Sony collections and release 0.7.5

[itimpi]

If you select multiple books in Calibre and then select Edit metadata you will be given the multiple-book editor that allows you to carry out any of the options it gives across all selected books.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by itimpi

If you select multiple books in Calibre and then select Edit metadata you will be given the multiple-book editor that allows you to carry out any of the options it gives across all selected books.

This works in the calibre library view but he is referring to the device view. I am not sure if the multiple-book editor works in the device view.

Why someone would want to add all the work of manually editing their collection in the device view is beyond me. Personally I do exactly what you said and edit my books in calibre's library view using all of the mass editing tools at my disposal then I send them to my device and let calibre create a collection for each tag and series associated with the book.

The book might be tagged in more then one collection, but there is only one copy of the book on the device. Currently I have 255 books on my device in 66 collections. Letting calibre create the collections based on tags and series means that if the device hiccups and loses the collections it will take calibre a few minutes to fix the problem.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by tponzo

What I would like to know is - is there a way to label multiple books with a collection label all at once? Just added my Jane Austen collection (6 books). I want to have them all in the category Fiction - Classics. Can I add this tag to all six books at once or do I need to do each book separately? (all at once is better, saves time and less chance of mislabeling because of a spelling error. I had to completely redo a whole section because I misspelled a word ugh!)

Previous posts have answered the main question on bulk addition: no. However, global spelling correction is possible. Right click in the collections column, bring up 'Manage collections', and change the names as you wish. You can change names or delete collections. The changes will be applied to all books in that view.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by JLYates

I get back this message:
could not upload the following book(s) to device as no suitable formats were found. Convert the book(s) to a format supported by your device.

Huh? They have already been converted to ePub.

You will get that message if any one of the books is not already converted. The rest would be transferred. If you push the More Details button, you will see a list of the books in question.

My guess is that one or more books in the selection had only .doc or .rtf (or some such) formats.

Now what? Do I have to remove the books and start all over again? Why won't it let me redo them, or is there another way? Or did I miss a step?

As I said above, my guess is that calibre sent the books it could. To find out, you should transfer [some of] them again, and if you get the message, check to see which books failed. Pick one of the failing books, check which formats it has, and post the list here if one of them is supported by Sony.

Another way to tell is to check if the author/title changed for one of the edited books, assuming you changed this information for some books.

A third way to check is to look at the dates on the books on the reader. If the date matches (approximately) the time of the second send, then the books were transferred. My 300's book information display shows only the date, which doesn't help if the changes were made on the same day. You can see the date and time by using a file explorer and going to the Sony's storage. No worries if that is too much trouble to do.

I went to the selections at the top, where it has author, title and such and rearranged them to Author, Title, Series, Tags, Dates, MB, Published. I could care less about rating and some of the other areas, would like to see genre, but I can do that with tags.

Could have reorganizing the labels have created this problems?

Are you saying that in the library view, you changed the order of the columns, and hid some? No, this will have no impact on what gets sent to the device.

The books are still all on my Sony 900 reader, just many still without a cover or they have the authors face; such as Tale of Two Cities and many other classics.

To recapitulate what I think you are saying:
1) You converted some books to epub.
2) You successfully sent these books to the reader.
3) You then decided to edit metadata, changing various things including the cover.
4) You resent the books and received the error discussed above.
5) The covers weren't changed.

I have already talked about the error. As for covers, there seems to be a disagreement between you and calibre over what should happen when you send a book to the device.

When you send a book to a reader, calibre will (if it can) update the metadata fields that have columns on the library view: author, title, series, tags, etc. It does not change the 'book' contents. The cover is considered book content.

As far as I can tell, the cover is changed only when the book is converted. I don't use these features, so cannot discuss with any authority how they work. That said, given that you are changing descriptions and the like, you might be interested in the 'jacket' feature that dwanthny discusses in the thread https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?p=984257.

In any event, to change the cover, you need to reconvert the book. Converting it from epub to epub will work. I hope that someone with more experience with this process will chime in, because it is likely that some tweaking of the conversion settings would be helpful.

[JLYates]

I have a somewhat different question (reason for not making new thread).

When I had some books in a series I numbered them. First time I wasn't thinking and put in the first one first and then the second one (only two books).
In adding some other series to my Calibre I made sure to put the last one and then the first one.

Here is the other part that doesn't connect.
When I sent them to my reader (sony 900, computer is W XP) it spread them out. One book is on page and another is on another page. And a couple are not in order; book two of one is on a page and the book one is on another page.

A group of books by the same author, but not a series, is also spread all over the pages; and I entered them in order by author. And the collection is not in alphabetical order so that can not be the reason.


Janette

[chaley]

Originally Posted by JLYates

When I had some books in a series I numbered them. First time I wasn't thinking and put in the first one first and then the second one (only two books).
In adding some other series to my Calibre I made sure to put the last one and then the first one.

If the series index (that number) is wrong, you can change it either using the metadata editor or by double-clicking on the collection and changing the number directly.

Perhaps you talking about the order that you added them to your 900? That shouldn't matter.

Here is the other part that doesn't connect.
When I sent them to my reader (sony 900, computer is W XP) it spread them out. One book is on page and another is on another page. And a couple are not in order; book two of one is on a page and the book one is on another page.

What pages are you referring to? My 300 has books by author, books by title, books by date, and collections.

A group of books by the same author, but not a series, is also spread all over the pages; and I entered them in order by author. And the collection is not in alphabetical order so that can not be the reason.

Are you saying that a book is in multiple collections? Or that a single collection spans multiple pages? Or something else?

It is perfectly normal that a book is in multiple collections, just as it is normal that many books can have the same tag. If you asked calibre to build collections for tags, then a given book will be in a different collection for each tag it has. Is this what you mean by "spread all over the pages"?

Calibre has no control over how the Sony sorts the list of collection names. On my 300, they are in alphabetical order. As for how books in collections are sorted within a collection, books in non-series collections are sorted by title, which by default ignores leading articles. Series collections are sorted by series index (the number you referred to above). There is no way to get collections sorted by author.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by JLYates

A group of books by the same author, but not a series, is also spread all over the pages; and I entered them in order by author. And the collection is not in alphabetical order so that can not be the reason.

On the books by author it is alphabetical, it just disregards the first word if it is "A" or "The".

Have calibre create your collection based on series and the books in that collection should be in order.

[JLYates]

I have only one collection (I think) of books.
To help me get it clearer:

download books to computer. drag and drop to calibre. First time I just then sent the book to my reader, didn't do anything at all. Only had around 10 books.
Next time, do the same, except in calibre I highlighted the book, then went to the edit meta and note the book as which its location was in the series, put in the tag and if there wasn't a description added my own to help me know what book it was, or went to the internet and collected info to create a description.

For those which were in a series, I made sure to add the last one first, then the second and down the line so when they showed up in the list they were in correct order.

Then, sent them to my reader. Later when I turned on my reader to read a book, the books were there on the screen, but the books were "all messed up". I was looking at the screen, maybe I should have used my brain and not expected the collections, where it shows all unread books and realized they wouldnt' show them in any order.
I went to collections and some are still out of order, one in one and other in another theme (murder, romance, and such)

Did that clear it up?

Mybe I just need more patience and try to figure it out better, when my brain decides to function. Note to self: Do not try to make sense of reader and anything connected to it when brain is in stupid mode.

Janette

[tponzo]

I finally got it! After reading all the posts and fiddling with calibre, it finally clicked. I got my collections and calibre managing them (not doing it manually - yeah!)

[chaley]

Originally Posted by JLYates

I have only one collection (I think) of books.

I think that we just identified one of the problems -- a difference in terminology. When I say 'collection', I am talking about something on the Sony reader. On my 300, when looking at the basic screen (Continue reading, Books by ..., ), I see 'Collections'. That grouping, not the name inside, is 'Collections'. A 'collection' (singular) is a named group of books found inside Collections.

Calibre maintains a 'library', which is a bunch (avoiding the word 'collection' ) of books. Calibre maintains 'metadata', which is information about books.

One metadata item that calibre maintains is 'Series'. This item sets a grouping for books. For example, Winston Churchill's 6 books about WWII all are part of a series named "The Second World War".

To help me get it clearer:

download books to computer. drag and drop to calibre. First time I just then sent the book to my reader, didn't do anything at all. Only had around 10 books.
Next time, do the same, except in calibre I highlighted the book, then went to the edit meta and note the book as which its location was in the series, put in the tag and if there wasn't a description added my own to help me know what book it was, or went to the internet and collected info to create a description.

Here is possibly another terminology difference. You put in the 'tag'. Tags in calibre are single words that can signify anything of meaning, but they are very seldom used for series. The 'Series' column is used for that. You might be thinking of genre?

For those which were in a series, I made sure to add the last one first, then the second and down the line so when they showed up in the list they were in correct order.

I don't understand what you are doing here. Are you adding something to the Series column? If you sort by that column, the books are ordered properly. The order you entered the series has no impact at all.

Then, sent them to my reader. Later when I turned on my reader to read a book, the books were there on the screen, but the books were "all messed up". I was looking at the screen, maybe I should have used my brain and not expected the collections, where it shows all unread books and realized they wouldnt' show them in any order.

The 900 has a list of unread books? My 300 doesn't, so I don't know what that looks like.

But again, we need to be careful about terms. You used the word "collections" and then said it shows "unread books". Is the 'unread book' collection inside the 'Collections' group, or somewhere else? Do you have a tag named 'Unread'?

Have you asked calibre to make collections from tags and series? If you haven't changed the default, the answer is 'yes'.

I went to collections and some are still out of order, one in one and other in another theme (murder, romance, and such)

These seem to be genres (themes is a fine word, once we agree). In calibre, they would be tags. If you haven't changed the defaults, calibre will add a collection for each tag, and then put each book with that tag into the collection.

Another point: if you haven't change the default of the 'preserve user collections' checkbox, then calibre will not clean things up. If a book with tag "Whazzup?" is sent to the device, it will appear in a collection named "Whazzup?". If you later erase that tag and change it to "Nuttin", then send the book again, that book will now be in both the "Whazzup?" and the "Nuttin" categories. You must clean up the categories by hand on the device view.

Mybe I just need more patience and try to figure it out better, when my brain decides to function. Note to self: Do not try to make sense of reader and anything connected to it when brain is in stupid mode.

I suggest that you play with it. Erase all the books from the reader (saving them first if needed), then send one book. Look at what is put on the reader, trying to identify where each collection/entry/whatnot came from. I am sure that you will quickly see the pattern. Test it by sending another book, but this time predicting what will happen. Check and modify your understanding as needed. In very short order you will have the system down pat.

[tponzo]

JL,

keep working on it, you will get it and it will be a snap. Collections are the way your reader catagorizes and organizes your books. The 900 has three default collections, unread books, unread periodicals and purchased books. You can't change those but you can add your own to make it easier to keep track of what you have. That's where calibre comes in.

If you go to preferences>plugins>device interface plugins>sony device interface. Highlight and click customize. At the bottom is a place to tell calibre what criteria to use to form collections. They suggest tags, series, author. That actually works pretty well so that's what I put there.

Now go add some books. When you add books and fetch metadata that's where your collection information comes from. So I added Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Most of the fields are easy except maybe tags. Tags are categories, what catagories would you put this book in. I don't like the tags they use in the metadata so I made up my own tags, which will be titles of collections on my reader. Isbndb gave this book a bunch of tags but I only needed one so I deleted them and just added my own, Fiction – Classics. So now the tag is Fiction – Classics. So when I send this book to my reader it will be in three collections: the default Unread Books, Jane Austen (author), and Fiction-Classics (tag).

So what about series? I added all six books in the series Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. Again for each book I fetch metadata and get tags I don't want to use. I gave each book the same two tags, Fiction – Childrens and Fiction – Fantasy. In this case, because they are part of a series the name of the series - Chronicles of Narnia- is included in the metadata - and each book is numbered in the series. Calibre does this automatically. So now I send these six books to my reader. Each book in the series will be in 5 collections, Unread Books, C.S. Lewis (author), Fiction – Childrens and Fiction – Fantasy (the two tags I gave it) and Chronicles of Narnia (series name).

So now I have 7 books and 6 collections (not counting the default ones). My collection titles are Jane Austen
C.S. Lewis
Fiction – Classics
Fiction – Childrens'
Fiction – Fantasy
Chronicles of Narnia

So if I add another book by Jane Austen and give it the tag of Fiction – Classics. It goes in the already made Jane Austen and Fiction – Classics collections.

For books in a series usually the metadata will include the series name and what number the book is in in the series so the only info I have to tweak is the tags.

You may want to use different categories but that's the gist

I hope that this is helpful and not redundant. It took some playing with it and I know that there's still stuff I need to figure out but at least that part is working now.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by tponzo

If you go to preferences>plugins>device interface plugins>sony device interface. They suggest tags, series, author.

Congrats, it seems you have an excellent grasp. One thing if you prefer you can use author_sort which creates collections Author Last Name, First Name. Personally I only use tags and series.

Originally Posted by tponzo

I don't like the tags they use in the metadata so I made up my own tags, which will be titles of collections on my reader. Isbndb gave this book a bunch of tags but I only needed one so I deleted them and just added my own, Fiction – Classics. So now the tag is Fiction – Classics.

I hate all of the tags that get downloaded automatically as well, so I turned that feature off. Go to Preferences - Plugins - Metadata Download plugins and customize each plugin - uncheck the Download Tags box. Now I never get any tags downloaded with the metadata.

Originally Posted by tponzo

For books in a series usually the metadata will include the series name and what number the book is in in the series so the only info I have to tweak is the tags.

Often but not always the series number needs to be tweaked as well.

Karma to you.

[tponzo]

thanks, I knew there must be a way to turn off all of the tags. Now if I could figure out how to quote w/o quoting the entire post I'll be happy

PS thanks for the karma