Nested Collections?

[therful]

Is there any way to have nested collections? The way I generally sort my books is Author > Series > Books. Is this at all possible to do on the kobo without having to resort to including series information in the book name?
I have a Glow HD running firmware 3.15.0.

[barobach_so]

hi
take a look at this, maybe help you

[therful]

Originally Posted by barobach_so

hi
take a look at this, maybe help you

Thanks, I guess that's my best option.

[eschwartz]

The Kindle "supports" nested collections, possibly the only device to do so. Of course, by "support" I mean "use the Collections Manager kindlet hack on a jailbroken Kindle". Also, only Kindle firmwares earlier than 5.4.2 can do this -- that's when Amazon closed the loophole.

This is one of numerous little issues that absolutely no company seems to get.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

The Kindle "supports" nested collections, possibly the only device to do so.

Not really the only. Sony with PRS+ supports it too...

[meeera]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

Not really the only. Sony with PRS+ supports it too...

Since we are including tweaks, so do Kobos via Koreader I believe, no jailbreak required.

[eschwartz]

Are we talking nested collections, or directory structure?

You can tell the difference because nested collections support having a book in multiple (nested?) collections, rather than a single hierarchical directory structure.

KOReader does directory structure AFAIR, dunno about PRS+ as I never had a Sony.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Are we talking nested collections, or directory structure?

Nested collections in Sony. I can say that because I pestered the developer to get them

[therful]

Hmm, I wonder if it would be possible to have 'links' to other collections inside collections. How are these things stored?

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

Nested collections in Sony. I can say that because I pestered the developer to get them

Nice! Too bad you can't lean on Amazon as well...

Originally Posted by therful

Hmm, I wonder if it would be possible to have 'links' to other collections inside collections. How are these things stored?

That is exactly how it was done on the Kindle, and since no one has arranged to do the same on the Kobo, I suspect it wasn't possible.

[therful]

So I poked around in the KoboReader.sqlite and it seems like it isn't possible because the shelf doesn't have a ContentID. I tried adding a record into the table 'ShelfContent' using the ID from 'Shelf' as the ContentID, and adding it into 'content' the same way, imitating a book in most of the other columns. When I turned it on it just said "Unknown book".
It seems like it won't work because the shelves have no actual location for the ContentID (e.g. file:///mnt/onboard/kbmenupngs/exit_nickel.png).

Anyone have any ideas?

[davidfor]

That is correct. The collections are virtual and defined using the database. They are very simple in definition and do not support any sort of nesting. Each is simply a list of books that are in the collection.

[compurandom]

> The collections are virtual and defined using the database.

If the collections are defined in the database, then why does it take so long to open the list of collections? Don't they have the collection table indexed or something?

(~2500 books, maybe 150 collections)

And I don't see why they couldn't implement nested collections in a directory hierarchy structure, as long as you can still put one book in multiple collections. Calibre and sony both do it that way, just put a separator character in the collection name, and then collapse similar prefixes in the collection list.

Another alternative that would make me even happier than nested collections would be multiple collection searches -- search for books in all of two or more categories. And that would be trivial to implement -- just more items in the sqlite query. Heck, I'd even be happy if I was limited to exactly one or two categories, as long as it didn't take twice as long as now to build the list and it saved a home tile with the combo.

But, then, the collection list is already abysmally slow to come up, and they don't do hierarchical TOC's in pdf's or epubs anyway. (I blame half of that on adobe, of course. Amazing adobe can't follow their own standards.)

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by compurandom

> The collections are virtual and defined using the database.

If the collections are defined in the database, then why does it take so long to open the list of collections? Don't they have the collection table indexed or something?

(~2500 books, maybe 150 collections)

I'm with you on this, I'm surprised at how slow this is. But, without seeing the code, I can't guess why. Of course, the number of people with that number of books and collections is probably very small. My bet would be that most users have less than two screens worth of collections. And unless you use calibre putting the books into collections takes a lot of work.

And I don't see why they couldn't implement nested collections in a directory hierarchy structure, as long as you can still put one book in multiple collections. Calibre and sony both do it that way, just put a separator character in the collection name, and then collapse similar prefixes in the collection list.

Another alternative that would make me even happier than nested collections would be multiple collection searches -- search for books in all of two or more categories. And that would be trivial to implement -- just more items in the sqlite query. Heck, I'd even be happy if I was limited to exactly one or two categories, as long as it didn't take twice as long as now to build the list and it saved a home tile with the combo.

But, then, the collection list is already abysmally slow to come up, and they don't do hierarchical TOC's in pdf's or epubs anyway. (I blame half of that on adobe, of course. Amazing adobe can't follow their own standards.)

Of course they could do this. But, it is their decision whether to. And they will mainly do things that will benefit a lot of users (or make more money for Kobo). How many people do you think would actually use multiple levels of collections? Personally, I wouldn't and I suspect very few would. If that is Kobo's opinion, they will spend their development time in other areas. I can rattle of a list of things that I would want to see a long time before this.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by davidfor

How many people do you think would actually use multiple levels of collections? Personally, I wouldn't and I suspect very few would.

Personally I much prefer the flexibility of tags, where each book can have a multiplicity of tags. I use series, genre, author, priority of reading, and a couple or three other things for my tags. (Not all series and all authors; selected ones. The rest I can easily find with Search.)