Filename template bug?

[stasiana]

Calibre allows you to specify a template for how files are saved to an ereader. I use Kobo ereaders and I also have a column configured to as the collection of a book, so I modified the template as follows:

{#collection}/{author_sort}/{title} - {authors}

When I sent books to the device, it ended up creating garbled naming for the #collection directory names. For example:

chess
chss
coming
ecoics
econmics
economics
meir
memoir
military
self-imovement

I definitely don't have mangled collect names in the Calibre library. What's going on?

[JSWolf]

Maybe you have a typo in some of the collection names.

[stasiana]

No, I don't. I can see in the Calibre collection pulldown that everything is correct.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by stasiana

No, I don't. I can see in the Calibre collection pulldown that everything is correct.

Have you ever had a typo and since fixed it?

Have a look at the books in the misspelled collections and see what books they are and then look at the same books in the library.

[stasiana]

I have already double checked, triple checked, that it is not due to content. I've used the collection names for years, loaded into the Kobo as actual names of the collections.

These are not typos and these are not left-over files on the device. I wouldn't call them typos because I definitely did not type these ever.

The device was factory reset just prior to my posting. I changed the template and synced. I watched these folders get created by Calibre on the device mangled. I went back and looked at the individual books and in the Calibre library they are correctly named.

Unless Calibre has these mangled strings in its database that is not shown in the UI, it is mangling them upon sending the books to the device.

[stasiana]

Interesting, upon further investigation, when it mangles the collection directory name, it also mangles the author directory name. But it does not mangle the epub filename itself. Definitely a bug in the app.

[theducks]

Your pathnames are being shortened to comply with all OS limits (AKA Windows)

[stasiana]

Originally Posted by theducks

Your pathnames are being shortened to comply with all OS limits (AKA Windows)

Thanks, I just figured this out too when realizing all the mangled directories have filenames that are really long. That's it.

The shortening behavior is very counterintuitive. Directories are meant to organize and shouldn't be mangled. It doesn't help to have "chess", "chss", and "cs".

The filenames, on the other hand, can be since usually the title/author metadata is displayed on the ereader instead of the filename anyway.

Can this behavior be changed?

[Sirtel]

Why do you need collections as directories on your Kobo? For KOReader?

[DNSB]

You might also want to change your template to shorten the author-sort and author fields. What I use is Elib/{author_sort:sublist(0,1,&)}/{title} - {authors:sublist(0,1,&)} where the sublistsublist(0,1,&) shortens the field to the first author name.

As for adding the collection name to the file path, since you mention the title/author metadata being displayed, why not simply add the books to a collection set in metadata on your Kobo ereader. See the second tab of the KoboTouch/KoboTouchExtended driver for the collections configuration.

[stasiana]

Originally Posted by DNSB

You might also want to change your template to shorten the author-sort and author fields. What I use is Elib/{author_sort:sublist(0,1,&)}/{title} - {authors:sublist(0,1,&)} where the sublistsublist(0,1,&) shortens the field to the first author name.

That's an awesome tip, thank you.

I want to do this so that I can make sense of the books when viewing the directories. KOReader also.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by stasiana

That's an awesome tip, thank you.

I started using this since some of my spouse's books are anthologies that have 20-30 authors listed and they would exceed the path length limit just for the authors.

[ownedbycats]

This happened to me a few years ago:

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

I'm not sure if this would also be present with the regular Kobo driver.

I ran into a glitch where between the length of multiple (long) author names and the .kepub extension, the filepath seemed to hit some sort of limit and truncated part of my custom save path ({#kobopath}/{author_sort}/{title} - {authors}) , resulting it ending up in K:\Fanion\ instead of \Fanfiction\.

Thankfully I was able to fix it with a {author_sort:sublist(0,1,&)} to show only the main author, but I found it strange that it truncated the path instead of the filename. Did I make a user error?

Originally Posted by davidfor

The path creation is done by calibre. The drivers supply a maximum path length and calibre works something out in that. It does tend to shorten the actual file name more than the rest of the path, but, I have seen this myself. I use a couple of different libraries, and put the library name first. Occasionally the library name gets shortened. From a quick look at the code, all parts of the path can be shortened, but the longer the part, the more will be taken from it. Hence the file name part will usually be changed the most.

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

The original truncated path was exactly 180 characters (setting author_sort to a sublist shortened it to 156) and the filename did change quite a bit. If it had been able to display in full, it would've been 205 characters.

Originally Posted by davidfor

The driver sets the maximum path length to 185 characters. With it needing to remove 20 characters, I am not surprised the first directory was touched.