Guide to Collections Management with calibre (Touch / Glo / Mini /Aura)

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by Tijntje

Hi , would it be possible to add a custom string to the bookshelves?
I create bookshelves for series and authors with the following command in the plugin.
series, authors

Now in the Kobo they show up exactly as specified, but I would like to add a custom string in front of the authors and series like this:
Author: author name here
Series: series name here
That way I can easily distinguish between serie and author names.

Is this possible?

It is possible.
You can make a custom column type column built from other columns, with the template
{series:'test($, test(field('series'),strcat('Series:',field('serie s'),),''),'')'}

This will give you Series:series name.
Then you use the custom column name instead of series in the plugin.

Same for authors


Probably PeterT will have a better way though

Helen

[cloudsuck]

Originally Posted by PeterT

You could probably handle this with a custom column which you would use as the source for the shelf column. Something like

{:'first_non_empty(field('Series'), field('author_sort'))'}

This would return the Series name if set, else, the author_sort field.

In case a book has no author (not sure if this IS possible) you could also use

{:'first_non_empty(field('Series'), field('author_sort'),'Uncategorized')'}

to ensure that books ended up on an Uncategorized shelf.

This would all be defined as a custom column in calibre preferences of type Column built from other columns, and then the lookup name would be used in the driver's shelf definition field (prepeneded by a # mark of course).

I have been playing around with creating shelves in my Kobo Glo. The info here has been invaluable! I used the method described above for creating shelves based on "Series" but I changed it to "Tags" The result is shelves have been created based on the exact word string within the "Tags" column.

My hope is that someone that understands how to structure this may suggest a way to still use the "Tags" column but limit the CSVs (within the "Tags") to a specified number. So if the "Tags" column has a string of 15 CSVs, I could specify that it only return perhaps the first three. This would serve to generalize and create fewer shelves with each would have more than a single title but yet similarly tagged gendra content compared to what I am now creating.

Tag as currently used: American, American Science Fiction And Fantasy, Bodyguards, Contemporary, Epic, Ex-convicts, Fantasy, Fantasy - Contemporary, Fantasy - General, Fantasy fiction, Fiction, Fiction - Fantasy, General, National characteristics, Reading Group Guide, Spiritual warfare, Widowers

Tag limited to first four: American, American Science Fiction And Fantasy, Bodyguards, Contemporary,


Thanks!

[PeterT]

Not using tags, I'm not sure quite how they are ordered.. Alphabetically? I do have some ideas and will play with it a bit tomorrow.

[cloudsuck]

The order of tags seems to be vary depending on where you view them.

In the Calbre Library they appear alphabetically. In metadata they are often random.

My current work around for tags that are excessively lengthy is to use metadata/edit metadata in bulk edit/tags/remove to delete them. I then bulk retrieve metadata/covers and hope the new tag strings are of a reasonable length.

This is sort of the best way to clean up the library but it is time consuming.

[speakingtohe]

My experience in tags is that they are sorted alphabetically when accessing them but numeric values do not appear first in the GUI.

{tags:sublist(0,1,\,)} will display 69 before A but in the calibre tag list it will often not appear first.

Helen

[ficbot]

Ever since I updated the Kobo firmware, it has been duplicating all my shelves. It is driving me nuts! I have tried resetting the Kobo, and it is still doing it. Is there a fix for this? Or ultimately, a way to turn off the shelf manager plug-in?

[PeterT]

Originally Posted by ficbot

Ever since I updated the Kobo firmware, it has been duplicating all my shelves. It is driving me nuts! I have tried resetting the Kobo, and it is still doing it. Is there a fix for this? Or ultimately, a way to turn off the shelf manager plug-in?

This has nothing to do with calibre, rather it is an ongoing issue with the Kobo servers and the sync process. As of now there is no trivial solution.

[ficbot]

Thanks, Peter. Guess I will just ignore the shelf area until it's fixed.

[ophelia]

Deleted post, figured it out!

[cgkr]

Is there a way to make all images in an ebook appear larger when transferring it to Aura HD? Perhaps a plugin?

A 400 x 100 image will show just fine on a Touch or Glo but will be completely illegible on the Aura HD.

I understand that one cannot create pixels out of thin air but I'd rather have an ugly legible picture that a pretty illegible one.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by cgkr

Is there a way to make all images in an ebook appear larger when transferring it to Aura HD? Perhaps a plugin?

A 400 x 100 image will show just fine on a Touch or Glo but will be completely illegible on the Aura HD.

I understand that one cannot create pixels out of thin air but I'd rather have an ugly legible picture that a pretty illegible one.

My preference is to use an SVG wrapper for all images. Instead of an line such as below:

<img alt="Cover" src="../Images/cover.jpeg" width="594" height="793" />

I would use:

  
<style type="text/css">
@page {padding: 0pt; margin:0pt}
            body { text-align: center; padding:0pt; margin: 0pt; }
</style>
</head>

<body class="nomargin">
  <div class="svg_wrapper">
    <svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" height="100%" preserveAspectRatio="xMidYMid meet" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 594 793" width="100%" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
      <image height="793" width="594" xlink:href="../Images/cover.jpg"></image>
    </svg>
  </div>

The nomargin and svg_wrapper are (probably) redundant in light of the @page styling but they are left over from when I was having fun using the <g> group tag when playing with rotating images.

.nomargin {
    display: block;
    margin: 0 0 0 0;
    text-align: center;
    }
.svg_wrapper {
    display: block;
    margin: 0 0 0 0;
    padding: 0 0 0 0;
    text-align: center;
    }

The advantage to using an SVG wrapper is that the image will be displayed using as much as possible of the display area. The sizes in the viewbox, height and width are more the aspect ratio and not the image size. Using any representation of the image aspect ratio there works equally well -- 600, 800 or 3, 4 will give the same results.

Regards,
David

[cgkr]

Originally Posted by DNSB

My preference is to use an SVG wrapper for all images. Instead of an line such as below:

<img alt="Cover" src="../Images/cover.jpeg" width="594" height="793" />

I would use:

  
<style type="text/css">
@page {padding: 0pt; margin:0pt}
            body { text-align: center; padding:0pt; margin: 0pt; }
</style>
</head>

<body class="nomargin">
  <div class="svg_wrapper">
    <svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" height="100%" preserveAspectRatio="xMidYMid meet" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 594 793" width="100%" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
      <image height="793" width="594" xlink:href="../Images/cover.jpg"></image>
    </svg>
  </div>

The nomargin and svg_wrapper are (probably) redundant in light of the @page styling but they are left over from when I was having fun using the <g> group tag when playing with rotating images.

.nomargin {
    display: block;
    margin: 0 0 0 0;
    text-align: center;
    }
.svg_wrapper {
    display: block;
    margin: 0 0 0 0;
    padding: 0 0 0 0;
    text-align: center;
    }

The advantage to using an SVG wrapper is that the image will be displayed using as much as possible of the display area. The sizes in the viewbox, height and width are more the aspect ratio and not the image size. Using any representation of the image aspect ratio there works equally well -- 600, 800 or 3, 4 will give the same results.

Regards,
David

That seems really interesting David. Can it be done in batch though?

[Mivo]

Originally Posted by PeterT

On the line that reads Add new plugboard do the following

• In the box Format (choose first) select epub
• in the Device (choose second) box select KOBOTOUCH
• In the Source Template the magic happens . Here you have a lot of options

If I use the Kobo Touch Extended plugin, would I choose that instead of KOBOTOUCH in the device field? I presume so, but wanted to double-check.

Thanks for the instructions -- it's super useful.

[davidfor]

Mivo: Yes, you select the device or driver that matches what you are using. Or, you can select "any device" so that it is used for any device you send books to.

[salinda]

is there a way to translate it for dutch users? i have read this over and over and stil don't get it, my calibre is in dutch, and i am dutch too.