Proper Casing on Metadata Searches

[Gary_M_Mugford]

Hi all,

I've unchecked the box that overrules author name and book title over-writing when importing metadata, which is a spectacularly good tool. Most of the time, it's not because it's replacing Great Book with Great Book: The Novel. It's because it's replacing Great Book With Long Title with Great book with long title.

It's a matter of preference, but I like my book titles proper cased. And I type it in, in proper case, only to have the search screw it up again. I know that there is probably NOT a setting to have the search auto-Proper Case book information on retrieval, but I thought I'd ask.

If such a preference check box does not exist, what is the process for making a feature request. I know from the programming that I do that it's a couple of lines of code to implement when either filling the grid in the metadata search window or upon import into the calibre database.

Thanks in advance, GM

[Worldwalker]

The feature request would be done through the bug tracker.

Casing is more of a problem than you realize, though, because Calibre is used worldwide. Proper casing in English is probably totally wrong in some other language, so it would be necessary to check locale and case accordingly ... and even that would blow up if the book happens to be in a non-local language. Whether there's some handy library function somewhere that takes care of this, I don't know, but if there isn't, it's non-trivial.

I share your frustration with the metadata, though. I uncheck loading author/title metadata, which keeps it mostly under control, but grit my teeth and growl at the screen when it doesn't.

[Gary_M_Mugford]

You caught me being English-centric. While I have functions to do proper-casing within my own library, it's because of the program being for local businesses with no chance of it ever needing non-English handling. Never considered the issue as it relates to other languages.

Guess I will forego the request.

Thanks for pointing it out, GM

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Gary_M_Mugford

You caught me being English-centric. While I have functions to do proper-casing within my own library, it's because of the program being for local businesses with no chance of it ever needing non-English handling. Never considered the issue as it relates to other languages.

Guess I will forego the request.

Thanks for pointing it out, GM

Right click on the title field.
Choose your poison.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by Gary_M_Mugford

It's a matter of preference, but I like my book titles proper cased. And I type it in, in proper case, only to have the search screw it up again.

As you know you can uncheck Overwrite author and title by default on the Preferences - General page. But for those times when you end up without proper case follow theducks advice below.

Originally Posted by theducks

Right click on the title field.
Choose your poison.

If you right click on any field that is ready to be edited, you will get the option to change case (see attached). It's not automatic but it is easier then retyping it.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by Gary_M_Mugford

I've unchecked the box that overrules author name and book title over-writing when importing metadata, which is a spectacularly good tool.

I'm glad you like it. It's the first bit of code I wrote for Calibre. It got me started looking into the Calibre code base.

Most of the time, it's not because it's replacing Great Book with Great Book: The Novel. It's because it's replacing Great Book With Long Title with Great book with long title.

Yes, improper casing in my books was also an important reason I wrote that bit of code.

It's a matter of preference, but I like my book titles proper cased. And I type it in, in proper case, only to have the search screw it up again.

I'm confused. If you have the option turned off, it shouldn't be changing what you type in. That's what it's for.

I know that there is probably NOT a setting to have the search auto-Proper Case book information on retrieval, but I thought I'd ask.

I suppose you're thinking about where you override the default (I hope you like that feature, too - I found it convenient to add the override to the fetch page so you could overwrite or not regardless of your default setting.) I figured if you are overwriting, then you should overwrite, if you are not overwriting, Calibre shouldn't touch what you typed.

Auto-correcting of case is not trivial for a program that supports non-English users, but you can request it. Part of the problem was option-creep. You may have noticed that you can overwrite author/title as a pair, but not overwrite the author, but not the title. It would have been easy to add two separate option boxes. I could also have added option boxes for publisher, dates, etc. Kovid rightly has a concern about too many option boxes being confusing, and I'm not sure whether he would add another to attempt to autocorrect title case.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by dwanthny

If you right click on any field that is ready to be edited, you will get the option to change case (see attached). It's not automatic but it is easier then retyping it.

Cool! I didn't know that was there.

[Worldwalker]

I didn't know about that either. Calibre is starting to remind me of one of those old castles you meet in fantasy novels, where there's some new secret around every corner ... a locked room here, a hidden staircase there ... new features keep popping out of the woodwork.

One of these days, I need to sit down and really read the manual, end to end, to at least catch up on the current state of features before the next build full of nifty new ones shows up.

[Gary_M_Mugford]

Originally Posted by dwanthny

If you right click on any field that is ready to be edited, you will get the option to change case (see attached). It's not automatic but it is easier then retyping it.

Very nice to know. It's enough of a solution that I'm thinking of once again enabling over-write of title/author.

Appreciate this very much. Thanks. GM