V3.23: Cannot find new Kobo driver feature

[DrChiper]

"Kobo driver: Add an option to not maintain bookmarks/read status/etc. when resending a book already on the device."

I seem to have mislaid that new feature as I cannot find it. Can somebody here?

[Terisa de morgan]

Could it be: Do no treat replacement as new book? I don't remember it... and it's not translated

[DrChiper]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

Could it be: Do no treat replacement as new book? I don't remember it... and it's not translated

Perhaps, but as it is according to the change log a "Bug fix" , but also "a [new] option", I doubt whether it is seen before.
That said, I'm known to have had it wrong before , hence my question.

[kovidgoyal]

It's called "Do not treat replacements as new books" and is to be found under the Collections, covers and uploads tab of the Kobo Touch driver customization dialog.

[DrChiper]

Found it

[davidfor]

Yes, that is the new option. But, I wasn't expecting it to be listed as a bug fix.

The option is actually how the driver has always worked. I have just added a way to turn it off.

The reasoning is:

If you manually replace a book, the device will remove the existing details it has for the book and then import it as a new book. Hence, it will be unread, won't have series info and won't be in any collections.

The KoboTouch driver has always tried to prevent this. When you send a book to replace an existing one it makes a change to the database to prevent the device from deciding it is a new book. That keeps the reading status, series info and collections.

I have always thought this was the more useful behaviour as I frequently edit books to fix spelling and layout. And, if you needed the standard Kobo behaviour, you could delete the book before resending it. I added the option because there have been a few comments recently that made me realise it should be an option. And I knew it wasn't going to be hard to add. It defaults to on because that keeps the behaviour of the previous versions of the driver.

And if anyone can write a better name for the option or a better tooltip, I would be very happy to use it.

[kovidgoyal]

It was listed under bug fixes accidentally It should be under new features.

[DrChiper]

Originally Posted by davidfor

If you manually replace a book, the device will remove the existing details it has for the book and then import it as a new book. Hence, it will be unread, won't have series info and won't be in any collections.

The KoboTouch driver has always tried to prevent this. When you send a book to replace an existing one it makes a change to the database to prevent the device from deciding it is a new book. That keeps the reading status, series info and collections.

It also seemed to preserve notes, which I did not wanted. So in the past, I made the replacement of a book in a 3-step way:

1. delete the book
2. disconnect/reconnect
3. add (new version of) the book

So I assume that unchecking this option will automatically reset now all database entries for the book, right?

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by DrChiper

It also seemed to preserve notes, which I did not wanted. So in the past, I made the replacement of a book in a 3-step way:

1. delete the book
2. disconnect/reconnect
3. add (new version of) the book

So I assume that unchecking this option will automatically reset now all database entries for the book, right?

Effectively, yes. But, the driver doesn't do it. It lets the device handle the book how it wants to.

But, there annotations might come back. For epubs, these are stored in two places. In the database and in a file in the "Digital Editions" directory. That file doesn't get deleted and will be read when you open the book.

[DrChiper]

Yes, I can see loads of orphaned files in the "Digital Editions" directory, but they do not contain any notes anymore when the epub files are removed from Kobo. So that will not cause any problems on reloading books I guess.