Glo Get the series' informations

[jiembe]

To show the series in Kobo after loading new ebooks, I have to use the Calibre update metadata's option. It results of that action that the contents of all my Kobo's shelves are changed. Is there a way to update the metadata of a single ebook? Or another way to get the series appeared in Kobo without touching the shelves distribution?

[davidfor]

The collections and series info are almost completely are separate. The driver has an option to set the series info. This doesn't cause collections to be created.

The collection creation is done from the collection management options, specifically the "Collection Columns". If you have "series" as one of the columns, collections for each series will be created. If you remove that, they will be removed the next time you connect the device.

[jiembe]

Thank you.

Maybe I wasn't clear. When I load an ebook in Kobo it appears in the books list with the title on the first line and the author as a second line. No information about the series appear. I want that information. Using Calibre update metadata's option make the series information appear between the title and the author's lines. But doing that change the distribution of the books in my Kobo's collections. So for example where there were 16 books in one collection, it remains no more than 5. I have to reclassify the majority of my books in various collections after an update of the metadata.

The problem is not about creating or abolishing the collections but about which books are in the collections.

[davidfor]

Sorry, but that is just impossible. There is no direct connection between the series information and the collections. The only connection is if you have both the options set and series as one of the collection columns. And using both of these have no affect on the other.

How are you maintaining the collections? If you do it on the device, you need to not have the collection management options configured in the driver. If you want to use calibre to do the collection management, then don't do it on the device as the next time you connect, calibre will redo the collections according to the options.

Of course, there could be a bug. I'm pretty confident there isn't in this area of the driver. But, run calibre in debug mode, connect the device, let the device jobs run and close calibre. Then post the debug log. And tell me which collections get messed up.

[JKenP]

There was a script floating around that added series to the title when you transfer to the device. You can probably find it in the recipe section in Calibre forum

[PeterT]

It's not really a script; it's a plugboard that adds series info to the title. I for instance prepend the title with an abbreviated series name and the book number, so something like LOTR - 02 - The Two Towers.

This means I can easily sort on title and see the books and order in a series.

[milady133]

Regarding the problem of collections empty or almost empty when jiembe updates the metadata, it's something that also happens to me when I choose to manually update the metadata on one book. Afterwards, most books loose their collections association. It isn't something that I do frecuently, and knowing the problem I usually avoid doing that. I think there's something in the plugin configuration causing this, because I read other people is doing this without problems. I think maybe it's because I have it configured to only send metadata when I send the book, but not to automatically update the metadata of the books already in the device. I should try to reproduce the problem in my Kobo Mini now that it's retired, but I don't have the time.
Anyway, jiembe, just in case you haven't realized how the series information works in Kobo. When you send the book to the device the series don't appear, Calibre needs that Kobo firmware process the book and adds it to the Kobo database, that happens when you copy the book in Kobo and afterwards disconnect Kobo from your PC. The second time you connect the Kobo to Calibre, Calibre automatically sends the series information, you don't need to do anything or force the update of the metadata of the book.
You only need to manually update that metadata if you change it in Calibre after the book has been processed, and there's some configuration in the plugin to do it automatically if you want to (I think, I don't have it configured myself)

[jiembe]

About "The second time you connect the Kobo to Calibre, Calibre automatically sends the series information, you don't need to do anything or force the update of the metadata of the book". This doesn't happened in my case.

But since my first post I found a workaround using the Calibre's plugin Kobo Utilities. This plugin allows to update the metadata you to choose for one or more books lying in the Kobo without touching the composition of the collections.

Thank you every one.

P.S. I managed my collections through the Kobo Glo.

[Terisa de morgan]

Do you have set the metadata management to automatic from calibre?

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by jiembe

About "The second time you connect the Kobo to Calibre, Calibre automatically sends the series information, you don't need to do anything or force the update of the metadata of the book". This doesn't happened in my case.

In that case, you probably don't have the "Metadata management" set to automatic on the "Sending books to devices" page of the calibre preferences. Or you haven't selected the "Set Series information" in the driver configuration. If you have both set and it isn't updating the series info when you connect, then something is wrong. Running in debug mode and posting the debug log as I suggested before would let me try and work out what is wrong.

But since my first post I found a workaround using the Calibre's plugin Kobo Utilities. This plugin allows to update the metadata you to choose for one or more books lying in the Kobo without touching the composition of the collections.

Personally, I don't consider that to be a workaround. It is an alternate way of achieving the same result. Plus a lot more.

And if calibre is touching with your collections on the device, it is either because you have configured the driver to do so, or there is a bug. I there is any chance of the latter, I need a debug log to look at to fix it.

[jiembe]

You were right. I didn't have the "Metadata management" set to automatic on the "Sending books to devices". I try it and voilà the contents of my collections was changed again (lot of work to do now!). That setting is described as : on send:Calibre updates metadata and adds/removes collections for a book only when it is sent to the device. So I presumed the same thing about the collections with automatic management option. And so it does : update_device_database_collections - category='xx' books=41

I should have add (and that's why I supposed I have this problem) that the series names in my Calibre are not all the same as the categories names of my Kobo

As about the debug log: it contains more information about the contents of my Kobo then I 'm ready to go public.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by jiembe

You were right. I didn't have the "Metadata management" set to automatic on the "Sending books to devices". I try it and voilà the contents of my collections was changed again (lot of work to do now!). That setting is described as : on send:Calibre updates metadata and adds/removes collections for a book only when it is sent to the device. So I presumed the same thing about the collections with automatic management option. And so it does : update_device_database_collections - category='xx' books=41

And that means you have the collection management options set in the driver. If you don't want to do this from calibre, then turn it of.

But, also look at the options. You don't have to use "series" as the collection column. You can use anything. Including a custom column that you maintain with a list of collection names.

I should have add (and that's why I supposed I have this problem) that the series names in my Calibre are not all the same as the categories names of my Kobo

As about the debug log: it contains more information about the contents of my Kobo then I 'm ready to go public.

I can understand that. You can send it to me in a PM. But, as a starting point, the lines I am interested in look like:

Job: 3 Get list of books on device started
DEBUG:    6.7 KoboTouch:books - oncard='None'
DEBUG:    6.7 KoboTouch:books - oncard='None', prefix='F:\'
DEBUG:    6.7 Kobo device: Kobo Touch
DEBUG:    6.7 Version of driver: (2, 3, 1) Has kepubs: True
DEBUG:    6.7 Version of firmware: (4, 0, 7564) Has kepubs: True
DEBUG:    6.7 Firmware supports cover image tree: True
DEBUG:    6.7 KoboTouch:books - opts.extra_customization= []
DEBUG:    6.7 KoboTouch:books - driver options= Driver:KoboTouch, Options - format_map: [u'kepub', u'epub', u'txt', u'cbz', u'cbr', u'pdf', u'mobi'], use_subdirs: True, read_metadata: True, use_author_sort: False, save_template: {author_sort}/{title} - {authors}, extra_customization: [], manage_collections: True, collections_columns: #kobobookshelves, #readstatus, #status, series, create_collections: True, delete_empty_collections: True, ignore_collections_names: , upload_covers: True, keep_cover_aspect: False, upload_grayscale: True, show_archived_books: False, show_previews: False, show_recommendations: True, update_series: True, update_device_metadata: True, modify_css: False, support_newer_firmware: False, debugging_title: Sharkman, driver_version: 2.3.1
DEBUG:    6.8 KoboTouch:books - prefs['manage_device_metadata']= on_connectJob:
2DEBUG:    6.8  Set library informationKoboTouch:books - set_debugging_title to 'Sharkman'

If you plug the device in shortly after starting calibre in debug mode, these will be fairly early in the log. The number after the "DEBUG:" is the number of seconds after calibre started, so it will change.

[jiembe]

Here is the debug log file (after some edit to take out the contents of Calibre and the Kobo) with the automatic metadata update enable. Remember as I said before the series and the collection don't correspond totally. When they are the same the collection content is not modified by Calibre.

I'm sorry to have call the kobo utilities a workaround (english is not my native language) when it is a good substitute to Calibre for some function.

And for a laugh. It takes me 2 hours to rebuild my collections but I forgot the metadata automatic update was on when I plug again my Kobo into Calibre...

[davidfor]

The log has the following lines:

DEBUG: 0.0 KoboTouch:books - driver options= Driver:KoboTouch, Options - format_map: [u'kepub', u'epub', u'pdf', u'txt', u'cbz', u'cbr'], use_subdirs: True, read_metadata: True, use_author_sort: False, save_template: {author_sort}/{title} - {authors}, extra_customization: [], manage_collections: True, collections_columns: series, create_collections: False, delete_empty_collections: False, ignore_collections_names: , upload_covers: False, keep_cover_aspect: False, upload_grayscale: False, show_archived_books: False, show_previews: False, show_recommendations: False, update_series: True, update_device_metadata: True, modify_css: False, support_newer_firmware: False, debugging_title: , driver_version: 2.3.1
DEBUG: 0.0 KoboTouch:books - prefs['manage_device_metadata']= on_connect

The first line shows the driver configuration. The highlighted bit shows that you have collection management enabled. And the series column is being use for the collections. But you don't have the options enabled to create new collections or delete empty ones.

What that means is that when you connect the device, the driver will do collection management. In this case, no extra collections will be created, and empty ones will be left. But, the books will be removed from all collections that do not match the name of the series they are in. And that means that any book that is not in a series, will be removed from all collections it is in.

This is what I was expecting to find. The driver is working correctly, and is doing what you have configured it to do. If you don't want the driver to do the collection management, you need to deselect that option in the driver configuration.