Firmware Update AKC! - Automatic Kindle Collection Generator

[thermopyle]

Originally Posted by daffy4u

So, it seems that if you have one book that would fall into more than one collection (tag, category...), you would have to have more than one copy of the book on the Kindle (which a couple of people were asking).

If I want a book in the "mystery" and also "paranormal" collections, I'd have to have a copy of the book in each folder? And after the book has been read I'd have to add another copy to the "books I've read" collections? Am I understanding this correctly?

Ah, I understand what you're asking now. The answer is yes and no. Even if books are in separate locations on the Kindle, they'll still end up in the same collection if the directory name is identical. If you have multiple columns you use for genres and read/unread status, you can have those used in the output Calibre uses (or make the directories yourself, which would be a pain.) Here's an example:

In Calibre, if you add and use fields for Genre1, Genre2, Read Status (values being read and Unread), here could be your save to disk template:

({author_sort}/[{series}/{#genre1}/{#genre2}/{#read_status}/{title} - {authors}

Here would be the output of a book whose genres are Mystery and Paranormal, which has been read:

x:/documents/Jim Butcher/Dresden Files/Mystery/Paranormal/Read/Storm Front.mobi

Now, Calibre will not output a variable if there is no value for it. If you have Genre1 set but not Genre2, you'd get this instead:

x:/documents/Jim Butcher/Mystery/Dresden Files/Read/Storm Front.mobi

Now, the key thing here is that when the AKC program is run, books are added to a collection based on the directory name. So, these three will all be added to the same Mystery collection:

x:/documents/Jim Butcher/Dresden Files/Mystery/Paranormal/Read/Storm Front.mobi
x:/documents/Dan Brown/Robert Langton/Mystery/Unread/Da Vinci Code.mobi
x:/documents/Mystery/Unread/Collection of Mystery Stories.mobi

Note that the second and third examples above would also end up in the Unread collection.

Basically, if you can have a directory name in the path, no matter where that directory name is at in the path, (as long as it's a sub-directory of documents, anyway), then the book will appear in that collection, as will every other book with that directory name in its path.

Now, there is one downside to this: If you have two authors with the exact same name, their books will end up in the same collection. Or if you have two series with the same name (two authors happen to write trilogies with the same name, titled Boy Saves World, for example), those will also show up in the same collection. Either case is pretty rare, however. Even if this were to happen, Author1's collection would have the BSW trilogy, as would Author2's, so the books would be separate there.

So, while you can't use the comma-seperated "Tag" field in Calibre to organize books by collection, using unique values in your own columns and then having them as part of the "Save to Disk" path works just fine. Genre1 and Genre2 and Read_Status would be good examples of this.

NOTE: If you DID try to have multiple copies of the same book on your Kindle, in the way you specifically asked about, it would actually create multiple entries if the directories were repeated. For example:

x:/documents/Paranormal/Jim Butcher/Dresden Files/Storm Front.mobi
x:/documents/Mystery/Jim Butcher/Dresden Files/Storm Front.mobi

This would end up putting Storm Front in the Paranormal collection and the Mystery collection, yes, but then you would have two copies of Storm Front in both the Jim Butcher and Dresden Files collections. So, no, you wouldn't want to take this approach.

[daffy4u]

Thanks for explaining that! I was concerned about having multiple copies of the same book on the Kindle. For folks with large libraries (the ones who REALLY REALLY need your software), it would cause major problems with space.

I guess I'll have to spend some of the my holiday time off, adding/fixing tags for my books in Calibre before I can try your software. I'm quite lazy when it comes to managing my ebook collection.

Thanks again.

[thermopyle]

Originally Posted by reech

Smart, this works very well for me. However, there's still no damnable 'putting your series in the right order' feature in the Kindle! At least with 3G I can always look up

There is, too. At least, if I'm right in what you mean.

Newer versions of Calibre have a feature called Plugboard. It allows for some use of variables based on column values in how the metadata of a book is written when the book is sent to the device.

Check out this link for some useful examples of Plugboard expressions: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...t=series+order.

The one I'm using is the "General Metadata" one in the first post. It makes the title metadata of the book lead with an initialization of the series title, the number of the book in the series in brackets, a dash, and then the name of the book (the author's name trailing on the right). I'll give you example of how it works. If you had these columns in Calibre:

title author series (book number in brackets)

Storm Front - Jim Butcher - Dresden Files [01]
Fool Moon - Jim Butcher - Dresden Files [02]

What would be output (this is what you'd see while reading on your Kindle):

DF [01] - Storm Front ---- Jim Butcher
DF [02] - Fool Moon ---- Jim Butcher

I definitely recommend checking it out. It's awesome and really, really helpful. Just remember to have leading 0's in the book numbers if you're going to have more than 9 book in a series. Otherwise you'll get this:

Series [1] - title ----author
Series [10] - title -----author
Series [11] - title -----author
Series [2] - title ------author

[reech]

Ohh - I'll try that later, when back in.

Just tried to use AKC on a couple of series (10 books altogether) it worked fine. Sadly, then moving another 100 books on with about 10 series - no joy, and it's removed ALL the collections - will have a look later on... (And yes, did restart both times!)

[thermopyle]

Originally Posted by daffy4u

Thanks for explaining that! I was concerned about having multiple copies of the same book on the Kindle. For folks with large libraries (the ones who REALLY REALLY need your software), it would cause major problems with space.

I guess I'll have to spend some of the my holiday time off, adding/fixing tags for my books in Calibre before I can try your software. I'm quite lazy when it comes to managing my ebook collection.

Thanks again.

You're definitely welcome. ^_^ I need to load a bunch more books on my Kindle to see how long the AKC! program takes with a full one. With 400 books, my 3-year-old laptop takes less than 2 seconds to create all of the collections necessary. I'll be very impressed with myself if it's less than 20 seconds for 4000.

Now, I will admit there is one annoying issue that would accompany this type of program approach: You'll end up with a LOT of directories in your Kindle. If you're browsing through the Kindle's contents withe file explorer, that could be a pain. Those directories are invisible to Calibre and in the Kindle itself, however, so it should not cause any usage problems for the vast majority of people. Trying to manage the collections by hand in the form of creating these directories yourself would be a huge orderal, and at that point it would probably be better to use another collection management program. AKC! was written primarily to be used with Calibre, as using the two together allows for the maximum amount of automation. I'm a big fan of less work.

[thermopyle]

Originally Posted by reech

Ohh - I'll try that later, when back in.

Just tried to use AKC on a couple of series (10 books altogether) it worked fine. Sadly, then moving another 100 books on with about 10 series - no joy, and it's removed ALL the collections - will have a look later on... (And yes, did restart both times!)

Let me know how that goes. At this point I'm not sure if the program has issues with DRM (I may have to buy a book or two with DRM to test). Did any of the initial 10 books you loaded have DRM? If not, how about the 100 books you did afterwards? If it's not working, please send me your collections.json so I can take a look at what AKC! output to that file.

[daffy4u]

A couple of other questions.

1 - Do you think this will work with Kindle 2?
2 - If not, will the collections sync from K3 to K2 via Amazon?

[thermopyle]

Originally Posted by daffy4u

A couple of other questions.

1 - Do you think this will work with Kindle 2?
2 - If not, will the collections sync from K3 to K2 via Amazon?

If the Kindle 2 uses the same method of handling collections, it should work just fine. What I would suggest doing is renaming/backing up your collections.json file and running it as a quick test. There's no real consequence if it doesn't work, or if the results are not what you wanted. Simply delete the AKC!-generated collections.json and restore the one you were previously using.

[dujik]

Originally Posted by thermopyle

The program does not require Calibre at all, it simply builds off the directory structure you've created on your Kindle (Calibre just makes those directories if you use it.) You can create any directories you want and the program won't know the difference between that and Calibre-generated folders.

Having said that, where are you running the program from? I just want to make sure you have it in the correct location, which is the root directory of your Kindle. Just put it on the Kindle and run it from there (it uses relative pathing and so needs that as its starting location.)

If that doesn't work, is you collections.json file in the system folder? If not, where is it? Does the program crash or give you an error? Does AKC simply not make changes to your collections, with your previous collections staying as they were, or does it wipe those out and leave you with none?

Sorry for late answer.
Ok i found a bug,if there is mbp file along with the book the whole thing is
not working.
I manage to create a collection with clean mobi files(this is the only way that is working for me) and when i start reading mbp file creates itself and then later when i add book in the same folder
and reboot kindle the whole collection disappears because of previous created mbp file.

[Mixx]

Originally Posted by thermopyle

So, while you can't use the comma-seperated "Tag" field in Calibre to organize books by collection, using unique values in your own columns and then having them as part of the "Save to Disk" path works just fine. Genre1 and Genre2 and Read_Status would be good examples of this.

Could someone create a piece of code in Calibre to just take the string of "tags" (separated by commas), disassemble it into the list elements (=tags), sort them to be a unique list and turn that list into a directory structure? That way, we could use tags to organize.

Example:

A book has the tags: History, English, Fiction
The tags variable: "History, English, Fiction"
Sorted: "English, Fiction, History
Directory: X:/documents/English/Fiction/History/book.mobi

As far as I understand, that way each book has a unique folder location, has just one copy and ACK can generate the collections from the segments of the path.

What do you think? I'd do it but have almost zero programming skills.

Regards, Mixx

[thermopyle]

Originally Posted by dujik

Sorry for late answer.
Ok i found a bug,if there is mbp file along with the book the whole thing is
not working.
I manage to create a collection with clean mobi files(this is the only way that is working for me) and when i start reading mbp file creates itself and then later when i add book in the same folder
and reboot kindle the whole collection disappears because of previous created mbp file.

I don't believe the .mbp file is the problem. The program is written to ignore those when generating the collection, and I've tested it with no problems. I just tested again, just to be sure; I generated the collections, read a book, rebooted the Kindle, everything was fine. Then I ran AKC! again (with the .mbp file in place), rebooted, and things are still okay.

What was the exact process you went through? You said after you started reading you added a book to the same folder; did you move the book you were reading, or simply add a different book? Did you run AKC! again after adding that book (to add it to the collections), or did you leave the collections as-is?

[thermopyle]

Originally Posted by Mixx

Could someone create a piece of code in Calibre to just take the string of "tags" (separated by commas), disassemble it into the list elements (=tags), sort them to be a unique list and turn that list into a directory structure? That way, we could use tags to organize.

Example:

A book has the tags: History, English, Fiction
The tags variable: "History, English, Fiction"
Sorted: "English, Fiction, History
Directory: X:/documents/English/Fiction/History/book.mobi

As far as I understand, that way each book has a unique folder location, has just one copy and ACK can generate the collections from the segments of the path.

What do you think? I'd do it but have almost zero programming skills.

Regards, Mixx

It's possible that the creator of Calibre could add this type of output creation. He seems pretty open to requests; have you tried asking him to do this?

It's something that could work well. Manual management of the tags field would still be necessary, I think (some of the books I have came with a ridiculous number of tags, which is unhelpful), but some people might like that. Personally I'd rather declare a few columns for tags that I'll use (as described previously), since with individual columns you can sort by content. A Read_Status column, for example; if you click on the column header, you can sort by whether you've read books in your library. Then it's easier to go through and make changes to that status as you read the books. But we all have different preferences, I suppose.

[dujik]

Originally Posted by thermopyle

What was the exact process you went through? You said after you started reading you added a book to the same folder; did you move the book you were reading, or simply add a different book? Did you run AKC! again after adding that book (to add it to the collections), or did you leave the collections as-is?

I simply add another book (one mobi file) and run AKC again.
Basically every time i run AKC and there is *.mob in it ,collection disappears or
it wont be created in the first place.
I`m using kindle DX ,software 2.5.5

[thermopyle]

Originally Posted by dujik

I simply add another book (one mobi file) and run AKC again.
Basically every time i run AKC and there is *.mob in it ,collection disappears or
it wont be created in the first place.
I`m using kindle DX ,software 2.5.5

Is it a specific book, or any book? Either way, please provide full file name(s) for those that are causing problems.

[dujik]

Originally Posted by thermopyle

Is it a specific book, or any book? Either way, please provide full file name(s) for those that are causing problems.

Small update.
If i create collection with one book with *.mbp file it will work and if i add another one also with mbp file it will not work.

In this link:
http://rapidshare.com/files/434692081/EBOOK.rar
...there are two books that i`m talking about ,(one of them collection works but if you put both it will not)


or if you dont want to download that here is link for their file names.
http://rapidshare.com/files/434685974/FILE_NAMES.txt