Automatic Tag Change OR Tag Shortcuts?

[Jackwc]

Hey everybody! Long time user, first time poster.

I do a lot of e-book tagging, specifically sub-tagging. For instance, I might have a tag like "Subject.Art.History.Movements.Baroque" or say "Author.By Era.Elizabethan" (at some point I might make a post about how I organize my tags if people might find that interesting).

Anyway, this can make bulk editing a bit of a pain. When you're typing in tags like, say, "Subject.History.By Region.Afro-Eurasia.Asia.East Asia.Japan," the autocomplete becomes pretty useless for a person like me because "Subject.History" already has several sub-fields, as do the sub-fields underneath that, and of course the number of sub-fields is always growing.

Two questions:

1. Is there a way to automatically change a tag? For instance, if I simply put in "German Author" can I have it so that it automatically changes that into "Author.By Region.Afro-Eurasia.Europe.Central Europe.Germany"? Is this a feature of Calibre, or of a plugin? I know that I can have automatic filters on books I IMPORT INTO Calibre, for instance.

2. Is there a way to use tag shortcuts? Is there away, for instance, to have a tag like "Author.By Region.Afro-Eurasia.Europe.Central Europe.Germany" be tied to a shortcut, so I type in "German Author" and the tag autocomplete brings up the former tag as an option?

All the best.

[arpeggioaccele]

There probably is, but how I would do it is just use "GA" (german author) to tag books at first, then search for tag:"=GA", select all books to edit metadata and add the correct tag and remove the placeholder. This would be super manual though.

[ownedbycats]

Look into Action Chains. It can automate multiple actions, including metadata edits, and bind them to a keyboard shotcut.

The built-in tag mapper can also replace tags. I don't know if you can trigger it with a shortcut.

[Jackwc]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Look into Action Chains. It can automate multiple actions, including metadata edits, and bind them to a keyboard shotcut.

The built-in tag mapper can also replace tags. I don't know if you can trigger it with a shortcut.

Hmm... okay, interesting. I'm checking out the extension now; admittedly it's a little complicated for me. How would you go about it?

[ownedbycats]

Take a look at the attached chain. Here's how to import.

Alternately, User Categories might be a better option, you can add the author directly to one of those. In the Tag Browser, go to Configure > Manage authors... > User Categories. To nest them, use a period as a separator (same as tags).

[Jackwc]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Take a look at the attached chain. Here's how to import.

Alternately, User Categories might be a better option, you can add the author directly to one of those. In the Tag Browser, go to Configure > Manage authors... > User Categories. To nest them, use a period as a separator (same as tags).

I actually do that very thing! Hence the issue: the problem is that, I have so many tags and the nesting categories are so LONG that it can be a pain to type it all out when tagging new books

[Jackwc]

Okay, I found a workaround that works for me, in case someone else comes along this thread:

Preferences > Tweaks > Completion mode when editing authors/tags/series/etc.

Change

completion_mode = 'prefix'

to

completion_mode = 'contains'

Not exactly what I was looking for, but still leagues better than it was before.

[ETruss]

While this did not exactly match what I was looking for, it made me think of how to change a misspelled tag. Thanks