced that is on the feature list to do with controlling which data gets chosen to "keep". I believe the hope is that it could be used to resolve desired improvements to the way metadata is overwritten when retrieved as well as fine grained merging.

I have been tempted more than a few times to write an interim solution but as I don't know when the new feature will appear in Calibre it is hard to know whether to waste the effort or not for something so "temporary". The sort of ideas for the change I would make are...
- Firstly, I like the existing checkbox functionality for when you are adding new formats of an existing book, for that it works perfectly.
- However I personally don't want it to just throw away with no control a "duplicate" of the same format. Exact duplicates I can catch using disk utilities before adding to Calibre. However currently potentially better quality versions of a format just get discarded with no opportunity for you to intervene.
- So in the situation of a duplicate format detected, I would want Calibre to create a duplicate book entry for me that I can later compare side by side within Calibre to decide which I want to keep using existing Merge functionality. Adding a tag like "Duplicate" to both books would be an easy marker to use. I don't want to have to decide at the time I add the book, it would negate the nicety of quickly doing "bulk adds" that exists currently.
- Finally I would tweak the merge code so that when I do get to the point of merging two books where the formats "clash" it pops up a simple dialog listing the formats that are in conflict of each book. You should be able to launch the ebook viewer for each so you can decide which to keep. Even better would be a side-by-side viewer mode but that would probably be way too much work.

I know Kovid is more than aware of the people itching for more control over situations where data gets overwritten/discarded that his new dialog would attempt to address. However what we don't know is any timeframe for when it might happen, obviously there are lots of features out there people want and for now it is "when it is done".

[kovidgoyal]

yeah I'm aware, unfortunately there are at least two other major features in the pipeline ahead of this, an embedded viewer of the content server and the ever delayed PDF conversion engine. So, it is most definitely a case of "when it is done".