Author Pictures

[Quetico]

Is there any way to add author pictures to your Calibre library?

[transmitthis]

I do it like this




Only done 50 or so, just to see.

If there is interest we could have a shared library of Authors so people could add to them and update them? - just an idea, in any case if anyone is doing similar let me know


(the only reason mine show up as CSV as opposed to txt files, is they link directly to a excel sheet of all the books by that author...)

[Quetico]

Thank you. It works really well.

[44reader]

Looks good. But what have you done there, transmitthis?

What's the significance of #type:"=AuthorDetails" ... and have you imported a txt (or csv) file for each author and that's what we're looking at - as if they are 'books'.

I'm confused. I just don't know what I'm looking at; ha ha, I don't even know how to phrase the question.

Typing #type:"=AuthorDetails" in the search box doesn't bring anything up.

What IS this image of?!

Can anyone help this dumb fool please?

[kiwidude]

He's created a fake "book" for each author to be able to put in an image and comments. Then to differentiate such fake books as authors from genuine books, he has used a custom column called #type and given a value of "AuthorDetails" to such author rows.

[44reader]

@kiwidude Aaaaagh! I see; thanks.

[TMSxMR]

And what calibre can download metadata for authors if I will do it in this way?

From programing point of view I belive it's a very ad-hock method, especially that in clibre database there is a separate table for authors, and the developers can easely add column for the photo and biography.

[kiwidude]

@TMSxMR - no there is no "metadata download" for such an approach, it is a workaround that this particular user happened to use and wanted to share.

As for calibre natively supporting author biographies, this has been discussed previously on other threads. The upshot of all that was chaley added the ability to hyperlink the author name to the Wikipedia page by default (customisable to an alternate page of your choice) that you can click on in the book details panel. That way the burden of "metadata updating" is left to the community that supports the website for the author. It isn't a solution that meets everyones needs but it is something you get for free.

[44reader]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

<snip> The upshot of all that was chaley added the ability to hyperlink the author name to the Wikipedia page by default (customisable to an alternate page of your choice) that you can click on in the book details panel. <snip>

I was just about to start another thread but seeing as you mention the "author link template" here can I just ask in here...

I have my authors listed as e.g. Joyce, James [I think you do the same don't you, kiwidude?]. That means I have to do one extra click in Wikipedia; it takes you to the search page instead.

Is it possible to write a template (currently: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search={author} ) that swaps last name, first name when I click on the author link template link in Book Details?

[TMSxMR]

Dear kiwidude

Thx for info, having link not a bad thing too, but the problem (in my opinion) that you will need to enter it manually, for the thousands of the authors i have this simply impossible.... and templates will not always get you the right page.

[kiwidude]

It depends on your authors, calibre does try to guess the right link as a default. And you will have the exact same problem with any approach to gathering author metadata - there is no single repository that contains it all and you will always have to do some sort of duplicate name resolution etc.

Like I said, it isn't a perfect solution but it was low cost to implement for suiting a number of users.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by 44reader

Is it possible to write a template (currently: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search={author} ) that swaps last name, first name when I click on the author link template link in Book Details?

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search={author:swap_around_comma()}

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by 44reader

I have my authors listed as e.g. Joyce, James [I think you do the same don't you, kiwidude?]. That means I have to do one extra click in Wikipedia; it takes you to the search page instead.

Is it possible to write a template (currently: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search={author} ) that swaps last name, first name when I click on the author link template link in Book Details?

Ahhh, I don't use the feature personally but I see what you mean (and yes I am a LN, FN person).

Whether it is possible to swap in a template, or whether chaley could just add some extra logic in for comma delimited names/a preference I leave to his wisdom to respond to.

This sort of thing is unfortunately a recurring pain in the butt issue with any new feature of calibre that involves author names. I've stirred the debate pot about it a number of times but without a conclusion that Kovid/chaley are yet happy with. There is no centralised preference saying "my names are in LN, FN" format that every other piece of code can then look at - the argument being that for non-english names it is not so easy to determine what is a LN and FN. I have a selfish opinion on that, but then thankfully for all the international readers using calibre I don't manage the development

Edit: I see chaley posted a solution for this case while I wrote this

[chaley]

For completeness, here is a template in template program mode that works with both FN LN and LN, FN for most names. This template will fail for author names like Joe Blogs, PhD, which is one reason it isn't the default.

{authors:'contains($, ',', swap_around_comma($), $)'}

[44reader]

Originally Posted by chaley

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search={author:swap_around_comma()}

(and for the complete version) ...