Frequently Asked Questions - Page 9

kovidgoyal · 05-19-2009, 12:36 AM

yes, yes, yes, not yet, not yet

pilotbob · 05-19-2009, 01:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sabardeyn

1) Close all calibre windows.
2) Right click on the calibre system tray icon and choose Quit.
3) Remove calibre using Add/Remove Programs (or the Start Menu option, Uninstall calibre).
4) Once process ends, find and run the updated calibre installation file.

Sure. You don't have to uninstall the current version.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sabardeyn

Will the library metadata be retained., or must it be re-entered when updating?

Yes.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sabardeyn

Can the library path be changed without re-entering the books or metadata? (Assume books are moved to a completely different hard drive and file structure: C:\Books\<author>\<title>.<ext> to G:\Library\Books\<author>\<title>.<ext>.)

Yes.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sabardeyn

Is there any way to group book genre files seperately? Adding a Fiction, Manuals, News or equivalent folder between ...\Books\<author>\ in my example above?

Yes, you can group books by genre, however it in no way affects the way they are stored in your hard drive.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sabardeyn

Similiarly, can authors be grouped alphabetically within a genre? (I've noticed with so many authors my system is slowing down a bit.)

You can select a single genre and sort by author.

BOb

itimpi · 05-19-2009, 02:43 AM

- You can combine steps 1) and 2) by doing CTRL-Q from the main Calibre Window.
- Step 3) is unecessary - simply install the new Calibre release over the old one.

Sabardeyn · 05-20-2009, 01:16 AM

Thanks for the answers. I did check the User Manual and the FAQ and found nothing about installing or updating that would answer those questions.

Kovidgoyal,
I noticed you said "not yet" for the hard drive structure (genre and/or alphabetical folder grouping) questions. Does this mean these things are on your "to do list"?

I'm asking because at the moment I'm looking to generate a fairly large path/tree structure, probably like this:
<Drive>:\eLibrary\<Subject>\<Genre>\<Alphanumeric>\<Author>\<Filenam e. ext>

The eLibrary is meant to be long-term data storage for multiple sets of data. Besides text-based data (fiction, RPGs, manuals, poetry, et al), I'm also going to include manga, music, images, movies, etc. I would prefer to use one structure through out. However, as I stated before, I have noticed that Windows can bog down when dealing with >500 children (folders or files) in a parent.

By using the path structure I outlined above, I'm hoping to avoid this problem. Each finer sort helps to keep the number of sub-folders within an acceptable response time. It might be better for me to consider a file server and/or NAS, but I'm just not that knownledgeable on networks... yet.

I'll have to go read another ebook.

kovidgoyal · 05-20-2009, 01:27 AM

yeah, it's on my todo list, but 500 is really riduculous. Windows really bogs down with only 500 entries in a node?

pepak · 05-20-2009, 01:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Windows really bogs down with only 500 entries in a node?

It depends. But yes, it can happen.

kovidgoyal · 05-20-2009, 02:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pepak

It depends. But yes, it can happen.

is this with ntfs only or fat32 as well?

Sabardeyn · 05-20-2009, 03:54 AM

I'm using WinXP SP3 with an AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual Core processor 4200+ (2.21 Ghz) and 2Gb RAM on SATA 1 hard drive with a NTFS partition.

Windows Explorer is the most robust file management software to use as far as dealing with large numbers of children and system response time. Occasionally when issuing a File Open/Save command, response time will slow down. Other software is not as robust or can CTD from too many nodes.

I must admit I have a humongous library of material I'm storing. When I built this computer system I never imaging I would need so much data storage. But that was also before I was actively collecting some of this stuff.

(BTW, having nothing to do with calibre, I'm looking for any software that allows mass or batch file property changes. I need to add metadata [keywords, tags, authors, artists, dates, etc] to some of the non-book, non-music collections. PM me if you know of anything.)

wodin · 05-20-2009, 02:53 PM

Great program Kovid!

I was wondering, I have a jetBook that supports a hierarchical file structure in the form of AuthorLast, AuthorFirst>Title>FileName.Format

Exactly like Calibre saves files to disk. This format provides the best menu experience, and the only improvement I can think of would be to have a top level folder for genre, but since I tend to confine my reading to one or two genre it doesn’t matter to me.

The question I have is when I save to the removable drive that my jetBook presents to my Vista OS, it saves all of the formats that I have in the library, in my case ePub and PRC. Then I have to open each author folder and delete the unwanted file format. Also since the jetBook only supports USB 1.1, the time necessary to save several hundred books becomes significant, and if I have to save multiple copies it becomes even more unacceptable. Is there a way to specify to only save one format?

Thanks in advance!

kovidgoyal · 05-20-2009, 03:30 PM

There is a save single format option. Also, the 0.6 release of calibre should create a folder structure automatically when sending files to the jetbook via the send to device button.

emellaich · 05-20-2009, 05:22 PM

Regarding the Windows capability to handle multiple files per folder.

I haven't done testing in recent windows applications -- I think my work was way back in win 2000. However, at the time the problems was in Windows ability to do string math. Basically, file names were kept as characters and all the files in a directory were stored by the OS as one long string. As the size of the string became too large, file operations would really slow down. One thing to allow more files was to use shorter file names since this would shorten the total string size.

Also, I'm not sure of my recollection, but I believe the entire path was stored with each file name in the directory. Therefore, anything to make the path shorter (/n/f/r instead of /name/french/revolution) would speed things up considerably.

As I said, I'm not sure if these limitations still exist, but if you are seeing a slow down with the number of nodes then this is something that could be checked.

Michael

kovidgoyal · 05-20-2009, 05:28 PM

Interesting, thanks.

Sabardeyn · 05-21-2009, 05:16 AM

emellaich,

Thanks for the reminder. You are correct

. There does not appear to be any changes for later versions of Windows.

From Wikipedia:

Quote:

Although NTFS allows each path component (directory or filename) to be 255 characters long and paths up to about 32767 characters long, the Windows kernel only supports paths up to 259 characters long

movieking · 06-12-2009, 02:39 PM

Did a search but couldn't find anything, but I am sure the answer is here somewhere.

Let's say I import 50 books via calibre. I know that the files are also copied to the new folder that I specified in the setup. Now let's say I rename a few books, cleaning up tagging errors, etc. Where are the updated files that have been updated? The reason I ask is because I had to switch computers recently, and I took all of my updated books from the output folder after adding it to calibre, but none of the updated information was in the files, only the original names, authors, etc.

Where do I look for the files with the corrected information? I think that I looked in both the original and the destination folders but neither of them had the updated names.

itimpi · 06-12-2009, 03:13 PM

The files that you imported are (as you discovered) unchanged. The updates are held in the Calibre metadata database.

If you want the information in the files to be updated then you export them (Save to Disk) from Calibre. This information would also be updated as part of a "Send to Device" command or if you did a conversion.

05-20-2009, 01:16 AM	#124
Sabardeyn Guru Posts: 644 Karma: 1242364 Join Date: May 2009 Location: The Right Coast Device: PC (Calibre), Nexus 7 2013 (Moon+ Pro), HTC HD2/Leo (Freda)	Thanks for the answers. I did check the User Manual and the FAQ and found nothing about installing or updating that would answer those questions. Kovidgoyal, I noticed you said "not yet" for the hard drive structure (genre and/or alphabetical folder grouping) questions. Does this mean these things are on your "to do list"? I'm asking because at the moment I'm looking to generate a fairly large path/tree structure, probably like this: <Drive>:\eLibrary\<Subject>\<Genre>\<Alphanumeric>\<Author>\<Filenam e. ext> The eLibrary is meant to be long-term data storage for multiple sets of data. Besides text-based data (fiction, RPGs, manuals, poetry, et al), I'm also going to include manga, music, images, movies, etc. I would prefer to use one structure through out. However, as I stated before, I have noticed that Windows can bog down when dealing with >500 children (folders or files) in a parent. By using the path structure I outlined above, I'm hoping to avoid this problem. Each finer sort helps to keep the number of sub-folders within an acceptable response time. It might be better for me to consider a file server and/or NAS, but I'm just not that knownledgeable on networks... yet. I'll have to go read another ebook. Last edited by Sabardeyn; 05-20-2009 at 01:20 AM. Reason: Mistake in post.

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05-19-2009, 12:36 AM	#121
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 45,609 Karma: 28549044 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	yes, yes, yes, not yet, not yet

05-19-2009, 02:43 AM	#123
itimpi Wizard Posts: 4,553 Karma: 950151 Join Date: Nov 2008 Device: Sony PRS-950, iphone/ipad (Marvin/iBooks/QuickReader)	- You can combine steps 1) and 2) by doing CTRL-Q from the main Calibre Window. - Step 3) is unecessary - simply install the new Calibre release over the old one.

05-20-2009, 01:27 AM	#125
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 45,609 Karma: 28549044 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	yeah, it's on my todo list, but 500 is really riduculous. Windows really bogs down with only 500 entries in a node?

05-20-2009, 03:54 AM	#128
Sabardeyn Guru Posts: 644 Karma: 1242364 Join Date: May 2009 Location: The Right Coast Device: PC (Calibre), Nexus 7 2013 (Moon+ Pro), HTC HD2/Leo (Freda)	I'm using WinXP SP3 with an AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual Core processor 4200+ (2.21 Ghz) and 2Gb RAM on SATA 1 hard drive with a NTFS partition. Windows Explorer is the most robust file management software to use as far as dealing with large numbers of children and system response time. Occasionally when issuing a File Open/Save command, response time will slow down. Other software is not as robust or can CTD from too many nodes. I must admit I have a humongous library of material I'm storing. When I built this computer system I never imaging I would need so much data storage. But that was also before I was actively collecting some of this stuff. (BTW, having nothing to do with calibre, I'm looking for any software that allows mass or batch file property changes. I need to add metadata [keywords, tags, authors, artists, dates, etc] to some of the non-book, non-music collections. PM me if you know of anything.)

05-20-2009, 02:53 PM	#129
wodin Illiterate Posts: 10,279 Karma: 37848716 Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: The Sandwich Isles Device: Samsung Galaxy S10+, Microsoft Surface Pro	Great program Kovid! I was wondering, I have a jetBook that supports a hierarchical file structure in the form of AuthorLast, AuthorFirst>Title>FileName.Format Exactly like Calibre saves files to disk. This format provides the best menu experience, and the only improvement I can think of would be to have a top level folder for genre, but since I tend to confine my reading to one or two genre it doesn’t matter to me. The question I have is when I save to the removable drive that my jetBook presents to my Vista OS, it saves all of the formats that I have in the library, in my case ePub and PRC. Then I have to open each author folder and delete the unwanted file format. Also since the jetBook only supports USB 1.1, the time necessary to save several hundred books becomes significant, and if I have to save multiple copies it becomes even more unacceptable. Is there a way to specify to only save one format? Thanks in advance!

05-20-2009, 03:30 PM	#130
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 45,609 Karma: 28549044 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	There is a save single format option. Also, the 0.6 release of calibre should create a folder structure automatically when sending files to the jetbook via the send to device button.

05-20-2009, 05:22 PM	#131
emellaich Wizard Posts: 1,101 Karma: 4388403 Join Date: Oct 2007 Device: Palm>Ebookman>IPaq>Axim>Cybook>Kndl2>IPAD>Kndl3SO>Voyager>Oasis	Regarding the Windows capability to handle multiple files per folder. I haven't done testing in recent windows applications -- I think my work was way back in win 2000. However, at the time the problems was in Windows ability to do string math. Basically, file names were kept as characters and all the files in a directory were stored by the OS as one long string. As the size of the string became too large, file operations would really slow down. One thing to allow more files was to use shorter file names since this would shorten the total string size. Also, I'm not sure of my recollection, but I believe the entire path was stored with each file name in the directory. Therefore, anything to make the path shorter (/n/f/r instead of /name/french/revolution) would speed things up considerably. As I said, I'm not sure if these limitations still exist, but if you are seeing a slow down with the number of nodes then this is something that could be checked. Michael

05-20-2009, 05:28 PM	#132
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 45,609 Karma: 28549044 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	Interesting, thanks.

06-12-2009, 02:39 PM	#134
movieking Member Posts: 23 Karma: 10 Join Date: Dec 2008 Device: Sony 505	Did a search but couldn't find anything, but I am sure the answer is here somewhere. Let's say I import 50 books via calibre. I know that the files are also copied to the new folder that I specified in the setup. Now let's say I rename a few books, cleaning up tagging errors, etc. Where are the updated files that have been updated? The reason I ask is because I had to switch computers recently, and I took all of my updated books from the output folder after adding it to calibre, but none of the updated information was in the files, only the original names, authors, etc. Where do I look for the files with the corrected information? I think that I looked in both the original and the destination folders but neither of them had the updated names.

06-12-2009, 03:13 PM	#135
itimpi Wizard Posts: 4,553 Karma: 950151 Join Date: Nov 2008 Device: Sony PRS-950, iphone/ipad (Marvin/iBooks/QuickReader)	The files that you imported are (as you discovered) unchanged. The updates are held in the Calibre metadata database. If you want the information in the files to be updated then you export them (Save to Disk) from Calibre. This information would also be updated as part of a "Send to Device" command or if you did a conversion.