Plugboards not working on KindleGen 2.9 MOBI's

[Katsunami]

Some EPUB files seem to be too large for Calibre's AZW3 output plugin; one notable example are the HUGE ebooks created by DelphiClassics.com.

To save myself the work of splitting them up, I've written a small batch script that uses KindleGen 2.9 to convert the books, and KindleStrip 1.35 to remove the included EPUB source.

The books work fine in Calibre, and on my Kindle Paperwhite, except for one little thing.

I like to have the Count Pages page number behind the title, and the series in the Author field, so I've created a plugboard to do this. It works well on AZW3 files, and on MOBI files created by Calibre itself.

It seems it doesn't work on MOBI files created by KindleGen. Calibre's viewer says that these files are of the type "KF8:Joint". (Containing both AZW3 and MOBI versions, I suppose.)

Is it expected behaviour that the plugboard does not work on these KindleGen MOBI / KF8:Joint files?

Would it be "dangerous" if I just renamed the KindleGen MOBI to AZW3 before importing to Calibre? (With dangerous I mean: could I make calibre crash and corrupt the database, or freeze the e-reader in the middle of reading a book, for example.)

edit: Renaming has no effect. Calibre still sees that the file is a MOBI and treats it as such.

PS: Page numbers themselves (displayed when touching the menu part of the screen) still work fine, which is the most important thing.

This is not an important problem for me, because normally, I don't use KindleGen or the MOBI / KF8:Joint format. The only reason why I'm using it now is because Calibre can't convert the DelphiClassics books to AZW3 without splitting them up into 2-4 volumes first. Because Delphi updates their books once in a while, I would need to do the splitup each time a book is updated, and I don't like that prospect.

If it would take some sort of weird acrobatics or a lot of time to get the plugboards to work on the KindleGen MOBI's, then don't bother about it on my behalf.

[Katsunami]

Forget about it.

Yesterday I've re-installed my Calibre plugins/settings in an attempt to resolve a crash-problem. I forgot about KindleUnpack. I've installed it and it can dump the AZW3 file from the KindleGen MOBI into a folder. After re-importing these into the library, the plugboards work on them.

I've downloaded KindleUnpack Version 62 (not the plugin but the scripts), and replaced KindleStrip with KindleUnpack in my batch script to immediately get the AZW3's.

[kovidgoyal]

Updating metadata in general does not work for joint mobi/kf8 files. plugboards are a special case of that.