[GUI Plugin] EpubMerge

[Mandabar]

That's what I thought. The ebook editor can do that but that's much more involved than a basic plugins intended function. Thanks anyways

[Shiroyasha]

First of all, I want to express my sincere gratitude for creating such an amazing plugin. Your hard work has made a significant difference in my experience using Calibre.

But I do have a small issue that's been bothering me, and I was wondering if you could help me out. After using the EpubMerge feature, I've noticed that the start of the file names of the merged e-books are displayed as "1/1/1" in the Calibre editor. Although this doesn't affect the functionality of the plugin, it looks a bit odd and bothersome to me.



Do you have any suggestions on how to resolve this issue?

Thank you once again for your amazing work, and I look forward to hearing back from you.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Shiroyasha

First of all, I want to express my sincere gratitude for creating such an amazing plugin. Your hard work has made a significant difference in my experience using Calibre.

But I do have a small issue that's been bothering me, and I was wondering if you could help me out. After using the EpubMerge feature, I've noticed that the start of the file names of the merged e-books are displayed as "1/1/1" in the Calibre editor. Although this doesn't affect the functionality of the plugin, it looks a bit odd and bothersome to me.



Do you have any suggestions on how to resolve this issue?

Thank you once again for your amazing work, and I look forward to hearing back from you.

Just one quick question on my part. How are you getting so many levels deep in subdirectories—a quick count of the ../ triplets shows about 65 levels deep? Might that be related to the chapter number?

[Shiroyasha]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Just one quick question on my part. How are you getting so many levels deep in subdirectories—a quick count of the ../ triplets shows about 65 levels deep? Might that be related to the chapter number?

I'm adding chapters one by one, for example, from 0 to 100 chapters, If I don't delete the ../ manually, there'll be hundreds of subdirectories. A novel gets updated - I download the file - merge it with the book - new subdirectories are generated for all of the index splits. This is what I want to avoid.

P.S. Bulk renaming doesn't eliminate the problem.

[JimmXinu]

EpubMerge operates on a principle of changing the input content as little as possible.

So each time you merge two (or more) epubs, each is placed in a numbered subdirectory so that files with the same names don't conflict and relative links (../style.css etc) work without changing anything.

Adding many chapters one at a time over and over is not the best way to use EpubMerge. I would instead suggest that you collect all the chapters together and merge all of them in one operation. Every time you call EpubMerge on an epub you've previously merged, you get an other layer of nested directories--that just the way it works.

There's going to be a limit to how deep you can nest dirs in a zip file; I suspect it may vary between devices/implementations.

However, EpubMerge also as the ability to 'UnMerge' a merged book, essentially giving you the pre-merged epubs back again. Assuming you didn't turn off the 'Keep UnMerge Metadata' option before the merge and haven't processed the merged epub through another tool that discarded the 'extra' files.

So, if, for whatever reason, you have to add one chapter at a time, I would suggest that you first 'UnMerge' the existing book, then make a new merge with the prior chapters plus the new one.

[Shiroyasha]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

EpubMerge operates on a principle of changing the input content as little as possible.

So each time you merge two (or more) epubs, each is placed in a numbered subdirectory so that files with the same names don't conflict and relative links (../style.css etc) work without changing anything.

Adding many chapters one at a time over and over is not the best way to use EpubMerge. I would instead suggest that you collect all the chapters together and merge all of them in one operation. Every time you call EpubMerge on an epub you've previously merged, you get an other layer of nested directories--that just the way it works.

There's going to be a limit to how deep you can nest dirs in a zip file; I suspect it may vary between devices/implementations.

However, EpubMerge also as the ability to 'UnMerge' a merged book, essentially giving you the pre-merged epubs back again. Assuming you didn't turn off the 'Keep UnMerge Metadata' option before the merge and haven't processed the merged epub through another tool that discarded the 'extra' files.

So, if, for whatever reason, you have to add one chapter at a time, I would suggest that you first 'UnMerge' the existing book, then make a new merge with the prior chapters plus the new one.

Thanks for the response.

I didn't keep metadata, so I can't use "UnMerge".

Is there a way for me to alter the way this plugin works through preferences? To tell it to not create another layer. I get that it's created this way to avoid name conflicts when merging, but if I just name the things correctly before merging, I don't need that feature.

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by Shiroyasha

Thanks for the response.

I didn't keep metadata, so I can't use "UnMerge".

Is there a way for me to alter the way this plugin works through preferences? To tell it to not create another layer. I get that it's created this way to avoid name conflicts when merging, but if I just name the things correctly before merging, I don't need that feature.

No. EpubMerge is meant to be a simple tool to do the one job. And as a general rule, it doesn't matter what's inside the epub as long as it works.

If you use Calibre Convert to do an epub->epub, you could try using the 'Flatten Epub structure' option on the 'EPUB output' page. Then you'd have 1_1_1_... instead of 1/1/1/... if that's an improvement.

If you can't change your use pattern, and can't do UnMerge, I'd honestly suggest using a different tool, such as Calibre Edit book.

[Shiroyasha]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

No. EpubMerge is meant to be a simple tool to do the one job. And as a general rule, it doesn't matter what's inside the epub as long as it works.

If you use Calibre Convert to do an epub->epub, you could try using the 'Flatten Epub structure' option on the 'EPUB output' page. Then you'd have 1_1_1_... instead of 1/1/1/... if that's an improvement.

If you can't change your use pattern, and can't do UnMerge, I'd honestly suggest using a different tool, such as Calibre Edit book.

That did work as you said it would. After that, I bulk-renamed everything and got rid of 1/1/1. Though I still need to do this every time I add a new chapter and also, somehow CSS classes have changed...

Well, at this point, I'll just leave it as is.

Anyways, thank you! the plugin is still one of the best.

[DNSB]

A while back when I was creating some omnibus volumes, I used Sigil (calibre's editor will also work) to rename the CSS stylesheets and image to unique names since several of the books had names used for the stylesheet's elements and the image filenames that referred to different items but with the same name.

So book 1 would have the stylesheets with _bk01 added to the name and images filenames. Book 2 would use _bk02, etc. Sigil's regex rename made this pretty easy.

[Shiroyasha]

Actually, I found two ways of fixing this problem.

First one: you can merge all the index_splits into one, rename the merged index to remove the nested directories from it (the /1/1/ stuff), and split the indexes again with "split at multiple locations" (RMB in the editor). In my case, I split books with h1 headers.
After that you rename everything with bulk rename if you want to and the nested directories will be gone.
However, the shortcoming of this option would be that you can't do anything to the nested directories of the images. While renaming two CSS styles is easy and not time-consuming, there can be a lot of images in the book(again, in my case, there are a lot of them) so the /1/1/ thingies remain there.

The second way: this way means not to create nested directories at all, meaning, to not use the plugin for merging books(I'm sorry plugin creator ...) But how do I merge the book? You ask. Well, I've found an easier way to "merge" the books. You simply copy everything from one book and paste it into another. (I know, I know, why the hell did I not think of it before...) So basically, in the editor, you select your indexes, styles, images, or whatever else you need, then right-click and select copy, go to your other, let's say "main" book, and right-click where indexes are shown, and select paste. (do not close any of the editors while you are copy-pasting, because otherwise it will not work and you'll encounter an error) Voilà, you just "merged" the books! now you can reposition index_splits as you wish and fit to the book's needs.
However, you should know that new index splits won't generate ToC this way, so you should go to the "Edit ToC" and use the tools provided to get the full ToC again. I use headers for chapters all the time, so it's pretty easy for me. If your book has a good or "correct" structure, you shouldn't have a problem here. If you fine-tuned ToC in some way before and don't want to lose it, you should just generate a new ToC in the manager and delete duplicates, only leaving the new index splits(the chapters you just merged)

[julo]

I have my ebooks in folders and do not use Calbre's library feature. I never liked that I had to import epubs into Calibre before I could use the EpubMerge feature.
I made a small Windows batch file where I can select the epubs I want to merge and just drag them onto a shortcut. Calibre and the epubmerge-plugin still need to be installed but Calibre does not need to be open. I thought there may be other people who might like this as well.
Additional instructions and the bat file (still as text in case of firewalls or virus checkers) in the attached zip file for your enjoyment. Sorry, Windows only.

[golly1]

Hi all,
at first ... sorry for my english
I've two questions for epubmerge for calibre.
1. When merging epubs, the jackets are deleted. Why? (German Version)
2. the table of contents is not created, although it is marked. Do I have to do something else?
(Google translated )
I would be glad about help.
Thanks
Regards golly1

[JimmXinu]

I assume you mean Calibre's metadata jacket, added using Calibre's Polish feature.

When I merge 2 epubs with Calibre metadata jackets in them, the jacket pages are included.

The jacket pages do not appear in the table of contents(TOC) because Calibre does not put the jacket pages in the TOC of the individual epubs.

By default, EpubMerge creates a nested TOC. Each source epub is at the top level and you need to expand them to see the individual book TOCs.

I would need to see the epubs you are merging to help more than that.

[golly1]

Hello JimmXinu,

yes Metadata jacked is it, what I mean.
I've try it, and try it and try it again and the them procedure at evry time.
How I can send the books to you?
Thanks

[JimmXinu]

If they are not copyrighted or NSFW, you could attach files here. That would be ideal.

Otherwise, you could upload them somewhere and send me the links.

I would say to use Private Message here, but I doubt you can yet--it's usually off until you've been on the site for a while and/or made 10 posts. I don't really want to put my email in a public post. You could open an issue in the project github.

There's also a Scramble plugin, which replaces all the copyrighted text with gibberish while preserving everything else. But it's a little clunky to use.