Series problem

[KevinH]

And why would a Book have an article headline? Who comes up with this stuff?

[kovidgoyal]

Just ignore the IDPF, I have never in my life seen a less functional "standards" organization. Basically every few years they will keep releasing inadequate, backwards incompatible, totally impractical standards and we will have to waste a few days/weeks of our lives writing code to deal with their idiocy. It's pointless trying to argue with them, I've tried. They seem to have absolutely zero sense when it comes to technical matters, and they are entirely driven by the B2B use case. They really dont care about the people that actually read books, only the ones that sell them.

[jcsalomon]

I’ve just been describing this conversation to my wife: how EPUB 3.0 is being used for its advances (particularly in Japan), but version 3.1 is so strongly rejected that they’re seriously proposing a version 3.2 which exists solely to pretend, in a Standards-Compliant way, that 3.1 never happened.

[Sarmat89]

I'm quite baffled by that. Series is not even colophon, it is a title page information. Why it is not in EPUB format in 2018, among the other useless changes from version 2.0? Is it because of book vendor competition, which do not want to disclose series, summaries, blurbs and other information in an easily readable format?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Sarmat89

I'm quite baffled by that. Series is not even colophon, it is a title page information. Why it is not in EPUB format in 2018, among the other useless changes from version 2.0? Is it because of book vendor competition, which do not want to disclose series, summaries, blurbs and other information in an easily readable format?

Description/summary is a part of ePub 2 metadata.

[Notjohn]

Originally Posted by jcsalomon

I’ve just been describing this conversation to my wife: how EPUB 3.0 is being used for its advances (particularly in Japan), but version 3.1 is so strongly rejected that they’re seriously proposing a version 3.2 which exists solely to pretend, in a Standards-Compliant way, that 3.1 never happened.

A bit like Windows 10! Win 8 was such a debacle that Microsoft skipped over Win 9, hoping we'd not only forget that there ever was a 9, but also further dim our memory of 8.

[JSWolf]

Actually, Win 8.1 with Classic Start Menu wasn't all that bad.

[dwig]

Originally Posted by Notjohn

A bit like Windows 10! Win 8 was such a debacle that Microsoft skipped over Win 9, hoping we'd not only forget that there ever was a 9, but also further dim our memory of 8.

MS did skip Win9 at all. They merely named it 8.1 for marketing reasons (e.g not charging for the upgrade, ...). If you look at the numeric version number, the way application do, you'll see that it is a full dot version upgrade from 8:

Windows 2000 = NT 5.0
XP = NT 5.1
Vista = NT 6.0 (x.0 releases are always bad...)
Windows 7 = NT 6.1
Windows 8 = NT 6.2
Windows 8.1 = NT 6.3 (this is really Windows 9)
Windows 10 = NT 6.4

[Sarmat89]

Calibre series metadata are pretty useless, as the book can have multiple series, but Calibre only supports one (and the author refuses to fix that glaring error).

Even less popular formats, like FB2, support multiple series natively.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Sarmat89

Calibre series metadata are pretty useless, as the book can have multiple series, but Calibre only supports one (and the author refuses to fix that glaring error).

Even less popular formats, like FB2, support multiple series natively.

It's not a glaring error. You can add another series type column to your library's database.

[KevinH]

I very much doubt there is a much of a need to support multiple series for the exact same rendition of an ebook.

Please cite multiple examples of a specific epub2 ebooks that are in two or more "series" at the same time. Please remember the ebook text in question must not be a later revised text use in a later series. Also note, that a specific ebook text can be parts of different collections but this is not the same as being parts of different series at the same time. Having a series change its name over time is not the same thing either.

I would be interested to see just how pervasive the need to support multiple "series" for a specific rendition of a text really is.

[sjfan]

Originally Posted by KevinH

I very much doubt there is a much of a need to support multiple series for the exact same rendition of an ebook.

Please cite multiple examples of a specific epub2 ebooks that are in two or more "series" at the same time. Please remember the ebook text in question must not be a later revised text use in a later series. Also note, that a specific ebook text can be parts of different collections but this is not the same as being parts of different series at the same time. Having a series change its name over time is not the same thing either.

I would be interested to see just how pervasive the need to support multiple "series" for a specific rendition of a text really is.

It's not uncommon in the case of sub-series. Raymond Feist's Shadow of a Dark Queen is the first of four books in the Serpentwar Saga, and is also the 9th book in the Riftwar series. Gabaldon's Lord John Gray and Outlander are similar, as are the various Pern books by Anne McCaffrey (e.g the Harper Hall of Pern series relative to the overall series). You can use hierarchies to work around this pretty well.

But it also happens a fair bit with anthologies. The Warriors collection contains stories from both George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series and the aforementioned Outlander. It'd be nice to flag it as both for when you're doing a read-through of one series or the other.

And then there are cases where a single book is actually in multiple universes; Asimov had a bunch of later books that are both Robot and Foundation novels. Michael Connelly's The Reversal is a Harry Bosch book and a Mickey Haller book.

It makes sense that Kovid is reluctant to implement something, because the semantics are unclear (what happens when you sort on series if there are more than one?)

[KevinH]

Interesting. Is there technically a primary and secondary series recognized for these books in print.

Using common epub2 meta metadata tags with just name and content attributes are then an issue as there is no explicit relationship between a calibre:series_index meta tag and the calibre:series meta tag if there exist multiple series. With only meta name and content tags to work with you would need to create a calibre:series2 and calibre:series2_index just to prevent mismatch between index values and series titles. Obviously, this does not scale.

Alternatively, fixing the exact sequence of meta tags in the ops metadata section is the only other approach that may be usable where the series_index meta tag would have to always come immediately after the series meta tag if multiple series tags exist. But there is no easy way to enforce that.

In epub3, the use of refines with target ids actually helps here.

[Notjohn]

Originally Posted by dwig

Windows 8 = NT 6.2
Windows 8.1 = NT 6.3 (this is really Windows 9)

Thank you! That makes sense (sort of ...).

[sjfan]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Interesting. Is there technically a primary and secondary series recognized for these books in print.

I think you need to do something like that just for sorting purposes, but it's semantically strange. In the case of a sub-series it makes sense, but I suspect different people would have different ideas about which is primary in a given series. With multi-series novels, it may or may not make sense: did Mickey Haller show up briefly in what's basically a Bosch story, or is it truly a balanced split between the series?

For an anthology that has stories from a couple of distinct series (or a balanced split in a single story/novel), it's pretty forced. I guess you set your favorite series as primary, or maybe the one you expect to be reading next.

I think calibre's smart to punt on it, since the semantics can vary by individual a lot. Use the main series to mark whatever you decide makes sense as the primary, and put other series into custom column(s) based on your use case.