Setting publication date to year only?

Phssthpok · 05-06-2017, 09:05 AM

If I don't know/don't care what month in a year a book was published, I'd like to be able to set the date to just a year. It doesn't seem to be possible to do this; changing it in the "Edit Metadata" dialog seems to be the only way to change it, and this in turn affects the <dc:date> in the metadata.opf file and the OPF file inside the book itself, but not vice versa. And the "Edit Metadata" dialog only allows either month & year, or "undefined". (What's more, the value of <dc:date> is always set to a full timestamp accurate to the nearest minute, even though the spec allows YYYY or YYY-MM as acceptable formats.)

Has anyone got any idea what I should do?

kovidgoyal · 05-06-2017, 10:18 PM

Since you dont care about the month, simply set it to June.

BetterRed · 05-07-2017, 01:14 AM

There is a tweak to specify the format in which the pubdate, modified, and timestamp columns are displayed, something like Control date display format - I assume for pubdate a format of 'yyyy' would only capture and display the year entered.

Phssthpok · 05-13-2017, 08:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Since you dont care about the month, simply set it to June.

Actually, I've been setting it to January so far, but I'd prefer to just not have it there at all...

Phssthpok · 05-13-2017, 08:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BetterRed

There is a tweak to specify the format in which the pubdate, modified, and timestamp columns are displayed, something like Control date display format - I assume for pubdate a format of 'yyyy' would only capture and display the year entered.

Hah, thanks, that does the trick! Internally, the month/day/hour/minute/second and femtosecond of publication stay the same when the year is changed, but at least I don't have to see any of this spurious detail any more.

05-06-2017, 09:05 AM	#1
Phssthpok Age improves with wine. Posts: 571 Karma: 95229 Join Date: Nov 2014 Device: Kindle Oasis, Kobo Libra II	Setting publication date to year only? If I don't know/don't care what month in a year a book was published, I'd like to be able to set the date to just a year. It doesn't seem to be possible to do this; changing it in the "Edit Metadata" dialog seems to be the only way to change it, and this in turn affects the <dc:date> in the metadata.opf file and the OPF file inside the book itself, but not vice versa. And the "Edit Metadata" dialog only allows either month & year, or "undefined". (What's more, the value of <dc:date> is always set to a full timestamp accurate to the nearest minute, even though the spec allows YYYY or YYY-MM as acceptable formats.) Has anyone got any idea what I should do?

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05-06-2017, 10:18 PM	#2
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 45,156 Karma: 27110894 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	Since you dont care about the month, simply set it to June.

05-07-2017, 01:14 AM	#3
BetterRed null operator (he/him) Posts: 21,607 Karma: 29710338 Join Date: Mar 2012 Location: Sydney Australia Device: none	There is a tweak to specify the format in which the pubdate, modified, and timestamp columns are displayed, something like Control date display format - I assume for pubdate a format of 'yyyy' would only capture and display the year entered.