Metadata Plugboard to change title of same-title books in series for Kobo Touch

[il_mix]

Ok, the thread title is quite confusing... I'll explain in detail.
I have several book series where the books have no actual title. As an example, I have a "My hero saga" series, where all the books are called "My hero", and can be discriminate by the series index.
I've read and tested several paths to edit the title when uploading on the device (Kobo Touch) via Metadata Plugboard. The title will actually be changed on the device (e.g., on the device I read "02 - My hero" as title, correctly stored in "My hero saga" shelve), BUT sending a new book from the same saga will overwrite the one on the device, although on the device the title changes. I've underlined "on te device" since on Calibre, in device library view, the book is listed with the original title "My hero", not "02 - My hero". Mayyyyybe that's the problem.

Now, I can easily bypass the problem by changing the title in Calibre to "My hero 1", "My hero 2", ... But I prefer, if possible, to maintain the title "clean" and let the send function do the dirty work.

Side note, as stated in some similar thread I've opened, this WORKED in the past, I'm sure of this. Don't know what happened on the device firmware side, driver side or Calibre side.

Any hint?

[theducks]

The Title MUST be set in Calibre. (Author-Title IS the DB Tie Breaker, not series)
In this case (and I also have a similar), The Title index is also the series [index], Just set them both

Title bk1 Title[1]
Title bk2 Title[2]

[davidfor]

You probably need to change the metadata plugboard, but the reason the next book replaces the book already on the device is the save template. This is set in the driver configuration. For this I have:

{author_sort}/{title} - {authors}

With that, if I was sending a book to the device with the same author and title, the second would replace the first.

To distinguish them, you need something extra such as the series info. The following should work:

{author_sort}/{series}{series_index:0>2s| - | - }{title} - {authors}

If this has stopped working recently, have you changed driver? If you changed from the KoboTouch to the KoboTouchExtended driver or the other way, you will need change the save template in whichever driver you are currently using.

[il_mix]

The save template actually did the trick.
The behavior didn't change "recently". Several years ago I was able to send same-title bookz (actually cbz/cbr archives) to the device changing the title via Metadata Plugboard; quite sure I didn't hack the "save template" at the time. Maybe there was no "save template" at the time on the driver, and only the Metadata Plugboard's rules were working during the send procedure?

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by il_mix

The save template actually did the trick.

Good.

The behavior didn't change "recently". Several years ago I was able to send same-title bookz (actually cbz/cbr archives) to the device changing the title via Metadata Plugboard; quite sure I didn't hack the "save template" at the time. Maybe there was no "save template" at the time on the driver, and only the Metadata Plugboard's rules were working during the send procedure?

That is definitely not the case for the Kobo devices. The save template has always been part of the configuration for them. And, at least for the Touch and all Kobo devices since, the uniqueness on the device is the full filepath for the book file. You can have multiple books with identical metadata as long as they are separate files.

[il_mix]

Working with the "save template" I can actually remove the Metadata Plugboard settings to get the desired behavior. Good that I have to tweak a single place.