Metadata Organization

[Turtle91]

Hello,

I had a couple questions about Calibre's metadata for custom columns.

1) Is there an option to disable saving of a custom column's metadata to the book? I use custom columns within the GUI to help manage my library, but there isn't a need desire to have all any of that data in the file itself.

2) If I must save it to the opf, is it possible to have a consistent output order?

<meta content="{&quot;kind&quot;: &quot;field&quot;, &quot;is_custom&quot;: true, &quot;is_category&quot;: false, &quot;#extra#&quot;: null, &quot;name&quot;: &quot;Formats&quot;, &quot;rec_index&quot;: 23, &quot;link_column&quot;: &quot;value&quot;, &quot;datatype&quot;: &quot;composite&quot;, &quot;is_csp&quot;: false, &quot;is_editable&quot;: true, &quot;is_multiple2&quot;: {}, &quot;colnum&quot;: 6, &quot;label&quot;: &quot;formats&quot;, &quot;#value#&quot;: &quot;EPUB&quot;, &quot;is_multiple&quot;: null, &quot;category_sort&quot;: &quot;value&quot;, &quot;search_terms&quot;: [&quot;#formats&quot;], &quot;table&quot;: &quot;custom_column_6&quot;, &quot;column&quot;: &quot;value&quot;, &quot;display&quot;: {&quot;description&quot;: &quot;&quot;, &quot;composite_template&quot;: &quot;{:'approximate_formats()'}&quot;, &quot;composite_sort&quot;: &quot;text&quot;, &quot;contains_html&quot;: false, &quot;use_decorations&quot;: 0, &quot;make_category&quot;: false}}" name="calibre:user_metadata:#formats" />

The name of the custom column consistently appears at the end of all that, but the 'value' changes location and can be somewhat difficult to find. Is it possible to have it always appear at the beginning of that list, or at the end just prior to the name??

NOTE: The position changes between books. Within the same book it is in a consistent relative position for each of the different custom columns.

Thanks!

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

Hello,

I had a couple questions about Calibre's metadata for custom columns.

1) Is there an option to disable saving of a custom column's metadata to the book? I use custom columns within the GUI to help manage my library, but there isn't a need desire to have all any of that data in the file itself.

There isn't an option, but others have found ways to do this using other calibre tools/plugins. I expect that one or more of them will chime in with the technique(s).

2) If I must save it to the opf, is it possible to have a consistent output order?

If you mean the file metadata.opf instead of the opf in an epub, then no tool will remove this information. That file is used by calibre to recover book metadata in case of a catastrophic crash and loss of its book database.

In either case (in or out of the book), there is no existing way to control the order of the columns or the info in the columns. Calibre keeps them in an efficient data structure (called a 'dict') for performance reasons. One consequence is that when the structure is saved the items appear to be randomized. Of course, calibre could be changed to write this information to the file in some known order but that would be a fair amount of work, error prone, and possibly incompatible with the old order. For these reasons I am not interested in doing it. Others, of course including Kovid, might think differently.

[BetterRed]

I use the Modify ePub plugin to remove all non-DC elements

BR

[FizzyWater]

"DC"?

[PeterT]

Dublin Core

[Turtle91]

Thanks for the info!

Thanks Chaley. Yes, I was referring to the opf inside the epub. I don't have a problem with the metadata.opf containing that info. I was hoping there was an option of deleting those entries while "saving to disk" - or at least just not updating them from the metadata.opf.

Unfortunately, there are some other non-DC metadata that I do like to keep such as series name and index. But thanks for the suggestion BR.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by FizzyWater

"DC"?

Ah yeah, I tend to forget that other DC.

BTW, the Dublin in DC isn't the one that gave us Joyce, Beckett, Yeats et al. It's the the one in Ohio, there's no Blarney Stone there either, that's closer to Cork.

BR

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

Thanks for the info!

Thanks Chaley. Yes, I was referring to the opf inside the epub. I don't have a problem with the metadata.opf containing that info. I was hoping there was an option of deleting those entries while "saving to disk" - or at least just not updating them from the metadata.opf.

Unfortunately, there are some other non-DC metadata that I do like to keep such as series name and index. But thanks for the suggestion BR.

@Turtle91 - I put the metadata that I want to see in a 'metadata jacket', which I move to the back of the book. Sometimes I edit the content.opf directly with an xml-aware editor to get rid of particularly irritating dross.

BR