How can I save all my tags to a file, and how can another macOS Calibre user it?

[adrianf]

I want to save all my tags at a specific moment in a file, and pass this one on to a friend who too, uses Calibre under macOS, like myself.

How could my friend import this file, and thus overwrite his own tags?


Can anybody help me with this?

Thank you
adrianf

[BetterRed]

Create a empty book with an empty EPUB, add all your tags to that book, Polish the book (to put the tags in the EPUB), and email the EPUB to your friend.

Your friend adds the EPUB to their library, et voila all your tags are in their library. They must leave the book there as a place holder for the Tags, as you probably know you cannot have Tags (or any other category) that are not attached to a book.

Tip: use shift click in the Tags editor's Available tags list to select multiple items.


@Kovid - just a nitpick: the Add books->Add empty books option (Book entry with no formats) is no longer quite true.

BR

[Bookstooge]

And just to be clear, your tags WON'T "overwrite" his tags, but simply add to his collection of tags. He'll still have to assign them to the books he wants.

[stumped]

... and there is no simple way to replicate your tags into books assignments into another library, on a book by book basis . because his book folders will probably have different calibre IDs to yours, within the black box calibre database.

maybe you are over-complicating it. unless you have hundreds of tags it may be faster to generate a catalogue, with the tags shown, [ or screenshots] send that, do manual updates when received

[adrianf]

Many thanks, stumped, Bookstooge, and BetterRed, for your suggestions. Very kind of you.


If I understand correctly, there is no way of saving the list of all tags at a specific moment into a file.

The simplest way to conserve tags seems to me to be (thank you, BetterRed), to create a dummy book with all tags. But this does very much look like a patch to me, and an ugly one, at that.

Do you know of any, more natural, way of saving tags into a file? Are the tags so deeply buried into Calibre?

Does anybody have a more direct connection to @Kovid to know if this suggestion about saving tags to a file will, at least, be considered in a future version?
Thank you all

[kovidgoyal]

Your request is not well defined. You can save the list of tags trivially, but how is your friend supposed to import them overwriting his tags?? how will he know which tag goes to which book?? What happens for books that exist in one library and not the other??

[Bookstooge]

reply no longer relevant since Kovid replied.

[adrianf]

Thank you, @Kovid, for your fast reaction.


I was thinking in being able to

(1) save all tags in, say, a csv format file;
(2a) import such a csv file among the already existing tags wthout deleting any; or
(2b) to import such a csv file to replace the already existing tags.


It goes without saying that there should be clear parsing conditions under which such a csv file is accepted as a valid tags file.



Kovid, does it make more sense now? If so, do you think this might be possible to implement in a future version?

[stumped]

Won't work.
Because as previously explained the master list of tags is generated by collating all tags in use in books.in library, and auto regenerates with changes to books.
Tags cannot exist without books containing them
Which his good, because deleting books auto removes orphaned tags.
You need to go back to previous suggested workaround

[BetterRed]

You can save them to a csv with the calibredb list_categories command, see ==>> Command Line Interface

But there's no easy way to add them into library because of calibre's "a category will only be retained if its attached to a book' rule.

Because it only uses standard features of calibre and your email accounts (or similar) I'd call my method a process, rather than a patch.

1. Add an empty book with a 'blank' epub to the library.
2. Apply all the tags to that book with the Tags Editor
3. Polish the Book with the update metadata option checked
4. Save the Book (ePub only) to Desktop
5. Email the ePub to your friend,
6. Friend saves the ePub attachment to his/her desktop
7. Friend drag-drops the ePub from their desktop into their library

See screen shots and attached epub

I'd call having to retain placeholder books with category lists a kludge. I've been wishing for a controlled vocabulary option on categories since I started using calibre in 2011. But I assume its not easy to do, otherwise someone would have done it.

BR

[theducks]

Originally Posted by adrianf

Thank you, @Kovid, for your fast reaction.


I was thinking in being able to

(1) save all tags in, say, a csv format file;
(2a) import such a csv file among the already existing tags wthout deleting any; or
(2b) to import such a csv file to replace the already existing tags.


It goes without saying that there should be clear parsing conditions under which such a csv file is accepted as a valid tags file.


Kovid, does it make more sense now? If so, do you think this might be possible to implement in a future version?

CSV is not an option BECAUSE you can't import anything that has no place used.

The Book of All Tags (post 2) is the only way.
THAT BOOK MUST REMAIN until all tags have a usage count of 2 or more (1 being the BOAT), or Calibre auto-cleans out the Not in Use tags, (Authors, Series, Publishers...)

[DaltonST]

Originally Posted by adrianf

I want to save all my tags at a specific moment in a file, and pass this one on to a friend who too, uses Calibre under macOS, like myself. How could my friend import this file, and thus overwrite his own tags? Can anybody help me with this?

Assuming your friend has mostly the same books as you, and assuming both you and he have the identical ISBN for the same book, this is easy to do.


See the attached image.


[1] You create a Calibre Catalog .csv file with only columns ISBN and Tags, and give it to your friend.


[2] Your friend creates a new custom column of type "comments-plain text-simple text", and then populates it using Bulk Metadata Edit Search & Replace from Identifier Type 'isbn'.

Important: the custom column must be "real", not "virtual" or "composite" or "built from others", since the JS Tool reads the metadata.db, not the GUI Cache, to do its work.


[3] Your friend imports your .csv file via the tool shown in the attached image, and matches the ISBN in the .csv to his ISBN in his new custom column. The column to update is Tags.



DaltonST




n.b. the easy way to copy all Tags (or any other Tag-like custom column) from one library to another is to use the Job Spy "Mega-Metadata Reference Dropdown Helper" tool to automatically add all Tags to a single book you pick, then export the book with .opf file to disk. Then import the book. Now, all of the Tags from the first library exist in the second library, but of course only in that special book.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by DaltonST

n.b. the easy way to copy all Tags (or any other Tag-like custom column) from one library to another is to use the Job Spy "Mega-Metadata Reference Dropdown Helper" tool to automatically add all Tags to a single book you pick, then export the book with .opf file to disk. Then import the book. Now, all of the Tags from the first library exist in the second library, but of course only in that special book.

You might want to add a Languages option in Configure, its also Tag like.

@adrianf - JobSpy's "Mega-Metadata Reference Dropdown Helper" does with a single click what my step 2 does with a click on every Tag. Obviously I didn't know about it until now.

BR

[adrianf]

Sorry, @BetterRed, for being a nuisance; I do not find the «JobSpy's "Mega-Metadata Reference Dropdown Helper"» you talk about, although I have checked «Automatically start the Edit Metadata Dropdown Visible items increaser daemon at Calibre startup» when customising Job Spy. (Of course, I restarted Calibre, but I still to not find the Dropdown Helper you mentioned.)

Thank you for some additional help.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by adrianf

Sorry, @BetterRed, for being a nuisance; I do not find the «JobSpy's "Mega-Metadata Reference Dropdown Helper"» you talk about, although I have checked «Automatically start the Edit Metadata Dropdown Visible items increaser daemon at Calibre startup» when customising Job Spy. (Of course, I restarted Calibre, but I still to not find the Dropdown Helper you mentioned.)

Thank you for some additional help.

No worries

The JS configuration setting should be:



Then, with the 'Empty Book" current, press (click/select return whatever) the "Mega Metadat...." option:



Hey presto the book will have all the tags:



BR