Managing anthologies

[PaulBeijer]

Is it possible to register different authors in an anthology separately, and have a link to the anthology in each entry, instead of multiple iterations of the larger anthology file? Haven't found a pertinent thread for this.

Thanks in advance for any advice provided!

[theducks]

Custom Column of the authors type.

Mine started out as a place for pseudonyms (some of my dead tree volumes had those and later, the e-book was released with the real name). The I started using it for Anthology Author lists

Turns out that column serve both purposes.
(It also allowed for a short name for my first, file name based readers bookshelf)

I also use Preferences: searching: grouped searches to use both together for some searches.
My general plan priority for {Authors}:
1) The Editors (on the cover) if shown eg. Gardner Dozios (ed) [and yes, I add the (ed) if 'Edited by' is what is on the cover.]

2) A (perceived) Headliner Author (usually the first on the cover or largest print)

3) <various> Mostly for Boxed sets with no clear 'Editor'.

Is this the only way? nope. Does it fail on edge cases
YMMV

[retiredbiker]

Originally Posted by PaulBeijer

Is it possible to register different authors in an anthology separately, and have a link to the anthology in each entry, instead of multiple iterations of the larger anthology file? Haven't found a pertinent thread for this.

Thanks in advance for any advice provided!

What do you mean by "separately"?

Why not just list all the authors separated by "&" in the author & author sort fields? The actual book will be stored in a folder of the name of the first author only, but the tag browser will look up and take you to the book by searching on any of the authors. I've done many pulp magazines (for example) this way and it works fine.

[PaulBeijer]

Thanks, retiredbiker! That is of course possible but I wanted to register not just the included authors but also the respective titles and other metadata such as content descriptions as well, which to me suggests a separate post for each author/title. I suppose I could leave it empty and manually refer to the title of the anthology... But what I really wanted to know is if I could replace the usual e-book format with a link to the anthology e-book included in the calibre database under the anthology title. Sorry for being obscure in the original posting.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by PaulBeijer

Thanks, retiredbiker! That is of course possible but I wanted to register not just the included authors but also the respective titles and other metadata such as content descriptions as well, which to me suggests a separate post for each author/title. I suppose I could leave it empty and manually refer to the title of the anthology... But what I really wanted to know is if I could replace the usual e-book format with a link to the anthology e-book included in the calibre database under the anthology title. Sorry for being obscure in the original posting.

AFAIK there is no way in Calibre to have an Active (clickable) Link between books (entries).
A lot of work, but EPUB SPLIT the anthology does get an entry per/ with the story
(sorry, I missed realizing your goal, on my first reply.)

[Tarana]

For a favorite author or 5 star writing, I use Calibre to split the book and save those few out separately. I do keep the complete anthology as well. I am the keeper of the e-library and none of my family members read anthologies, so it's for my own perusal. Think about your goals. Otherwise, it is a lot of work to go through when you could spend it reading new books.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by theducks

AFAIK there is no way in Calibre to have an Active (clickable) Link between books (entries).

The Calibre URL scheme lets you have links between books. The links can be static (entered into a long text HTML custom column) or computed (in a column made from other columns). For static links, the comments editor has tool to construct URLs from links.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by chaley

The Calibre URL scheme lets you have links between books. The links can be static (entered into a long text HTML custom column) or computed (in a column made from other columns). For static links, the comments editor has tool to construct URLs from links.

Isn't that fairly fragile because it is not back linked ? If either piece gets a new ID .

I will play with it. It was there all along, although the first few times i clicked on it, it failed to jump to the book and suggested my view was limited.
A search (not a VL) was in effect

#master:"=Split_Off"

That is a custom Tag field (fixed values) where I log the original format
BUG?

[chaley]

Originally Posted by theducks

Isn't that fairly fragile because it is not back linked ? If either piece gets a new ID .

If I was concerned about the links surviving copy to library and the like where IDs do change then I would (probably) do the link with an Action chain. Define a custom column that contains the right search to locate the anthology (author, series, title, whatever), then have the action execute that search and show that book. If you want the action to change the selection instead of doing a search then probably the action must be written in Python.

I will play with it. It was there all along, although the first few times i clicked on it, it failed to jump to the book and suggested my view was limited.
A search (not a VL) was in effect

#master:"=Split_Off"

That is a custom Tag field (fixed values) where I log the original format
BUG?

Sorry, but I don't know what the "it" is you clicked on. Your example implies it is an item in the tag browser. Those don't do id-based searches. If it is an item in book details then clicking on one will replace the search. If a VL is active then it will indeed limit the resulting books to those in the VL.

[PaulBeijer]

Thank you all for your useful input. I think I now have a pretty clear idea of how best to handle my particular issue!

[theducks]

Originally Posted by chaley

Sorry, but I don't know what the "it" is you clicked on. Your example implies it is an item in the tag browser. Those don't do id-based searches. If it is an item in book details then clicking on one will replace the search. If a VL is active then it will indeed limit the resulting books to those in the VL.

I clicked on the Calibre link from one of the split off books. (my it)

The screen flickered, but remained.
I did a Quickview on the series and it said it was not available in the View (was just the search shown). But If I quickedview the Author, it was there and it had the ID that the Calibre Link had.
Then it started working as long as I did not have my custom column search (it worked wit the Author search)

[BetterRed]

I can't recall having any problems using calibre:// URL links when a search or VL is active.

I have hundreds of 'books' linked with within the same libraries and between libraries. Within libraries I use the 'show-book' and 'view-book' directives, sometimes both; and between libraries I use the 'search' directive.

I store the links in long test columns, and the Link column of the authors table (Manage Authors).

For me the addition of support for a 'calibre' protocol is the most useful new feature that has been added to calibre since I started using it over a decade ago. That's probably because I cut my teeth on IMS and IDS TP systems that used network databases.

FWIW - It would be useful if the link tool in the long text editor (LTE) had a widget to get a calibre:// URL as well as a file:// URL, e.g. an additional "Choose a book in your library: Browse (button)' widget. It would avoid having to copy the link from book details before firing up the LTE and pasting it there.

It would need a means to select a 'show-book' or 'view-book' link… radio buttons? And for me at least browsing the library folder tree would be fine, for show-book one would select the book folder and for view-book the format file.

BR

[BetterRed]

Back to the OPs issue - how I deal with anthologies and journals.

I have a 'related/Related" long text column, with HTML, Header on the side attributes, this is where I put the inter-book links.

• Add the anthology/journal as a book, if necessary convert it to EPUB.
• Use the Epub-Split plugin to create the books for the individual stories/articles
• Put a list of calibre:// URLs referencing the individual stories/articles into the Related column of the original anthology/journal - usually view-book links, but sometimes show-book links or both.
• Put a show-book link to the original anthology/journal book into the Related column of each story/article book.

The clipboard extender I use (ClipboardFusion Pro) makes this waaaay easier than it would be if I only had the normal Windows clipboard.

Added: For journal PDFs I sometimes split it into article PDFs rather than convert to EPUB and splitting that.

BR

[Wiggo]

Or if you find all this too much effort for nothing, just copy the ToC into comments

[chaley]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Back to the OPs issue - how I deal with anthologies and journals.

I have a 'related/Related" long text column, with HTML, Header on the side attributes, this is where I put the inter-book links.
[...]

Riffing a bit on BetterRed's method, what I would do: Create a custom series column (example: #related) to relate the anthologies. Make the anthology have index 0. The rest are in book order.

I now have three choices:

• Use Quickview to browse the books in the anthology. Show Quickview then click in the Related Books column in the booklist. You can now navigate between the related books in the Quickview pane/window. Double-clicking in a related books cell will select that book in the booklist.
  
  Example screen capture:
  
• Compute "show" links and put them in a custom "column made from other columns" that shows in book details. Example: #related_links. Clicking on the link will select that book in the booklist.
  
  Example screen capture:
  
• Use Action chains to create an action that displays the list of links in a popup dialog. Give it a keyboard shortcut if desired (I usually don't). As above, clicking a link will select that book in the booklist.
  
  Example screen capture:
  

The second and third methods use a stored template to compute the HTML links. In my case the template is named "list_related_books()". The template is attached.

The template in the #related_links column (choice 2) is

program: list_related_books('#related')

This calls the stored template, telling it to process the custom series column '#related#.

The action chain in choice 3 is a "Formula" action that uses the same template as choice 2. The chain is attached.