PLEASE help me...I'm so confused!!!

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by Synful

Okay....and again I'm back....

Everything seems to be converting to the way I want, the books are going to my K3 the way I want...except for PDFs.

These still maintain a title that I do not want. I want everything uniform.

This is what I have under Preferences:

ADDING BOOKS: Regular Expression (?P<author>[^_-]+) -?\s*(?P<series>[^_0-9-]*)\s*-\s*(?P<title>[^_].+) ?
The above expression has been working perfectly for me...except with PDFs. The PDFs still continue to have the author name in the title of the book, although the Calibre is showing the author and title are separate.

So you are saying the title and author columns in Calibre have the correct values in the library view right? In which case your "add to Calibre" step is working fine and your regular expression above is not relevant to this issue.

SENDING BOOKS TO DEVICES: {authors}/{title} - {authors} with Automatic Management marked for metadata.
So far the above do-dad is working well...

Ok so that will sort out the directory structure for how they are saved on your Kindle. For a Kindle this isn't relevant to how they will appear displayed on the screen. Just the OCD in you that wants to control where they are stored under the covers. As dwanthy said above, if you go changing this make sure you change it in the device specific configuration screen in Preferences->Plugins->Devices->Kindle XXX. That caught me out yesterday, changing it in one place instead of the other.

TWEAKS: # Control formatting of title and series when used in templates save_template_title_series_sorting = 'Strictly_Alphabetic'

That sounds fine to me.

This is what I want my K3 to show: Within the collection called Debbie Macomber, a book should read "Angels Everywhere 02 - The Trouble With Angels". CURRENTLY, it is showing Debbie MacomberAngels Everywhere 02 - The Trouble With Angels

SO. How do I get the PDFs to keep the name that I give them when they are uploaded to K3?

You didn't mention your metadata plugboard values. This is what *will* control how your Kindle titles are displayed. For more info see this thread. So in Preferences-> Metadata Plugboards, create a plugboard of:
Format: mobi
Device: KINDLE2 (or whatever is relevant to your model)
Source template: {series:|| }{series_index:0>2s|| - }{title}
Destination field: title

Then make sure you send the books to your device again and hopefully you will get what you want appearing.

I suspect what is happening is that the metadata stored inside those PDF files is not what you want. And as Kindles use that metadata for display purposes you don't see what you want. So you need to setup a metadata plugboard above to overwrite the data when you send the book to your Kindle.

Once that is working, your next step will be the Kindle collections, I finally got around to trying the plugin yesterday and it does the job great.

[Synful]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

So you are saying the title and author columns in Calibre have the correct values in the library view right? In which case your "add to Calibre" step is working fine and your regular expression above is not relevant to this issue.

Ok so that will sort out the directory structure for how they are saved on your Kindle. For a Kindle this isn't relevant to how they will appear displayed on the screen. Just the OCD in you that wants to control where they are stored under the covers. As dwanthy said above, if you go changing this make sure you change it in the device specific configuration screen in Preferences->Plugins->Devices->Kindle XXX. That caught me out yesterday, changing it in one place instead of the other.

That sounds fine to me.

You didn't mention your metadata plugboard values. This is what *will* control how your Kindle titles are displayed. For more info see this thread. So in Preferences-> Metadata Plugboards, create a plugboard of:
Format: mobi
Device: KINDLE2 (or whatever is relevant to your model)
Source template: {series:|| }{series_index:0>2s|| - }{title}
Destination field: title

Then make sure you send the books to your device again and hopefully you will get what you want appearing.

I suspect what is happening is that the metadata stored inside those PDF files is not what you want. And as Kindles use that metadata for display purposes you don't see what you want. So you need to setup a metadata plugboard above to overwrite the data when you send the book to your Kindle.

Once that is working, your next step will be the Kindle collections, I finally got around to trying the plugin yesterday and it does the job great.

Everything works now! Thank you so much!!!!!! I would like to say this is the last you will ever speak to me but knowing my luck. ::Sighs:: Thanks again!!!

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by Synful

Everything works now! Thank you so much!!!!!! I would like to say this is the last you will ever speak to me but knowing my luck. ::Sighs:: Thanks again!!!

Fantastic

Glad you got there in the end. And don't worry about the questions. IMHO I find it is one of those areas of Calibre that is "super flexible" at the expense of "first timer" usability. It is not a criticism aimed at the developers as this has evolved over time and with so many different devices or features to support it is obviously a complex thing to manage.

I just think along with a couple of other areas of Calibre (like setting up a library for the first time) it is a candidate for a "UI Wizard" to lead users through the steps. Choose your device, choose from a limited list of "options" such as how to display titles/store in folders, and then let the wizard take care of setting the multiple settings underneath to reflect that. If over time the user wants to change their settings, they can either fire up the wizard again or go direct as an "advanced" user into the various multitude of preferences, tweaks and plugin configurations as they do now.

The hours of time I could have saved if it had been as simple as clicking through 2 or 3 wizard screens of basic options...

[Synful]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

Fantastic

Glad you got there in the end. And don't worry about the questions. IMHO I find it is one of those areas of Calibre that is "super flexible" at the expense of "first timer" usability. It is not a criticism aimed at the developers as this has evolved over time and with so many different devices or features to support it is obviously a complex thing to manage.

I just think along with a couple of other areas of Calibre (like setting up a library for the first time) it is a candidate for a "UI Wizard" to lead users through the steps. Choose your device, choose from a limited list of "options" such as how to display titles/store in folders, and then let the wizard take care of setting the multiple settings underneath to reflect that. If over time the user wants to change their settings, they can either fire up the wizard again or go direct as an "advanced" user into the various multitude of preferences, tweaks and plugin configurations as they do now.

The hours of time I could have saved if it had been as simple as clicking through 2 or 3 wizard screens of basic options...

YES! That sounds perfect...just a wizard to get you started. I read and read instructions but none made sense. I'm usually pretty good at figuring things out on my own...but this really whooped me!! Without you guys here to steer me in the right direction....I'm pretty sure I would have been bald by now....