emailing books and 'On Device' / series / metadata plugboards

[affa]

Version: Calibre 0.8.53

I'm using a metadata plugboard to add series information to my titles -- ie,
Lincoln Rhyme [1] - The Bone Collector

I then email these files to my 3 devices (2 kindles, 1 ipad). However, because the title changed, it does not recognize that they are the same title. This is causing other problems -- for example, the Kindle Collection plug-in is failing to create collections because it doesn't pull the series information since it doesn't realize they're the same books.


i found an old thread that is sort of related to my issue
(https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=128976) but... it wasn't much help.

Any ideas? Is this happening because I'm emailing vs. using a USB connection? Is there any way around this? Email is definitely the way I need to do this; my kindles travel around with family members.

[affa]

ok, i've been searching for threads on this sort of thing for hours, to no avail. i found some interesting info here:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...34963&langid=2

about how 'in device' is calculated, but no solution for my problem.

Is there any way to somehow 'tweak' the way Calibre name matching works? For example, I know my series will be

SERIESNAME [number] - TITLE

So it would be great to be able to instruct Calibre to ignore the regular expression for everything up to "] - " when doing name matching from library to device. (note, i don't actually know regular expressions, i just know it's possible).

Does this feature already exist? Or is there another method? I want to add stuff to my devices, but till I get this worked out I can't.

[kovidgoyal]

No, it isn't possible, short of running calibre from source and modifying the code.

[affa]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

No, it isn't possible, short of running calibre from source and modifying the code.

Darn. So using a plugboard to modify series titles will always mess up 'on device'?

I can't code, so I wouldn't be able to code a plug-in, but someday a way to tweak 'on device' matching would be extremely helpful.

I have to either give up 'on device', which is extremely useful, or I have to give up using a plugboard, which is also extremely useful. Since they're interrelated, it would be nice if they could play nice together.

Thanks for the response, though. Even if it was bad news. I'm surprised no one has figured out a workaround for this... I can't be the only person to use plugboards, so isn't everyone having this problem?

[kovidgoyal]

Send by USB you will have no problem. Its only the combination of email+plugboard that has this issue.

[affa]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Send by USB you will have no problem. Its only the combination of email+plugboard that has this issue.

Sending by USB only works for one of my devices, unfortunately. Another is often traveling and the third is an Ipad. Email works really well, and puts the book in the Amazon cloud, which makes it easy to grab.

Oh well. Thanks for the response.

[affa]

kovid --

is there any chance of getting access to adding regular expressions to the 'on device' matching algorithm at any point in the future?

I was also doing more research, and it sounds like the first attempt to check for 'on device' is the books UUID... why is this changing when I email the book vs. send it by USB?

Sorry, just been trying to figure out an alternate solution for this for days, hitting my head against the wall.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by affa

kovid --

is there any chance of getting access to adding regular expressions to the 'on device' matching algorithm at any point in the future?

I was also doing more research, and it sounds like the first attempt to check for 'on device' is the books UUID... why is this changing when I email the book vs. send it by USB?

Sorry, just been trying to figure out an alternate solution for this for days, hitting my head against the wall.

E-mailing is a one way street. There is no communication from the device to Calibre.
OnDevice is meaningless except with a hard connected device

You could create) a 'Sent to device' custom column, but the burden of maintaining that would be on you as Calibre does not know if the book even arrived

I include the field {id} (this is the internal number Calibre assigns the folder that it keeps the book and can be made to show in the 'Book Details' pane) in the Template: {title}{id}- Very useful to ID the correct book if you have 2 versions of the same title

[kovidgoyal]

I'm not going to add any such capability to calibre the potential for hard to track bugs is too high, but it should be trivial to run calibre from source and add it yourself. relevant code is in gui2/device.py

[affa]

Originally Posted by theducks

E-mailing is a one way street. There is no communication from the device to Calibre.
OnDevice is meaningless except with a hard connected device

Ah. I think I understand the reason this isn't making sense to you --

'On device' is incredibly useful. Just because a device might be 'hard connected' today doesn't mean it always is. If a device is away for a month, and I'm emailing files to it, when it comes back any title that used a plugboard isn't recognized anymore as 'on device'.

Additionally, emailing is the best way to get the same file on many devices at the same time -- multiple kindles and an Ipad. If I send via email, all devices can easily get it. Being able to get a file on all of our devices with a single email, regardless of where in the world the device is, is extremely useful.

so, this creates a problem... all the files on the device that used a plugboard are now 'disconnected' from their calibre file, which means i currently need to periodically go and delete them all and resend via USB (when the device is at home). if you've ever dealt with amazon cloud, you'd know why this is a massive, massive, massive chore.

sorry, i have a family that travels tons, which is why there is an issue.

[affa]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

I'm not going to add any such capability to calibre the potential for hard to track bugs is too high, but it should be trivial to run calibre from source and add it yourself. relevant code is in gui2/device.py

sadly, i wouldn't even know how to run Calibre 'from source', let alone alter source code. but thank you for the response.

there must be another way to accomplish this then, because it basically really hinders the combination of email/plugboard (at least with kindles), which is so useful.