Combining similar titles when importing

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by starrigger

Whoa! That's dangerous. I just selected a couple of books and pressed M to see what kind of dialogue would come up. <Bing> One of the books vanished. Given how easy it is to hit a key by accident (even if you know to expect that behavior), I'd sure like to see a confirmation dialogue on that. Or a way to disable the keystroke option. Or undo.

There is a long warning dialog. If you aren't seeing it, you've turned it off and will have to turn it back on. (See Prefs|Interface|Behavior|Reset Warning Dialogs)

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by Starson17

I'm confused
If automerge is off, you get a notice only when duplicate titles have been found. The notice comes up regardless of whether the authors match or not. If you allow duplicate titles, you get duplicates, again, regardless of whether the authors match or not. I'm not sure what you mean by "Import both, but don't merge" when automerge is off?



It never merges anything if the autosort/automerge option is off. You get records with titles that match other titles (regardless of author) or not, depending on whether you say yes or no to the warning dialog.

Hm, apparently I was misremembering what happened the last time I did this. (That's the problem with discussing these things from memory.) Okay, I guess what I wanted was--at that point--an option to merge the way automerge would do it. [Dang memory!]

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by Starson17

There is a long warning dialog. If you aren't seeing it, you've turned it off and will have to turn it back on. (See Prefs|Interface|Behavior|Reset Warning Dialogs)

Okay, I reset all warnings and tried again--and yes, I got that warning dialogue. Thanks.

However, I noticed that it merged books into the metadata of the book that was highest in the library listing, not the book that I selected first. I don't think I understand how to control which entry will be the "master" entry.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by starrigger

Hm, apparently I was misremembering what happened the last time I did this. (That's the problem with discussing these things from memory.) Okay, I guess what I wanted was--at that point--an option to merge the way automerge would do it. [Dang memory!]

That's possible, but notice we're talking about different sets of books now.

With autosort off, Calibre has just asked what you want to do with books with duplicate titles. Some of the incoming books may have the same author as existing books. Some may have different authors. Some may have the same formats as books with the same author, some not.

The automerge option uses another list - a subset of the list that Calibre is asking you about, which includes only books with identical authors and identical titles to books already in the library. You can have "an option to merge the way automerge would do it," but you still have to answer Calibre's question about the rest of the books. Do you want the same author/same title/same formats in a new record? Do you want the different author/same title added as a new record? And what if there are duplicates of duplicates in the list Calibre is asking about? Do you want them to be considered as belonging to the subset list for automerge (ignored and not added if they are same format) or are they part of the other list to be handled with whatever answer you give for the rest of the books?

You can achieve pretty much whatever combination you want by adding the books more than once with the option on vs. with it off, depending on the order you take those steps and how you answer the questions.

I thought about a couple of options for changing this, but I didn't want to interfere with what Calibre was already doing with duplicate books. I thought people had expectations about the way it had been working, and I didn't want to change it too much. By leaving the automerge option off by default, I achieved that. Plus, you can see there's some complexity to the differences between the two sets of books being handled by the previous "duplicates" code and the autosort/automerge duplicates code. Trying to explain that difference in the context of option boxes in the dialog became tricky.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by starrigger

I noticed that it merged books into the metadata of the book that was highest in the library listing, not the book that I selected first.

Test again, and if it still fails to merge into the first selected, it's a regression bug and needs to get fixed. I'll look at it when I get a chance, but not for a few hours. (Is anyone else seeing this?)

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by Starson17

Test again, and if it still fails to merge into the first selected, it's a regression bug and needs to get fixed. I'll look at it when I get a chance, but not for a few hours. (Is anyone else seeing this?)

Okay, I tested it again several times with clearly marked entries, and it appears to be doing just what you said. I'll come back to my home spacetime continuum now.

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by Starson17

That's possible, but notice we're talking about different sets of books now.

With autosort off, Calibre has just asked what you want to do with books with duplicate titles. Some of the incoming books may have the same author as existing books. Some may have different authors. Some may have the same formats as books with the same author, some not.

The automerge option uses another list - a subset of the list that Calibre is asking you about, which includes only books with identical authors and identical titles to books already in the library. You can have "an option to merge the way automerge would do it," but you still have to answer Calibre's question about the rest of the books. Do you want the same author/same title/same formats in a new record? Do you want the different author/same title added as a new record? And what if there are duplicates of duplicates in the list Calibre is asking about? Do you want them to be considered as belonging to the subset list for automerge (ignored and not added if they are same format) or are they part of the other list to be handled with whatever answer you give for the rest of the books?

You can achieve pretty much whatever combination you want by adding the books more than once with the option on vs. with it off, depending on the order you take those steps and how you answer the questions.

I thought about a couple of options for changing this, but I didn't want to interfere with what Calibre was already doing with duplicate books. I thought people had expectations about the way it had been working, and I didn't want to change it too much. By leaving the automerge option off by default, I achieved that. Plus, you can see there's some complexity to the differences between the two sets of books being handled by the previous "duplicates" code and the autosort/automerge duplicates code. Trying to explain that difference in the context of option boxes in the dialog became tricky.

Uncle!