Garbled file titles on Save to Disk

[rmkoske]

I'm seeing some slightly garbled filenames when I export using Save to Disk, and I want to find out if it is an error I'm making, an error in my expectations, or a problem with Calibre.

I'm running Windows 7. When Calibre gets wonky, I've found updating it fixes a lot, so I've just done that and replicated the error with newly installed version 2.22.0. My library is living on Dropbox and I'm doing a Save to Disk on my local folders. I'm not doing anything fancy with the metadata - the settings for filenames and metadata treatment during export are whatever the original settings were.

What I'm seeing: Some files get garbled title names, and occasionally also author names.


Today before updating Calibre, "The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" exported as "I." Afterward, it exported as "Improbabllmes, The"
Other examples behind a cut:

Calibre title: Attack Your Day! Before It Attacks You: Activities Rule. Not the Clock!
Export: Attack Your Day! Before Ities Rule. Not the Clock!

Calibre title:Organize for a Fresh Start: Embrace Your Next Chapter in Life
Export: Organize for a Fresh Start_ Eace Your Next Chapter in Life
Calibre Author: Susan Fay West
Export: West, Ssan Fay

Calibre title:Organized Simplicity: The Clutter-Free Approach to Intentional Living
Export:Organized Simplicity_ The Clproach to Intentional Living
Calibre author: Tsh Oxenreider  (Her first name is correctly vowel-free)
Export: Oxenrer, Tsh (Her last name is mangled)

Calibre title: Calm Energy: How People Regulate Mood With Food and Exercise
Export: Calm Energy_ How People Regu Mood With Food and Exercise

Calibre title: The Guild of the Cowry Catchers, Book 1: Embers, Deluxe Illustrated Edition
Export:Guild of the Cowry Catchers, Beluxe Illustrated Edition, The
Calibre Author:Abigail Hilton
Export: Hiltonbigail

I notice that all the titles are quite long and most of them contain a colon, but the Sherlock Holmes title seems relatively short and doesn't contain a colon, and one called "16 Expert Lessons for Successfully Managing Your Personal Finances (Collection)" exported successfully in the same operation as the Calm Energy book. I haven't been worrying about colons in book titles because I thought the defaults would handle them, and it looks like it sort of is - many of the colons are replaced by underscores and then the garbling occurs a few characters later.

In case it matters, the Sherlock Holmes book is one I exported to my desktop, and the others are being exported to a sub-sub-sub folder of my Documents.

Can anyone tell me what's going on here? Can I fix it, or should I accept it as a slightly strange way to truncate long titles?

[rmkoske]

Did my attempt to hide the list fail? I'm still quite a noob - sorry.

[BetterRed]

@rmkoske - the following characters are not allowed in Windows file names

< (less than)
> (greater than)
: (colon)
" (double quote)
/ (forward slash)
\ (backslash)
| (vertical bar or pipe)
? (question mark)
* (asterisk)

If you have them in book titles calibre will replace with '_' (underscore) when creating folder/file names derived from book titles

Windows also places restrictions on path lengths, so calibre has to truncate long titles. I put subtitles and straplines into a separate custom column. Basically I strip the title down to its 'essentials' no straplines, no dates, no publisher, no series like data etc.

What does your save to disk template look like?

Not sure what you second post is referring to, your first post is fine.

BR

[theducks]

The other thing is all those names are really long and they get shortened to not violate maximum path naming limits.

2 for 2

[rmkoske]

My template is

{author_sort}/{title}/{title} - {authors}

I think that's what shipped with the software. That particular chunk of the program mystifies me and most of the time the results are fine, so I don't mess with it.

The offending characters are being replaced fine, and the idea of truncation is okay with me, but I never expected it to truncate in the middle of the text string. And why did the Holmes book truncate when the 16 Lessons book didn't? I'm fairly certain that the Desktop doesn't have a path as long as the path to the archive folder I put that one into.

...although now that I look at it, the AUTHORS field for that Holmes book (it's an anthology) is ridiculous. "John Joseph Adams & Robert J. Sawyer & Stephen King & Michael Moorcock & Sharyn Mccrumb & Stephen Baxter & Anne Perry & Barbara Hambly & Tanith Lee & Neil Gaiman & Rob Rogers & Naomi Novik & Anthony Burgess" That might possibly just maybe produce a file path that is stupid-long.

Hah! I replaced them with "Various," and voila - no truncation of the Holmes title. Yes, RM, total file path matters.

I also noticed that I wasn't looking carefully - the FOLDERS that contain the book files have truncated names. Most of the files themselves are named properly. And I notice that the ones where the actual book filenames are truncated are also the three where the authors' names are truncated. So I'll just chalk all this down to file-path-length and unexpected truncation of the strings in the middle.

Thanks so much for the suggestion about the custom column for subtitles et al. The Guild of the Cowry Catchers book slipped through during a period when I wasn't doing regular cleanup - I don't usually let the "book 1" stuff stand. But I couldn't figure out what to do with the subtitles on the other works. Now I have a direction to poke in.

[rmkoske]

Originally Posted by theducks

The other thing is all those names are really long and they get shortened to not violate maximum path naming limits.

2 for 2

I just really thought, "Truncation means it chops off the END of the string, not the middle."

But I can completely live with chopping out the middles once I know that's what's going on.

Thanks!

[theducks]

Originally Posted by rmkoske

I just really thought, "Truncation means it chops off the END of the string, not the middle."

But I can completely live with chopping out the middles once I know that's what's going on.

Thanks!

Creative abbreviation


I always drop series info from the title (field)

Forgotton Realms: I am trying => I am trying
Watson come here: A Phony Mystery => Watson come here

I usually drop subtitles =>(If I care, I look at the cover)


I agree that 'Various' or the Editors name should appear in the Authors for counts >3 => Martin Greenberg (ed)
Search:

authors:#>3

I divert the full list into comments

[BetterRed]

Putting subtitles and straplines into a separate columns can be useful for searching - especially if you exclude Comments from searching in the interest of speed - or you don't have any comments, and you don't want to over tag.

But bottom line is keep titles short - no extraneous stuff.

[eschwartz]

I find it very helpful for anthologies, to use a slightly-modified default save template that subsets the authors field to only use the first author. Try this:

{author_sort:list_item(0,&)}/{title}/{title} - {authors:list_item(0,&)}

For more info on save templates, see: http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/template_lang.html

[rmkoske]

Time to do some more spring cleaning on my files, obviously.

Every time I come and spend serious time here, I come away understanding more about Calibre and able to make it work better for me. Thanks for the advice, everyone.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by rmkoske

Time to do some more spring cleaning on my files, obviously.

Every time I come and spend serious time here, I come away understanding more about Calibre and able to make it work better for me. Thanks for the advice, everyone.

Take some time to figure out the Search and Replace feature of Bulk (mode) metadata edit.
You will need some REGEX foo. But with that, you will be able to
Split and move chunks to other fields
trim out extra fluff
normalize/standardize data (the Tag editor will also allow right click options)