Folder organization & Role-playing Books

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by Theeo123

Expecting a program to change what works for millions of other scenarios, just to accommodate a few special cases, always seemed dumb to me.

Sadly, we've had a disturbing number of people who have expected that, and demanded that, generally with insulting Kovid and the other devs thrown in for good measure. As Manichean said, we've gotten a bit paranoid as a result. Possibly more than a bit, in my case.

There are, very rarely, people calibre doesn't work for. There are, likewise, people Windows doesn't work for (probably more people, percentage-wise). I have to wonder if those people post on Microsoft forums and demand that Windows be made to do things their way, not Microsoft's way. Given the number of people involved it wouldn't surprise me -- get enough people and any kind of behavior you can name will surface -- but most of them, I think, realize that Windows is what it is, and it's not going to change because Joe Schmoe dislikes something about it. The big difference, of course, being that Joe Schmoe does not have the freedom to just open up the Windows source code and change it to however he likes, whereas with calibre, not only can he do exactly that, but there are instructions on how to go about it.

We get a disturbing number of people here who ignore the fact that calibre organizes books, not files, and want it changed to organize files instead of books. I always wonder why they want to work with files -- shouldn't they be doing physical disc reads and writes instead? After all, files are too much abstraction! But they've gotten used to using the filesystem for half-assed metadata, and they want to continue doing that but still call it calibre (I've never gotten a straight answer as to where a book by Smith & Jones should be filed, or a book with both historical and fantasy stories, or an SF mystery, or in fact any book that fits two categories however they define them should go). Why, I'm not sure.

If someone explains a problem, we'll find them a solution. The content server, in your case. But all too often, they just show up, insult us, insult the devs, and insult calibre (I kid you not), and then claim we're not being helpful when nobody wants to be insulted anymore. That's scary in a disturbing number of ways.

[Theeo123]

Lady Fitzgerald.
actually I didn't I only said that Calibre's system of Tag's would not be the most efficient, not that File/folder would be more so, it was an example of where Calibre's tagging system might not be optimal, I never claimed to have a superior alternative on that one actually.

Using Calibre's system, every volume of the encyclopedia, would come up with the same author, title, publication date, et.c essentially 95% of all the metadata would be the same. Vol 1 Vol 2, Vol 3 or a - f, g - k those would be different.

now assuming the average person doesn't have the volume titles of their encyclopedia set memorized, and you are looking for something that begins with "F" you can't just type "F" into calibre's search and expect the proper item to come up you'd get hundreds of results. you could use operators, and narrow it to "encyclopedia" and "Britannica" and "F" and probably get it, but by the time you typed that all out.... well you get the idea.

typing "Britannica" and then looking manually through the titles of your 12 volumes is more efficient yes?

If the manual folder structure you create in windows is simply "encyclopedia Britannica" with 12 PDF's inside it. It would honestly be quicker than launching Calibre, typing names, sorting results etc.

It should be noted though, that this is NOT Calibre's intended use really. Most people are not going to be using Calibre, to sort PDF copies of an encyclopedia, to load onto their E-Reader.


Tech journals it's highly subjective, If you manually Enter a lot of Tags, to denote individual articles, within the issue you are adding and so forth, it would be much quicker, Assuming you don't spend an hour reading each and every article, and then developing tags for all of them to add-on book, you would run into similar problems. using the cover browser to see what articles are in an issue could lead you to find the appropriate one quickly, however, this would not be much different from using thumbnail view in explorer.

Again though, this is not necessarily Calibre's intended purpose, these are rare, and special circumstances, not the norm.

[Theeo123]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

Sadly, we've had a disturbing number of people who have expected that, and demanded that, generally with insulting Kovid and the other devs thrown in for good measure. As Manichean said, we've gotten a bit paranoid as a result. Possibly more than a bit, in my case.

There are, very rarely, people calibre doesn't work for. There are, likewise, people Windows doesn't work for (probably more people, percentage-wise). I have to wonder if those people post on Microsoft forums and demand that Windows be made to do things their way, not Microsoft's way. Given the number of people involved it wouldn't surprise me -- get enough people and any kind of behavior you can name will surface -- but most of them, I think, realize that Windows is what it is, and it's not going to change because Joe Schmoe dislikes something about it. The big difference, of course, being that Joe Schmoe does not have the freedom to just open up the Windows source code and change it to however he likes, whereas with calibre, not only can he do exactly that, but there are instructions on how to go about it.

We get a disturbing number of people here who ignore the fact that calibre organizes books, not files, and want it changed to organize files instead of books. I always wonder why they want to work with files -- shouldn't they be doing physical disc reads and writes instead? After all, files are too much abstraction! But they've gotten used to using the filesystem for half-assed metadata, and they want to continue doing that but still call it calibre (I've never gotten a straight answer as to where a book by Smith & Jones should be filed, or a book with both historical and fantasy stories, or an SF mystery, or in fact any book that fits two categories however they define them should go). Why, I'm not sure.

If someone explains a problem, we'll find them a solution. The content server, in your case. But all too often, they just show up, insult us, insult the devs, and insult calibre (I kid you not), and then claim we're not being helpful when nobody wants to be insulted anymore. That's scary in a disturbing number of ways.

I've seen a few of those threads, Some people get downright nasty. I'm of the opinion that if you don't like a piece of software. head to alternativeto.net and find something else, asking or hep is constructive. bitching and complaining is not, why waste energy on something that's not constructive in any way? It simply makes me think these people have far more spare time than I do

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Theeo123

Using Calibre's system, every volume of the encyclopedia, would come up with the same author, title, publication date, et.c essentially 95% of all the metadata would be the same. Vol 1 Vol 2, Vol 3 or a - f, g - k those would be different.
.

You found one of the edge cases where you DO need to keep the Volume title(range) in the Title to differentiate books

I would also use
Series: Brittanica-2010
and
Series index: vol#

The Series info properly orders the 'book-set'.
What is important is getting a query that has all the volumes, regardles of the Name on the volume

Same with any subscription: Journalname-year and Vol# as the series

Actually it may work out better this way

Analog Magazine Feb 1999
Analog Magazine Jun-Jul 1999
Analog Magazine Mar 1999

Does not sort well but assigning a Analog-1999 series and setting the index to the volume # does

[Worldwalker]

A lot of people forget about the series name and number. They can be amazingly useful for organizing the books in a series. I just wish my Sony Reader got along a little better with series, but that's not calibre's fault.

[Manichean]

I have, until now, only filed textbooks in my Calibre library, but I believe I'd rather file single relevant articles with the journal noted as series or somesuch. The title and author then would, of course, be the title and author of the article, and I could put the abstract into the comments. So, Calibre is suited for scientific journals, I think.

[Theeo123]

Just as an update to my case things are working out nicely. Now not only can I share the files I want to properly but with the tags I can make it easier to find stuff. Granted it took me more than a half hour to load 4 books, editing a lot of meta-data manually. However now I can add case specific tags, like say "which book was that optional mounted combat rule in" I used to have to muddle through several "players advantage" type books. now I can add tags, with certain frequently used info, that isn't necessarily conveyed in the title and such.

though it's going to take me a long time to set up I think this will actually speed things up at the table when we need to look things up in the future

Again thanks for all the help guys

[Manichean]

As a side note: You can restrict the content server, much like the library, to only display books that conform to a saved search. If you, for example, only want to make player handbooks available through the server and block access to GM handbooks, you could do that.

[Theeo123]

Originally Posted by Manichean

As a side note: You can restrict the content server, much like the library, to only display books that conform to a saved search. If you, for example, only want to make player handbooks available through the server and block access to GM handbooks, you could do that.

Oh really?
cool, may have to play around with that. thanks for the heads up

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Theeo123

what I have not included is my extensive 60 Gig collection of RPG books. almost all of these are in PDF, sadly, some of them don't look so great on e-readers, also not all my players have e-readers.

so as it stands now the RPG books are organized, generally speaking as thus
RPG books
-- Game
---- Edition
-------- Player books
-------- GM books

so on so forth. these books often have multiple authors or even entire creative teams, and the author is unimportant.

I don't have 60gb of gaming books. I have, I think, about 10gb, including several scans-only books that are pretty much useless for ereaders, and a handful of them that I've converted myself. (Grumble grumble only e-copy of Primal Order on the frickin' planet; talk about wasted effort.)

I almost always put the game system & edition in the Author spot. Sometimes I put system, edition and "category": rulebook, supplement, adventure, extras.

(Author: GURPS 4ed Rules, title: Characters; Author: GURPS 4ed Suppl, Title: Magic, etc.)

[Theeo123]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

I don't have 60gb of gaming books. I have, I think, about 10gb, including several scans-only books that are pretty much useless for ereaders, and a handful of them that I've converted myself. (Grumble grumble only e-copy of Primal Order on the frickin' planet; talk about wasted effort.)

I almost always put the game system & edition in the Author spot. Sometimes I put system, edition and "category": rulebook, supplement, adventure, extras.

(Author: GURPS 4ed Rules, title: Characters; Author: GURPS 4ed Suppl, Title: Magic, etc.)

I hear ya man, I spent like years looking for a dead-tree format copy of Tales from the Crypt. I have this thing for weird/rare/un-appreciated/obscure game systems.

thanks for the idea's on formating, I've been slowly entering my library since starting the post, my problem wasn't finding them in Calibre myself, but how I could still make them easy to find for the rest of the group. We have the luxury of gaming 3 times a week, 3 different games, 3 different GM's but my computer seems to have somehow become the central repository for everyones digital game books.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Theeo123

I hear ya man, I spent like years looking for a dead-tree format copy of Tales from the Crypt. I have this thing for weird/rare/un-appreciated/obscure game systems.

I have Midnight at the Well of Souls. Which I have fond thoughts of someday finding (1) someone else who's read the books and (2) a GURPS group that wants to play in the world enough to start converting the races over.

Riiiight. I'll find that right after I scrounge up a Wild Cards superhero game.

thanks for the idea's on formating, I've been slowly entering my library since starting the post, my problem wasn't finding them in Calibre myself, but how I could still make them easy to find for the rest of the group. We have the luxury of gaming 3 times a week, 3 different games, 3 different GM's but my computer seems to have somehow become the central repository for everyones digital game books.

Right now, no ebook system is good for actual libraries. They are all, at best, decent for a single person's large collection; none are built to work well for multi-purpose use (leisure, research, reference, archiving); there's no ebook program that works like a digital card catalog. (Not the fault of the software builders; someone has to enter all those keywords as metadata, and they can't effectively design software for "all options somebody might consider important someday." Lots of ebook library software allows 2-5 keywords; it gets a lot more troublesome when you want to include a dozen keywords and three dozen search terms.)

[Manichean]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

(Not the fault of the software builders; someone has to enter all those keywords as metadata, and they can't effectively design software for "all options somebody might consider important someday." Lots of ebook library software allows 2-5 keywords; it gets a lot more troublesome when you want to include a dozen keywords and three dozen search terms.)

Actually, from what I know, calibre allows you to assign as many tags as you want and search them. And if that's not enough, you can always create custom columns (and search those too).

[Theeo123]

I have to agree, It's doing a marvelous job with my RPG's like said my problem was never with Calibre's catalog, but with being able to share the cataloged files with other on my network, and that was due to my own lack of understanding concerning the use of the content server.

If there was not a need for me to make my books available to my roommates/gaming-group the issue would have never arisen and I would have added the books to calibre long ago.