08-13-2011, 05:26 PM | #61 | |
Wizard
Posts: 1,065
Karma: 858115
Join Date: Jan 2011
Device: Kobo Clara, Kindle Paperwhite 10
|
Quote:
I'm new to OpenOffice this year and I'm just starting to learn regex so my plan is to gradually wean myself off Word and get more comfortable in OOo and stop using Word entirely eventually. Regarding default settings as a KISS thing, I still run with almost 100% defaults, figuring I don't know enough yet to figure out what my desired ideal settings might be. |
|
08-13-2011, 05:56 PM | #62 | |
Wizard
Posts: 1,065
Karma: 858115
Join Date: Jan 2011
Device: Kobo Clara, Kindle Paperwhite 10
|
Quote:
I'll also add in kmckinley's excellent point about default settings being a KISS thing. Regarding Writer2epub I'd read about it a little, but I haven't tried it. Maybe a paragraph listing tools like that might be helpful, but I'd figured those were covered elsewhere in the forum. But I'll add it anyway. Edit: And travger's advice to go slow at first, clarifying the learning curve, and the more books there are the more time refixing things uses up. Anybody who has any advice for new calibre users, please post here and I'll incorporate in KISS where possible. There are probably a lot of other things experienced users do - or even new users - that might be helpfui to other new users, gathered together in one place. Also please advise me if I make any errors in assumptions, practices, or whatever. Before posting a major revision I'll read back through the thread carefully, make sure I didn't miss anything, then incorporate. Last edited by unboggling; 08-14-2011 at 04:36 AM. |
|
08-13-2011, 06:54 PM | #63 |
Junior Member
Posts: 1
Karma: 10
Join Date: Aug 2011
Device: calibre
|
|
08-13-2011, 07:17 PM | #64 | |
Wizard
Posts: 1,065
Karma: 858115
Join Date: Jan 2011
Device: Kobo Clara, Kindle Paperwhite 10
|
Quote:
Edit: And thanks for the smile. Last edited by unboggling; 08-13-2011 at 08:41 PM. |
|
08-14-2011, 11:41 PM | #65 |
Wizard
Posts: 1,065
Karma: 858115
Join Date: Jan 2011
Device: Kobo Clara, Kindle Paperwhite 10
|
I feel remarkably good for an eBook-addict and fiction-addict with zero fiction eBooks. Now I have a clean eBook baseline, consisting of the Calibre Quick-Start Guide in default library configuration. I deleted the old libraries with all their eBooks, de-intalled calibre including the configuration directory, and reinstalled this new, clean-baseline calibre instance. I realized the best time of all possible times to zero both eBook and calibre baselines was now, together.
1. I had a minor problem losing a few books between saving-out and adding-in operations across two libraries. (Didn't normally use CopyToLibrary.) I couldn't pin it down enough to replicate on demand and document it. The library infrastructure configuration for each library had evolved through a lot of structural changes, any of which could have engendered some problem that lingered on sporadically. A clean installation of calibre might solve whatever that was. 2. I made mistakes. I didn't track sources on eBooks, and I was careless about some sources. If I didn't fix it now, I'd have more eBooks to sort out later. And I want to achieve a higher level of format quality next go-round. Since I'd converted everything to ePub I'd have had to re-add them from my Raw Books bin in their original formats with bad metadata, fix author and title then merge them with the right metadata in the old ePub record, and still wouldn't know their sources in all cases. So I deleted all Raw Books too. 3. I will start eBook gathering anew, slowly, redownloading some books a few at a time from Amazon, Baen, other legitimate sources. I'll know the source and track it in metadata, and in most cases delay any conversions or cleanups until right before reading, also leaving them as whatever format they arrived in. And this go-round I will be much more discriminating in choice of content for inclusion, regarding authors, genres, quality of content, desire-to-read-soon. At the start of my eBook activities, I'd grabbed a lot of stuff from places like Mobile Read, Project Gutenberg, Amazon (free or on sale) that looked mildly interesting and I didn't intend to read until later, if ever. Why should I even bother to download those and maintain them in my own eBook database, when they're all instantly available from those vendors/distributors whenever I want to read them in the future? At that future time format qualities and my conversion skills probably will be better than now. So I'm thinking a new strategy might be good to try: "don't download the series or title until just before reading." Obtain-the-book-on-demand. That might work pretty well, as opposed to my original strategy to "obtain long before reading and fixup right away in case I might want to read it someday." I'd been gathering a lot more than I was reading anyway. That use of time gathering and fixing didn't match my reading needs. 4. I'd also like to determine a slightly more comfortable infrastructure for my library or libraries. Rethink custom fields and templates. Rethink that habit of using two libraries, one for cleanups and one for main library. I know a little more now about eBooks, the eBook world, and calibre than when I started in January. My work habits in the KISS 0.21 (at Post #52 in this thread) seem okay to me as still-a-beginner, except where marked there as needing revision, and except as discussed above. But I settled into those habits in haphazard fashion. I want to rethink everything first then go slow and build carefully. Does that reasoning seem sound? The next version of KISS may take awhile to shake out. Thank you to everyone who posted in this thread, and other MR posters elsewhere too. You taught me a lot so far and helped me work this out. Whether it's sound reasoning or not sound - thanks. Last edited by unboggling; 08-16-2011 at 06:47 PM. Reason: several small clarifications |
08-17-2011, 03:59 AM | #66 |
Wizard
Posts: 1,065
Karma: 858115
Join Date: Jan 2011
Device: Kobo Clara, Kindle Paperwhite 10
|
Request reality check and feedback before I continue revising KISS versions. I decided I'm not comfortable giving anyone any advice, because heck, who am I to give advice in this crowd. So I plan to recast this whole KISS thing into: one new user (me) documenting his efforts to apply KISS (in the sense of an engineering project) to building his library, with iterative improvements in methods and (hopefully) results. If others on MR think they might extract any use from that, I'll continue to post documentation about it here. If not, I'm continuing the project anyway but just won't post about it.
So, do you think it would it be useful or not? Last edited by unboggling; 08-17-2011 at 04:15 AM. |
08-17-2011, 04:16 AM | #67 | |
Grand Sorcerer
Posts: 11,940
Karma: 7219261
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Notts, England
Device: Kobo Libra 2
|
Quote:
One piece of unasked-for advice. People don't seem to want to read documents that discuss first principles -- the fundamentals of how something works. Instead they want to know what button to push and what text to type to solve their problem-of-the-moment. Where it makes sense, you might want to provide specific solutions to problems you remember having. I do recognize the difficulties: remembering what your problems were and tracking calibre's changing landscape. |
|
08-17-2011, 09:50 AM | #68 |
Well trained by Cats
Posts: 30,377
Karma: 58053698
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: The Central Coast of California
Device: Kobo Libra2,Kobo Aura2v1, K4NT(Fixed: New Bat.), Galaxy Tab A
|
I think Chaley has it right. Users want quick fixes (to problems they created because they did not RTFM (or MR) first)
I had an advantage when I ordered my first (and only) device, the Astak PEz... I had to WAIT. I put the time to great use by reading posts here at MR. By the Time my PEz finally arrived, I knew many of the issues of (Calibre) Library creation to avoid. I still made missteps, ... just not as many |
08-17-2011, 10:30 AM | #69 | |
Wizard
Posts: 4,004
Karma: 177841
Join Date: Dec 2009
Device: WinMo: IPAQ; Android: HTC HD2, Archos 7o; Java:Gravity T
|
Quote:
I'm not so sure that users don't want to know or read about how things work, it's just that they have a hard time connecting the manual's details to a practical solution for whatever problem they face. I can look at a long list of functions and still not realize that one of them is perfect for solving my current problem. It's far easier to spot a problem description and say - That's just like my problem - then read a specific solution using a specific function, then go back and read about how the function works, than it is to do all that in the reverse direction. Examples are great, and new users are always going to create problems for themselves. A thread like this, with a good set of basic steps for the new user can certainly help minimize those problems. |
|
08-17-2011, 06:06 PM | #70 |
Wizard
Posts: 1,065
Karma: 858115
Join Date: Jan 2011
Device: Kobo Clara, Kindle Paperwhite 10
|
Thanks for the responses.
Presently I'm most interested in strategies and methods of use, how other people do things, testing various methods in an effort to determine "best practices" for given needs, particularly my own needs for gathering and managing fiction. So that's what I'm focusing down on as opposed to my other distracting interest in things like coding, documentation, or troubleshooting any specific technical problems. I'll continue to post about what I'm doing. It's a way for me to automatically correct bad assumptions and practices, sort of nip them as they bud, assuming that experienced users give feedback such as "hey, that's a bad method or assumption due to this-or-that reason. What I do instead is…." One reason I had some trouble was that after an initial period hanging out here in "learning mode" for a month or two, I went into "doing mode" for months without asking for feedback about my methods, and bogged down in gathering/fixing and some not-very-good methods. In the bigger-picture sense, not the which-button-should-I press-next sense. That's one reason I laid my work habits out there originally. People with a lot more experience dealing with eBooks posting their general strategies for dealing with eBooks helped me immensely. (Such as: fix just before reading makes more sense. Converting everything isn't necessarily good. Go slow.) And such general strategic advice probably existed in other posts on MR back when I first started - maybe I just wasn't ready or willing to hear it at that point. Last edited by unboggling; 08-17-2011 at 10:15 PM. Reason: small clarifications |
08-19-2011, 04:20 AM | #71 | ||
Evangelist
Posts: 480
Karma: 270594
Join Date: Aug 2010
Device: palm tx, Windows7, Galaxy A5
|
Quote:
Quote:
Idea for 'source' I lifted from someone's screenshot... |
||
08-19-2011, 05:13 AM | #72 | |
Wizard
Posts: 1,065
Karma: 858115
Join Date: Jan 2011
Device: Kobo Clara, Kindle Paperwhite 10
|
Quote:
How exactly do you track source? I was thinking I'd like to add a custom field #source as a multi-tag type of field, and keep SourceName, web.address there where possible, or other source-IDing info. Edit: I just added it, as described. Been configuring calibre and adding fields. I haven't decided yet what to do with tracking rights information, if at all. After all, it's almost always in the book if it's from a legitimate source. Edit: I'm deciding not to track it separately unless someone let's me know a good reason I've missed. BTW, there are pros and cons for the separate metadata/format clean-up library. One con is that you can't (yet) cut and paste from older books in main library without doing a quick switch, which takes time. For example, to enter series info on a new series member when you already have older series members in the other library. Edit. Page counts, another thing I hadn't messed with and now I'm wondering if they'd be useful to me in any way. Since I read mostly fiction that is mostly text with few graphics, I've been doing pretty well estimating book length solely from filesize. Now I realize page count would be useful in cases like a short story where the author or publisher padded the size with hi-rez cover or additional hi-rez graphics. Last edited by unboggling; 08-19-2011 at 06:38 AM. Reason: clarification & additional points |
|
08-19-2011, 07:47 AM | #73 |
Wizard
Posts: 3,130
Karma: 91256
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Germany
Device: Cybook Gen3
|
Just a note re: maintaining the post once it's a sticky: If the mod just copies/moves your post to a new thread, locks that and stickies it, you can still edit the post- it's your post, after all.
|
08-19-2011, 08:21 AM | #74 |
US Navy, Retired
Posts: 9,865
Karma: 13806776
Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: North Carolina
Device: Icarus Illumina XL HD, Nexus 7
|
I don't think this is correct. If I recall correctly once it is a sticky only Mods can update it. That's one of the reasons why Starson17 became a mod so he could update his "Using News Recipes: Start Here" sticky post.
|
08-19-2011, 08:33 AM | #75 | |
Wizard
Posts: 3,130
Karma: 91256
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Germany
Device: Cybook Gen3
|
Quote:
|
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Two Users--One Calibre Library? | jerrypettit | Devices | 3 | 06-24-2011 01:01 PM |
Hi, Calibre users | zaphod234 | Introduce Yourself | 6 | 07-22-2010 08:16 AM |
The Success of the iPad and KISS | ColdSun | General Discussions | 68 | 07-10-2010 10:33 PM |
How do Calibre users.... | Lanyon | Calibre | 24 | 01-01-2009 01:29 PM |