Why calibre always translate non-English file name into Latin letters?

[JackLiu]

First of all, calibre is really sweet app, I loved it!

But, there is one thing that bothers me a lot, which is calibre always translate non-English file name into Latin letters.

I'm a Chinese user, who have a lot of books named in Chinese. And calibre just simple translate all these Chinese characters into Pinyin. For example, a book named 围城 will be translated into Wei Cheng. This is really inconvenient for Chinese users and other non-English users. Because most of them want to see the original name on their eBook readers.

So, is there any solutions for this issue?

Thanks

[kovidgoyal]

Not really. Support for non ascii characters in file systems is really atrocious. There's no way to make an application like calibre that supports a multitude of operating systems, devices, etc that also writes file names with non ascii chars.

[JackLiu]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Not really. Support for non ascii characters in file systems is really atrocious. There's no way to make an application like calibre that supports a multitude of operating systems, devices, etc that also writes file names with non ascii chars.

Thank you very much kovidgoyal, you did a really good job on this software, it helps me a lot!!

BTW, There is a checkbox in the preferences of "Saving books to disk" which says "cover non-English characters to English equivalents".

If I uncheck the option, I'd be able to save a book to my PC/Kindle in the original Chinese filename. But the file will not state as "On Device" when I plug my kindle into my PC.

So, I'm wondering is it possible to add a same feature to "Sending books to devices", or mark the file which I save to Kindle as "On Device" manually?

[kovidgoyal]

doing that with sending to device causes major problems because different devices have different levels on filesystem unicode support (it depends on the file system and the kernel). Why do you care about filenames on the device in any case? the Kindle lists the books by their metadata not their filenames (except PDF)

[JackLiu]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

doing that with sending to device causes major problems because different devices have different levels on filesystem unicode support (it depends on the file system and the kernel). Why do you care about filenames on the device in any case? the Kindle lists the books by their metadata not their filenames (except PDF)

Thanks for your explanation.

I don't care filenames if Kindle lists the books by their metadata. Since, I read a lot of pdf and txt files on my Kindle, and it seems that Kindle ignore the metadata of a txt files too.

PS. Because a Pinyin word could stands for a lots of Chinese Characters, it is difficult for Chinese to read a book in Pinyin filename.

For instance, the Pinyin book name "Wei Cheng" might stands for "围城 未成 卫城 渭城 伟成 危城 伪称 维城 ...".

[kovidgoyal]

I suggest converting your files to mobi then you wont need the filenames to be correct.

[JackLiu]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

I suggest converting your files to mobi then you wont need the filenames to be correct.

I will try that, BTW is there a way to output converted file to another directory?

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho....php?p=1124906

This is the thread that I posted.

[johnskiller]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

I suggest converting your files to mobi then you wont need the filenames to be correct.

first thank you for your greate Calibre.

I read a lot chinese books on kindle 3, the pinyin file name is a little bit different for manage 'cause I'm not always manage my books using Calibre, so could you add an option for "translate non-ascii filename" then I can keep chinse book name for my kindle.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by johnskiller

first thank you for your greate Calibre.

I read a lot chinese books on kindle 3, the pinyin file name is a little bit different for manage 'cause I'm not always manage my books using Calibre, so could you add an option for "translate non-ascii filename" then I can keep chinse book name for my kindle.

That's not going to happen as it will create headaches for me (it's very difficult to get filename encoding correct on multiple platforms/devices/OSes/locales)

[firsikov]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

doing that with sending to device causes major problems because different devices have different levels on filesystem unicode support (it depends on the file system and the kernel). Why do you care about filenames on the device in any case? the Kindle lists the books by their metadata not their filenames (except PDF)

Hello, Kovid.

I really love your program. Very powerful library manager. And the book editor is beyond praise. Much better than Sigyl.

As you know, many people jailbreak their Kindle. And they use formats other than .mobi or .azw. For example, .epub or .fb2.

And then in the library, such books are displayed not by their internal titles, but by file names. It is very inconvenient when book titles consist entirely of non-Latin letters. Cyrillic, Hangul, Japanese hieroglyphs, or, as mentioned above, Chinese. I'm sure Indian users have the same problems.

If it is possible to add the option "convert non-English characters to English equivalents" to the device settings and make it enabled by default, it would be very convenient for advanced users who really understand what they are doing.

And for users who stumbled upon this option unexpectedly, make a warning about the dangers of such changes.

[kovidgoyal]

I am afraid not. There are enough issues with device integration that are very difficult to debug as they require access to hardware. Given these devices expose themselves using FAT32 filesystems that have various extremely non-intuitive limits on what characters and file names they allow I am not going ot complicate my life further here. Thre is nothing stoppig whatever jailbroken file listing software you are using from reading metadata from inside an epub or fb2 file.