Kobo Libra H2O - Calibre driver

[Araucaria]

I've just bought a Kobo Libra H20 as a gift for a friend who's in hospital.

I'm trying to pre-load it with sideloaded books via Calibre, and I'd like the Calibre series information to be preserved. And I've gone through the steps from here -

https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Kob...nd_Collections -

and I have just about what I want. Not quite, as the "Collections" and "Series" on the Libra show the same information in different formats.

My principal question is which Calibre driver do I use: should it be the KoboTouch or the KoboTouchExtended?

And is there in fact a way I can get the Libra to show the series number? I am not all that tech savvy.....

Thanks in advance.

[geek1011]

Based on what you said, you probably want to use KoboTouchExtended.

But, what do you mean when you say you want to "get the Libra to show the series number"? It should show up automatically after you plug it in a second time (if you don't want to have to do that, my NickelSeries mod can make it happen during the initial import).

[davidfor]

I think I just answered the first half of this here.

For the choice between the built-in KoboTouch driver and the KoboTouchExtended driver, it is really about whether you want to read epubs or kepubs. The extended driver transforms epubs to kepubs as the books are sent to the device. There is a lot of discussion of the pros and cons of this. A search of the forum will show the many threads.

[Quoth]

And davidfor has even given the option to use the KoboTouchExtended with kepub on the fly conversion turned off.

Certainly there are pros and cons of epub vs kepub. One aspect is to know what a newly created ebook might be like on other epub ereaders, epub apps and even to an extent Kindles, as Amazon KDP accepts epub2 uploads. AFAIK the kepub is purely Kobo?

Also important is KoboUtilities to fetch annotations for one book and check / backup the kobo ereader database.

[Quoth]

Oh, and you need to eject and re-connect after transfer to get the series to be recognised by the Kobo. Assuming you have entered the series name and numbers in the Calibre column.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Oh, and you need to eject and re-connect after transfer to get the series to be recognised by the Kobo. Assuming you have entered the series name and numbers in the Calibre column.

This is where NickelMenu comes in very handy. You can program it to allow bringing up the USB problem to connect again without unplugging the USB cable. So you can reconnect with no cable pull.

Here are the NickellMenu USB config lines I use.

menu_item : main : USB : nickel_misc : force_usb_connection
menu_item : reader : USB : nickel_misc : force_usb_connection
menu_item : library : USB : nickel_misc : force_usb_connection

To see how to use NickelMenu, see the thread on NickelMenu.

[Araucaria]

Originally Posted by geek1011

Based on what you said, you probably want to use KoboTouchExtended.

But, what do you mean when you say you want to "get the Libra to show the series number"? It should show up automatically after you plug it in a second time (if you don't want to have to do that, my NickelSeries mod can make it happen during the initial import).

Thanks Geek1011, you made me look again, and I see the series numbers are there. My excuse for not noticing them (leaving aside the obvious one of mere stupidity) is that as Kindle will only do collections for books you've bought from Amazon - in my case about 1% of the books I have - I got into the habit of inserting series numbers into the book title. These show up big and black on the Kobo, while the automatically generated ones are small and grey.

You must despair of users like me sometimes....

But now I am really impressed with the way Calibre handles this on Kobo.

And for at least one feature (dispensing with the need to eject, unplug, replug) I will try installing your NickelMenu: you have a lot of very good reviews.

Can I just ask one question before I do, that might save me from going through all 21 pages of the NickelMenu thread?

Does it only affect the way my copy of Calibre behaves to this (and other) kobos? I am giving the Kobo to a friend: he's in the UK and I'm normally in France and I wonder whether the NickelMenu will "show" on his Kobo once I'm no longer connecting it to my laptop. I'd prefer what he has to be a more or less standard Kobo.

Thanks very much.

[geek1011]

Originally Posted by Araucaria

And for at least one feature (dispensing with the need to eject, unplug, replug) I will try installing your NickelMenu: you have a lot of very good reviews.

If you want it to be unobtrusive, you can add "menu_item:library:USB:nickel_misc:force_usb_conne ction" to a new file named ".adds/nm/config". Then, it will show up as another menu item in the three-dot menu in the top-right of the library. I don't currently have a way to hide the main menu, but I guess I could add an experimental option for that for the next version. Try it and see if you like it the way it is, since I personally believe the bottom nav looks better with the menu.

If you just want series metadata, though, I'd actually recommend trying my NickelSeries mod. It's completely automatic, and it won't conflict with Calibre at all.

[shalym]

Originally Posted by Araucaria

Thanks Geek1011, you made me look again, and I see the series numbers are there. My excuse for not noticing them (leaving aside the obvious one of mere stupidity) is that as Kindle will only do collections for books you've bought from Amazon - in my case about 1% of the books I have - I got into the habit of inserting series numbers into the book title. These show up big and black on the Kobo, while the automatically generated ones are small and grey.

You must despair of users like me sometimes....

But now I am really impressed with the way Calibre handles this on Kobo.

And for at least one feature (dispensing with the need to eject, unplug, replug) I will try installing your NickelMenu: you have a lot of very good reviews.

Can I just ask one question before I do, that might save me from going through all 21 pages of the NickelMenu thread?

Does it only affect the way my copy of Calibre behaves to this (and other) kobos? I am giving the Kobo to a friend: he's in the UK and I'm normally in France and I wonder whether the NickelMenu will "show" on his Kobo once I'm no longer connecting it to my laptop. I'd prefer what he has to be a more or less standard Kobo.

Thanks very much.

I know that this is the Kobo forum, and this may not be welcome here, but I do want to point out that you can put non-Amazon books into collections, and have always been able to. If the books are sideloaded over USB, then they have to be put into the collections on the device, but if they are sideloaded by uploading them to your Kindle cloud, you can add them to collections on your computer, and they will show in the collections on your device.

Shari