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

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Samanthaaaa

Hello, I was wondering is there anyway to add a single 'book' to multiple shelves?

And also, is there anyway to automatically place books into a shelf based on the information of another column, such a 'Word Count'?

Yes to both of these. If you read the first post, it has the example of a custom column called "#myshelves". This is a tag-type column. To have multiple shelves, enter the names separated by commas.

The other example used is the "series" column. But, it could be most columns in calibre. A numeric column, like I would expect a word count to be, will work.

[Samanthaaaa]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Yes to both of these. If you read the first post, it has the example of a custom column called "#myshelves". This is a tag-type column. To have multiple shelves, enter the names separated by commas.

The other example used is the "series" column. But, it could be most columns in calibre. A numeric column, like I would expect a word count to be, will work.

Thank you David. I don't know if this will veer going a little off-topic now and maybe I need to cross-post in the 'Count Pages' thread too... But I want to create a few bookshelves which sort my 'books' into shelves based on the value of the word count. For example shelves with the title: 'Greater than 20,000 words', 'Greater than 50,000 words', 'Greater than 100,000 Words' etc.

How would I go about this? (And if this is beyond the knowledge of this thread, please tell me to post it else-where).

Thanks again.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Samanthaaaa

Thank you David. I don't know if this will veer going a little off-topic now and maybe I need to cross-post in the 'Count Pages' thread too... But I want to create a few bookshelves which sort my 'books' into shelves based on the value of the word count. For example shelves with the title: 'Greater than 20,000 words', 'Greater than 50,000 words', 'Greater than 100,000 Words' etc.

How would I go about this? (And if this is beyond the knowledge of this thread, please tell me to post it else-where).

That's not off-topic at all, and it is quite a good idea. I haven't created shelves like that, but I have my word count column colour coded to indicate "Novel", "Novella" etc.

To do something like this, you need a custom column that uses a template to generate the name of the shelf. The following should work:

Lookup Name:    wordsshelfname
Column Heading: Words Shelf Name
Type:               Column built from other columns
Template: {#words:'cmp($, 100000, cmp($, 50000, cmp($, 20000, '', 'Greater than 20,000 words', 'Greater than 20,000 words'), 'Greater than 50,000 words', 'Greater than 50,000 words'), 'Greater than 100,000 Words', 'Greater than 100,000 Words')'}

Then add "#wordsshelfname" into the shelf column name field of the driver configuration.

You can change the names to what you want. And the "#words" is the lookup name of your word count column.

If you want to add more divisions of the shelves, it isn't hard. But, it might be an idea to look at a slightly different way of doing it. The templates can be put elsewhere, so that they can be reused more easily.

[embryo]

Originally Posted by davidfor

To do something like this, you need a custom column that uses a template to generate the name of the shelf. The following should work:

Lookup Name:    wordsshelfname
Column Heading: Words Shelf Name
Type:               Column built from other columns
Template: {#words:'cmp($, 100000, cmp($, 50000, cmp($, 20000, '', 'Greater than 20,000 words', 'Greater than 20,000 words'), 'Greater than 50,000 words', 'Greater than 50,000 words'), 'Greater than 100,000 Words', 'Greater than 100,000 Words')'}

Then add "#wordsshelfname" into the shelf column name field of the driver configuration.

That is a nice idea.
There is this thing though.
When I have the formating like this: {0:,} I get a "TEMPLATE ERROR invalid literal for float(): 54,916"
It works only if I change the formating to {0}, but then, the word count number is more difficult to be read.
There is this "re()" function I've read about, but since I don't know anything about programing, I don't know how to implement it. I'm experimenting, but ...
Any thoughts?

[kgn]

I setup my Kobo Aura HD using the settings on the first post in this thread. That works just fine as far as it goes. What I REALLY want to do though is emulate the folder structure of my Pocketbook, which is like this....

author_sort[1] / author_sort/ series / series_no - title

ie C / Cussler, Clive / Numa Files / 01 - Sahara.epub
ie at the top level I have the collections A - Z. Inside each letter I have all the authors with names that start with that letter. Inside the folder for each author I have a folder for each series, plus all the books that are not in a series.

In the Kobo I have no problem making up a Shelf (Collection) for any one or all of these. But that is no good at all as you then get hundreds of collections. What needs to happen (I presume) is that you need to be able to create a collection inside another collection.

Is this possible?

[PeterT]

Nope. Collections are not nestable

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by embryo

That is a nice idea.
There is this thing though.
When I have the formating like this: {0:,} I get a "TEMPLATE ERROR invalid literal for float(): 54,916"
It works only if I change the formating to {0}, but then, the word count number is more difficult to be read.
There is this "re()" function I've read about, but since I don't know anything about programing, I don't know how to implement it. I'm experimenting, but ...
Any thoughts?

I did notice that, but I cheated and removed the formatting of the number

I had a look through the list of template functions and found "raw_field". That returns the raw value of a column. Using that, the following works:

{:'cmp(raw_field('#words'), 40000, cmp(raw_field('#words'), 17500, cmp(raw_field('#words'), 7500, '', 'Novelette', 'Novelette'), 'Novella', 'Novella'), 'Novel', 'Novel')'}

Doing the same thing in program mode is:

program: 
words=raw_field('#words');
shelf_name=cmp(words, 40000, cmp(words, 17500, cmp(words, 7500, '', 'Novelette', 'Novelette'), 'Novella', 'Novella'), 'Novel', 'Novel');

That's still pretty unreadable. A lot better is:

program: 
words=raw_field('#words');
shelf_name=cmp(words, 7500, '', 'Novelette', 'Novelette');
shelf_name=cmp(words, 17500, shelf_name, 'Novella', 'Novella');
shelf_name=cmp(words, 40000, shelf_name, 'Novel', 'Novel');

And something I hadn't realised before is that the template for this type of column can be changed from the library list. Click in the column to select it, and then either click again or press F2 to open an editor on the template. When changing the template, it is tested using the selected book and the results are shown.

[embryo]

Originally Posted by davidfor

I had a look through the list of template functions and found "raw_field". That returns the raw value of a column. Using that, the following works

It works perfectly, thank you.

And something I hadn't realised before is that the template for this type of column can be changed from the library list. Click in the column to select it, and then either click again or press F2 to open an editor on the template. When changing the template, it is tested using the selected book and the results are shown.

Thats a interesting tip.

And since we are at this, do you have any idea about a way to convert the values of this column (or any column) to tags?
Not a way to send them to a Kobo device, but in the tag column inside Calibre.
I did a search and didn't came up with anything useful...

TIA

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by embryo

It works perfectly, thank you.

Good to hear.

And since we are at this, do you have any idea about a way to convert the values of this column (or any column) to tags?
Not a way to send them to a Kobo device, but in the tag column inside Calibre.
I did a search and didn't came up with anything useful...

TIA

Looks like you can do it with:

list_re(src_list, separator, search_re, opt_replace)

I can only get it working in program mode. I think the following does what you want using the word count as the input.

program:
list_re(field('#words'), ',', '.*', '')

It gives results that look like "43, 102". Then I can use "list_item" to retrieve a single item from that list.

[embryo]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Looks like you can do it with:

list_re(src_list, separator, search_re, opt_replace)

I can only get it working in program mode. I think the following does what you want using the word count as the input.

program:
list_re(field('#words'), ',', '.*', '')

It gives results that look like "43, 102". Then I can use "list_item" to retrieve a single item from that list.

Hmm... I can use the code to create another column that gets the values from my "word group" column, but what I wanted to do is to automatically add that value to the original Tags column, so I could add it inside the epub as metadata.

Maybe I didn't express it very well, or maybe you already answer me and I can't understand it because of my programming ignorance. Sorry about that.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by embryo

Hmm... I can use the code to create another column that gets the values from my "word group" column, but what I wanted to do is to automatically add that value to the original Tags column, so I could add it inside the epub as metadata.

Maybe I didn't express it very well, or maybe you already answer me and I can't understand it because of my programming ignorance. Sorry about that.

I can't think of a way to update the tags column like that. But, you could update the tags in the book when sending the book to the device.

The following will return a list like you want.

program:
list_union(field('tags'), list_re(field('#words'), ',', '.*', ''), ',')

You use this with a plugboard for sending epubs to the device. Put the code into the "Source template" of the plugboard and select "tags" as the "Destination field". And save the plugboard.

When you send the book to the device, the tags in the metadata will be updated. You can also use this for save to disk.

I'm not sure if that is what you want. I'm also not sure if there is any real point doing it. The Kobo devices do not use the tags.

[embryo]

Originally Posted by davidfor

I'm not sure if that is what you want. I'm also not sure if there is any real point doing it. The Kobo devices do not use the tags.

Well, what I'm trying to do is to embed the "book size information", that I get out of word count, to the epub itself, so it is "device independent".
Not a big deal, because I can add that manually.
I was just thinking the "auto way" (lazy?)

Thank you for your help.

[davidfor]

In that case, the plugboard will work. The version of the book in the calibre library won't have it in the file. But, using send to device or save to disk will update the tags for any reader that does show the tags.

An alternative is to add a jacket. These are added as a page after the cover with a copy of the metadata. I haven't done it, but I believe the template used can be customised to include different metadata fields. For that, have a look at the calibre help, or ask in the calibre forum.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by davidfor

In that case, the plugboard will work. The version of the book in the calibre library won't have it in the file. But, using send to device or save to disk will update the tags for any reader that does show the tags.

An alternative is to add a jacket. These are added as a page after the cover with a copy of the metadata. I haven't done it, but I believe the template used can be customised to include different metadata fields. For that, have a look at the calibre help, or ask in the calibre forum.

Yes, it can be totally customized, but you have to add/regenerate it after adding the custom info and before sending it to device.

[inthemood]

Hello,

Is there a way to have the bookshelves (which become "collections" in the Kobo Aura) show up in alphabetical order on the Kobo Aura. When I do it, the order seems totally random, making it hard to search. I use the bookshelf feature in calibre to, in effect, make folders to classify the books by their author.
Thank you.