My Metamess - Frustrated 50 year old user

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by AZBooks

OK. We'll switch to using Calibre and it's library system. It appears Calibre creates and reads an OPF file inserted into the book folder. How do I update the metadata of every book file in the Calibre Library...so if I grab one from there and send to my sister, it will have the updated metadata/cover. Should I "Polish" every book and checkboxes for metadata, cover, and book jacket?

Also, what are the newly inserted numbers at the end of the folder names of the books? I am now working on our audiobooks, started a new thread on folder locations.

I prefer that the files in the calibre folder reflect the current state of play, so I always run the EPUB through Modify immediately after updating the metadata, downloading a new cover etc. I use Modify in preference to Polish because it has a couple of checkboxes that Polish doesn't have, and I've hacked Modify to put the jacket at the back of the book.

To send a book to someone, I press O on the keyboard, right click the relevant file(s), and select Send To/<whatever> For people such as my sister I have a 4Melanie folder in my Send To folder. When I write to Melanie I will zip up the ../Send To/4Melanie folder and attach it to the email, if its big I'll upload it to our shared FTP account and let her know that its there.

That's what I've been doing with pictures, press clippings, videos urls, etc for the past 20 odd years - why would I do anything different with ebooks.

BR

[dickloraine]

Originally Posted by AZBooks

OK. We'll switch to using Calibre and it's library system. It appears Calibre creates and reads an OPF file inserted into the book folder. How do I update the metadata of every book file in the Calibre Library ... Should I "Polish" every book and checkboxes for metadata, cover, and book jacket?

It is not bad to do this. So your files have the metdata too. If I'm not wrong, the opf files inside the folders are for database recovery only. All the infos are in the metadata.db also, which is used for the database. If this file gets corrupted, you could restore it thanks to the opfs in the folders. If you also polish the books, another layer of security is there, beecause you could reimport these files also.

Originally Posted by AZBooks

so if I grab one from there and send to my sister, it will have the updated metadata/cover. Should I "Polish" every book and checkboxes for metadata, cover, and book jacket?

If you export files ( or send them to your device) through calibre (which is the best and easiest way), the metadata is updated in the exported files.

Polishing every books is a good way to gain another level of security and is important, if you would copy the files without calibre or if you sometime in the future switch from calibre to another software. But exporting to disc with a template would then be the even better option.

Just think of calibre as a database and as your new explorer for books. Folder structure is nothing you are concerned with anymore. Just import your books to calibre and then use calibre to do things with the books (like exporting, sending to a device etc.).

There are many (maybe overwhelming many) things you can do with calibre in addition. Maybe some plugins are of interest for you. Custom columns are easy too and you could use them to store for example if you (or your wife or your sister) has read a book.

[AZBooks]

Thanks all. We do appreciate the advice. However, this thread is aiming in the wrong direction..obviously lot's of passion about Calibre's feature set.

For anyone with a very large family or large network of friends...rolling out a new tool is a massive headache. You become the trainer and IT guy for EVERYONE, at all times of the DAY & NIGHT. You become the contact for it's updates, lack of features, how features work, their "shrink" when frustrated...and so on. The simple need of updating book metadata doesn't warrant rolling out software to everyone's laptop, box, etc.

Just the addition of a new and unknown file type (OPF) in our book folders will cause enough issues with family members.
Dad what are these files for?
What does it do?
Why can't I open it?
Dad why can't Mom and I have that software for those OPF files?
Dad I found software that read those OPF files!
Dad I installed an open source app that reads OPF files.
Dad my PC is freezing up now!
Dad can I get a new laptop?
Get the picture?

I will try to figure out the difference between:
Save to Disk .vs "Modify" .vs "Polish"
...all 3 suggested as the best way to save metadata to the file.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by AZBooks

Thanks all. We do appreciate the advice. However, this thread is aiming in the wrong direction..obviously lot's of passion about Calibre's feature set.

Just the addition of a new and unknown file type (OPF) in our book folders will cause enough issues with family members.

I will try to figure out the difference between:
Save to Disk .vs "Modify" .vs "Polish"
...all 3 suggested as the best way to save metadata to the file.

@AZBooks, I hear your frustration - but there is no best way in Calibre, just different ways - one could criticise it for having too many ways.

I hope you wont take offence at some advice from someone old enough to be your father But you may be better off asking specific questions about specific features rather than general 'what's the best way' style of questions.

I don't use Save to Disk often but I keep it simple - see below for my Save to Disk settings. The net result of those settings is Author folders that only contain epub files whose file names are the same as those in the Calibre library.

Why I use Modify - to get rid of redundant embedded artefacts including the cover! And to position the book jacket at the back of the book - the latter's done via a hack to the Modify PI. The only alternatives I can think of are, edit the EPUBS with Sigil, or use Calibres Tweak Books and edit the HTML. I can do Modify with MenuKey->UpArrow->Enter->Enter.

And as I also said, I just prefer to have the current metadata in the format files in the book folder without having to export the book via - Send to Device, Save to Folder or Send in an Email - none of which I ordinarily use.

Before I discovered Modify, I used Save to Disk to get an epub with the up to date metadata onto the desktop, then I drag dropped that file back to Book Details, and deleted it from my desktop

I did not come to Calibre with a predefined set of detailed requirements, they've evolved both because of externalities and because of what I've learnt about Calibres features and their possibilities.

Example : as a result of a chance comment by theducks I recently I discovered how to insert custom columns into book jackets - up until then I regarded book jackets as useless. But when I saw the result, I said to myself "I don't want this at the front of the book, I want it at the back of the book", so I bit the bullet and hacked the plugin - removed 3 or 4 lines of code.

BR

[Adoby]

While it may be difficult to tell you what would be "good practice" for you, it is possible to give you an example of what is bad practice.

Don't access the books from inside the calibre library. That is dangerous and confusing, since the library is not meant to be used directly. It is possible, but not recommended.

The reasons are that the library structure is hardwired into the calibre software, and the library contains information that is only meant to be used by the calibre software. For instance the paths and the filenames are most likely unsuitable for direct use. There are numeric id inside parentheses. There are cover files and backup data for recovery (.opf). The filenames may be abbreviated in a weird way. And even very minor manual changes to any file, path or filename may result in data loss, if you are unlucky. Stay out! If you ignore this, make sure you have a recent backup of the calibre library, and be prepared to restore that backup.

Also the book files inside the calibre library may not be updated with the latest metadata. One reason is that some book formats don't allow all metadata to be stored inside them, another is that updates of metadata in calibre are optimized by the use of "lazy updates". That means that minor changes of metadata are usually NOT stored in the books inside the calibre library. They are only stored in a central database file, metadata.db. The reason is that it would be very expensive/slow to update the metadata inside the books all the time, even if the format allowed the metadata to be stored. They book files would have to be copied, unzipped/exploded, updated, zipped/packed, copied again and finally replaced. And all this for every minor change.

I've seen people complain about calibre taking long to resort the books after a bulk update of metadata, and the latest version has been given the option not to resort, in order to speed up bulk metadata updates. I can only imagine the level of frustration if lazy updates were not used...

When you save books to disk, send to device or convert to another format (or the same) the new books will have the updated metadata. Also the GUI show you what the updated metadata is.

It is possible to force calibre to update the metadata in the books. That is where polish, epub update and conversion to same format is used. But as long as you just access the books from the GUI, save to disk or send to device, you get books with the correct metadata. (When you open a book in a reader, from the GUI, the metadata that reader has access to may not be the updated metadata.)