Programs like Calibre for general use?

[kovidgoyal]

You dont need to set the tweak differently per library, you simply add all the fields from all the libraries intot hat tweak, fields that dont exist in a particular library will simply be ignored.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Kythe42

Thanks for the plugin recommendation. I installed it, and there's a lot of options there, so I'm not sure if I just didn't find what I was looking for because I missed it, or if it wasn't there. I only have one library at the moment that deals with books, so many of the things that the plugin deals with might not be relevant to me. On top of that, even when dealing with books, I always enter metadata manually to make sure it comes out the way I want.

I had these three Job Spy tools in mind

• Per-Library Tweak for Calibre Global Tweak for Author Sort Method
• Per-Library Tweak for Adding Books for 'read file metadata' from either file contents or file name
• Per-Library Tweak for Book Automatic Adding Directory

They are documented starting at post #190 in the Job Spy thread.

Originally Posted by Kythe42

Really the first setting that appears to be global that relates to what I'm doing is the option to have a cover image show up in the book details side panel. I might want this for some books but not others. It really does seem like something that you should be able to set on a per library setting. Perhaps I should just try to ignore it.

Something that's a much bigger deal is that it seems that the tweaks settings are global, or at least the specific one I'm looking at, which is to customize the order of custom metadata fields. This one I really do need to be able to set it differently for each library given that the custom fields are going to be completely different in each library. I could find no function to edit this with the plugin.

When I started with calibre I couldn't get the single book metadats edit dialogues into a shape with which I was comfortable. But then I discovered I do all my metadata editing in the booklist - including long text custom columns. I make use of the View Manager plugin to order the columns in the optimal sequence for entering the data for the different libraries; and I can reorder the columns for one off situations by dragging the headers around or hiding/showing columns. I also make considerable use of the recent enhancement to copy & paste metadata values between 'books'; for me its a boon, especially in my periodicals library.

BR

[Kythe42]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

You dont need to set the tweak differently per library, you simply add all the fields from all the libraries intot hat tweak, fields that dont exist in a particular library will simply be ignored.

Thank you. It took a lot of reboots to figure out how to get the order right since some of the fields do overlap between libraries. And that was only merging two of them. I can only imagine how much fiddling it will take to merge the fields of five libraries, which is what I'll have if I end up doing all of my planned projects on Calibre. It did eventually work though.

@BetterRed

I did see those, they just really weren't relevant to my needs since I only have one library that's used for books at the moment.

Originally Posted by BetterRed

When I started with calibre I couldn't get the single book metadats edit dialogues into a shape with which I was comfortable. But then I discovered I do all my metadata editing in the booklist - including long text custom columns. I make use of the View Manager plugin to order the columns in the optimal sequence for entering the data for the different libraries; and I can reorder the columns for one off situations by dragging the headers around or hiding/showing columns. I also make considerable use of the recent enhancement to copy & paste metadata values between 'books'; for me its a boon, especially in my periodicals library.

I'm glad that works for you, but I'm really not comfortable with editing everything in the booklist view, especially with the number of fields I have in some libraries. There's just too much there, and it's far too easy to accidentally edit something in the wrong row. This is part of why I'm trying to get away from Excel. Having a form to enter everything in a single entry without the other entries distracting me is much preferred. I did experiment with forms in Excel at one point, but found them awkward to use. Thankfully, I was able to get the custom fields how I liked them through trial and error.

[princeyann]

Not free, but worth the price: Directory Opus. Best all around.

[Kythe42]

Despite not being able to spend very much money, I did look at Directory Opus. It doesn't seem to be a database program, but an alternative to Windows Explorer, which isn't what I need, unless I was somehow looking at the wrong program.