Sort Problem (not sorting newest to oldest) - Page 3

kovidgoyal · 08-13-2011, 01:04 PM

Then send him EPUB books and dont send him the OPF. I'm sorry, but your use case is simply too specific. I am not going to add an option to ignore timestamp metadata from standalone OPF files.

Reading metadata from OPF files is one of the primary way to restore the metadata database and an option that breaks that paradigm needs to have a lot more justification than this.

kiwidude · 08-13-2011, 01:21 PM

Well, when Calibre one day has a perfect PDF->EPUB conversion engine, and my Dad has ereaders which can read EPUB, then that will be an option. Until then unfortunately it isn't. There are too many books in the world that cannot easily be converted to EPUB unfortunately.

kovidgoyal · 08-13-2011, 01:29 PM

Still isn't enough justification. You're just making your use case even more specific.

kovidgoyal · 08-13-2011, 01:36 PM

Though it occurs to me, that there is a way to accommodate your use case without breaking the restore library paradigm I care about. Adding an option to Save to Disk to not write the timestamp instead of adding an option to adding books to not read the timestamp.

This does mean that the paradigm of using save to disk to backup a library breaks when the option is set, but, since save to disk is not really a good way to do backups anyway, I can live with that.

kiwidude · 08-13-2011, 02:08 PM

@Kovid, thx, I'll happily take any change you are willing to accept. Certainly the save to disk is the primary case.

As for making my use cases specific - well yes I am describing the actual issue that I'm personally hitting every week around this behaviour, rather than trying to speak on others behalf.

If you want me to say it, then I doubt that Ron and I are the only users out there who have hit the situation of not being able to find books they have added to Calibre because the date field was "magically" set to something historic. But of course I can't begin to guess how many people that might be, particularly given the fact that only a tiny portion of the userbase even comes to these forums. I know I've raised this topic as a thread myself many months ago, when I couldn't figure out why when I added html based books I had downloaded it didn't show up at the top when I sorted by date added - all because there was an opf file sitting within that folder when I imported.

And now it is additionally hitting me because I learnt from a few months with Calibre that sticking all your years of mish-mash of books in a library at once leaves you with just as big a mess and a slow library to try to do something about it

So now I transfer them a few at a time from the old library into a new one to clean them up, but I can't easily see which ones I just copied across - such as if I get interrupted or come back to it on another day. Specific to me - yup, guilty

kovidgoyal · 08-13-2011, 02:17 PM

The point is you are hitting this issue because

1) You are transferring an ebook format with poor metadata support
2) You are transferring to someone that finds it difficult to use calibre's bulk metadata features
3) You have a workflow that involves having a large unstructured library and a smaller structured library and you find it difficult to remember to set the date before transferring from one library to another.

These are all conditions that make your use case, specific, as in likely to affect a small fraction of the user base.

kovidgoyal · 08-13-2011, 02:44 PM

I've added an option to not preserve the date when copying to library. The save to disk option is considerably more work, since it would should be a general option that allows the user to select what fields to exclude from the opf when saving to disk, so I'm putting that on the back burner, feel free to submit a patch if you want it faster.

kiwidude · 08-13-2011, 03:39 PM

Awesome, thx Kovid - and that you would be willing to accept a patch for changing the save to disk as well is good news. Hopefully someone can work on that too one day.

Ron. · 08-13-2011, 04:43 PM

Thanks Kovid! I just downloaded the source
"When copying books from one library to another, preserve the date"

Ron. · 08-14-2011, 07:38 PM

with the new option unchecked it still uses the date in the .opf

kovidgoyal · 08-14-2011, 07:43 PM

That option applies to using the copy to library action only. Right click ona book and select copy to library.

Ron. · 08-14-2011, 07:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

That option applies to using the copy to library action only. Right click ona book and select copy to library.

I see, thanks for the clarification.

Starson17 · 08-15-2011, 03:08 PM

Quote:

a workflow that involves having a large unstructured library and a smaller structured library

Just as a side comment, I don't understand the appeal of this procedure. I've got a strong preference for having all my books in a single library, as I'm a heavy user of the Content Server, and I need remote access to all my books, even if they aren't yet perfect. I realize that may not be important for many users.

However, even if I didn't need remote access, it's pretty easy to just add a tag "Finished" to books that would be in the "structured library" and then restrict out those books, or use that tag as part of a saved search whenever I wanted to only see the perfect books. (Or do it the opposite way, tag "Unfinished" - add that tag automatically to all Added books, and delete the tag when they are processed.)

There are lots of situations where I want to know whether I have a book. I'd hate to have to search in two separate libraries. Many times I'm trying to find it with only partial information and have to do several searches to be sure. I'd hate even more to make multiple searches in each library just to verify if I do or don't have the book.

The only good justification I've seen for multiple libraries is when you need different custom columns, and even there, it's not worth it for me if I have to lose remote access.

Still - different strokes and all that - but I'm interested in what advantage others see to having a perfect library and a separate imperfect one?

kiwidude · 08-15-2011, 03:20 PM

@Starson - its not really by choice, more that Calibre performance degrades too much for large libraries to work with it in it's original state. Much faster to do my day to day work with the subset that I'm happy with. So I just move all books for an author across one at a time and get them cleaned up.

Starson17 · 08-15-2011, 03:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kiwidude

@Starson - its not really by choice, more that Calibre performance degrades too much for large libraries to work with it in it's original state. Much faster to do my day to day work with the subset that I'm happy with. So I just move all books for an author across one at a time and get them cleaned up.

Got it. Perhaps I should investigate speed improvements with a subset of books. I'm not unhappy with speed for 16K books, but perhaps I don't know what I'm missing.

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08-13-2011, 01:04 PM	#31
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 45,251 Karma: 27110894 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	Then send him EPUB books and dont send him the OPF. I'm sorry, but your use case is simply too specific. I am not going to add an option to ignore timestamp metadata from standalone OPF files. Reading metadata from OPF files is one of the primary way to restore the metadata database and an option that breaks that paradigm needs to have a lot more justification than this.

08-13-2011, 01:21 PM	#32
kiwidude Calibre Plugins Developer Posts: 4,726 Karma: 2197770 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Australia Device: Kindle Oasis	Well, when Calibre one day has a perfect PDF->EPUB conversion engine, and my Dad has ereaders which can read EPUB, then that will be an option. Until then unfortunately it isn't. There are too many books in the world that cannot easily be converted to EPUB unfortunately.

08-13-2011, 01:29 PM	#33
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 45,251 Karma: 27110894 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	Still isn't enough justification. You're just making your use case even more specific.

08-13-2011, 01:36 PM	#34
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 45,251 Karma: 27110894 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	Though it occurs to me, that there is a way to accommodate your use case without breaking the restore library paradigm I care about. Adding an option to Save to Disk to not write the timestamp instead of adding an option to adding books to not read the timestamp. This does mean that the paradigm of using save to disk to backup a library breaks when the option is set, but, since save to disk is not really a good way to do backups anyway, I can live with that.

08-13-2011, 02:08 PM	#35
kiwidude Calibre Plugins Developer Posts: 4,726 Karma: 2197770 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Australia Device: Kindle Oasis	@Kovid, thx, I'll happily take any change you are willing to accept. Certainly the save to disk is the primary case. As for making my use cases specific - well yes I am describing the actual issue that I'm personally hitting every week around this behaviour, rather than trying to speak on others behalf. If you want me to say it, then I doubt that Ron and I are the only users out there who have hit the situation of not being able to find books they have added to Calibre because the date field was "magically" set to something historic. But of course I can't begin to guess how many people that might be, particularly given the fact that only a tiny portion of the userbase even comes to these forums. I know I've raised this topic as a thread myself many months ago, when I couldn't figure out why when I added html based books I had downloaded it didn't show up at the top when I sorted by date added - all because there was an opf file sitting within that folder when I imported. And now it is additionally hitting me because I learnt from a few months with Calibre that sticking all your years of mish-mash of books in a library at once leaves you with just as big a mess and a slow library to try to do something about it So now I transfer them a few at a time from the old library into a new one to clean them up, but I can't easily see which ones I just copied across - such as if I get interrupted or come back to it on another day. Specific to me - yup, guilty

08-13-2011, 02:17 PM	#36
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 45,251 Karma: 27110894 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	The point is you are hitting this issue because 1) You are transferring an ebook format with poor metadata support 2) You are transferring to someone that finds it difficult to use calibre's bulk metadata features 3) You have a workflow that involves having a large unstructured library and a smaller structured library and you find it difficult to remember to set the date before transferring from one library to another. These are all conditions that make your use case, specific, as in likely to affect a small fraction of the user base.

08-13-2011, 02:44 PM	#37
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 45,251 Karma: 27110894 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	I've added an option to not preserve the date when copying to library. The save to disk option is considerably more work, since it would should be a general option that allows the user to select what fields to exclude from the opf when saving to disk, so I'm putting that on the back burner, feel free to submit a patch if you want it faster.

08-13-2011, 03:39 PM	#38
kiwidude Calibre Plugins Developer Posts: 4,726 Karma: 2197770 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Australia Device: Kindle Oasis	Awesome, thx Kovid - and that you would be willing to accept a patch for changing the save to disk as well is good news. Hopefully someone can work on that too one day.

08-13-2011, 04:43 PM	#39
Ron. Evangelist Posts: 448 Karma: 864744 Join Date: Mar 2011 Device: Kindle 3, LookBook, Nook Simple Touch	Thanks Kovid! I just downloaded the source "When copying books from one library to another, preserve the date"

08-14-2011, 07:38 PM	#40
Ron. Evangelist Posts: 448 Karma: 864744 Join Date: Mar 2011 Device: Kindle 3, LookBook, Nook Simple Touch	with the new option unchecked it still uses the date in the .opf

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08-14-2011, 07:43 PM	#41
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 45,251 Karma: 27110894 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	That option applies to using the copy to library action only. Right click ona book and select copy to library.

08-15-2011, 03:20 PM	#44
kiwidude Calibre Plugins Developer Posts: 4,726 Karma: 2197770 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Australia Device: Kindle Oasis	@Starson - its not really by choice, more that Calibre performance degrades too much for large libraries to work with it in it's original state. Much faster to do my day to day work with the subset that I'm happy with. So I just move all books for an author across one at a time and get them cleaned up.